tentative syllabus ENGL301 Writing & The Teaching of Writing
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LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 ltorda@bridgew.edu www.leetorda.com NOTE: All classes, student meetings, and open student hours (office hours) this semester will be held virtually via Zoom. Need to make an during a time that is not an open student hour? appointment? Let me know you want to meet by adding yourself to my google.doc appointment calendar here: https://goo.gl/3CqLf and I will send you a zoom link for the time you sign up for. |
Spring 2021 Open Hours for students (office hours):
T&R 11:00-12:30 W 11:00-12:00 F 3:00-4:00 and by appointment. Click here to attend ANY of the Open Hour for Students Zoom sessions listen above. HOW TO ATTEND ZOOM CLASS Click here to attend ENGL 301 Writing & the Teaching of Writing Click here to attend ENGL 344 Young Adult Literature Click here to attend ENGL 489 Advanced Portfolio workshop. |
UPDATE FOR 16 FEBRUARY 2021
I’m trying to take to heart the idea that you are getting bombarded with emails in all directions so I’m going to try to keep it to two emails a week. Keep in mind, I’ll always post these emails on the “Class Update” page for our class as well so you don’t need to keep these emails in your in-boxes.
HOW TO DO THE SCAVENGER HUNT
ENGL 301 Class Profile Super Fun Scavenger Hunt (just humor me)
UPDATE FOR THE WEEK OF 2 FEBRUARY 2021
I was really moved by what Andrew Mortarelli wrote on the discussion board last Thursday after reading “Why Johnny Can’t Write.” He said: “Reading this made me think about my writing. I have always seen myself as a confident writer, but after reading that and assessing myself, I’m wondering where I actually fit. I would be the student who would use simple words only because I didn’t know more sophisticated ones or I was afraid of spelling them incorrectly. “
This is the kind of thing that kills me as a teacher: that a hardworking, super conscientious, student like Andrew would question his skills (in a piece of writing that is perfectly and entirely grammatically correct and error free, mind you). This is why I want to push back against this trope crystalized in “Why Johnny Can’t” and other articles that schools and teachers are failing students as readers and writers: that mindset does not serve to make students better readers or writers.
Angel Walsh didn’t necessarily question what Merill was arguing, but she did make this particular point: “No matter what writing is a continuous learning process.” Yes. Yes it is. A number of you questioned the idea that college-age students couldn’t become better writers because they were so messed up from all their school years prior. And with good reason. You know that you are a better writer now than you were before.
So why is that? Because you’ve written a lot in college and writing more is how you learn to write better. If we want to critique a “system” of writing instruction, let’s not look at TV or movies or video games or phones as the reason. Let’s not blame teachers. Let’s look at the kinds of writing reading experiences students have access to. Students read and write less in school in part because a lot of instructional time is crowded out by standardized testing.
I don’t want to make too big of a deal about this, but a number of you pointed out that an article about how bad student writing is was riddled with writing errors. Olivia Halpin was generous enough to imagine that the typos were intentional and meant ironically. Both Maria Pestilli and Danielle Delaroca made the point, in Danielle’s words, that “here are so many typos in it, and I did not look too closely at the grammar, but I am sure there were probably flaws with that too, which is what they claim is poor.” (And that’s a whole other question: is a typo a sign that someone is a bad writer?) So why do we trust this woman, who is not a teacher and apparently doesn’t have super great editors at Newsweek?
Catie Mullen wrote about the article “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read” written in 2019. She writes: “This is very similar to the article we discussed in class, "Why Johnny Can't Write." Martin Cothran says in the "Why Johnny Still Can't Read" article that, "Because of shortcomings in how teachers are educated , children are failing to learn essential skills.” I think that a lot of the articles you found (and good work there for the wide range of pieces you located) have some version of that argument in it--10 years ago, 5 years ago, 20 years ago, 70 years ago--all the same).
Look, I’m not saying that everything is going right in the classroom today. Yes, there are some crapola teachers out there. But teachers are also incredibly underpaid and under-appreciated. Being a teacher isn’t the same as being a nun--you don’t take a vow of poverty. It’s a job--and a job you need a college degree to get and a Master’s degree to keep, not to mention the 5 tests someone who wants to teach elementary school needs to take just to get initial licensure. Does that sound like underprepared teachers to you?
A number of your wrote about how great the Bay Area Writer’s Project sounded (Sara McNaughton, Olivia Halpin). And you are right, it was great. It gave teachers the chance to come together as writers, practice their own writing, and then bring back what they learned as writers to their schools where they could mentor other teachers on best practices. Again, I get back to what Angel Walsh said about writing being a process. What makes Writer’s Project so great was that it allowed teachers to engage in the process of writing.
It became something called The National Writing Project. However, all the federal funding for that brilliant idea was cut in the early 2000s. Now, it is funded locally and through private donation, which means far fewer folks have access. Good ideas are expensive and one thing that should be abundantly clear is that the US does not really like to spend money on public education.
