Just to center us: a return to some history. Roughly 100 years before Villanueva publishes the article we read for this evening, Harvard starts English A. English A, with its emphasis on error correction, is pretty much the standard intro composition course for almost 75 years. In the next century, the GI Bill in the late 40s and then, the biggy, Open Admissions in 1970 drastically alter who is going to college. 

1975, the backlash of Why Johnny Can't Write and the whole back to basics movement. 1980, Mina Shaughnessy publishes Errors and Expectations. The first PhDs in the field are granted in 1984. Sharon Crowley puplishes Composition in the University in 1998. 

So by 1998, not quite 30 years after the field "started" in the modern iteration that we know it, we see in Crowley and here in Villanueva a critique of the field. That speaks to the health of this area of study. It was secure enough in itself to think about what came next. Fifteen year's after that (a little more), we have Inoue. 

For this post, trace a line between what you understand from someone like Shaughnessy, through Villanueva, to Inoue. You are welcome to use the Clark reading on audience as well as the reading from Wardle/Adler-Kasner. Frame your discussion using the lens of identity--how has the field's relationship to a writer's identity shifted over time? Make sure your focus is on what Villanueva in particular contributes to our thinking here, but situate him in the wider history we've been exploring. And consider this as well: we've identified ways that historical and cultural forces outside the academy have made big impacts in the field. In fact, you could even argue that the field exists solely because of a wider movement in education and literacy instruction specifically. What forces are impacted by or impacting Villanueva? Inoue? 

Once you've posted, read your colleague's material and respond--add to their ideas, challenge them, make connections between colleagues. As we enter the last month of thinking about the field, I want us to continue to see how the field acts on and is acted upon by cultural forces beyond the academy. 

Picking up on the themes of our reading this evening about audience, identity, ideology, and the way writing constructs, imagines, shapes, and changes all three, I'm asking you to write about and respond to each other about your own writing/reading classroom. 

In what ways are our classrooms colonizing spaces? Thinking back to Inoue, what policies, practices, people enforce ideologies and direct identities for our students--and for ourselves as educators? Try to think of something very specific and, if possible, try not to repeat what you see in your colleague's post. Because, after all, we could all talk about what standardized tests do to us, our students, and our classroom spaces all day long. We've sort of already done it. Of course, please don't stress yourself out over overlap, just try your best. 

Once you've identified a colonizing aspect of your classroom, can you think about ways, manageable, realistic ways, we. can counteract that force?  Write about that as well. And, again, try to be as specific as possible--can you imagine a specific assignment, a specific revision of a policy, etc? 

Finally, once you've posted your own work, read through your colleague's work. Respond authentically with other ideas that might counteract colonizing forces in our classroom. Challenge them. 

Let's all help each other have the most thoughtful, engaging, humanizing classroom spaces we can in a world that can feel like all three are unimportant. 

It's a bit serendipitous that our readings tonight speak to identity, identity formation, and ideology. One thing the reading from this evening is trying to do is make visible the way these things are often seen as invisible in spaces where writing is happening--and in the writing produced in these spaces

For this asynchronous class post, I want to help you to make visible who you are as a researcher and who you are researching. And I also simply want to help you draft your ethnography/case study.

Please post roughly 500 words that positions you as the researcher in your study AND positions the students and their writing. Think of this demographically--age, race, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background. That's the kind of thing that applies to both the observe and the observed. 

But, from your end, who are you or who do you think you are as an educator in the classroom? What are your values and biases that you bring with you as you try to observe the writing space and writing activities that fill it? In other word, what is your identity as you enter into this project and what is your ideology you are operating under? 

This material may not appear in the lump it will appear here in this space, but hopefully you'll find ways to use this material in your paper. 

No need to respond to each other. This is a space for me to read and respond. Much like we did outloud in class last week, I'll try to give feedback and ask questions meant to help all of you as you move through the project. 

FOR NEXT WEEK: Continuing our trend of sort of pre-drafting as we go, please be ready to post and/or discuss what preliminary things you are noticing about your site of writing. 

Hello All--
In lieu of a synchronous online class for 26 March 2024, I'm hosting this asynchronous space for asking questions about the two upcoming projects: the ethnography/case study and the pedagogy presentations. 

You don't have to have questions if you don't have any questions, but feel free to ask if you do. Pedagogy Presentations start next week (3 April 2024), and the workshop draft of your ethnography/case study is due the following week. 

I'll be on the look out for questions and try to answer as quickly as I can over the next week. See you in-person on the 3rd. 

And on the other end of things: Revision
It doesn't feel like a new observation now, but in 1982, what Nancy Sommers said about revision was revelatory--in part because it was the first time someone actually paid attention to revision strategies as something that defines a good writer: ​

How Sommer's came to this place, is outlined in the opening from another of tonight's reading's "Concept 5: Writing is (Also Always) a Cognitive Activity. This is the kind of early research in Composition where folks trying to work with new students in the university (via open admissions) were, as Dryer says mapping "mental processes" of writers.

For Tonight's Prompt: CONSIDER EITHER INVENTION OR REVISION from tonight's reading. Then identify one or more ideas from Threshold Concepts in writing  "Concept 5" that helps you to think about what you aren't doing/are doing/should be doing in a writing classroom to help students understand themselves as writers and understand their process better. 

Once you've posted your response, read your colleague's responses, and be ready to have a discussion about what you find interesting across these discussions.