My Mind is Reeling

After examining the resources for this week, I can't help but feel my mind reeling. CJ has asked for our impressions, and I can say that there are definitely a few of those forging new connections in my mind.

The video was informative, and I was glad for an initial slate-clearing to help define rhetoric in my mind. I liked that it was neither too short nor too long, and that it provided me with enough background to cement connections to some of the historical figures associated with the discipline AND alter my view on just how far-reaching it actually is.

I felt like Lindemann's article was preaching to the choir. I know they're out there, but I just can't seem to imagine a composition teacher (regardless of grade level) who doesn't feel passionate about the importance of the written word. As I read the section on Writing as Economic Power, I couldn't help but think of my students and the frank discussion that we had the other day on just this subject. It's so important that students see literacy as the key to all opportunity in their lives.

Fulkerson's "Four Philosophies of Composition" felt like a Cliff Notes version of Berlin's "Contemporary Composition: Major Pedagogical Theories," though I learned (and reviewed) much by reading them. Something that screamed at me: both authors emphasized that, regardless of which philosophy or theory an educator subscribes to, he or she must always remain cognizant of the way in which the philosophy/theory shapes the instruction and assessment in his or her classroom. I wondered how much autonomy a public school teacher is afforded in this regard. Though I have had the opportunity to score my own students' writing for a state test, it was only after norming sessions and training to score in a particular way was I allowed. If I am, for example, expressivist in my pedagogy, how can I be held accountable for the scores those students received on the very formalist rubric against which they were scored?

I did need to brush up on the theoretical underpinnings for composition. Being in the high school classroom has left me too busy and too isolated to hear much more than a barrage of different strategies. I was also struck by the idea that "to teach writing is to argue for a version of reality" (Berlin 236), and immediately began to wonder about certain stakeholders within public education and how they might feel if they were introduced to writing in that context. *Cue maniacal laughter*

Bartholomae's "Inventing the University" was a long read, truth be told, but made me reexamine my own assumptions about what makes writing "good." After reading Fulkerson and Berlin, Bartholomae was who sort of left me reeling. I think what kept whispering to me beneath Bartholomae's prose was a call to teach students how to think, much like Berlin's "version of reality" comment. This is truly a fear of mine. I can attempt to teach them to think critically, but, without much schema for the world around them (because many of my students, by virtue of maturation levels and cultural factors, are moderately-to-extensively self-absorbed), how can they develop opinions to give thought to, and without respect or motivation, how can they see the value in developing their skill with the written word to put those opinions out there in a thoughtful way?

When I begin thinking about that and which theory I subscribe to, I wonder if I should even teach writing at all, or just begin from square one and ask students to just put their thoughts on paper. The way my brain feels, it'd probably be best.

~Kyla