OCTELA conference 2010

Whew! What a ride :-) This past year has been such a nerve-racking, yet rewarding experience for me. Planning and presiding over a state wide conference was more work than I could have imagined, but I learned so much.

Although I didn't get to attend any breakout sessions, I was responsible for choosing them and I was pleased to see that many dealt with writing strategies in some way. It always seems that reading takes the forefront in English Language Arts instruction and I was happy to be able to offer a fine mix of both, along with the other 21st Century skills of building community, motivation, engagement, cooperation, and technology.

Click here to view the program of the two day event.

Local Literacies: Chapter 8 Cliff

For me, the story of Cliff in Barton and Hamilton's Local Literacies was especially interesting.

I was intrigued by his love of letter writing and how it was such an important thing in his life. He not only used it to keep in touch with his daughters following his divorce, but he also used it as a means of entertainment, as well as a link to the wider world since he was unable to travel due to certain circumstances of his life.

The fact that he really didn't like reading, but did see the value in it to gain information that was applicable to various life situations was also interesting. In my experience, people enjoy reading over writing more often than not and he was just such an unusual character.

What endeared him to me the most, though, were his quotes. When discussing his recorded voice with the interviewer, he realized he said 'yeah' often and he wasn't bothered by it. He went on to discuss how people are often embarrassed by what they say and how they speak, but that he was fine with himself. "I suppose accents or dialects are like music and some are nice on your ears and some are not..." (p. 130). I just liked that.

When discussing his lengthy letters, he said, "I write as I think, not as I think it should be written...and there's a difference." Yes, Cliff, there is. I just love how he has such a realistic view of who he is and the part that literacy plays in his life.

The fact that he sometimes appears to be depressed and worried led me to wonder if writing as therapy could help him with some of those feelings. Presently, he uses writing to correspond to others, but writing about his life and feelings in a more directed way might help him, too.

Narrative Theory?

I continue to read the Queer Theory Chapter in Tyson, but it really isn't ONLY about Queer Theory. Lesbian and Gay Criticism are related, but different from Queer Theory, and each other. It is all so fascinating, but I find I have to re-read sections to clarify the similarities and differences among these critical theories.

To thoroughly complicate things, I have stumbled upon Narrative Theory which is credited to Walter Fisher and defined in Wikipedia as follows:

"Fisher's narrative theory is based on the concept that people are essentially storytellers. Storytelling is one of the oldest and most universal forms of communication and so individuals approach their social world in a narrative mode and make decisions and act within this narrative framework" (Fisher 1984).

Further discussion:

"Narrative theory clashed with several pre-existing beliefs as to the nature of human beings and how they communicate and act. Fisher describes this contrast by identifying the tenets of what he sees as two universal paradigms: the rational world paradigm, and the narrative paradigm.

Rational World Paradigm:

*People are essentially rational

*People make decisions based on arguments.

*The communicative situation determines the course of our argument.

*Rationality is determined by how much we know and how well we argue.

*The world is a set of logical puzzles that we can solve through rational analysis.

Narrative Paradigm:

*People are essentially storytellers.

*People make decisions based on good reasons.

*History, biography, culture, and character determine what we consider good reasons.

*Narrative rationality is determined by the coherence and fidelity of our stories.

*The world is a set of stories from which we choose, and constantly re-create, our lives."

(Source: From Fisher, 1987)

I say that it complicates matters because I may want to use this in combination with 'coming out' stories since it is a perfect avenue for using writing with the LGBTQ population. This was a suggestion made by a wonderful new friend. He happens to be a doc student in Kent's English Department and an out gay man. He's the one who suggested I look into this idea and said he thought it might be quite innovative.

I'm in the process of reading about this concept and what it might mean for me in terms of my research. I also know a professional storyteller who just received his PhD, so I plan to see what he knows about this theory. I think my blog title is reflecting this journey in an uncanny way!

Pedagogical (Dis)location

I've veered off the official reading list for awhile while I gather resources for my wiki, paper, and even my dissertation! While perusing the shelves of the National Writing Project office, I came upon the book, Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Teaching of English, edited by William J. Spurlin. His introduction relates the personal story of his teaching English in Singapore as a young man right out of college. He didn't know how to handle the students in Singapore reading Shakespeare through their cultural lenses and says, "I was not yet familiar with the discourse of theory and the possibilities for critique it opens, and therefore was unable to deal with my sense of pedagogical (dis)location at the time..." (p. xv). Dr. Spurlin continues by telling how this experience "radically politicized my teaching; my student's (re)reading of King Lear enabled me to interrogate more fully the relationship between the text and the cultural context in which it is read and interpreted...and to see critical reading as a struggle to (re)write the text against indeed transgress, the grain of dominant discourses, hegemonic images, and received knowledge" (p. xv).

The introduction section previews the various essays collected in this book and the connecting thread is how our society perpetuates the hegemonic view of heterosexuality as the norm and how we can "theorize, to varying degrees, queer difference as a lens through which to read, interpret, and produce texts, or as a way of reading the classroom and indeed the world..." (p. xix). I am reading this book as a companion to my chapter on Queer Theory in Critical Theory Today.

Beyond the introduction, I have read one chapter and I found it most interesting. Chapter 13: Fault Lines in the Contact Zone: Assessing Homophobic Student Writing by Richard E. Miller discusses grading the writing of unsolicited oppositional discourse. In this case, a teacher in a pre-college-level community college composition class had to deal with an essay that was crude, violent, and definitely anti-gay in theme. When this was brought up at various conferences, professors' reactions were varied, but most were summed up in one of three ways:

"read the essay as factual and respond accordingly; read the essay as fictional and respond accordingly; momentarily suspend the question of the essay's factual or fictional status and respond accordingly" (p. 237).

Scenario one would have the student removed from the classroom and turned over to authorities.

The instructor actually treated it as fictional and restricted his comments to word choice, imagined audience, and compared it to A Clockwork Orange in its depictions of violence and surrealistic detail. Many of the professors discussing this called it cowardice, but the instructor felt a sense of victory because he was able to "successfully deflect the student writer's use of his writing to 'bash' his professor, with the unexpected result that the student not only stayed in the course, but actually chose to study with (him) again the next semester" (p. 238). This was most intriguing since the instructor is an openly gay man, so he helped the student learn "to cope with an openly gay instructor with some measure of civility" (p. 238) all in the way he handled the grading of one paper.

The Free Appropriation Writer? Really?

Well, The New York Times just ran an article about a young German woman who wrote a book by appropriating the work of other people. The 17-year-old writer said it was "mixing, not plagiarism."

Read the article here.

Louis Menand "suggested that, as with any creative movement, if the results are compelling and profound enough, even rigid conventions come around to making what seemed like a sin into a virtue." I wonder how long it would take for society to accept this thinking because this concept fits right into my earlier post about how people are worried about posting their writings online and putting them out into cyberspace. Interesting concept, this 'free appropriation writer.' Hmmm....