Video–
Defining Literacy
• Video from Brandt’s lecture in at Rhetoric Symposium 2009 (Sylwester Zabielski’s “Remixing Brandt“)
• Kim Allison’s “What is Literacy?” inspired by 50 People, One Question
• Also worth a look (in terms of defining literacy)–Sylwester’s “Literacy in One Sentence” and “Do the Write Thing” (both available at www.ncow.org/site)
- 50 People, One Question (inspiration)
- Kim Allison’s 50 People, One Question–“What is Literacy?”
Currently in the Process of updating, including adding great video from Sylwester (“I Teach 101”), Kim (“50 Questions”), Sylwester’s students, and Sunchai.
Expect links to other fabulous NCoW artifacts as well. Or dig for them yourselves at www.ncow.org/site
In the spirit of ongoing support for writing teachers, we will offer a weekly update on 675 goings-on, including teaching tips, resources, and other relevant information. We’ll also post regular “previews” just in case you are in interested in joining us–sharing ideas, trading ideas. You are always welcome!
Week 2 in Review: Laura and D’Andra (posted below)
Week 3 in Review: D’Andra (posted below)
Week 4 in Review: Toni (available 9/27)
WEEK 3 in Review–d’Andra White
Writing, Teaching, Teaching Writing 
The following post is a synthesis and synopsis of English
675 Teaching Colloquium and the underlying discussion of
literacy. These subjects were breeched, questions posited,
and merit further discussion and conversation on diverging
literacies theories.
According to one student’s/teacher’s evaluation of the book
Nation by Terry Pratchett, some interesting observations
emerge from converging cultures calling into question the
ethnocentric prestige of “civilized” Western culture.
Is there a great divide between literate and illiterate
people, as pointed out by Cunning and Stanovich? What kind
of divide is it? On the basis of Scribner’s metaphors for
literacy, should it be a survival divide (based on
adaptation), a power divide, or a freedom divide (literacy
seen as state of grace)? More profound reflections prompt
us to consider the other kinds of “divide”: a moral one,
a cultural one, an ethnic one, especially when based on the
idea of Western civilization as opposed to views of
“uncivilized” cultures.
These questions constrain us to return to the larger
question of “what is literacy?” and “what defines it?”
especially if we relate it to new media.
This has become the “big question” in literacy since the
bulk of the definitions of literacy are not related to the
real world and seem to be surpassed by “the ways literacy
lives” in everyday life. The result is, to facilitate
anew multiple conversations on reading, writing, and
literacy.
In this process of analysis, Writing Centers have a pivotal
role in engaging students to explore their own writing and
literacy constrains. Tutors work hard every day focusing on
the students’ needs: both the ones students perceive as
pressing (such as well written papers in order to make a
good grade) and the ones many students still do not perceive
(the usefulness of being literate in the real world, as
workers, parents, voters, citizens). Unavoidably the
discussion develops some tough unresolved questions: how can
we inspire students to access the writing center; how do we
explain that going to the writing center will make their
studies easier; how do we create a more collaborative
environment between tutors and instructors in order to
better help students?
Other crucial questions involve the focus of the meeting
with the students: what they need the most? On the one hand,
someone says that focusing on spelling, grammar and
punctuation interferes with the invention process and thus,
the improvement in writing. Furthermore, some scholars
maintain that a paper full of grammar correction could be
discouraging, and also, could distract students from
engaging ideas and building content. On the other hand,
grammar and spelling are a fundamental part of the writing
process and making the message coherent to another reader.
Moreover, informing the students of their grammar errors
help them identify areas of deficiency so that they can
improve their writing.
However, without a teachable moment, as one professor
articulated, where the student desires to know “how to fix
it” not just “fix it for this paper” or a cursory
glance at the grade and teacher comments, without that
teachable moment, the writing doesn’t really change.
Interestingly, the teachable moment identified was one
where, instead of correcting, the instructor had placed
“good trans” in the margin. The student confessed that
for years she had seen “trans” in the margin on several
of her papers but had never bothered to find out what that
meant. It was only when the teacher pointed out what she
had done right and well that she was motivated to know what
“trans” meant. As writing instructors, that motivates
us to identify what the student does well first.
