composition

Today, for whatever reason, the writing on the bathroom stall in the library caught my eye. Usually, bathroom stalls are scribbled with nasty things. I've seen "so-and-so is a whore" or gang symbols and graffiti tags a million times. People's names or hearts with lovers are common too. To my surprise, however, inspirational messages were written everywhere in this particular stall. Things like, "Be the change you wish to see in the world," and, "You are beautiful," were written in pen on the green doors. I would have taken a picture, but I thought that cameras in public bathrooms would be inappropriate. For a moment, it made me smile. While I don't condone vandalizing university property, I couldn't help but think how nice it was that someone had taken the opportunity to reach out to other women and share a moment of inspiration, one that they (most likely) could not avoid seeing. I couldn't help but wonder how our world would be differ...

Taken at the Lego Store in NYC Last year, around Christmas time, my family took a trip to New York City. We made a pit stop in the huge Lego Store near Rockefeller Center. This Lego mural greeted customers the moment that they walked in the doors. We are often afraid to be creative because creativity invites chaos, unexpected ideas, things we don't have control over. But as this Lego mural reveals, creativity is our stability. It ensures that we will grow and prosper as a society. Creative thinking is the key to progress, and so I find it extremely sad that many people deny our students access to their creative outlets. When we ask our students to routinely do what they have come to know, we are not asking them to tap into their creativity. If you ask them to repeat the same skills, they will never grow. Furthermore, when students do tap into their creativity and we reprimand them, we are doing them (and ourselves) a great disservice. We limit their ability to find new and better w...

First things first. I must offer my apologies for taking more than a month to write a new post. I kept starting and deleting half-formed ideas. With the new semester coming into full swing, I will be more consistent from here on out. Ok, now to the exciting topic... Contract Grading :) image credit: acuitydesigns.com Earlier in my short teaching career, I called a student out on the lack of effort in his revisions, and he told me, "I didn't make revisions because I knew I'd have to make them for the final portfolio," and later, "I know I'm getting an A anyway." Two things became clear: (1) even though his comment made me want to screech, he was right; (2) he was missing out on a valuable learning experience because he couldn't see beyond the grade on his paper. His negative attitude towards applying himself in my classroom was not all his fault. He had been programmed by previous learning experiences and my own failed teaching attempts. Something nee...

image from thissongissick.com For those of you who don't already know this, I am a huge fan of house music, and one of the biggest names in house, one of the few mainstream house artists, is David Guetta. This morning, he did a radio interview with Elvis Duran and the Morning Show (which I also love). Throughout the interview, it was obvious that Guetta not only loves what he does, but aspires to bring that love to others. When race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and all of the other differences fade into the background and everyone feels the music, that is when he believes he is most successful as a dj. As Guetta spoke on the radio, listeners got a glimpse into just how personable Guetta is, and also how intelligent and committed to his craft he is. Guetta's music is obviously his passion and his study. Just as we spend hours pouring over books and archives, collaborating with colleagues, writing and revising, Guetta spends hours searching for rhythms and sounds, looking ...

It frustrates me IMMENSELY when students-- or anyone for that matter-- tell me, "Oh, I don't know what that word meant," "I didn't know how to cite that in MLA style" (especially after we've gone over it in class and shared multiple resources detailing how to), "I didn't know who so-and-so was," or "I didn't know that [insert major current event] was happening." There are some things that are tough to come by, but definitions, citation guides, biographies, and major world events are not any of them.  If my rabbit can figure out how to open up Google, so can you! Cluck hopped around on the keyboard and managed to open up Google without my assistance. Like I said, some things aren't easy to find (for instance, a free live stream of the Super Bowl), but many times people are simply lazy. Today, we have the biggest library in the world at our fingertips, the Internet, but people don't want to spend an extra 15 minutes look...

About a week ago, I picked up Stanley Fish's Save the World on Your Own Time. A colleague mentioned it during a conversation at faculty orientation, and I was instantly intrigued. Fish argues that teachers who try to do anything but teach-- which he defines as providing new discipline-relevant material and demonstrating practical methods of analysis and evaluation-- are doing their students and academia in general a disservice. His argument also extends to administrators and universities in general. And he doesn't sugar coat it. He has a wry, sarcastic, and very direct style to his writing; some might even call it aggressive (he does). As a teacher, I was interested in his distinction between "academicizing" and indoctrinating, especially after hearing a fellow classmate's heated objections to a teacher who was offering extra credit to students who chose to join Occupy Wall Street. To me, that was simply unacceptable. I also remembered the 2008 election and my tea...

For several months now, I've been slowly working through an archive of First Year Writing students' portfolios. Though I'm reading them through a lens that looks for classifications of public versus private writing spaces, I saw something today that sparked my interest much more. I was reading a student's essay on dorm living that was written for a colleague's class when I came across a description of a student that I recognized, one of my own. It was a strange moment for me. I only had the girl in class for a few weeks, but she was very unique. She had a creative approach to writing and a great sense of voice. I knew it would be a pleasure to read her papers and to push her to improve her writing throughout the semester, but I never got the chance. Eventually, she just stopped showing up. What I learned from this other students' paper was a bit about the girl's lifestyle. It made it seems as if she were a recluse, someone who never stayed in the dorms unles...