Let’s look at some of the other “Why Johnny Can’t” articles that you found (forgive me that I didn’t write down who found what). Keep in mind, if I wanted to, I could include three, four, five articles from 2016 on):
“Those of us who have been doomed to read manuscript written in an examination room--whether at a grammar school, a high school, or a college--have found the work of even good scholars disfigured by bad spelling, confusing punctuation, ungrammatical, obscure, ambiguous, or inelegant expressions. Everyone who has had much to do with the graduating classes of our best colleges, has known men who could not write a letter describing their own Commencement without making blunders which would disgrace a boy twelve years old.”
You wanna know who wrote that? It’s a man named Adam Sherman Hill, and he wrote this about students at Harvard University in 1879. Yes, you read that right, 1879.
So if you were wondering when the golden age of literacy in the United States was--and we must assume there was one since literally every single article above suggests that literacy has precipitously declined--it must have been sometime around the Civil War.
And let’s consider another point: he’s talking about the .0001% of super elite, rich white men who went to Harvard. And if he is essentially saying they can’t write for nothing, what does that say about the rest of us slobs? And, further, if things were so bad in 1879 and have, by our long list of articles published since, disintegrated further, how is it even possible that we are even able to communicate with each other?
So what is my point? Let’s move away from Deficit Ideologies
I started to make this point at the end of class, and it’s my job to both prove it to you and prepare you for the truth of what I’m saying: maybe it’s not that we are all such lousy writers. Maybe writing is hard. Maybe it takes time to learn. Maybe it takes meaningful opportunities to read and to write, over a very long academic career, to get decent at it. Couldn’t that be why you are all such competent writers at this moment in your career?
These first two weeks we laid out some groundwork for our time together: 1) it is absolutely no picnic to try to teach reading and writing in this or any other year; 2) We know in the deep-down of our hearts and minds what a good classroom experience looks like and 3) this last point: let’s flip this script of deficit. Let’s stop thinking that everyone is a terrible writer and that schools and teachers are hopeless places where no one learns anything. Let’s meet the challenge of teaching the difficult vital skill of writing and approach literacy instruction with the radical hope that it demands of us as teachers figure out how to give students the experiences they need to become powerful users of language.
I’m trying to take to heart the idea that you are getting bombarded with emails in all directions so I’m going to try to keep it to two emails a week. Keep in mind, I’ll always post these emails on the “Class Update” page for our class as well so you don’t need to keep these emails in your in-boxes.
- I’ve made a slight tweak to the syllabus regarding Thursday. It does not require much from you except for an extra post to a discussion board with a single question you think it is important to ask our teacher alums. I know we started this work in class today, but it was a narrow list, and we want to come with 5 to 7 great questions that really get at their experiences. You’ll be happy to have that material when it comes time to write the paper.
- The above discussion board as well as the final discussion board post on Rose are available for your input as of this email.
- Included here is a link to the .PDF packet of student writing I talked a bit about in class today (Tuesday). Here is the link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xki2xnyyomztnap/sample.student.writing.pdf?dl=0
You don’t’ need to do anything with it except have it for Thursday. I’m going to suggest that, if possible, print it out. The pieces we are going to use in class on Thursday are the ones that are hand-written and it’s difficult to read/do anything with them when it is electronic. It’s not a deal-breaker and there is no consequence for not printing it out, I’m just suggesting. Additionally, this link to the .PDF is also available on the syllabus as well as the Class update page for our class. - And the moment I know you have ALL been waiting for, included below and also attached to this email is the CLASS PROFILE SCAVENGER HUNT. This is not a required assignment, but completing it will earn you one of those free “A” for acceptables for your Reading Journal assignment. It can really help you out during a class when you just don’t have the time to post. It’s a great way to learn what a lovely collection of folks we have in our class this semester.
HOW TO DO THE SCAVENGER HUNT
- Read The CLASS PROFILES and be charmed by your classmates hidden talents and incredibly photogenic faces (I mean, really, collectively, nice looking bunch—and how do you all know how to do that thing with the side angle? Like that Drake song. It’s obviously generational—I can’t do it).
- Download the attached MSWord document or cut and paste the scavenger hunt worksheet from below (scroll down below these instructions).
- Match the name to the member of our class and fill in the blank with the right name.
- Email me—and me alone—your answer document (either an updated MSWord document or cut and paste it into an email). But, seriously, don’t just reply all to this email or you will ruin this very fun thing that I’m forcing you to do.
- Feel a little smug about having that extra “A” in your back pocket for use whenever you need it.
ENGL 301 Class Profile Super Fun Scavenger Hunt (just humor me)
- _____________is close to her adorable ragdoll cat Dixie and helps run the children’s program at her church and loves doing so; her all-time favorite food is Crab Rangoon.
- _____________loves animals, especially her registered show horse named Dizzy who she has had for 17 years and is busy planning a wedding to her fiancé Kaylynn.
