Escribimos Amigos

The Wrong 20 Minutes

2010-04-01T14:37:00.000-07:00

You'd be surprised how often students come into the Writing Lab twenty minutes before their paper is due. That specific number comes up all the time. Students who have class at 8:40 show up at 8:20 asking us to "check it" or "make sure it's good." There's honestly not a lot we can do in the last twenty minutes before their teacher expects a final draft because we have to figure out what the student needs to talk about or do in order to learn, plus they have to make changes and print before they are late for class.

That's not to say that there's not a lot we can do in twenty minutes. Two students came in this morning, on at about 9:30, another about ten minutes later. I had to leave for a meeting at 10:00, so I didn't have a lot of time, but each of them got some good work done in about twenty minutes.

The first student had a draft of a paper. It was a summary and response to an excerpt from a book about how being a nerd instead of a cool kid is advantageous in the long run. She had about a page and a half of initial thoughts, and I helped her see the skeleton of ideas she had and how she could add meat onto those bones. We talked about structure and focus, wrote some ideas on the whiteboard, and she was ready to tackle a much more detailed, intentional draft about how she went from being inbetween nerds and cool kids when she was young to choosing the nerd camp as an adult because she saw the advantages of education.

The second student kept talking about how she was writing about the same thing. The first thing I cleared up with her was that she wasn't. They were responding to the same essay, but she had different things to say. She didn't have a draft yet, just a very general thesis statement about dedication being key to success. I asked her how she saw dedication leading to success in the essay (nerds!), whether she was a nerd or a cool kid growing up (cool kid), and how she experienced determination as an important factor to success (cheerleader turned teen mother goes from cool kid to not-so-cool kid and figures out that life is tough but you have to keep on keeping on).

Both of them spent the right twenty minutes in here. If this would have been the twenty minutes before their papers were due, they would have been in trouble because they didn't have much to hand in and they didn't have much time to work. But they came in early enough to get their ideas straight, start thinking through the details of how they learned what they learned, and crank out solid drafts of their papers.

A Measure of Success

2010-03-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

A student who has come in regular intervals over the past few semesters shows up. We each say hey, and he take off his hat and looks at the crown. See, I tease him about wearing Yankee hats. We have a no-Yankee hat policy in the Learning Center*, but he was sporting the Sox (White, not Red) logo, so he was safe. I pointed out that he didn't even know what hat he was wearing today, and we laughed about that.

The hat policy wasn't all he was learning about. Later, after he filled me in on his assignment, a summary of the movie In the Bedroom, he was running through the basic ideas of the story. The class is writing about revenge, and he got to the part in the story when one of the characters wants to take revenge because he got "angry and stuff like that."

The student stopped and said, "No, 'not stuff like that.' He was angry." Then he continued. I felt awesome right then**. I didn't say anything about his use of such a vague phrase. It was like he took a giant pen and scratched a line through what he just said***.

That was cool. That made my morning.

*I find stuff like this helpful to disarm a place like this. It would be easy for a Writing Lab to feel like a nerdcave, academically isolated and only focused on papers papers papers. When we create faux policies like not allowing Yankee hats or requiring people who do math in the writing area to bring us donuts, we poke fun at the institutional nature of the place, show an awareness of the outside world (those Yankee hats never have to do with papers) and show a little humanity (donuts = hungry). Everything is strategic around here, even disdain for that NY logo that shows up on the heads of so many students who can't name their Yankees.

**It only had a little bit to do with the fact that I find myself doing this automatically when I hear words. I don't tell people when I do it. That's rude. I always tell people who ask if I'm going to correct their grammar that I have a policy of not correcting people's grammar out in the real world because people who do that don't have any friends.

**"...angry ~~and stuff like that~~..."

Tell the Truth

2010-03-03T10:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, a student working on a process paragraph showed me her work. It was about how she planned to study for her first math test. I asked her about one of the steps, the one where she comes into the Learning Center to work with a tutor. Specifically, I asked her what she did with the tutor.

She told me she didn't actually come in, that she planned to do that, but didn't make it because of her schedule. I advised her as I always advise people in this situation: Tell the truth.

I asked about details when she had none. I told her that telling the truth bases your paper on facts that can be used for evidence when necessary, when someone like, say, a Writing tutor asks for more detail. I informed her that her teacher might ask her about it and she might end up not being able to answer her teacher, which is not a good thing.

For some reason, sometimes people come to me for advice, but elect not to take it*.

She left the imaginary meeting with a tutor in her paragraph and emailed it to her teacher. Her teacher's reply said that she did not have enough detail in the section where she discusses visiting the tutor. The teacher would like more details from a meeting that never happened.

Tell the truth!

*Like the guy who is just now taking my advice to move on to drafting his second paragraph--he already told me what it's going to be about--instead of spending the rest of the morning tinkering with his first paragraph. He's already spent a good hour on it, and I told him more than once to move on and get the rest of the paper drafted.

FAQ: Can I ______?

2010-02-19T10:55:00.000-08:00

Writers sit at their computers, drafts on their screens, and look up at me to ask, "Can I ______?" all the time. They usually want to know if they can write a certain word or insert a certain punctuation mark.

My answer: yes.

Always: yes.

They need to see that they have ownership of their papers. That does not come from me telling them that they can or cannot do something. They take ownership when they think about "should," not "can."

When it's words: I always tell them that they can write whatever they want, but they need to think about if they should write it. They need to consider what they want to say and make the decision themselves: Does it support my point? Does it need to be there? Is it veering off topic? Does it make my essay better? Does it make me sound intelligent?

When it's punctuation: I ask them what job they think that period or comma or whatever is doing, and if that's what needs to be done in that spot.

I really like telling students they can write what they want. They are too accustomed to just doing what they are told without thinking about why. They need someone to say, "Sure, you can do that, but what happens when you do?"

Spell It Out

2010-01-27T09:50:00.000-08:00

Today, a scene:

Student: How do you spell "sincerely"?
Me: How do you think you spell "sincerely"?
Student: I have no idea.
Me: Does it start with a B?
Student: Well, no. It starts with an S.
Me: So you do have some idea.
Student: Yeah, I guess so.
Me: Give it a shot. I won't tell you if you're right or wrong until after you give it a shot.

Student resembles a spelling bee contestant for a minute or two, toying with letters, debating between i and e after that initial s, sounding it out in his head, scratching down letters and erasing them. When he's got a full attempt, I take a look: "sencerely." So close.

Me: Good.

I write "Sincerely" on the whiteboard behind him.

Me: Most people who tell me that they "have no idea how to spell a word" are usually one, maybe two letters off when they actually try and spell the word. You were close.

A Whole Lotta I Dunno

2010-01-20T14:54:00.000-08:00

This is the first week of Spring classes here at Pima, and most of the questions I've answered have related to schedules, class locations, online classes and other nuts+bolts kind of things that come up at the beginning of the semester.

One of the interesting facets of the beginning of a semester is that I see what school does to people. Not classes, not subject matter, not teachers, not a component of the educational system, but the system itself: it freaks a lot of people out.

One guy was working on his first assignment for his Technical Writing class. He had to answer a few questions in the form of a memo. The first page in the chapter he was directed to showed an example of a memo and broke down its characteristics.

He asked me to help him clarify and then just kept talking about the class. Eventually, I asked him what he was hoping I could clarify. He pointed to the example of the memo and asked if he should write his like that. I said, "That or...?" He said, "I don't know." I pointed out that his teacher asked him to write a memo and gave him an example memo, so it makes sense that he should take what he's been given instead of assuming there are other possibilities he has no idea about.

For some reason, he assumed there were other unspoken options than the obvious one. Interesting.

Another guy was registering for MathXL, an online tool for math classes that I often see math students using on the Learning Center computers but know little about because I'm not the math guy around here. Larry the Math Guy was busy with another student, but he gave the student a registration sheet to follow and off he went, registering away.

At one point, he raised his hand and said, "Should I click the first one?" As I walked over to see what the first one was, I asked him if the first one was true. He read it out loud. It went like something like this: "I am using MathXL for a class and need to sign on to my teacher's class in MathXL."

Again, I asked if this was true. I looked over his shoulder and saw the second option was something about "studying on your own." He took a second and then said yes, the first one was true and clicked it.

For some reason, he needed confirmation to go ahead and choose something he already knew was true. Interesting.

I find this fascinating because of something I heard in a TED Talk recently: "Education doesn't actually work by teaching you things. It actually works by giving you the impression that you've had a very good education, which gives you an insane sense of unwarranted self-confidence, which then makes you very, very successful in later life."

That's a quote from Rory Sutherland, an ad man, speaking about intangible value, not education, and I think he's right. It's a bold thing to say, and a potentially difficult sentiment for a teacher to hear, but I do think the value I received from my education was not the small items of material, the facts and figures, concepts and ideas that were passed along. It was the fact that I don't shy away from problems or assignments because I know I can figure them out if I give them a shot.

The problem for both of these students wasn't a lack of resources or support. They were each sitting at a public computer in a free tutoring center, holding all their class materials. The problem was a lack of confidence.

The answer in both cases was right there. Write a memo and use the example memo. Choose the option that is true, not the one that is false. The intangible value of education is problem solving, the ability to think, choose, adapt, revise, and to do so boldly. Hopefully, this semester gives those two the self-confidence to know that they can choose what they already see as the right answers.

Let's Get It Started

2010-01-14T09:16:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, I taught the first 2010 session of my Upward Bound* enrichment class. Because it was the start of the year, I addressed a common question that I hear in the Writing Lab: How do I start this?

Many student writers get an assignment and they just sit down and start banging keys. Or they just sit down and start staring at the computer hoping the paper will magically appear. However, before they write the first sentence, they need to know where they are going.

I gave the UB students a common assignment here on the DV campus, that significant place paper. I talked about how many students begin those papers with sentences like "Many places are significant to many people." True. That's actually so true that it's the seed of the assignment. The trick is to get past that and into the particular place and it's particular significant to you.

We talked about how they need to start with a basic claim**. Not a fully formed thesis yet, just an idea of Your Topic + What You Are Saying About Your Topic. I gave them some scratch paper and had them come up with a few ideas. Here are the places they came up with and the significance those places hold to these students, and a snippet of what we discussed about each.

Shower: get thinking done
(not the functional use of the place, but an unexpected function of the private place that turned out to be shared by a good portion of the students--student discovered commonality that he didn't assume would be common)

Ditch: privacy to paint
(unexpected place to be used by someone for anything, let alone a creative endeavor--intriguing from the get-go)

School Auditorium: break in and run off energy
(use of place focusing on one characteristic--big open space--instead of main characteristic--stage--that readers wouldn't assume)

Bathroom: unwind and get away/get out of things
(student focused on not only the privacy but the Do Not Disturb nature of the bathroom as a way to escape responsibility of rest of house)

Track: face a challenge, release stress
(discussed at how two people use same space differently: one to overcome and accomplish, one to escape and only compete with self)

Tennis Court: be in control
(student said it was where she could "be herself," elaboration lead to idea of exerting control; we discussed how even her close friends and family could learn something about her by reading an essay that explores this idea)

Kitchen: quiet place to draw
(asked students what they expected the significance to be, answers included cooking, food, and gathering; student instead pointed out particular characteristics of his kitchen--quiet, solitude--and how his unique talents play into how he sees that place)

Basketball Court: show effort, just play and not be judged
(again two students with two views on one place, one focused on competition and one focused on freedome; discussed how specific details--in a gym vs in a park--alter the expectations of a reader)

Golf Course: release anger
(opposite of expectations--golf as difficult game that frustrates people--that would be intriguing and need the explanation an essay would allow)

Open Field of Grass in a Park: see nature and remember place in the world
(student originally said "open field" and further questioning revealed the park; discussed how providing that detail was vital because "open field" could mean many things to many readers, so it would be important to direct readers to proper mental images)

Black Box Theater: become another character
(unique place unfamiliar to many people would ask the writer to provide good description in order to understand the difference between becoming another character in a traditional theater versus becoming another character in a black box theater)

These were intelligent answers that were brainstormed in only about ten minutes, so the students saw how little time it took to form a basic claim. I told them that they would now just need to explore the truth of that place's significance in their essay. They wouldn't have to make anything up or hope to be divinely inspired to write three pages about a place that is significant to them. They already know why it's important, so they need to explain it to those of us who don't see that place like they do.

