More inquiries on inquiry...

Quotes to ponder from Brannon's "The Development of Writing":

"Teachers err in their use of grades only when they allow the fiction of 'improvement' to distort their judgements" (165).  Wait!  You mean I live in a fictitious world???!!?  Very true, aptly phrased and frustrating.  The writing program I am a part of  has bought into and canned the functionalist view of writing classes.  Lil Brannon elaborates on this view: 

"A functionalist view of writing classes, emphasizing such low-level technical accomplishments as the manufacture of a business letter, is seductive because it assures a measure of teaching 'success', yielding public evidence of productive effort.  But its effect, often, is to encourage a rudimentary behaviorism in the classroom, not unlike the training of pigeons to push levers, where students are drilled to affect the appearance of literacy without striving to acquire the humane values or the intellectual competences that literacy really entails"(166).  The phrase 'affect the appearance of literacy' really resonates with me - actually it really bothers me because there is so much truth to this.  I so want to hit a homerun with this concept and break the windshield of my student's' cars - wake up!  

"Writing - writing about things that matter, writing to make sense out of experience, writing to discover new knowledge, writing to reach ethical judgements, writing to examine the problems and complexities of the world, writing in response to meaningful reading - is an activity both truly liberal and truly artful"(167).  Zebroski would agree; he is an advocate for studio - a concept I need to implement into my  curriculum.  I have studied the Ross School in NYC, where students are surrounded by art and participate in atypical 'classrooms'.  Shoes are left at the door of the school and a multi-disciplinary approach to topics of interest is the approach taken by teachers. (a writing across the curriculum, if you will).  Wouldn't Scott also agree that writing is liberal and liberating - which is why, perhaps, we have all of these assessments currently in place - as a way to codify and control the masses?


Brannon goes on to write: "Presumably, the value of a reading program would lie mainly in its effectiveness at creating new incentives and offering additional support for readers [students], so that school reading [learning] reinforces and intensifies the literary experiences students are also accumulating elsewhere"(167).  This has me thinking of global interaction via internet - there are two professors at ECU who have implemented a digital classroom program.  It facilitates opportunities to interact, teach, learn and dialogue with students and teachers from different countries.  Dr. Susan Gardner speaks of 'updating and relating'; this is what is missing in the 'classroom'.   I want to name my class "Language Studio I", etc...  The term 'Developmental English' bothers me; what does this really mean?  Aren't we all developing and evolving our understanding and wordsmithing of language on a daily basis?  

"The answer, again, and it is an ancient one for the liberal arts, is that evaluation emphasizes, not short-term outputs, which are always inconclusive, but the character and appropriateness of activities going on in such courses, and the impact of those activities on students' dispositions to learn"(168).   This concept of activity has me thinking about transitivity analysis and the transitive nature of writing courses.  How can we create more experience in the classroom?   I think a key word here is 'activity'.  Learning is active; it is not a product to be consumed, but an experience to be shared.  I did a transitivity study on a short story writing from The Brownies Book, a magazine published initially in 1920(?) by the NAACP for children.  It has been fascinating to delve into the actions of the characters and ask the questions why? when? where? how? How does the transitive essence of verbs affect the reader/student?


More later...