- _____________has a passion for dancing and in her spare time, she choreographs dances for a YouTube channel and is pet mom to Daisy (cat) and Gracey (dog).
- _____________does Olympic weightlifting, enjoys action movies, and loves the poem "to be of use," by Marge Piercy, and babysits two children, a six-year old girl and a ten-year old boy.
- _____________has 3 sisters, 1 brother, and two guinea pigs. Her favorite season is the fall, her favorite holiday is Halloween, and her favorite films are anything with hardcore action.
- _____________went to Babson College for a degree in Business with a focus in Environmental Sustainability and moved to California before moving to Ireland for four years.
- _____________is into running, the TV show Game of Thrones, and proud caregiver to a Golden Retriever named Abe, as well as a Mini Poodle named Moses.
- _____________is into thrifting for sustainability reasons; astrology posts and reading what they have to say about her zodiac sign, Cancer; The Bachelor and Bridgerton.
- _____________transferred last semester from Northern Essex Community College, loves her cat, doing yoga, Law and Order: SVU and the color purple.
- _____________is a Resident Assistant on campus, loves anime, yoga, arts and crafts, The Great Gatzby, the color yellow and the TV show Supernatural.
- _____________is very determined, and her favorite show to watch is The Office; her favorite book series is the Robert Langdon series, and her favorite book in the series is The Da Vinci Code.
- _____________is a huge animal and hunting advocate. She can explain to you how hunting is helping the environment in MA with the current overpopulation of whitetail deer.
- _____________is proud caretaker of her dog named Karlie, a box-terrier-poodle mix. Karlie may be small, but she has a big personality. Her passion for teaching stems from the hardships she once faced in the classroom.
- _____________loves to stay active going to spin class and on walks and hikes with her golden retriever puppy name Bailey. She is the Administrative Vice President of Gamma Phi Beta at BSU.
- _____________works managing the main dining hall at Curry College in Milton, loves the color and the writer Octavia Butler.
- _____________published one of her poems in The Bridge, is a dedicated barista at a local coffee shop in her hometown, and backpacked on the cheap for a month in Europe.
- _____________listens to podcasts like The Moth Story Hour, The Confessional, and This American Life, watches British cop shows, and, above all else, she really loves to teach.
- _____________enjoys travel (favorite spots: Ireland and Jamaica) working out, cooking, and running and takes care of dogs Calie and Bodhi and a cat named Roo.
- _____________is a Peer Assistant for Intro to Linguistics and is into New Girl and Schitt’s Creek, the movie Ten Things I Hate About You and knows a lot—a lot, a lot—about Taylor Swift songs.
- _____________is into Legos the Percy Jackson series and the TV show The Flash, even though it tends to get a little too repetitive after a few seasons.
- _____________ is one half of a set of fraternal twins, works as a substitute teacher and at Carters clothing store, and was recently an extra on the movie set for the movie Godmothered.
UPDATE FOR THE WEEK OF 2 FEBRUARY 2021
I was really moved by what Andrew Mortarelli wrote on the discussion board last Thursday after reading “Why Johnny Can’t Write.” He said: “Reading this made me think about my writing. I have always seen myself as a confident writer, but after reading that and assessing myself, I’m wondering where I actually fit. I would be the student who would use simple words only because I didn’t know more sophisticated ones or I was afraid of spelling them incorrectly. “
This is the kind of thing that kills me as a teacher: that a hardworking, super conscientious, student like Andrew would question his skills (in a piece of writing that is perfectly and entirely grammatically correct and error free, mind you). This is why I want to push back against this trope crystalized in “Why Johnny Can’t” and other articles that schools and teachers are failing students as readers and writers: that mindset does not serve to make students better readers or writers.
Angel Walsh didn’t necessarily question what Merill was arguing, but she did make this particular point: “No matter what writing is a continuous learning process.” Yes. Yes it is. A number of you questioned the idea that college-age students couldn’t become better writers because they were so messed up from all their school years prior. And with good reason. You know that you are a better writer now than you were before.
So why is that? Because you’ve written a lot in college and writing more is how you learn to write better. If we want to critique a “system” of writing instruction, let’s not look at TV or movies or video games or phones as the reason. Let’s not blame teachers. Let’s look at the kinds of writing reading experiences students have access to. Students read and write less in school in part because a lot of instructional time is crowded out by standardized testing.
I don’t want to make too big of a deal about this, but a number of you pointed out that an article about how bad student writing is was riddled with writing errors. Olivia Halpin was generous enough to imagine that the typos were intentional and meant ironically. Both Maria Pestilli and Danielle Delaroca made the point, in Danielle’s words, that “here are so many typos in it, and I did not look too closely at the grammar, but I am sure there were probably flaws with that too, which is what they claim is poor.” (And that’s a whole other question: is a typo a sign that someone is a bad writer?) So why do we trust this woman, who is not a teacher and apparently doesn’t have super great editors at Newsweek?