I told them to file these essays ideas away in case they are ever asked to write about a significant place. Maybe I'll run across one of them in a future DV class.

*UB is a bunch of high schoolers who are looking to get into college. The program exists to help them do that. I am there to help them get a leg up on what they'll need to know about writing for college. They are generally good kids whom I enjoy spending some Saturday mornings with.

**I used a road trip analogy: you want to know where you're going before you pull out of the the driveway. This was interesting because a couple of the students had actually taken a road trip that had no known destination. I had to revise my metaphor: it may be adventurous to set off on the open road with no destination, but that strategy is won't work out when writing a paper.

Paragraph Design

2010-01-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

Over the past year or so, I've been involved in a redesign of my church's website. About three months ago, we added a professional web designer to the design team. I know, this sounds like an obvious move that was made too late in the process.

My church has an ethos of activating the talents of those in the community, so we were working with the graphic designers, writers, and programmers that we had. All of us are good at what we do, even getting paid to do that work in other contexts, but we'd never done work quite like this site redesign before.

When the professional web designer moved to Tucson and joined our church, he acted as a catalyst. His expertise plus some deadlines on the part of our resident programmer (who is in grad school at the UofA) zoomed us along. The site is now foundationally complete, and we're taking it live this week.

One point in the design process made me think specifically about the role of the professional designer who has an eye for each element in the design and how that connects to what I do in teaching writing. It all had to do with capital letters.

The design used headers on each page in all-caps. When we received the code for the design and began implementing each piece, I suggested changing those to title casing (That Means Like This) instead. In my world, the world of words on paper, THIS LOOKS LIKE YOU ARE YELLING AT SOMEONE, and I didn't want that, so we switched THIS to This. I didn't think anything of it once we did so and went on to other updates.

When the pro jumped back into the conversation, he explained why THIS should remain as THIS and not switch to This. Basically, his argument boiled down to viewing the header as a design element: not a word in itself, but a "readable shape" that tells people where they are in the hierarchy of information without them even needing to read the word. That means, before they read THEOLOGY, they see a readable rectangle at the top of the page that orients them to be able to easily understand the info.

I know, it may not seem like a big deal, all-caps or not, but I saw the function in action. After the pro explained the purpose of uppercasing the headers, I went back to look at the site. He was right. The title casing headers blended right into the other text on the page (now that we had more text on the pages, it was easier to see). There was no direction from the design, no nail to hang the picture on, I suppose.

I told him that I understood what he meant and we switched the headers back to all-caps. I didn't elaborate on my understanding all that much because we had other work to do, but I saw his perspective, his world of elements of design. Each piece played a part in directing users to receive info in some way or another. The choices he made were not shots in the dark. He knew why they were there.

I related this perspective back to my world of words on paper, and came up with this: paragraph design. Students need to know more about this. I've had a theory for awhile that teaching students how to construct paragraphs is a tipping point* in their writing education, and now I think they may need to think more about how to design and paragraph than construct one.

The switch from construct to design is more about how they view the elements**. Instead of constructing with concrete building blocks that are difficult or nearly impossible to change after they are in place, they are working with more fluid design elements that can always be assessed terms of playing their part in communication.

In a Writing 100 class once, I played the intro from Stranger Than Fiction to show the students how the graphic interface represents how this particular man views his world. Then I showed them an academic essay with Points highlighted in pinks, Illustration highlighted in yellow, and Explanation highlighted in green to show them how their teachers view their essays. I wanted them to see that their instructors had a particular way of viewing their writing. As Harold Crick's calculations showed up in his head as he moved about his world, certain pieces of their essays stood out in certain ways when their teachers saw their essays.

This was the first foray into exploring the design of a paper, but I didn't know it was exploring the design. This is something I'm going to keep exploring. I think it's important to not only look at what we are teaching, as in certain concepts that always come up in our courses, but to look at how we are enabling students to work with those concepts. I want a student to not only know that their paragraph needs to begin with a claim***, but how to choose the words to make that first sentence an effective claim. To design that sentence to play its part in what the paragraph is communicating. When students start to do that, they will think about what needs to be in that sentence so others can understand the paragraph instead of just trying to write a good sentence that makes sense to them.

I don't know where this is going to go, but that's often where I have the most fun with ideas.

*I take this term from Malcolm Gladwell's excellent book about trends and use it in a sense that when they understand how to construct a paragraph properly and it's place within the context of an entire academic essay, they will go from being unable to write an academic essay to being able to write an academic essay. It's not quite his usage, but I mean that they tip from No to Yes.

**I also think there may be some cultural capital, some element of uplifting the student from "student writer who thinks they are terrible at writing" to a fresh role as a designer. Designers are cool. Designers get movies made about them. Writers are communicators, and the kind of writing we ask students writers to produce requires that they take on the role of the expert. Many of them don't feel like experts, so their writing reflects the shyness or weakness they are operating out of. Anything we can do as educators to change that is worth their time.

***I used Point, Illustration, and Explanation earlier, but those are often referred to as Claim, Evidence, and Explanation on my campus. Either way works for me.

It's Not Me, It's You

2009-12-11T12:21:00.000-08:00

One of the teachers here at Desert Vista assigns a persuasive letter as her third essay in Writing 100 every semester. This semester's crop of essay topics has been the best I've seen. Instead of students trying to get the State of Arizona to completely overhaul their education system or convincing the government to change laws, these students picked accomplishable goals: Dad, stop smoking; downstairs neighbors, stop filing all those complaints; suitor, look elsewhere for romantic involvement; teacher, amend your assignments; etc.

These are manageable requests, and working with these students has generally centered on two ideas:

1. Me, Me, Me
The students know what they want. Knowing what they want is the first hurdle they overcome. And the first obstacle they face. It's what the student wants, so their rhetoric focuses on how this change will meet their needs. They pretty much stop right there. They don't realize that while the request they make originates in a need they have, the action will take place on the other side of the fence, so they need to go over there and see it from that person's perspective.

2. You, You, You
What they need to do is think about who they are persuading and what their idea involves for that person.

Instead of presenting tons of medical information to get your father to stop smoking, think about why your father smokes in the first place. What if he doesn't care so much about his health, but cares more about appearing manly because he started smoking on a ranch as a preteen because his father let him? Data about lung cancer may not hit the bullseye.

Instead of asking your neighbors one floor down to "put yourselves in my shoes," you need to slip into theirs. They complain about the noise your two-year-old makes at ten o'clock at night because they want to go to bed. If you want them to stop filing complaints, explain your situation (why is that kid up at 10:00pm?), explain what you'll do to try and be quieter, and maybe go so far as to invite them up for a meal so they will think about how wonderful you and your family are instead of curse you and call the apartment office the next time they hear stomp stomp stomp when they are trying to fall sleep.

Instead of pointing out how much of an idiot he is, lay out the differences between what you want and what the guy who keeps asking you out wants in a relationship. Be objective. Sure, he wants to be a drug dealer and you think basing your life on illegal crime is a bad idea, but he's not going to change if you tell him he's stupid. Take the emotion away for a bit and present your case rationally. You want security. Comfort. Not men with guns. Maybe he'll see that getting a real job isn't so bad, especially if he wants to date a girl.

Instead of asking your teacher to rework her entire semester's worth of assignments to exclude personal details, think about why she set it up that way (hint: you already know yourself and don't have to do research in a non-research class) and how much work would be involved in crafting an entirely new class. Then think beyond your desire to not talk about your bad memories and examine why focusing on other things might help more people learn to write. Oh, and give her some ideas about what you would be willing to write about. You don't want to appear "like [you] don't want to participate." Help her out and think about what she's trying to accomplish: getting you to write essays without sinking you into deep research.

These are interesting conversations. The students don't realize they are focusing solely on their own needs. Or they don't realize they are using broad arguments that don't necessarily apply to their audience. Bringing it up changes their papers from a general repetition of their basic premise to specific thoughts aimed at actually getting something done.

Keep Calm and Carry On

2009-12-02T08:52:00.000-08:00

It's the time of year when people start freaking out because big projects and final papers are due. I shared this image with a particularly stressed student today. She's a non-traditional student of the sort who combines go-getter-ness with I'm-gonna-make-something-of-my-life-ocity, so everything must must must be perfect.

In reality, perfect doesn't happen all the time. Deadlines come, things are handed in, the semester marches on, and so should she.

Evolution as It Pertains to Introductions

2009-12-01T08:18:00.000-08:00

I've noticed myself repeatedly saying something new about introductions lately. It's the natural evolution of my usual advice.

My usual advice on intros: Wait.Work on the body paragraphs. Know what you have to say first. It's okay to work on the middle before the beginning.

See, people jump in and write their intro first because it's the first part of their paper. They jump in without knowing what they have to say. They just know that they need to get this paper done, so logically start at the beginning and try to work from there.

The problem, as I said, is that they don't know what they have to say. Thus, the evolution.

The evolution in my advice on intros: Your intro should introduce your paper, not the general topic you're working with.

Student writers sit down with a blank Word document and they start generally writing about whatever it is that they are supposed to be writing about. They make broad statements that include all people everywhere or every time anyone has done a certain thing or been a particular place. They are doing the wrong work. They are trying to go from general to specific before they know the specifics. They are not introducing their paper. They are trying to introduce a subject, an assignment, a big idea, but they are not introducing what they will cover in their essay.

So I've started to talk about that specifically with people whose intros are painted with broad strokes. It seems to be helping because it removes the stress of getting the paper off to an interesting/humorous/engaging/thoughtful/never-before-seen/amazing start and subtly plants the seed that they do in fact have something specific to say with this paper.

Why We Do What We Do

2009-11-17T13:04:00.000-08:00

Part I.
Yesterday in the Writing Lab, a conversation about my 22-month- and five-week-old daughters turned toward the H1N1 Flu shot:

Ania: Did you give your daughter the swine flu shot?
Me: Yes, we did.
Joe: You did?
Me: Yes
Joe: I wouldn't do that.
Me: Why?
Joe: I know lots of people who aren't doing that.
Me: I know lots of people who don't save money, but that's not a reason to not save money.
Joe: Well, yeah, but it sure is controversial.
Me: Yes, but that's not a reason not to give her the shot, either.

After that, Ania and I had a lengthy conversation about support, arguments, opposition, and credible sources. Too bad Joe left.

Part II.
Today, Brooks, a writing tutor, came back from a trip to Alabama with a Bear Bryant hat. A student came in, pointed to the hat and to me...

Joe B: That hat on him would look just like Crocodile Dundee.
Me: Crocodile Dundee's hat was leather.
Joe B: Details, details. As long as it's a hat.