Finally, from the platform of student revision the
professors encouraged writing instructors to confine our
focus to one area and have the student or tutor read the
paper aloud through the whole text and focus on patterns of
error instead of individual grammatical errors. From this
we can create a significant moment where the student can see
that writing well is achievable and that everyone can write.
[…] Post these reviews to the “Week in Review” tab above. These will always be due the Tuesday following the week you are reviewing. (the Week in Review generated by that same graduate class mentioned earlier might be useful to you. You can find that here. […]
[…] Week in Review […]
We discussed Bean’s ideas of collaborative classroom as an alternative to the lecturing teacher-centered dynamic.
This kind of classroom can be activated through several strategies: guided-journal tasks keyed to lectures, make students question the lectures, give more time to the students to answer teacher’s questions, class discussions on questions generated by the students and so on. Kim points out that there is a problem of personalities, that students who always talk in class, will be advantaged, those who are shy could not have the possibility of sharing.
Another interesting side of the discussion has been related with writing comments on students’ papers. Bean shows that it is not a lame issue, and teachers should be very aware of their comments.
Mandy lists some of the most thoughtful:
Comment: Be more specific.
Student response: You be more specific (241).
Comment: You haven’t really thought this through.
Response: How do you know what I thought? (241)
Comment: Try harder.
Response: I feel like kicking the teacher (241).
Comments like these can be not very useful for the students in order to improve their papers. So it is teachers’ responsibility to be very careful when mark their students’ writings.
The bulk of the discussion focus, then, on another kind of teacher’s responsibility: what to point out reading the papers?
Bean and others maintain that it is not important to correct or to mark everything one sees: it could, in a way, discourage the students. Mandy (and I strongly agree with her) writes «I do feel the responsibility to the writer to point out everything that I see as the reader, at least all of the higher-order concerns. I feel like when a student comes to me for help, or I am giving a student back his paper revise, he is trusting me to point out all the places that I see where he could revise his paper. I feel obligated to do so. As a student, I know I would be very frustrated if I revised my paper and re-submitted it and had cleared up all the issues that my teacher had pointed out, but I still got a B on the essay because the teacher didn’t point out everything, so I didn’t know that it needed more work. In fact, I would pissed.»
On the same line is the debate proposed by Sean F-W. Grading and correction are a great part of teacher’s work and each teacher struggles with many and different issues: what kind of notes? how much time is needed to correct a paper? What kind of grading strategy one should adopt?
There are a lot of good suggestion, but the result is that, probably each teacher will choose the strategy he feels more comfortable with him/her and his/her time.
This kind of reflections stands by other kinds of contacts with the written word, sometimes less frustrating contacts: the whole community outside the academy, people who write and think, also young people who write very good story. And we also meet some terrific writer whose play is successfully acted on the stage.
Each of us is already thinking to the end of the semester and it is time to begin closing the circles of what we are learning, we would or would not teach to our freshmen and sophomore students. Together with the tiredness, our thoughts are more and more clear, and some more practical readings from “On Ethnography” and “The Way Literacy Lives” are giving us an additional perspective to face the everyday teaching instances. We are also coping with articles on some specific questions, like that related to heterogeneous classroom where the differences are drawn between students belonging to the “dominant culture (or power)” and the “others” poorer or belonging to different groups, cultures, and religions. Dealing with different communities within the classroom is something teachers are responsible of. Exploring the ways literacy lives we wondered what do we have our students write: we thought about suggesting them to write about their future careers and interest, and we thought of how prompting them in doing it in a very formal, argumentative way.
The reflections on the writing centers activities and strategies have also been present during the whole semester and the last discussion we focused on was the “psychoanalytic” side of tutoring: while everybody have ever worked in a writing center can agree that tutors hold a therapist-like position in the Writing center, on the other hand not everybody has different opinion on the receptiveness of the students.
Of course, the bulk of the discussion of these weeks has been mainly focused on ethnography and its possible connections with our teaching routines. We went from the importance to take notes (the more, the better) to the role of who wear the ethnographer’s shoes., from the literary reviews to creating new theoretical frameworks.