Catie Mullen wrote about the article “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read” written in 2019. She writes: “This is very similar to the article we discussed in class, "Why Johnny Can't Write." Martin Cothran says in the "Why Johnny Still Can't Read" article that, "Because of shortcomings in how teachers are educated , children are failing to learn essential skills.” I think that a lot of the articles you found (and good work there for the wide range of pieces you located) have some version of that argument in it--10 years ago, 5 years ago, 20 years ago, 70 years ago--all the same).
Look, I’m not saying that everything is going right in the classroom today. Yes, there are some crapola teachers out there. But teachers are also incredibly underpaid and under-appreciated. Being a teacher isn’t the same as being a nun--you don’t take a vow of poverty. It’s a job--and a job you need a college degree to get and a Master’s degree to keep, not to mention the 5 tests someone who wants to teach elementary school needs to take just to get initial licensure. Does that sound like underprepared teachers to you?
A number of your wrote about how great the Bay Area Writer’s Project sounded (Sara McNaughton, Olivia Halpin). And you are right, it was great. It gave teachers the chance to come together as writers, practice their own writing, and then bring back what they learned as writers to their schools where they could mentor other teachers on best practices. Again, I get back to what Angel Walsh said about writing being a process. What makes Writer’s Project so great was that it allowed teachers to engage in the process of writing.
It became something called The National Writing Project. However, all the federal funding for that brilliant idea was cut in the early 2000s. Now, it is funded locally and through private donation, which means far fewer folks have access. Good ideas are expensive and one thing that should be abundantly clear is that the US does not really like to spend money on public education.
Let’s look at some of the other “Why Johnny Can’t” articles that you found (forgive me that I didn’t write down who found what). Keep in mind, if I wanted to, I could include three, four, five articles from 2016 on):
- We have an article that originally appeared in 1955 in McClean’s magazine by Rudolph Flesch excoriating parents that their children couldn’t read.
- He was still pretty sure no one could read in this 1985 article in Edweek by Rudolph Flesch that argues that whole language instruction is to blame for our supposed decline into illiteracy.
- There is this 2006 article in Inside Higher Education by Laurence Musgrove that says there is not enough writing infused into the entire college curriculum.
- I found a 2009 article by J. Singleton Jackson that says even graduate students don’t know how to write (It’s a PDF included at the end of this note)
- Here is a 2012 article from The Atlantic that says the same things as the article in 2006 and 2018.
- Here is a 2013 piece from NBC News that says Johnny can’t write and it’s upsetting employers.
- There is this 2017 New York Times article that says kids can’t write because they don’t have enough grammar instruction.
- We have this 2018 article by Matthew Lynch about why college students can’t write essays that blames the embrace of the writing workshop and teachers not requiring enough writing.
“Those of us who have been doomed to read manuscript written in an examination room--whether at a grammar school, a high school, or a college--have found the work of even good scholars disfigured by bad spelling, confusing punctuation, ungrammatical, obscure, ambiguous, or inelegant expressions. Everyone who has had much to do with the graduating classes of our best colleges, has known men who could not write a letter describing their own Commencement without making blunders which would disgrace a boy twelve years old.”
You wanna know who wrote that? It’s a man named Adam Sherman Hill, and he wrote this about students at Harvard University in 1879. Yes, you read that right, 1879.
So if you were wondering when the golden age of literacy in the United States was--and we must assume there was one since literally every single article above suggests that literacy has precipitously declined--it must have been sometime around the Civil War.
And let’s consider another point: he’s talking about the .0001% of super elite, rich white men who went to Harvard. And if he is essentially saying they can’t write for nothing, what does that say about the rest of us slobs? And, further, if things were so bad in 1879 and have, by our long list of articles published since, disintegrated further, how is it even possible that we are even able to communicate with each other?
So what is my point? Let’s move away from Deficit Ideologies
I started to make this point at the end of class, and it’s my job to both prove it to you and prepare you for the truth of what I’m saying: maybe it’s not that we are all such lousy writers. Maybe writing is hard. Maybe it takes time to learn. Maybe it takes meaningful opportunities to read and to write, over a very long academic career, to get decent at it. Couldn’t that be why you are all such competent writers at this moment in your career?
These first two weeks we laid out some groundwork for our time together: 1) it is absolutely no picnic to try to teach reading and writing in this or any other year; 2) We know in the deep-down of our hearts and minds what a good classroom experience looks like and 3) this last point: let’s flip this script of deficit. Let’s stop thinking that everyone is a terrible writer and that schools and teachers are hopeless places where no one learns anything. Let’s meet the challenge of teaching the difficult vital skill of writing and approach literacy instruction with the radical hope that it demands of us as teachers figure out how to give students the experiences they need to become powerful users of language.
UPDATES FOR OUR 2/4/2021 CLASS/DISCUSSION BOARD
Here are some updates to our syllabus. As you know, we only got through about half of what I hoped for us to cover. Thus, I’m tweaking what we will be doing in class tomorrow. This note is being emailed to you, and it will appear on both the syllabus and on the class update page.