The Best Worksheet I've Seen In Awhile, Perhaps Ever

2009-11-13T13:02:00.001-08:00

Today, a student came in with a worksheet. I'm not a huge fan of worksheets because they usually focus on technical aspects of grammar that are not inherently bad things to know (people would do well to know them) but are generally less than useful in terms of their applied function for writing students.

This worksheet, however, is possibly one of the most useful I've ever seen. It was simple. It took some sentences the student composed for a prior worksheet and had them replace general terms with specific nouns. Students need to know how to do that. They need that practice.

The example was corny (it replaced "elderly man" with "Old Jimmy Two-Teeth"), but the worksheet gave this student a chance to work on a writing skill that I see people struggle with everyday: being specific. I'm all for this and will probably add a similar activity to any classroom work I do in the future.

They Follow Rules That Do Not Exist

2009-11-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

I just had someone ask me about whether or not they needed a particular comma in a particular sentence. I asked why they thought it shouldn't be there.

"Because that's too many commas."

How many is too many?

"Um..."

I hear versions of that all the time. They either have to do with commas, as in this example, or with the length of sentences. Students tell me that their sentence is wrong because it is too long or too short.

Sometimes when they say it's too long, I bust out a sentence written by Virginia Woolf in an essay called "On Being Ill" that appears in Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. It's 181 words long and takes up most of the printed page in the book. They are shocked to learn that such things are possible.

I'm not sure where people pick up such rules. I suppose a teacher in some class told them a sentence was too long, but didn't define the measurements for a proper sentence. Thus, they were left with a vague notion that sentences could be too long, but that the border between proper and too long was a thing undetectable except by experts.

When they say a sentence is too short, there is usually an undertone of Short Sentence = Unintelligent Writer. They don't want to present a two-, three-, or four-word sentence to their teacher, and they usually seem a bit embarrassed to even let a tutor know that they were only able to come up with those few words.

The saddest thing about those moments is that the short sentences usually serve the purpose of a short sentence. Students just don't know there is such a purpose. They don't know the value of rhythm, of mixing up long, medium, and short sentences for legibility and effect. They don't know that choosing, at times, to write a short, pointed sentence shows intelligence. They just know that it's shorter than their other sentences and they think there is something sad about that.

Too long. Too short. Too many commas*. I don't know where these arbitrary rules come from. It's strange because they aren't definable and aren't teachable like their real counterparts--subjects + verbs = clauses of different sorts, connecting clauses and phrases, listing, separating, connecting again.

*Oh, and also: Place a comma wherever you take a breath. This notion of a rule might work for speakers of proper English, but it proves disastrous for those who do not already know the rhythms of the language. Commas pop up it the strangest places because the reader paused ever so slightly to breathe.

Quote of the Century

2009-10-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

After Brooks and I talked with a student for less than five minutes, he said this:

"Writing is so much easier than people make it out to be."

We told him not to spend all his energy thinking about how hard his class is. We told him to focus on his point. We told him to ask questions to start thinking and to answer those questions in his writing. That's pretty much it.

When I told him that the students who sat at the computer thinking about how much they hate writing should just spend that energy writing, he said I should put that on the wall. When he said that writing is easier than people make it out, I told him I would put that on the wall. I got his name. It's going up later.

My Job is Awesome

2009-10-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

The past two hours have been the best two hours of my week at work. Maybe of my month. Scratch that. Of the semester.

1. I got to bust out the claims sheet that I made to help people write papers analyzing songs. They have trouble with that (they can talk about the song or tell the story in the song, but they don't actually analyze it). The writer who needed it wasn't writing about a song, but was analyzing an ad. She understood the ad and the assignment. She just needed to see how to do the work.

2. I helped a girl with a draft of a narrative essay. The first two paragraphs were boring stuff about working at Jack-in-the-Box. Then it got good. See, the story she was telling was about a lady who removed the meat from her burger and claimed that it had no meat. She wanted a new burger. She wanted her money back. She screamed vulgarities. The writer told me that this happens every now and then. I love learning this stuff. Who knew that there was a whole culture of people who order burgers, remove the meat (leaving little black spots that the burger makers recognize as meat evidence), claim there was no meat, and request new meat. They go to a lot of effort for another patty. If that girl does the work, that essay will be awesome.

3. I helped a lady write about owning a dog. Not that exciting in itself, but I got to use one of my favorite strategies: the bowling alley. Often, people have good things to say. Too many, in fact. Their paragraphs bulge or wander (or both) because they have so so so many things to say. They need boundaries. I asked this writer a bunch of questions about her dog and figured out that everything she had to say came down to dog + work. Those were her boundaries. I drew two parallel vertical lines and said, "It's like a bowling alley. These are your boundaries. You can't go outside them." All she cares about it what is between dog and work. If it relates to dog but not work, it's out. She asked about the brand of dog food. Should she include that? On the surface, it relates only to dog. She only gets to include it if it takes a lot of work to get that particular brand of dog food, but only if that's the case.

4. I got to help a guy who was writing about his first day of school in America after immigrating from Saudi Arabia: September 11, 2001. Talk about a unique perspective. He didn't even know English yet. Just Arabic. The funny thing about working with him was that it was right before class. I asked him what he planned to do because he had to turn in the essay. After he assured me that the essay he was handing it wasn't a final, he did want to work on it, and he would take my comments into account, we had a great conversation about his paper, that day, and the kind of details he could include to really help us understand what it was like. I'm excited to see his next draft. I told him that I wanted to see it not as a part of my job, but as a person who likes writing.

I can't believe all that happened over the time I was supposed to be at lunch on a Thursday. That made my week. Sometimes this job is hard. Sometimes it's unbelievably rewarding. I felt like I was inside an episode of This American Life with the burger and 9/11 stories, and two of my favorite strategies paid off for the other two students.

FAQ: You know

2009-10-08T11:18:00.000-07:00

I like to talk with the writers that come in. I like to see if how well they know what they wrote about before we look at the works they put on the page. That gives me a idea of the handle they have on their ideas, or if they have one at all.

Inevitably, I get students to tell me about their subject. They start talking and they do this thing that many people do when they talk: they insert "you know" into their discourse.

Sometimes I let one, two, three slide by, and then I stop them. Other times, I just jump right in when they sneak the first "you know" in. I point out the tic, which they rarely notice, and make sure they pause for a second to realize that they just said "you know."

After that, I tell them that I do not in fact know. I don't know anything about their family Christmas gatherings or the time they got a scar while trying to stop a liquor store robbery. I don't know anything about the layout of their room or their choice of study space. I don't know their mothers, friends, teachers, or the other significant people who pop up as the subjects of their essays.

I wasn't there. I haven't spent time with those people. I do not know.

I realize that these students are not consciously referring to my knowledge, but they are subconsciously hoping that I will nod my head, say "uh-huh, I do know," and let them stay on the surface of their subject. I want them to be consciously aware that I have no idea what they are telling me--but I am interested in the details that are buried in their head if they would do a little digging.

After we break down what they know and I do not, they usually have a better understanding of what they need to provide so I can learn. I like to tell them that what is obvious to them is not obvious to others, so they should write what seems obvious. That way we can learn. And know.

You Can't Force This Stuff

2009-10-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

ESPN debuts a new documentary series tonight. 30 for 30 is thirty filmmakers making thirty films about sports stories that happened in the thirty years since ESPN started broadcasting--not figures, not people, not big names, but stories that are great stories.

I read an introduction to the series by Bill Simmons today and found it relevant to the way I teach writing. I guess that means this is sort of a dispatch from the Writing Center, but more a dispatch more me as a Writing teacher.

Simmons was the one who came up with the 30 for 30 concept. After the suits at ESPN gave his idea the go-ahead, he and Connor Schnell (who was involved in producing content for ESPN in some way or another) started brainstorming ideas for stories. Then they created a list of filmmakers to tackle those stories. The idea was to play matchmaker, hooking up a filmmaker with the story, finding "the 30 best matches. Period."

That was the plan. What happened* was a little different. The filmmakers already had the stories. They already loved sports in the way that people who tell stories love sports. They weren't so interested in the overwhelming sports obsession with predicting the future. Instead, they recognized what was worth looking back on with a keen eye. The filmmakers already had their matches. They made them themselves.

They just needed the forum, and Simmons and ESPN provided that. Now the stories will be told on Tuesday nights and I could not be more excited.

Here are the parallels between 30 for 30 and Writing instruction:

1. Bill Simmons and Connor Schell = Writing Teachers
They love their subject. They spend time thinking about their subject. They plan things out. They discuss what would be worthwhile for the time they are allotted. The 30 for 30 series is their class time and they want to fill it with the best possible subject matter, so they dive in and try to do the best to fill it well.

But they are not the ones doing the work.

2. The Filmmakers = Writing Students
They are the ones doing the work.

Simmons and Schell couldn't get too attached to their list of desired stories because they couldn't force professional filmmakers to do work they didn't want to do. All they could do was present the framework and let the filmmakers run where they would.

In the case of 30 for 30, the power resides in the filmmakers. This project doesn't gain steam without them. Instead, it's just a couple of guys who love sports dreaming up a show that focuses on stories. They need storytellers to make it happen, so when those storytellers change the plans, the masterminds have to go along.

In the classes, the power resides with the teachers. They give the grades, so the students have to do what the teachers want.

Despite the different loci of power, the two cases are similar in that nothing will get made without those doing the work.

Simmons and Schell loved their idea, but they held it loosely. They developed more than they needed, going so far as to choose stories that they anticipated the filmmakers would tackle. What they really needed was just the framework: the thirty years of ESPN's existence, sports, and stories that "resonated at the time but were eventually forgotten for whatever reason." That is specific enough to provide the necessary boundaries to allow those doing the work to flourish within their limits.

The big difference between the series and the classes is the experience of those doing the work. The filmmakers are professionals who were sought after because of their work. The students and their abilities are unknown.

Sort of. They are able to learn. They are able to think. They have stories buried in their heads.

Students are perfectly capable of taking a loose framework and running with it. They need the forum to tell their story and some direction to learn how that storytelling can be done. They can be guided in the work, but they can most certainly do most of the work.

*As is usually the case with Plans and What Happeneds, they were not the same.

Make It Your Own

2009-10-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

I read across a wide spectrum of subjects. One of them happens to be sports uniforms. Uni Watch is a blog that not simply covers sports uniforms ("athletic aesthetics" they would say), but delves deep into the subject.

Here's an essay submitted by a Uni Watch reader named Matt King. He details his decision to own authentic jerseys with his own name on the back. The normal practice (and some would say the only acceptable practice among true uniphiles) is to purchase an authentic jersey with the name of an authentic player on the back.

I think he makes a good case for the practice losing its taboo status. I like that he took it upon himself to defend his Own Name On Back decision. He stops short of championing the movement, but he goes into the context of his own decision (which originated before authentic apparel was widely available) as well as giving us general reasons for putting your own last name on the jersey of your favorite team despite never playing a down/inning/minute for the club (now that authentic apparel is readily available).

Coming or Going

2009-09-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

Here's something that happens frequently around here:

1. Teacher gives an assignment that can be described as "general." Said assignment usually includes language very similar to "make an argument about a significant experience/place/person."

2. Student chooses experience/place/person. Said experience/place/person is significant for some reason or another, but that significance is elusive and ethereal, tucked away in a messy drawer in the student's brain along with countless other experiences/places/people of varying significance, and thus any attempt to set it down on paper results in vague notions of importance that could be (and are) generated by just about anyone about just about anything.

