A Blog on a Blog

A link for you, folks, from a former writing advisor. She now teaches over in Korea (she just signed up for a second year), and I send this to you in part to show the possibilities that exist with a background in one-to-one writing advising. Such work positions you extremely well for overseas teaching positions (and Laura just took off for China), and there are several opportunities. To be honest, I expect none of you to go into the writing center field. That's not the goal. But I do think the work you do in the Center allows you to explore and take advantage of a lot of different opportunities.

Anyway, here's Caitlin's blog: http://caitlininkorea1011.wordpress.com/. The early posts talk a lot more about her teaching; the most recent page, though, has some beautiful pictures from a recent sightseeing trip.

Saturday Night's All Right for Tutoring . . .

Bonus points for recognizing the Reginald Dwight reference (and double bonus points for noting the reference for that). Anyway, having gone back through Brooks's article today, and having read a couple of blog posts that are taking issue with the piece, I'm looking forward to Tuesday's class. I think there are some provocative points to raise and discuss. What I'll simply throw out here is this: Brooks offers nine numbered suggestions in his piece (four, then three, then two) of what advisors could/should do with writers. Of those nine, how many do you truly disagree with? And why?

We now return you to your weekend, already in progress.

Bloggin'

Happy Friday, folks. Given a couple of mentions in other postings about the blog assignment, let me offer these thoughts. The blog space should be open to a range of thoughts and ideas. We have our readings, yes, and they should provide some material for discussion. But so too should our class discussions, your other classes, your interactions with peers, your visits to the Center, you dining choices, your lives in general. Pull from whatever makes sense to you as you think about writing center work. Did going to a restaurant seem similar to going to the Writing Center? I often think of myself as a restaurant manager. I see people seated, check in with them to see if the service was acceptable, talk with the staff about our serving options, etc. That's an analogy that helps me think about our work. There's also a good article that compares writing centers to bordellos. Yes. We can read that later this semester if you like.

You might also consider blogging about the writing style of any of the authors we read. Is there one sentence in particular that really works for you? Or one that doesn't? Think about the style and talk about the sentence structure. We can analyze writing here as well.

Think too about how writing is presented to you in other classes at Wittenberg. How do faculty talk about writing and the writing process, or how don't they? You have to develop (or perhaps articulate) your beliefs about writing. Is knowledge socially constructed? Is it found by oneself in a small room? Is writing a matter of transcribing what we think onto paper or is it the construction of knowledge itself? Do we think by writing? All those questions are ones that you can chase down on the blog.

Also, if you are having trouble thinking on things to write about, ask me. I can give some specific prompts if it helps anyone. I'm happy to do that. Regardless, get in the habit of sitting at the keyboard and typing. Respond. Write back to the readings, to our discussions, to your life. Sound your barbaric yawp out over the roofs of the world. At the least, give us a little yell.

Different Perspectives (heading due north)

Just a quick note here. Where I got back to the office, this email was waiting for me, from one of our professors--he had sent it out to his class and copied me in on it:

"To avoid losing points due to grammatical or stylistic errors in your weekly journals, group presentation, and final paper, please have your work proofread at the Writing Center before submitting it to me."

So, this is one idea of a writing center. Does it match with ours? Does it need to?

Power and Authority and Carino, Oh My.

My kids just watched The Wizard of Oz this past weekend, so the "lions and tigers and bears" line is right at the top of my mind. And here we have the power and authority, those creatures that might jump out of the writing center woods and heed our progress towards Oz. To not pay attention to them makes us, in Carino's words, immature or gullible or, to reference the movie again, cowardly. Granted, some of that is on centers themselves (and the administrators) rather than advisors, but at the least an advisor without knowledge of power and authority in a tutorial would be, well, like the Scarecrow.

This article is, I believe, an important one for us. It, and the next two, from Brooks and Shamoon & Burns, will probably influence your pedagogy a great deal. Here is where we begin to articulate what the relationship is (or can be) between writer and reader. I know Jennifer and Brandon have already commented on the reading, agreeing in part but also offering counters to Carino. Good. This is a crucial discussion for us to have (and probably never finish). What does it mean for us to have power in a session? When do we have it? I especially hope we talk some about real questions vs. ploys today. And, I'm also curious if this essay, as it seems to indicate, actually makes an argument for an advisor writing on a student's paper.

Grammar Humor

Seven Bar Jokes
Involving Grammar
and Punctuation.
BY Eric K. Auld
- - - -
1. A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
2. A dangling modifier walks into a bar. After finishing a drink, the bartender asks it to leave.
3. A question mark walks into a bar?
4. Two quotation marks “walk into” a bar.
5. A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to drink.
6. The bar was walked into by the passive voice.
7. Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They drink. They leave.

Why the Class?

Do we even need English 242? That is, perhaps, a dangerous question with which to start, but then again, dangerous questions are usually the most productive. Other schools certainly ask the question, and not every writing center requires a course; some hold day-long workshops, or a week-long introduction, and others have student advisors simply jump into the pool and start advising (there's a mixed metaphor). The idea, at least in part, is that students will learn as they go. Readings and exercises and mock tutorials are optional.

Now, in some cases, this approach is guided not so much by a sense of pedagogy but rather by budget. Not all schools can afford a credit course for their advisors. I would argue that we are fortunate in that this course has been on the books for many years and that the community here believes that there is a value in exploring and discussing the literature regarding writing centers. I do believe there is more to advising than being a good writer. But, I don't want to assume and blind myself to other possibilities--I should always ask why we are requiring this class. And, I know from past semesters that the readings we will be covering will seem dense at times and, perhaps, unnecessary. For me, though, we are laying the theoretical groundwork for our future work in the Center. We all stand somewhere, we all believe something about writing and reality, whether or not we articulate that belief. So, one of my goals for the semester is to have us all articulate exactly where we do stand. (You already read some provocative statements from Murphy and Sherwood about our work possibly supporting and extending racist and sexist policies. Those are some heavy accusations.)

One more point to open with: you will no doubt look to make comparisons between your own experiences in the Center as a writer with what we discuss in class. And you should. I do not expect that every session you had went as well as it could have, and you should take those experiences and build from them. Most important, I hope you always remember what it is like to sit in the writer's chair when you hold your sessions. Identifying with that role is perhaps the most important part of advising.

And, here's the link to that video I wanted to show you on Sunday: take a look when you can. http://www.peercentered.org/2012/01/ron-maxwells-advice-to-tutors.html

Mike's Blog

Welcome to Mike's blog for English 242, Spring 2012. Each of us in the course will be keeping a blog, writing about our readings, our class discussions, our mock and real consultations. The electronic space is a place to work through our thinking, to also share that thinking with others, and to collaborate with one another as we wrestle with questions about our writing and about working with others on their writing.

I too will try to keep current with this blog, offering some thoughts about the classes and the conversations. I hope each of you will take some time to respond to those posts when the feeling strikes you.