And, finally, keep those 200 word bios coming (not .PDFed) and your pic/image/meme to represent you (not your interview partner). Thanks to those of you who have already sent. And I’ll see all of you tomorrow for class.
Some notes on what you had to say in "First Principles" Discussion Board Post
Thanks to those of you who posted to our first class discussion board.
I’m grateful to all of you for sharing your stories of success and, perhaps even more so, of perceived failure--at least failure in the sense that a particular class experience was not successful. As I said in the intro to this post, research indicates that how teachers teach in their own classrooms is influenced far more by how they were taught as students than by what they learn about how to teach in methods classes. Thus, it is important to reflect on those experiences that most affected us as students. When I look at what you had to say, I notice two strong themes emerging. They are worth noting here.
What makes for a "great" classroom experience?
One particular theme I noticed among positive experiences, where teachers and classrooms and assignments that connected to the world beyond the classroom. Angel Walsh talked about a kind of assignment that connected what she was learning in her math class to her life well beyond the confines of that space. Angel’s teacher made a connection to the wider world, something that really great assignments, really great classes attempt to do. Mercedes Reid described a history class that made no effort to sugar coat the tragic complexity of the history of our nation. What she is describing here is a classroom that makes space for authentic learning--which can be a challenge in the ELA classroom. Not for nothing, banned books are still a thing. And Djenifer Goncalves wrote about a poetry class, that, similarly, brought the world into the classroom and the student into the world: “it helped you think about yourself the way you never taught about before. He would also inform us about what’s currently going on with the world . . . It would be information about today’s society and politics. What I loved about this was that it made me reflect. So, when I left school, and I was sitting on the bus, I used to always think about what we’ve discussed in class and write it down on my journal.”
Another theme I would hope you notice, and one that I will emphasize all semester long, folks weren’t describing easy classes; they were describing difficult, sometimes agonizingly so, classes where they as students triumphed because of how the teacher guided them through the work. I will go to my grave saying this: students don’t need easy work, they need hard work where they are challenged, and they need a teacher willing to stick right by them, buoying them up out of struggle into the light of success.
Patricia Diaz Fernandez described exactly this student/teacher relationship writing about a public speaking experience in this way, saying: “While other teachers would gladly give students the zero that they deserve for not performing in front of the class despite their public speaking fear, she encouraged me the whole time. She made me realize that I was capable of breaking down that barrier of fear if I just believed in myself like she believed I could.” I would really encourage you to read Rosalie Barkley’s entire post because I can’t really quote it all here. But she described the kind of teacher I aspire to be: a tough and no nonsense teacher, but a humane teacher and a human teacher (my flaws are all too often on full display in my teaching--and yet I think I’m my best self when I am teaching). She described this important teacher saying “He was not the teacher that you could bring a sob story to and he would hold your hand and cut you some slack. However, as the year went on, Mr. Ragona made it obvious that his goal was not to scare us but to help us learn and succeed.”
Why am I hitting this so hard?
I think Catie Mullen put it best: “It is an amazing feeling when you know that your hard work and dedication has paid off. At the beginning of junior year in his class, I was nervous because I didn’t believe in myself or my writing, but by the end of senior year I was confident.” Here is the thing: this is our job as teachers. We need to build confident, resilient, life-long learners. You don’t do that by giving students an easy lift all the time.
What makes for a soul-crushing classroom experience?
But you also don’t do it by just making things hard--or chaotic or cruel or just wrong, and that is the theme I see coming through in your stories of “worst” experiences. Stasia Wing described a classroom where a teacher engaged in unprofessional behavior--disclosing information about to students to other students in this instance. Danielle Delaroca described a totally chaotic classroom due in large part to disruptive students that the professor failed to keep under control (wish I could say that’s never happened to me, but). John Cronin was pretty generous in describing how one of his professors mailed him a packet of material at the start of last year’s initial lockdown and and essentially said, figure it out for yourself. He described his own confusion and struggle to figure out what was due when--and, get this, he had to mail stuff back to the prof. I mean, yeah, last year was rough, but, seriously? John, you were too kind in your assessment of that prof’s efforts. As a professor, I have thought so much about how to make the learning more seamless for my students as we move into essentially a third semester of forced online learning (not that I have it figured out--I’m struggling). All of these things crowded out learning for these students and forced them to spend time managing things they shouldn’t have had to deal with.
Maria Pestilli (our first post, thank you, Maria, for getting us started this week) described a situation that totally gutted me where she described being made to feel “helpless” in a class--the polar opposite of what you want your students to feel. While Maria was describing one class, Courtney Beale got at a larger oppressive and discouraging force in the classroom--the incredibly stultifying effects of standardized testing on students’ sense of self (spoiler alert: glad to know Courtney found a teacher who, as she put it, “made me feel valued, important, and competent in her class and other classes following.” Which is exactly what we want to happen in our classrooms.