Example: Student writes about significant place: home. Where is home? A place on the reservation. What place? A house. Student is able to verbalize little more than that. Reading the paper + inquiring verbally reveal that this paper is nearly fully focused on the student's experience with the Catholic Church across the street, specifically during Lent when she would venture across the street, despite not being Catholic, to experience the ceremonies at the church during the Easter season because they were Catholic, yes, but also wove in the ceremonies of her tribe.

This student was having a difficult time zooming in to the specific place. She was stuck on "home" and didn't know that she could write about going from her backyard, where she grew up hearing the church bells and smelling the mesquite wood that the church burned for heat, over to the church itself every Friday and Saturday evening during Lent.

She didn't know that she could choose a topic so small. I see this all the time. General assignments like the significant experience/place/person often lead to big fields of thought, not small ones. To help her see how she could choose, I decided to tell her something about how stories work and go from there.

I drew two circles on the whiteboard. On one of them, I drew an arrow starting outside and ending inside. On the other, I drew an arrow originating in the middle of the circle and extending outward.

I told her that every story is one of these two. It is either someone/something new coming into an established environment or someone/something leaving an established environment to go on some sort of adventure or journey.

She recognized which hers was: Option #2, adventure. She recognized that the established environment (the circle) was her backyard and that the adventure (the arrow) was going to the church. I emphasized that she could pay attention to her time boundaries, all year vs. during Lent. We talked how she could smell the mesquite wood from the church. I asked her if this fell under all year in her backyard or during Lent at the church. Backyard. The Deer Dancer that was a part of the ceremonies? Church.

We talked about the intro could (and should) include details from all year in order to show us that she lives right near the church. The thesis is where the adventure starts. She journeys outside her backyard to the church itself.

I think drawing those diagrams helped her understand how the beginning of the paper related to the rest of the paper. At various points in the conversation, I added on to the drawings. I'd drawn them before, but never added on. I labeled the circle "backyard all year" and the arrow " church on Fr + Sat during Lent." I wrote the word "choose" above the arrow and "forced" below, then wrote "why?" I'd never thought about breaking the paradigm down like that, but it seemed helpful. I doubt that will be the last time that shows up on the whiteboard.

Fun with Informal Communication

2009-09-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

Here a couple of pieces of communication I've encountered in the past week. Ah, words.

1. On a black sweatshirt in the Writing Lab when I came to work one morning, I found a Post-It note with these words handwritten in pencil: "Some Random Sweater."

2. On a peer-reviewed draft (handwritten and submitted for review instead of the typed draft due to a flash drive left behind at the UofA computer lab) of a student essay: "this is g. but you gosta give me more detail chica! and finishing it would help a little."

You Teach Me Pia Gow, I Will Help You Write

2009-09-17T11:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday did not start well. We had a busy morning, normal for the Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays of the nascent Fall 2009 semester, and I asked one of the early morning students when his paper was due.

It's a simple question. When is your paper due? The answer: a date + a time. First, he told me that it's just a first draft. I asked when he had to hand it in, and he said something else that did not include a date + a time. That's two. I asked again. He said something else and I suggested that he look at his syllabus. He took out his syllabus and said, "I think it's ___," and I then I prodded him to make sure by checking his syllabus very carefully. He did, and he gave me a date + a time.

If this job had a fine print, it would definitely include some mention of the repetition of such questions to reach specific answers. It's the closest this job gets to water torture. Those drops are harmless on there own, but they just keep dropping dropping dropping.

Thus, yesterday did not start off well. Thankfully, it improved. Through Pia Gow.

Each semester brings us new regulars. One of our new regulars has been working on a paragraph about her favorite form of relaxation, going to the casino to play Pia Gow, for the past week or so. She's got the general idea of the assignment, but she keeps using the word "fun" to explain why it's relaxing, so I've been trying to draw some specifics out of her*. That can be a slow process sometimes because people don't realize what kind of details others need in order to understand the everyday, obvious things of life they are covering in their writing.

Yesterday, she didn't just bring her draft. She brought cards. She was going to teach me Pia Gow.

She spread the cards out on the table in seven stacks of seven. She was the dealer, I was the player. She told me that the dealer is always seven and then had me pick a number. Two (my number in whatever sports teams I find myself on). She arranged the cards according to my choice and began to explain how we play.

She told me about high and low hands, what I'm looking for in arranging each, and then had me give it a go. She explained this clearly, without hitch or hesitation, and when she showed her cards and flipped mine, she would flip one card with another. When they wouldn't cooperate, I saw that it was because of the too-smooth table, and the look on her face, a quick flash of frustration, told me that she has done this before on the right kind of table.

I was right. She told me she's a dealer. She deals all kinds of card games at one casino, and then goes out to play her favorite, Pia Gow, at another with friends--friend I found out later are also dealers.

I didn't find out she was a dealer until I told that the game seemed complicated and wondered why she found it so relaxing. She said it was part of the casino world where she felt comfortable. I asked why and she then let it spill that she works there, that she knows the other dealers at other casinos. That's when I got it. She found this complex game so relaxing because she knows it, she explains it, and she teaches it five times a week. She was able to run through various hand scenarios for me faster than I could actually pick up that she was presenting a new option for how I could play. She knew the ins and outs because she's seen them play out in front of her.

She also found Pia Gow relaxing because it's a slow game. I didn't know she was a dealer, but she did let me know that detail early on. I just didn't understand it until we played. Remember those high and low hands? Each hand played in Pia Gow gives the dealer and the player two chances to win, which leads to a lot of pushes. She told me that this game is a push game. There's not a lot of big wins, but more importantly, your fifty dollar buy-in lasts a long time because your money doesn't bleed away every hand.

Pia Gow's nature as a push game allows for socializing, imbibing (for free in Vegas, she said, but not at her casino), and watching other players. Earlier, I told her that she needed to explain why the game is relaxing because not everyone finds gambling relaxing. As we played and pushed often, I told her I understood what she meant about the slow pace allowing players to enjoy hours at the table.

She helped me understand Pia Gow, and then I helped her understand how to go about writing about it. She found it so relaxing because it was familiar, it let her play for a long time, and she got to enjoy it as a player, not a dealer. She needed to tell readers how she grew familiar with the game as a dealer, and then explain why she so enjoyed sitting at the table as a player.

I told her to go pack her paragraph with details and come back so I could help her see how to decide what details to keep and what to cut**.

After she left, I couldn't help but think about how writing classes often separate writers from their subjects. We gather in rooms with tables and computers, we discuss, we put black marks on pages, and we rarely send people out to interact with what they are supposed to be putting down on paper.

Is this a breakdown in immediacy, in the connection between the word generating person and the subject those words are attempting to convey? Journalists go knock on doors, talk to people, look at places, and experience the environments they are writing about. Novelists go to the places they write about or spend time with people who inspire their characters (or look up journalists' accounts as research).

I remember reading that David Foster Wallace immersed himself in tax laws while preparing to write The Pale King, and that "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" was written after he actually went on the cruise it discusses.

I wonder how we could shorten the gap between classroom and subject, bring some immediacy to writing assignments, place those recording the sensory details in the same place as the stimuli, and make writing the result of an experience, not just the recalling of one.

I say all this because it was genuinely fun to learn this game from this student instead of just talk about this game with this student. She was an expert, and we were doing something real. We weren't stuck in the realm of the abstract, detached from what she was writing about. We were doing what she was writing about, and then we moved to writing about it while the cards were still on the table.

*All the time. I actually made a sign that says BE SPECIFIC and placed it between two of the computers. Yesterday, I was telling a student that she needed to bring specific promises and changes into a paper hinging on President Obama's failure to deliver on said promises, which were alluded to but never named. I didn't just tell her this once. It came up multiple times. Her friend, who was waiting not working, walked over to the sign, picked it up, and waved it in front of the writer's face.

**I often tell students what I was told by good teachers. Phil Heldrich, my poetry professor at Emporia State, told us that it's always easier to cut that it is to add. It's true.

Drawing the Lines

2009-09-10T09:16:00.000-07:00

Two students just left. They each had an essay about something they liked. One: soccer. The other: singing. The assignment: argue that something they liked is worth liking.

The drafts were about as general as could be. He liked soccer because of health, and she liked singing because it relieved stress. That was about all that was there, so I started asking questions.

He doesn't just like soccer. He is on a soccer team in a league here in Tucson. He plays every week. She doesn't just sing. She goes over to a friend's house every weekend to sing karaoke.

They just needed to set up their boundaries. A soccer game needs the white lines at the edge of the field to determine when the ball is in play and when it's not. Once those boundaries are set, the teams can generally do whatever they what to score as long as they follow soccer's basic rules*.

An essay needs similar attention paid to where the limits are in order. I told these students that they are free to zoom in from soccer and singing to playing on a soccer team and singing karaoke at a friend's house. That tells them what kind of details are in play. He can discuss who is on the team, how often they play, how often they win, where they play, who they play, and why he enjoys being a part of all of this. She can examine why she loves going to this friend's house at the end of the week to sing someone else's songs into a microphone in front of her friends.

This is doable. They are both perfectly capable of writing about these experiences. They just need to know that they can.

*Don't touch the ball with your hands, stay onside, don't foul anybody. Other than that, it's wide open for creativity in tactics, team setup, and ball movement. I would argue that this is how essay should be taught, as well: give writers a goal, set up the basics, and let them set up their paper so as to accomplish that goal in their own fashion. You can always talk through their tactics, team setup, and ball movement after they have given it a go.

FAQ: Can you make sure this is good?

2009-09-09T15:15:00.000-07:00

That is not a generalization. We are asked that exact question--Can you make sure this is good?--frequently. Those are the words.*

The simplest of answers: No.

The process is always longer than that. People come to us for help, they just don't know what help we have to give. Instead of a bunch of marks on a page that will turn into corrections that students may or may not understand, we have questions.

I usually ask student writers who ask this question if they think their paper is not good. They are not accustomed to this question. It shocks some people visibly. They get a strange, confused expression on their face. If they were moving, they stop. Not everybody reacts this way, but a good number of people may have never been asked to think about the quality of their own work before.

My question leads to why they think their paper is not good. This is the important point in the conversation. They usually have a good idea. Suddenly they are able to verbalize that they know their paper has no thesis, that they need to work on organization, that the are struggling with the conclusion, or some other specific issue that was lurking behind their general request for goodness.

Some of them fall back from making sure it's good to wanting to make sure "it makes sense" or "it flows." I keep on going. I ask them why they think it doesn't. Eventually, they are able to evaluate their own work, and most of the time, they are right.

These students have somehow grown accustomed to other people making sure it's good. When asked to be specific in what they think is malfunctioning in their paper, when they start to think about it, when they do that work, they are able to start to make sure it's good, and we are able to help them do so.

It all comes down to ownership. I find that most people are perfectly capable of crafting a thoughtful paper if they are willing to think about it, answer questions, and dig into what they are trying to say. That's why I make them dig into what they think is wrong in the first place.

FAQ: Print in the Library

2009-08-31T10:43:00.001-07:00

It's the beginning of the fall semester, so we, along with every other office on campus, are peppered with questions. People want to know where classes are, how to get ahold of people, where to find services, and we usually know where to send them.

Those are the general, new-student, beginning-of-the-semester questions. We also get certain questions that pertain to our specific expertise not only around the time when classes start, but throughout the semester.

One of those is about printing. People see computers here in the Writing Lab, so they think printing happens here. It doesn't.

A few people asked today. We have one sign that says Print in the Library, but it's not enough. I printed a twin* sign for our door. I told Larry** about our new sign, and Brooks made a joke about having a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list for the Writing Lab.

I thought, "Hey, that's a good idea." I told Brooks I would put it on the blog. So here I am, starting a new feature on the blog. Whenever a frequently asked question comes up, I'll post how it's asked, who asks it, and how we usually answer it.

*A fraternal twin. I changed the wording just a bit to make sure people know not only to go to the library, but that the library is upstairs in the other building.

**The math guy, who also fields this question all the time.

Never an Off Day

2009-08-02T13:51:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday. I'm not at work right now, but I was thinking this morning, for whatever reason, about writing and research, about simple assignments and the complicated papers that can grow from them, and I decided on something I would like to do in the context of a research+literature class (like Pima's Writing 102).

It's in two stages for two specific reasons.
Stage 1: Meet an Author
Stage 2: Tell Someone Else to Read an Author

Here's the first stage. I'd like to have students research contemporary and recent authors. That could be pretty broad in terms of places, but I'd try to keep the timeframe fairly recent. I think I would make a list of authors and tack on a little info about that person. I'd let them choose who they want to look into. They could even go off the list as long as they convince me their choice is worth it.

Here's the reason for the first stage. I work with a lot of student writers who don't have the knowledge of their subjects and arguments that they need to form a solid essay because they have not invested the time into the process of research. I'm not blaming anyone here. I'm not pointing my finger at lazy students or teachers who rush through a semester. I'm just saying: writing is a result of thinking, so let's give folks we expect to write a little time to think. Let's make sure they have it. Let's make sure their brains can soak up enough information to form an opinion.

The first stage allows the student to get to know the research process while getting to know their author. We could work on database searches, knowing what kinds of sources are legitimate*, how to quote and paraphrase, choosing what to quote and what to paraphrase, organizing information from sources in a paragraph in your own paper, and all kinds of other little things that pop up in research.

The second stage would move on to adding in an argument. Here's my plan**: As a class, we would present our findings on our authors. Then each student would choose an author to support as someone people--not just academics or students or bookworms or nerds or kids whose parents don't buy them XBoxes--should read. They would have to think critically and connect who that author is, what that author writes about, where they came from, where they went, when they lived, and other contextual whowhatwhenwherehows with the same kinds of contextual issues in the people they are saying should read their author.

I'd love to see the arguments people come up with. I guess this comes from my desire to simplify assignments in order to let the complications grow organically from the students' thought processes, my hope that people see value in reading, and my observation that Writing classes often ask people to learn a skill which they have never seen in use. This assignment (which would really stretch over an entire semester in three large parts; the third being a revision stage that rarely gets taught but nearly always needs learning) would allow students to form their own ideas about something they have worked at gaining familiarity with, argue for time spent with your nose in a book, and learn more about people who choose to spend their time writing.

*Too many times I see people rushing through a research paper of one kind or another and all they've done is go to a few different basic sites like encyclodepias, Wikipedia (No!), About.com, or some other surface level biographical site with information gleaned from some other surface level biographical site. That's shoddy researchmanship.

**This is all just thinking and hoping because I'm not teaching right now, and if I were, I would be teaching Writing 70, which exists to help people write a solid sentence and then a solid paragraph.

The Microbiologist in Room A107

2009-06-24T08:17:00.000-07:00

This is a bulletin board I put up in one of the Writing classrooms here on campus (all the bulletin boards were all either blank or full of remnants of material from before I started at Desert Vista in 2006). It's a quote I found from a microbiologist from an article on how research should make you feel stupid.

That particular classroom is most often used for Writing 101 and Writing 102, which are research- and argument-focused classes. I thought it would be helpful for the students in that classroom to remember that scholarly, professional people don't know everything. They just press on and keep figuring things out.

Here is what happened after I put up this bulletin board. Not graffiti, but conversation.

Here's a closer look. What is this anonymous person thanking God for?

The idea of trying. The microbiologist's "it" in this case is a research problem he was having trouble with, so he asked a Noble Prize winner--who said he didn't know how to solve it.

So many people just need to know that they don't have to know, they just need to attempt, to guess, to explore, to walk out on a limb and see what happens.

That line under "things" is not a stray pen mark. It travels downward.

to the final piece of the quote.

It's my favorite part of the whole quote. I love the use of the word "muddle." I think it's important to hear "as best we can." That's all we can do. Muddle the best we can. What we do not know has no boundaries, so we can just keep pushing forward with what we can learn.

And this final anonymous note encapsulates the entire goal of the bulletin board. The microbiologist and all his scholarly research experience sounds like the community college student writing a paper and finding sources in the library database. The context is different, the scale and scope of the projects are different, but the idea stays the same: do what you can, keep moving forward, and keep learning--even if you feel stupid.

Type for Free, My Friends

2009-06-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

Last week, a student who visits the Writing Lab often came in with an urgent problem: the trial edition of Word on her laptop expired, but she needed to type a paper.

I contacted a friend of mine who works with Ubuntu Linux (he has written technical books for them, as well as rescuing another friend's computer by installing Linux). I figured he would know if a free or inexpensive word processing program existed for this student. He did.

He pointed me to OpenOffice.org. I knew nothing of Open Office, but now I'm sad that many students do not know. It's a free batch of programs from Sun Microsystems that match up with Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and more. I'm all for anything that will help students spend less, and this student got the equivalent of Word for free.

Now she can work on her papers at home when she has the time instead of trying to work all her writing time into her busy schedule and the Writing Center's summer hours.

Titleist

2009-05-11T10:38:00.001-07:00

Many people have trouble with titles. They come in with the assignment (Paragraph 2, Essay 3) on the top of their page, or they use the title of an assigned article/essay/story as the title of their analysis/reaction/response (The Red Convertible, sans quotation marks), or they use a general word or phrase (Mother, My Vacation, Believe in Yourself) that is much too large for their specific insights on the subject.

Here's the thing: I love titles. I'm a huge fan. I see titles everywhere. I love how a writer can capture the essence of a piece in a single word, a small group of words, an intentionally long string of words, or a title: subtitle combination.

I pay attention to titles, and I particularly enjoy the titles This American Life assigns to both their full-hour shows and the acts they divide those shows up into. They do something that I don't think most know they can do: play on existing phrases to create titles.

Here's a taste from the last few This American Life shows:

D-U-Why?
Return to the Scene of the Scene
Our Man of Perpetual Sorrow
This I Used to Believe
Scrambled Nest Egg
Team Spirit in the Sky
Pants Pants Revelation
You're as Cold as Ice
You're Willing to Sacrifice Our Love

They are all taken from existing pieces of language. DUI. Return to the scene of the crime. Our lady of perpetual sorrow. This I Believe (another radio show). Scrambled eggs + nest egg. Team spirit + "Spirit in the Sky." Dance Dance Revolution. Two lines from Foreigner's "Cold as Ice." Most students don't know they can do such things.

I'm going revisit this idea periodically.

Brand Recognition

2009-05-06T12:23:00.000-07:00

Last week, I went on vacation to San Diego. One day we were leaving our hotel and we stopped by the main building to mail postcards. I waited in the car with Elly while Janice went inside. While I waited, a man came out the front doors wearing a Billabong t-shirt. I see people wearing Billabong and Hurley and Volcom and Famous Stars and Straps t-shirts and hats, and I doubt many of those people know exactly what those companies make or do, aside from producing t-shirts with their names on them.

I thought this could be a good opportunity to get students to research the names they are paying to wear. They could choose a shirt or other piece of clothing that they own. It could be from one of those brands or from Hollister or American Eagle or Abercrombie & Fitch or any other company that puts their name on the front of a t-shirt to act as a mobile billboard. Then, they research that company. Who are they? What else to do they make? Is clothing their main business? Who makes their clothing? Why do people wear the clothes they make? How many people who wear those clothes actually know much about the company?

I would be interested in seeing what happens to student perspectives after they learn more about where those clothes come from. This could lead to writing about fair labor, materialism, fitting in, trends, authenticity, and a host of other issues.
________

Also on the research front:

Today, a few guys were in the Writing Center. One of them had a recent haircut. From the front, I thought it was mohawk-fade hybrid. I saw the back and discovered it was just a fade. I told him I thought it was a mohawk and he laughed. Mohawks are everywhere, I pointed out, so I thought he had one, too. I told them all that I saw a guy in Target with a mohawk--not the brightly-dyed, spiny dinosaur, punk kind of mohawk, but still a few inches high from forehead to neck. It was a near-punk rebel style haircut--and he was wearing a striped polo shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes. Hardcore.

We laughed about how the mohawk is everywhere, and then I mused that looking into where the mohawk came from and how it got to be everywhere would be an interesting research project. I asked the guys if they would be willing to write about that if their teacher asked them to. It wasn't an overwhelming response, but they were up for it. One of them was excited, even.

I think a paper about the origins and spread of the mohawk would be fascinating. It would require historical research from multiple times (book research, database research, Internet research) and allow for the students to conduct interviews and look into current media to find mohawks and the reasons for them. I would love to read that.

This and That

2009-04-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

1. Last week, a student researching her Writing 102 essay was highlighting. A lot. Way too much. I looked down at her printed page of research about JFK (she was investigating the context of his inaugural speech) and saw mostly orange. The lines she left white were few.

I asked her why she was highlighting all of that. She told me that she was going to possibly use it later. I then explained that she would simply be reading through lines of orange-and-black, not the white-and-black original, to find what she wanted to use. The work she would be doing later would be the same as the work she was doing right then (perhaps more because she probably doesn't read from orange pages that often).

I told her to simply highlight keywords and dates and leave the rest white. Then I drew this on the white board
__________ _______________ _____ ___
________ _________________ ________________ ____
________ _________________ _________ ___
________ _____________

to illustrate my point. The first part is highlighting as she was doing it. The second part is the highlighted keywords, which are much easier to spot and distinguish from other highlighted keywords.

She said, "Nobody ever told me that before. Highlighting keywords." I told her that one of the advantages I have in the Writing Lab is that I see people working. I see the formation, not the formed, so I get used to helping that formation happen more efficiently. I really do think this is making me a better teacher.

2. A panicky student who often drinks enough caffeine to make her leg shake* came in last week and calmly ran through her plan of attack for her research paper. She knew each section she wanted to cover, and her sections grew more specific as she proceeded through her paper. I was impressed. This student had cried earlier this semester. Writing overwhelmed her. It was too much and she had to leave for awhile. And here she was, calmly speaking from the notes and visual organization she put down on sheets from a legal pad.

All I could do was say, "That's great" and watch her go. She had no questions. She just needed time to work.

3. I love watching people think. At breakfast with a friend this Friday, he asked me if I would be busy that day. I said yes and no, that there would be people in working on research papers and they would be working working working, only asking questions when necessary**. I love when students sit down with their piles of research or plop down and type away at their drafts. I feel like they are understanding what it means to write. They aren't worried so much as focused. There will be time for revision after a conference with a teacher or a peer review. This is the time to forge ahead, and I love being in the room when that happens.

*Not a hyperbole. I've seen it. Although I suppose the stress of writing a paper contributes, she does drink a lot of caffeine.

**Like swimmers breathing only when necessary and concentrating on their stroke, their goal.

Good Day So Far

2009-04-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

What I've helped with so far:

The project on mental illness + creativity: going from the student saying, "Yes, there is a connection" to figuring out what connection she sees. Specifics!

Research on Dr. Seuss + historical/social context: looking for direction and questions, narrowing the focus, learning that Cat in the Hat was written to combat illiteracy.