Other (good) things
Andrew Mortarelli described a Shakespeare lesson with a teacher who brought great energy and enthusiasm for the work--passion. Students can smell it on you if you hate what you are teaching. That’s why I fill my classes with stuff I love and care about. I want to model that passion for my students for sure. Sara McNaughton talked about a teacher who “always emphasized the importance of self-care. When students were having bad days, she was the first to ask them how they were doing and what she could do to help.”
Mercedes Reid told two best/worst stories revolving around issues of race and racism in the classroom and the complexity of being a Black and Brown student in majority white settings. First, off, to Mercedes, let go of any regret you have about confronting or not confronting that teacher. That’s too much to ask of you in a classroom setting where one person, the teacher, has all the power (power dynamics in the classroom will figure into our discussions of assessment and evaluation). And let me say this: as literacy educators in the first part of the 21st century, our jobs are to create equity-focused classrooms. The equity-focused classroom is a just classroom where all students have the best chance at meaningful learning. That, my friends, is also a theme of this semester.
Our semester together will be spent unpacking a lot of the ideas, stereotypes, myths, difficulties, lies, complexities, challenges, and joys of literacy instruction that your own experiences as students have exposed you to and that you give evidence to here. It’s gonna be work. Let’s do it together and with energy and joy.
LT
Introductory Message 27 January 2021
If you are reading this message, you are currently enrolled in ENGL301-001. We are scheduled to meet synchronously from 9:30 to 10:45 every Tuesday and Thursday. And, for the most part, we will do just that.
PLEASE NOTE: Way back in October, when I scheduled a doctor’s appointment, I mistakenly scheduled the appointment for tomorrow during exactly our class time. Thus our first class will officially be Tuesday, 2 February 2020. I’m genuinely sorry about this. I considered scheduling but, like I said, I made this appointment in October which makes me think that if I cancel I’ll have to wait until March.
Here is the zoom link info to attend our class (on Tuesday, 2 February 2020). This link will also work for conferences/meetings later in the semester:
ENGL-301 T/TH 9:30-10:45 MEET UP
https://bridgew.zoom.us/j/93939192071?pwd=M2RTNTl1aldCZCtINW9XN280bTQ1QT09
Meeting ID: 939 3919 2071
Passcode: 607946
IF YOU ARE READING THIS MESSAGE ON BLACKBOARD: Please note that I do not host classes on Blackboard. I am posting this message here to alert you to that fact and to direct you to my teaching website: www.leetorda.com that you can access by clicking here. . I am in the process of updating and posting the policies, syllabus, and first assignment information to that site. It will be available by what would have been our first class together: Thursday, 28 January 2021,@ 9:30 AM.
In the future, weekly announcements like this one will be available on the Class Update page for this class. If you were enrolled in this course by 5 January 2020, you received an email that repeats some of this information and included the book list for our course. That email, along with this message, can be found there as well. Class updates will also be sent via email as well.
Email to students on 5 January 2021
If you are getting this email you are currently enrolled in ENGL 301. Excuse this intrusion on your winter break. After last semester, all of us deserve some time away from computers. So if you open up your email on January 26th and worry that you missed this, no need. I’m emailing you ahead of the semester for those folks who like to know as much info as they can ahead of the start of the semester.
First, I’ve had some questions about when and how our class will meet. ENGL 301 is scheduled in infobear for T/Th meetings from 9:30 to 10:45 synchronously, and it’s my intention to follow that and begin the semester synchronously. I am willing to discuss as a class a balance of synchronous and asynchronous meetings after we establish our online community, but, if you are trying to plan a work/home life around synchronous classes, please know that my expectation is that you will attend our course in zoom regularly.
Secondly, attached to this email are the book orders for all three of the courses I am teaching this coming semester. I don’t ask students to purchase texts lightly. I know how expensive these texts are, and I want to do what I can to make it as affordable as possible. So. . .
I’m mostly including the book lists for those of you who might have the inclination to read ahead. For ENGL 301, Lives on the Boundary will be the first text we use in class. It’s a book length memoir.
As we draw closer to the start of the semester, you will receive emails about first zoom meetings, were to locate the course materials for our class, and any updates on when and how we will meet.
Until then, be well everyone. Rest as you can. Stay safe for yourself and those you love.
LT
Here are some updates to our syllabus. As you know, we only got through about half of what I hoped for us to cover. Thus, I’m tweaking what we will be doing in class tomorrow. This note is being emailed to you, and it will appear on both the syllabus and on the class update page.
- I’m in the process of putting the Ts and Rs on the syllabus into a different color so it is easier to follow, but I’m only doing that after I get this message (that I’ve been trying to send out all day) out to you.
- I’m not abandoning the article thing that I made you locate. Please have selected and read any article on education and be ready to write and talk about it in-class tomorrow.