Rhetoric: explaining logos, pathos, and ethos to those about to persuade; getting four students knee-deep into their potential arguments.

To Call It an Article or To Not Call It an Article

2009-04-20T09:55:00.000-07:00

Good question today: Are the Question & Answer features in magazines called articles?

A couple of students working on responses to articles in The Aztec Press wondered if the Q&As were "articles." I looked up explained what people usually mean when they use the word "article" to describe writing in a newspaper or magazine, and I looked up "article" on dictionary.com to show them the true definition of the word. We talked about all the small lists or graphs or blurbs that magazines publish and how they are different than the articles those same magazines publish.

I liked the question, and the follow-up was even better: If not "articles," what are they called? I'm not sure. I suppose Q&A would apply, but not all of those little bits in the fronts of magazines are answers to questions. Do those have a name? I'm not in the magazine publishing business, but I suppose they do. I'll see if I can do some digging.

Links of Note

2009-04-17T08:35:00.000-07:00

1. Stupidity in Research: an article by a microbiologist (and they don't just let anybody do that) about the necessity of that I Don't Know feeling. If I were to make a pie graph of my job, which I have considered doing, I imagine a fairly large chunk of that circle would be labeled, "Telling People It Is Okay To Not Know." I ask students this question: What do you think? They reply: I don't know. I counter: I know you don't know, but I didn't ask what you know; I asked what you think.

2. John McPhee: an NPR piece and a Princeton Weekly Bulletin article on my newest authorial discovery. I think this guy is cool. The foundation of his livelihood is his curiosity. He is not a specialist in anything other than nonfiction. I just finished his first book, A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton, which follows now Senator Bill Bradley during his college basketball career and paints him as a sort of savant on the court, hyper-aware and capable of physical feats others don't know are possible.

Part of what I love about this book is that it came naturally to McPhee. He has lived most of his life in Princeton, and Bradley's presence slotted right in. The book grew organically from their intersection at the school. Another part of what I love is that McPhee is not a sportswriter. He is a writer who covers anything and everything (read the articles; you'll see), and this book happened to be about a basketball player.

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves

2009-04-16T16:30:00.001-07:00

I'm currently reading Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss. I have completed the introduction and the first chapter on the apostrophe. I'm ankle-deep in the second chapter, covering the comma. Here are my two favorite observations:

1. Various grammar books have various rules. Some say "Keats's poem" is correct. Others say "Keats' poem" is correct. I love that. The rulemakers can't even agree on the rules. How then can we expect non-rulemaking college students to follow them?

Everybody always comes in asking about grammar. One student came in today with a sheet of feedback from his teacher. Nowhere in that feedback did she mention anything about his grammar. She asked for focus, for clarification, for specifics, but said nothing of commas or sentence structure. I read the feedback and read over his essay. His teacher was 100% correct, and as I began to discuss her feedback with him, he waved his hand over his paper and asked if I could just look at it and tell him about his grammar.

I don't him he doesn't care about grammar at this point and explained that ideas come first. Most people think in this manner: writing=grammar. That is not true. Grammar is an aspect, not everything. I think that is driven home by Keats's poem/Keats' poem; does it really--really--matter? Not particularly. We still know who wrote the lines.

2. Truss quotes Sir Ernest Gowers: "The use of commas cannot be learned by rule." True. I can't remember a single writing student who learned where to put a comma based on an explanation of a rule. Rule + example is the minimum. The rule is theory, but the example is practice.

I can always tell readers when they come in. Their sentences bounce and flow with rhythm. They can't necessarily explain the placement of a comma, but they usually don't need to because their commas are properly placed. They have seen the tool in use enough to understand how it functions in live action.

This is same way I learned to use a semicolon. I saw enough of them in print and it sunk in that they pair sentences.

It's Not Brain Surgery

2009-03-06T08:50:00.000-08:00

I try to get out of the Writing Center at least a couple times a day and take a walk around the outside of Desert Vista's two-building campus. These walks remind me that I do not live in a windowless box*, that the sun shines and there are mountains and breezes--all of which are good things to be reminded of from time to time.

Last week, I passed Evelyn Martinez, one of our counselors here at DV, and we shared a quick conversation about helping people, persevering in helping people, and remembering that we cannot do it all for them.

Evelyn is a generally upbeat and encouraging person. She told me that she'd had a tough beginning of the semester, but was reminding herself that what we do is not brain surgery and that the power belongs in the choices people ultimately make, not solely in our advice. With that, she went her way and I went mine.

I've been reminding myself over the past couple weeks that what I do here in the Writing Lab is not brain surgery. It helps me keep work simple and to remember that I can't teach someone everything there is to know or think about writing in twenty minutes or three hours or even a few weeks or an entire semester. I can't go in an connect wires or smooth out wrinkles to fix thought processes in a short amount of time. I can suggest and model and guide, but the choice belongs in the writer.

But then, this morning, I was thinking about what I do kind of is brain surgery. I'm not a surgeon in the sense that I use my knowledge and skills to fix problems, but I do root around in writers' brains, challenging them to use the mass of cells they carry around in their skulls as more than an instrument of instinct. So often writers present me with their problems or questions, I turn it back to them in some form or another as an opportunity for them to ponder and explore, and they crumple into their own lack of knowledge, waving I Don't Know like a white flag, pleading for terms of surrender.

I suppose what I do is brain personal training. Not surgery to repair, but challenge to build up--both the ability of a person's brain and the belief a person has in the ability of their brain. Student writers say, "I have no idea," and then I push them further and their idea pops out like a just-born foal, shaky but trying to stand and closer to walking than it may appear. It usually finds its feet (hooves, to be consistent with the metaphor) fairly quickly, and they have seen that I Don't Know is not a stop sign.

They have either been taught that I Don't Know=Stop Thinking (I always tell them, "I didn't ask what you know; I asked what you think") or they have never been taught that there is more to life than Not Knowing. I suppose, if we want to wax philosophical, we could say that much of life is not knowing and that we must learn to push forward through that or be crippled by the blank page that is tomorrow and the next day and the next day, etc. That is the More: keep on going.

I will remind myself that I am not a brain surgeon. I will remind myself that I am a brain trainer.

*Okay, technically I do have a window, but it does not give me a view to the outside world or let in natural light. Instead, it functions like those large panes of glass at zoos, the ones that allow us to look in on the lives of captive gorillas and polar bears. It is a glass wall that passersby occasionally choose to tap or pound on, which reinforces my zoo metaphor and my conclusion that, while it is made of glass, it is not a true window.

My Dilemma: There's No Home For You Here Idea, Go Away (There's No Home For You Here)*

2009-02-23T08:18:00.001-08:00

I'm always getting ideas and trying them out (such is the life of someone who believes in the writing process). In my Summer 2008 Writing 100**, I tried out this idea:

1. I cut out words and phrases from the pages of magazines. There are always plenty of magazines lying about, so we might as well put them to good use: giving people a chance to work through the thought process*** necessary to develop an idea into an essay.
2. I put the now-separated-from-their-original-context words and phrases into a small white envelope.
3. Each student blindly chose a word or phrase from said small white envelope.
4. Each student set to work thinking of what they could**** write about based on this word or phrase. They brainstormed in whatever way worked for them. I walked around and gave feedback, mainly trying to get students to think sharply and specifically*****.
5. After each student had their list, which they posted on our class message board, they formed groups of three to choose one topic from their combined lists and then set to work outlining the main ideas for an essay on this topic.

They never actually turned these outlines into essays. That was not the point. The point was to help them develop as thinkers--which has to happen before they turn into writers. So much focus is placed on the final product in many classes that student writers don't concern themselves with learning to grow a small, simple idea into the complex, intricate thing that we call an essay. Thus, many students don't get their reps as Idea Developers. They rush through to finish because finishing a paper is finishing one more step along the way in finishing the class, which is one more step along the way to finishing their degree and getting a job.

I see that all the time in the Writing Lab. Honestly, it's one of my favorite things to work on with people. That's why I love having a whiteboard in the lab. We work out their essay together, and I show them what you can do with a blank page. But I wish I could do more of that. That's why I did that exercise with the random phrases. I wanted to give them reps. I would love to develop that exercise into a full-blown essay project that extends over weeks and allows us to examine stages of the thinking process that happen while writing. I just don't have a classroom environment to do that developing. I tossed the idea of a workshop around with Matt Matera, but we both know that workshops don't fly here because they are extra, and anything extra doesn't attract people who are learning+working+raising families, which many of our students are.

So the idea will be just that: an idea. Eventually, I hope to get a chance to see what could happen if I keep working on it. We'll see.

_________________

*This title is a modified version of The White Stripes' "There's No Home For You Here." I merely switched "girl" in the lyrics to "idea."

**The last class I was allowed to teach at Pima due to some new (I'm assuming budgetary) constraints placed on full-time staff who also served as adjunct faculty. That made me very sad. Hopefully that changes in the future.

***ESPN.com's Bill Simmons (The Sports Guy) has a theory that "it's all about getting your reps." This applies to basketball players, Miley Cyrus, and, I believe, people learning to think like people who write well; hence this exercise.

****This is about "could" because this exercise is about possibility. Most of writing is about possibility. Like Anne Lamott said, "Very few writers really know what they are doing until they've done it." We should focus on student writers' ability to work through the unknown and the possible toward a more finite product.

*****The best example of this, I think: a student plucked the phrase "Carve out some family time" (originally in an ad for Big Love). He wrote ideas about family. That is the obvious one. What he was neglecting was the idea of carving out time. We talked about what the word "carve" means, about what it implies when combined with the concept of time, and what those ideas meant for family. Often people ignore words that are right in front of their eyes.

So Far, So Good

2009-02-06T12:40:00.000-08:00

The Spring is always a little slower around Desert Vista, and the beginning of the semester sometimes takes awhile to get going, but it's been a good beginning of 2009 around the Writing Lab.

I'm basing that solely on the students who have crossed our door so far. They are eager and curious and self-deprecating. That means they pay attention and ask questions. I've already had the chance to explain comma splices to some foggy-minded students, who usually need to be told that breaking words into sentences is not a bad thing, that they can still explain what they are explaining in the next sentence, or who just need a little warning to think before sprinkling commas throughout their papers.

I also had the chance to explain the ideas of rhetoric to a couple students engaged in breaking down Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Honestly, I love watching people realize that they can not only read the What of a speech or essay or book, but also the How and Why that is tucked in those same words. That's the foundation of a critical thinker.

Early on this semester, I helped a student move from a dull summary (mistaken for description) of a movie to a lively little essay on her fish. Her refugee fish. See, she and her husband are Tucsonans via relocation from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They got on a plane without knowing the destination, leaving everything, including their fish, behind in their flooded home. When they returned months later, the looters had removed everything of value but left the fish, which was just fine. It's now a Tucsonan, too.

I'm hoping the semester continues like these few early weeks.

January 20, 2009: A Notable Day

2009-01-20T13:14:00.000-08:00

1. I watched Barack Obama take the Presidential Oath of Office with somewhere between 150 and 300 students, staff, and faculty here on campus. That was special. There was clapping. Much clapping. I love having a president who uses words to inspire and lead. I would love to print off his speeches and go over them with a Writing class to show them how words can be sent forth to change The Way Things Are.