- Have read “Why Johnny Can’t Write.” Compose a DRAFT first Reading Journal. Be ready to post it to the discussion board for tomorrow’s class. I will open the discussion board up this evening, but don’t post until class time tomorrow. I want to do an exercise in class before you post (this is due to what we didn’t do in class on Tuesday).
- Please, also, remember to google that phrase “why Johnny Can’t. . . “ it might also be “why Jane can’t” or it might be, say, “why American College students can’t”. It’s the why/can’t phrasing that I want to talk about.
And, finally, keep those 200 word bios coming (not .PDFed) and your pic/image/meme to represent you (not your interview partner). Thanks to those of you who have already sent. And I’ll see all of you tomorrow for class.
Some notes on what you had to say in "First Principles" Discussion Board Post
Thanks to those of you who posted to our first class discussion board.
I’m grateful to all of you for sharing your stories of success and, perhaps even more so, of perceived failure--at least failure in the sense that a particular class experience was not successful. As I said in the intro to this post, research indicates that how teachers teach in their own classrooms is influenced far more by how they were taught as students than by what they learn about how to teach in methods classes. Thus, it is important to reflect on those experiences that most affected us as students. When I look at what you had to say, I notice two strong themes emerging. They are worth noting here.
What makes for a "great" classroom experience?
One particular theme I noticed among positive experiences, where teachers and classrooms and assignments that connected to the world beyond the classroom. Angel Walsh talked about a kind of assignment that connected what she was learning in her math class to her life well beyond the confines of that space. Angel’s teacher made a connection to the wider world, something that really great assignments, really great classes attempt to do. Mercedes Reid described a history class that made no effort to sugar coat the tragic complexity of the history of our nation. What she is describing here is a classroom that makes space for authentic learning--which can be a challenge in the ELA classroom. Not for nothing, banned books are still a thing. And Djenifer Goncalves wrote about a poetry class, that, similarly, brought the world into the classroom and the student into the world: “it helped you think about yourself the way you never taught about before. He would also inform us about what’s currently going on with the world . . . It would be information about today’s society and politics. What I loved about this was that it made me reflect. So, when I left school, and I was sitting on the bus, I used to always think about what we’ve discussed in class and write it down on my journal.”
Another theme I would hope you notice, and one that I will emphasize all semester long, folks weren’t describing easy classes; they were describing difficult, sometimes agonizingly so, classes where they as students triumphed because of how the teacher guided them through the work. I will go to my grave saying this: students don’t need easy work, they need hard work where they are challenged, and they need a teacher willing to stick right by them, buoying them up out of struggle into the light of success.
Patricia Diaz Fernandez described exactly this student/teacher relationship writing about a public speaking experience in this way, saying: “While other teachers would gladly give students the zero that they deserve for not performing in front of the class despite their public speaking fear, she encouraged me the whole time. She made me realize that I was capable of breaking down that barrier of fear if I just believed in myself like she believed I could.” I would really encourage you to read Rosalie Barkley’s entire post because I can’t really quote it all here. But she described the kind of teacher I aspire to be: a tough and no nonsense teacher, but a humane teacher and a human teacher (my flaws are all too often on full display in my teaching--and yet I think I’m my best self when I am teaching). She described this important teacher saying “He was not the teacher that you could bring a sob story to and he would hold your hand and cut you some slack. However, as the year went on, Mr. Ragona made it obvious that his goal was not to scare us but to help us learn and succeed.”
Why am I hitting this so hard?
I think Catie Mullen put it best: “It is an amazing feeling when you know that your hard work and dedication has paid off. At the beginning of junior year in his class, I was nervous because I didn’t believe in myself or my writing, but by the end of senior year I was confident.” Here is the thing: this is our job as teachers. We need to build confident, resilient, life-long learners. You don’t do that by giving students an easy lift all the time.
What makes for a soul-crushing classroom experience?
But you also don’t do it by just making things hard--or chaotic or cruel or just wrong, and that is the theme I see coming through in your stories of “worst” experiences. Stasia Wing described a classroom where a teacher engaged in unprofessional behavior--disclosing information about to students to other students in this instance. Danielle Delaroca described a totally chaotic classroom due in large part to disruptive students that the professor failed to keep under control (wish I could say that’s never happened to me, but). John Cronin was pretty generous in describing how one of his professors mailed him a packet of material at the start of last year’s initial lockdown and and essentially said, figure it out for yourself. He described his own confusion and struggle to figure out what was due when--and, get this, he had to mail stuff back to the prof. I mean, yeah, last year was rough, but, seriously? John, you were too kind in your assessment of that prof’s efforts. As a professor, I have thought so much about how to make the learning more seamless for my students as we move into essentially a third semester of forced online learning (not that I have it figured out--I’m struggling). All of these things crowded out learning for these students and forced them to spend time managing things they shouldn’t have had to deal with.