2. We got an ID scanner for our sign-in computer. That's a big deal and we're thankful for it. I don't think people outside the Pima institutional behemoth will understand. We asked for this (officially) at the beginning of the Fall 08 semester. Mary Beth Ginter was our temporary VP of Instruction and, apparently, she moved things along so much so that today, the first day of Spring 09 classes, I unlocked the door and found a new computer complete with a new Accutrack program and a new scanner. To Dr. Ginter and Whoever Else Made This Happen: Thankyouthankyouthankyou. We anticipate this making the procedural part of our job much easier.

3. I overheard a conversation between Writing tutors that centered around the new film JCVD, which invovles Jean-Claude Van Damme playing Jean-Claude Van Damme, and then bloomed into a discussion of the films of Mr. Van Damme, as well as the acting prowess of Mr. Van Damme, Chuck Norris, and Stephen Seagal.

Everything Comes From Seed

2008-12-22T09:49:00.000-08:00

I'm not quite halfway through The Best American Essays of the Century, a book that I bought at Bookman's for nine dollars in trade credit over a year ago, maybe more. I bought it because I teach people how to write essays, and I have a philosophy of learning that involves learning from examples, and examples labeled "the best" by Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Atwan are worth learning from. I gave myself permission to read an essay a day or so. I have not kept that pace, but I do find the time to read here and there, so I'm slowly making my way through.

I have made discoveries while reading this book--really, while piling the readings up in my head, one essay by one essay, each a few years down the road from the one I read before it, each a record of how ideas are moving along the century.

1. Race Relations and Civil Rights permeate much deeper into the soil of American History than I realized (or was taught, really). It seems like one of every three or four essays tackles some varied perspective on minorities and majorities in our nation. The four that stick in my head are W.E.B. Du Bois's "On the Coming of John" (education, black/white, poverty), John Jay Chapman's "Coatesville" (repentence of racial crimes whose perpetrators were acquitted), Richard Wright's "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch" (education of a different, social, everyday sort), and Langston Hughes's "Bop" (pop culture's roots in dark dark things)

2. Writing that is worth reading is the process of a careful mind exploring simple moments, questions, or ideas. The ideas themselves do not need to be complicated. Hughes lays out a conversation between two black men about bebop music. James Agee, in "Knoxville: Summer of 1915," puts the evenings in his boyhood neighborhood under the poetic miscroscope. E.B. White writes about revisiting a lake, a place that he visited with his father, as a father himself in "Once More to the Lake." These are not complicated things, but the essays are beautiful, exact, detailed, and careful.

3. Organization is any structure an author uses to prop up his ideas; there are no rules--only control. I've told students before that, while teachers may ask for certain parts of particular structures, in the real world, all that readers ask is that the author seem like he is in control, that he knows where the writing is going. However an author can do that is okay by the public. These essays are examples of that. Wright goes so far as to build his essay in sections marked by roman numerals. They are conversational in tone and include dialect in dialogue, and are of varied length, but the roman numerals shows the reader that Wright knows where he's starting and stopping. He knows the limits of each story, and he lets each one live fully within those limits.

I think these discoveries could work to benefit a class full of learning writers.

The fact that race relations is such an integral thread to American life could spur a class to write about their own experiences living in multicultural environments, about their own life-lessons about "how it is" in terms of stereotypes and racial interactions and what can be done to move "how it is" toward "how it could be."

The idea of growing an essay from a simple idea could be important to the direction given. The work a student should do is not the work of diciphering an assigment; instead, it should be the work of taking a simple question or idea (either given by a teacher or unearthed from life) and mapping it, dissecting it, exploring it, and recording what is found.

Organization and control may be the most difficult to grade, but may also be fun to teach. It would allow a conversation between teacher and student in which the student is the owner of the idea--and of the presentation of the idea--and the teacher is the mentor+audience. In this mode, the student can discover and attempt to record, and the teacher can react, ask questions, and give gentle suggestions to mold people who can control the wild ideas in their heads that sneak around like mice or flail like loosed fire hoses. The only rule is: learn to control the idea, to package it so it can be unpacked and understood.

And They See That It Is Good, So They Try To Cram It All Into Their Allotted Two-to-Three Pages

2008-12-10T08:02:00.001-08:00

Focus is one of the most addressed issues in the DV Writing Lab. Often, student writers come in with a draft that they cranked out at home and ask us to "check it." What they mean is: Find my mistakes, oh writing nerd (basically, if not in those exact words). What they need more times than not, however is: focus.

I usually make people talk through their papers before we read them to see how much control they have of their ideas apart from the pages on which they flung their words in a coffee-infused, television-distracted, text-message-interrupted whirl of keystrokes. I ask them, "What is your paper about?" It's a simple question based on the precision of the second-person pronoun that ninety-nine percent of the time results in a student regurgitating the question or prompt given them by their instructor, or spitting out a one-to-three word phrase such as "construction" or "global warming" or "legalization of pot."

The former could go anywhere, really, but the latter, after combining their answers to my questions with a quick review of their essay, leads to a discussion of the idea of focus, a slippery rascal that is deceptively simple ("focus" is not some esoteric literary term) to the point that it could be slipped into a lesson on writing by a teacher and assumed to be understood without a hitch.

Even the student could assume they get it. They fill a few pages with their thoughts on construction work. They tell some stories, build their credibility with experiences working alongside construction-working fathers and injuries earned with the mis-hit of a hammer (or even worse, injuries observed in coworkers involving nail guns or falling _____ stories). They slip in a sentence here and there about how the foreman's job is to keep people safe and make sure the job gets done, and they have an essay on Why They Want To Be A Foreman. Done done and done.

Here is where one of the more important discoveries about writing I've made while tutoring full-time comes in. They assume that, because they did not talk about anything but construction, they have achieved focus. The problem is that the essay is not supposed to be a collection everything they know about construction (or global warming or pot or anything else). It's supposed to explain why this certain author wants to be a foreman on a construction crew--not a worker and not the project manager, but the foreman, who has specific responsibilities and duties.

The stories about smashing thumbs and nearly missing getting impaled with nails were interesting and detailed and appeared to be on topic, and they could be, if the student sees how to focus. Everything goes back to the central idea. Everything. If it's in the neighborhood, that's not focus. That's blurred edges.

This happens with essays about mothers and fiances, jobs and family vacations, hopes for future jobs, favotire holidays, scars, characters in books, and everything else that students are asked to write about. They see stories they want to tell or facts that they think would be interesting or information that they assume is indispensable and try to get it all down on the pages, all of it all of it all of it, and it's too much because they thought about the general topic, but not about what they are specifically saying about that person or thing or idea.

Mustachioed!

2008-11-26T09:58:00.000-08:00

This guy came in today in all black, including his backpack, his long hair, and his mustache. It got me wondering (as things often do) about mustaches. This guy is one of many guys, my father included, who sports a mustache, but it is not exclusive to a particular style (I have never once seen my father in all black, and his hair is not long like a Seattle grunge rocker but trimmed short and neat).

Here is where this is going: Why the mustache?

I would love to give that option to students to investigate. What is the history of the male decision to grow the hair above the lip, yet shave the hair below and around? When? Why? What does it mean? How has that meaning changed? Where did the word "mustache" come from?

Does it sound goofy? Yes. Would it lead them to all kinds of places? Yes: history, culture, social behavior, fashion, trends, etc. It would also be more fun to read than yet another paper about abortion/global warming/lowering the drinking age/legalizing pot.

Now You See, Me Now You Don't v. Up, Up, and Away

2008-11-19T10:00:00.000-08:00

If I were in a classroom environment where I was charged with teaching people how to argue, I would start here, I think.

Invisibility v. Flight
You get one of these superpowers. Pick one. Quick, pick one, no thinking. Now, write down the reasons you picked this one.
This is the gut reaction part. We would use this part to talk about how people often have opinions before they think through their reasons, but there are reasons buried in the heads of those people. This is the part where I get the students to realize that opinions and even guesses don't come out of nowhere, and that they can be unearthed with a little work. (Then we do a little work to unearth our reasons for our gut decisions, our choice of invisibility v. flight.)
Let's listen to some other people make this decision: This American Life's "Superpowers" Episode.
Act One of this epidsode is thirteen minutes of people choosing invisibility or flight. This is the part where we listen to how other people think through choices. Students would write down all the reasons they hear and make note of reasons they did not think of and any reasons they would choose for themselves after hearing them on the show.
Now, think of reasons why someone would pick the other superpower. Not the one you picked. The other one.
This is the part where we think of The Other Side, where we learn to think through the opinions of others, even if we don't agree with them. Students have to come up with reasons for the other power (at this point, some could be waffling on their original choice, but I would simply have them examine the one they didn't go to on their gut instincts).
Taking all of this into account, now you get to make a new choice. Invisibility or flight? You also get to come up with intelligent reasons for your choice. That will turn into a fun-yet-intelligent essay.
This is the part where they work on producing a piece of writing based on all this thinking. We'd probably work on outlining and revising and proofreading, but the basic idea of all this is that Invisibility v. Flight is not a supercomplex issue for them to deal with, but a simple choice that turns into a more complex and mature thought process.

We could also:
-have a class debate
-look at the benefits of both superpowers in actual comic books (in the lives of "real" superheros) -imagine the drawbacks of each power in everyday life (outside the lives of superheros)
-imagine the benefits of each power to a regular, non-hero-type person
-establish rules for each power (what would and would not turn invisible with you, how fast and high you could fly, etc.)
-move on to discussing something a little weightier like the agreeing or disagreeing with the claim that begins F. Scott Fitzgerald's essay "The Crack-Up": "Of course all life is a process of breaking down..."

Meaning is Everywhere, Even in Honey Jars or Cartoon Savannas

2008-11-18T10:48:00.000-08:00

Here are two thesis ideas for essays I overheard in the Writing Lab today:

1. All the major characters from Winnie the Pooh are different aspects of Christopher Robin's personality. The person who said this went through an exhaustive list of each character and which part of Christopher Robin's personality they correspond to. It was really quite impressive.

2. The Lion King is Shakespeare's Hamlet in Africa. And Disney-fied. No, Simba doesn't feign insanity, or put on a play-within-a-play/movie, and he doesn't die in the end, and Scar doesn't marry Simba's mother, but there are enough similarities between the two stories there for that argument to stand (there is a father's ghost in each, which is important for any comparison including Hamlet).

Collaborate + Imitate: Two Ideas for Possibilities in Teaching Writing

2008-11-14T10:27:00.000-08:00

{Collaborate}
Two Writing 100 classes each write their first paragraphs, say, on how they got an important/prominent/significant scar (an actual assignment in Andrea Graham's classes). They discuss the assignment, generate some ideas (the one on my leg from the bike wreck, or the one over my left eye from saving that stray dog in the alley?), and bang out a draft.

Then, they trade. Class A gets Class B's paragraphs, while Class B sends their paragraphs to Class A. Both classes dissect from first sentence to last. Both groups ask what is there and what is not there, what is done well and what questions still hang in the blank white space between the black ink marks. Class A's writers get to mentally pick apart, to explore, to venture questions, without the worry of knowing their paragraph is somewhere in the room, lurking incomplete and imperfect. Class B's writers learn how to dissect--really, is there a more perfect verb for this action?--what others have put on a page but are not present to elaborate on or defend: what is on the page is all they have as readers, and thus they (hopefully) see that is all they give as writers, so they should take care to put on the page what they want others to pick off the page. Both classes learn to ask specific questions, to look for the pieces that should be there, to encourage and applaud what is truly good with better phrases than "That's good!"

The student-dissectors return the paragraphs and then revise. So much of writing is learned in revision. Most, I would venture. Everything before is just experiment and hope.