Maria Pestilli (our first post, thank you, Maria, for getting us started this week) described a situation that totally gutted me where she described being made to feel “helpless” in a class--the polar opposite of what you want your students to feel. While Maria was describing one class, Courtney Beale got at a larger oppressive and discouraging force in the classroom--the incredibly stultifying effects of standardized testing on students’ sense of self (spoiler alert: glad to know Courtney found a teacher who, as she put it, “made me feel valued, important, and competent in her class and other classes following.” Which is exactly what we want to happen in our classrooms.
Other (good) things
Andrew Mortarelli described a Shakespeare lesson with a teacher who brought great energy and enthusiasm for the work--passion. Students can smell it on you if you hate what you are teaching. That’s why I fill my classes with stuff I love and care about. I want to model that passion for my students for sure. Sara McNaughton talked about a teacher who “always emphasized the importance of self-care. When students were having bad days, she was the first to ask them how they were doing and what she could do to help.”
Mercedes Reid told two best/worst stories revolving around issues of race and racism in the classroom and the complexity of being a Black and Brown student in majority white settings. First, off, to Mercedes, let go of any regret you have about confronting or not confronting that teacher. That’s too much to ask of you in a classroom setting where one person, the teacher, has all the power (power dynamics in the classroom will figure into our discussions of assessment and evaluation). And let me say this: as literacy educators in the first part of the 21st century, our jobs are to create equity-focused classrooms. The equity-focused classroom is a just classroom where all students have the best chance at meaningful learning. That, my friends, is also a theme of this semester.
Our semester together will be spent unpacking a lot of the ideas, stereotypes, myths, difficulties, lies, complexities, challenges, and joys of literacy instruction that your own experiences as students have exposed you to and that you give evidence to here. It’s gonna be work. Let’s do it together and with energy and joy.
LT
Introductory Message 27 January 2021
If you are reading this message, you are currently enrolled in ENGL301-001. We are scheduled to meet synchronously from 9:30 to 10:45 every Tuesday and Thursday. And, for the most part, we will do just that.
PLEASE NOTE: Way back in October, when I scheduled a doctor’s appointment, I mistakenly scheduled the appointment for tomorrow during exactly our class time. Thus our first class will officially be Tuesday, 2 February 2020. I’m genuinely sorry about this. I considered scheduling but, like I said, I made this appointment in October which makes me think that if I cancel I’ll have to wait until March.
Here is the zoom link info to attend our class (on Tuesday, 2 February 2020). This link will also work for conferences/meetings later in the semester:
ENGL-301 T/TH 9:30-10:45 MEET UP
https://bridgew.zoom.us/j/93939192071?pwd=M2RTNTl1aldCZCtINW9XN280bTQ1QT09
Meeting ID: 939 3919 2071
Passcode: 607946
IF YOU ARE READING THIS MESSAGE ON BLACKBOARD: Please note that I do not host classes on Blackboard. I am posting this message here to alert you to that fact and to direct you to my teaching website: www.leetorda.com that you can access by clicking here. . I am in the process of updating and posting the policies, syllabus, and first assignment information to that site. It will be available by what would have been our first class together: Thursday, 28 January 2021,@ 9:30 AM.
In the future, weekly announcements like this one will be available on the Class Update page for this class. If you were enrolled in this course by 5 January 2020, you received an email that repeats some of this information and included the book list for our course. That email, along with this message, can be found there as well. Class updates will also be sent via email as well.
Email to students on 5 January 2021
If you are getting this email you are currently enrolled in ENGL 301. Excuse this intrusion on your winter break. After last semester, all of us deserve some time away from computers. So if you open up your email on January 26th and worry that you missed this, no need. I’m emailing you ahead of the semester for those folks who like to know as much info as they can ahead of the start of the semester.
First, I’ve had some questions about when and how our class will meet. ENGL 301 is scheduled in infobear for T/Th meetings from 9:30 to 10:45 synchronously, and it’s my intention to follow that and begin the semester synchronously. I am willing to discuss as a class a balance of synchronous and asynchronous meetings after we establish our online community, but, if you are trying to plan a work/home life around synchronous classes, please know that my expectation is that you will attend our course in zoom regularly.
Secondly, attached to this email are the book orders for all three of the courses I am teaching this coming semester. I don’t ask students to purchase texts lightly. I know how expensive these texts are, and I want to do what I can to make it as affordable as possible. So. . .
- I don’t care what edition of a book you use as is the case in some literature classes.
- I don’t care if you read books using kindle—I mean, first, how would I even know, but, also, I don’t care.
- I’m not condoning anything illegal, but if you found a .pdf of a book online that didn’t cost you anything, and they are out there, I would have literally zero idea that you were doing that and not buying the book.
I’m mostly including the book lists for those of you who might have the inclination to read ahead. For ENGL 301, Lives on the Boundary will be the first text we use in class. It’s a book length memoir.
As we draw closer to the start of the semester, you will receive emails about first zoom meetings, were to locate the course materials for our class, and any updates on when and how we will meet.
Until then, be well everyone. Rest as you can. Stay safe for yourself and those you love.
LT