In doing this write-and-switch between classes, the process of looking closely at incomplete and imperfect work is taught, is focused on and addressed thoroughly. Student writers need that from their experienced mentor-writers and -scholars.

{Imitate}
People learn by observing and repeating. Only the truly brave or brash or innovative enjoy striking out on their own. Most of us are intimidated or simply expect the coming failure.

So: Controlled Imitation. I often wonder about the use of non-textbook texts in Writing classes (because those books and magazines and Internet columns are written by people who want to write for some specific purpose), and that wondering has honed in on the idea of letting a class loose with a teacher-chosen set of magazines, books, and even Internet columns, asking them to read and make note of articles that catch their attention (and their attention is caught), and then asking them to choose one to imitate.

They can observe and learn from a specific text. They can get inside it, figure out why it works, and then try to build the same type of rhetorical machine. I think I would start by having them type parts of, or maybe even the entire text*. That way, they could feel what writing these kind of polished sentences and specific details is like. Then, we could look at the ideas contained in that piece and the students could learn to think along the lines that writers who want to write (and get paid to write) use to sniff out stories, construct arguments, and string readers along through their entire piece. In addition to ideas (but after after after), we could get to technical stuff: organization, paragraph development, sentences, intro+conclusion. Then, they would be off to write a similar piece from their own slant or about their own subject.

It's a launching pad, really. Also an apprenticeship in a way.

I think there is space for this in the learning process.

*Watch Finding Forrester.

Logo!

2008-11-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

My friend Andrew is a graphic designer. A few months ago, I asked him if he would design a seal-like logo for the Writing Center. Here is result of our discussion.

Some thoughts on our logo:

1. The griffin was Andrew's doing, but I'm all in favor of griffins. They are my favorite mythological creature (I'm not making that up), and what could be better than a griffin holding a pencil. Write, griffin, write!

2. I wanted to make sure the year of establishment was on there because a) it's kind of what you do on a seal, and b) I am grateful to the people who came before me and decided that a Writing Center with a Writing Lab Specialist would be a good idea.
3. Tucson is on there not only because we do what we do in the Old Pueblo, but because we want people to be proud of doing what they do in the Old Pueblo.
4. "Escribimos Amigos" isn't any kind of official motto, but it is fun to say. Say it. Go ahead. Say it under your breath if you have to (maybe you are at work and or in the library and you want to remain quiet out of respect for others). It means, "We write, friends" in Español. Also: it rhymes (sort of, depending on how loose you are with your definition of rhyming--I have a friend who adamantly denies the rhyming nature of "alligator" and "calculator").
5. We hope to eventually put this on shirts. A former student of mine has a screen-printing business, so it may pop up soon on someone's clothes.

Ask the Photographer

2008-11-13T08:06:00.000-08:00

A student came in yesterday with the assignment to come up with a list of questions for the person who took a photograph (she didn't have the picture, but said it was of galaxies).

I see many, many people who say, "I don't know" and see it as a stopping point. They give up instead of inquire further. I like this assignment because it was a low-pressure chance to practice being curious. Students need to be inquisitive explorers to be successful, and this was a dry-run at questioning, a way to stretch the students' brains powers of exploration. This is an especially important skill for students who write research papers, have to choose their own topics, or write about issues they don't know about (which is kind of, pretty much, all students).

I also like this because it is repeatable to the nth degree (with n equalling the number of photographs available to the instructor).

On the Kind of Attention That Needs to Be Paid

2008-11-06T08:10:00.000-08:00

Here is what I tell students who are somewhere in the area of proofreading their work (which they sometimes want us to help with, but more often assume we just do for them):

1. Read Out Loud
It makes your brain process the words again. You need to make your brain do that because your brain is smart and it knows what you want to say. Now, though, you are interested in what you actually did say, not what you wanted to say. When you read out loud, your brain sends the words to your mouth instead of keeping them up in your head.

A high percentage of students tell me that they don't like to read out loud. I tell them that it doesn't really matter if they like it. It's an important step to take to owning the little black marks you printed on a page. Oh, and after I make them start reading, when they see the first few mistakes, they forget about liking or not liking and simply read.

2. Read Slowly
The goal is not to read through your paper so you can say you read through your paper. The goal is to catch little mistakes, and to do that, you need to set your brain to a different mode of reading than when you cruise through a magazine article, brush over an email, or scan an assigned chapter about mitosis for Biology class. To do that, you need to read slowly. You need to make yourself read slowly. At some point, you will speed up. I guarantee it. A paragraph or two into your paper, you'll gain speed like a cyclist riding down a mountain. Hit the brakes. Slow down. If you don't, you'll miss things you are perfectly capable of fixing.

3. Expect Little Mistakes
Finding a mistake is not finding a failure. Finding a mistake is simply finding a spot where you hit the wrong key or forgot a word, or forgot to delete a word, or make a word plural, or etc., etc. When you proofread, you are looking for the missing "s" at the end of a word or the accidental "-ed" that makes the right verb into the wrong tense. You're trying to make sure you put periods where periods should go, that commas are in the right places, and the words that need to be capitalized are capitalized (and the ones that don't need it are not).

These are small, small things. Look closely. Look very closely. They are there. You can find them and fix them.

On the Use of Two-Word Sentences

2008-10-31T09:16:00.000-07:00

While I was teaching Writing Fundamentals in the spring, I ran across an article on Esquire.com entitled, "On Saying No," which explores what happens when one stops explaining and simply says "No," and begins like this:

"I had a high school English teacher named Mr. Turk, who insisted that the best sentences in the world were just two words. Subject and verb. He said our class had proven too dense to understand prepositions. 'We define the limitations of experience with action,' he said. So he had us practice one afternoon, on a single piece of paper, writing these two-word sentences, which he considered elemental. Irreplaceable, even. "Two words," he said. I worked.

"I do. I insist. You will. She flew."

I was intrigued at the time because, as a part of learning as a tutor, I had set up a meeting with an ESL instructor here at Desert Vista to talk with the Writing tutors about how she works with ESL students in her classes. She showed us how, to begin, she took them to the core of writing: two words, subject + verb. Everything they did after was adding more information onto the subject + verb combination. The Esquire article and the peek inside the ESL teacher's head inspired me to ask my Writing 100 students to build two-word sentences as a simple start-of-class journal assignment (I just wanted to see where it would go; I live much of my life as a writer working on a draft: see something interesting, try it out, see where it goes, learn, revise, revise, revise).

It went. I explained the assignment to my students. Ten two-word sentences, subject and verb, no repeated words. Some understood, and some looked at me like I was crazy. Two words? That's it? I told them to try it. They tried. Some wrote a mixture of subject+verb, adjective+noun or adverb+verb. Some coasted through, crafting simple sentences without investing much in the choice of subject or verb, or diving too far in to the relationship of the subject to the verb, much like the sample sentences from "On Saying No," pronouns or names attached to general verbs that apply to most people or things, verbs without much substance or verve.

Some, however, did as much as possible with their allotted word count. They wrote "Architects designed" or "Astronauts launched." They connected specific subjects to actions that those subjects were more likely to do than your average person on the street. They explored. They worked. They wrote.

I am thinking of these two-word sentences now for several reasons:
1. I often work with people who do not fully understand subjects and verbs.
2. I see people who put words down on paper, yet do not fully understand the meaning of what they are putting down on paper.
3. I help people learn to see how sentences can string together to form a thread of thought.
4. I think writing two-word sentences could be a useful strategy in a developmental Writing classroom becauses it asks for focus yet provides efficiency--there are no extra words getting in the way.
5. Building two-word sentences, and I mean the good ones, the specific ones that maximize their size, helps people understand one of the key principles of editing: use only meaningful words that you need. No fluff. I like to think of writers editing their papers like runners think of their training their bodies: lean, fast, no extra muscle-for-the-sake-of-muslce, only what is necessary for the purpose of running fastfastfast or farfarfar.

The idea of the two-word sentence has been swimming around in my brain for awhile, and, for a combination of those reasons, has now bobbed to the surface.

They could be used to help people see the different stages in a process (a part of learning to write is learning to think, which involves differentiating between Step No.1, Step No.2, Step No.3, etc.; people must see these before they can organize a paper around them). This could be done by supplying the subjects (say, the people involved in building something or the ingredients in meal--who knows what else) and asking for the verbs that mark the stages of the process. This morning I thought of showing scenes from films, choosing 2- or 5- or even 10-minute chunks of all kinds of movies, and asking for a summary built of only two-word sentences.

They could be used to discuss the possible strength of verbs (thank you Pat C. Fellers for teaching me not to settle for am, are, is, was, were, have, has, had, be, being, been and instead digging and rearranging to fit a strong, specific verb in my sentences). Verbs are the strongest words (again, according to Mr. Turk, "We define the limitations of experience with action.") we can write, and stronger writers are made by asking student writers to find stronger words, more efficient words, words that can carry more weight for longer distances. This could be done by supplying specific subjects--from architects and astronauts to zoologists and zephyrs--and, again, simply asking for correlating verbs (or supplying verbs--from analyze and ascend to zigzag and zap--and asking for appropriate subjects).

They could also be used to ask budding writers to observe their world by sending them out into the field--campus, mall, baseball game, the bus ride across town--to identify specific nouns and their specific actions, and return with a notepad full of two-word sentences in which can be glimpsed the life, population, action, and general feel of the area they just spent their time in.

I'm a believer in using simple processes (simple machines! walking! dragging a pen across paper!) to accomplish larger and more complicated things. The two-word sentence could be one of the simple machines of writing, highly-efficient and easily adaptable and thus able to work well to serve an unknowable number of purposes.

On Beer and Research

2008-10-15T13:42:00.000-07:00

Another set of valid research questions that are based in reality came from a student working a paper persuading her friends not to do drugs. The questions are tangents, but they are worth mentioning because they a) are genuine, and b) seem like they might have simple answers, but really don't, so they require some research.

Her questions:
1. Why did people make beer?
2. Why do people drink beer?

On No.1: She thought this would be a simple answer to find on the Internet, so she went sleuthing, only to find differentiations between ales and lagers and pilsners (oh my!). The history she found was brief (as in, Ancient Egyptians had beer! Look how old beer is!). She found out that her question was more complex than she originally assumed: instead of When's and Where's, she wanted the Why, which is a great thing to look for. It takes finding When's and Where's along with Reasons and Purposes. Since this wasn't her main project, she cut off her search at this point, but not before I told her about how people write books based on simple research questions like this*.

On No.2: Here, she opened the door to sociology. In her limited experience, the answer to that questions was To Get Drunk, but she sensed there was some bigger reason behind that. We talked about how there are many reasons why people drink beer, and that she could write a whole paper based on different reasons why different people drink different beers.

On Why This Paper Would Be an Interesting Paper to Read:
First, it came from a simple and genuine question. She really wanted to know this--it wasn't thrust upon her by an authority figure wielding a syllabus and white board marker--so the results of her paper would most likely have some life to it (especially if her work was mentored by someone who wanted to help her come alive as a writer and explorer).

Second, the question is not some obscure idea at the periphery of human consciousness or some difficult/too large/too complex idea that she knows nothing about. She knows about beer. She's seen people drink beer. She doesn't have to cross the gap of content knowledge to write about this subject. She's expanding her knowledge on a subject she is already familiar with, so the paper would show the tone of that expansion, not of a deer-in-headlights student bewildered by a topic they do not find intriguing or accessible.

Third, it's relevant to her demographic and her life. Imagine: classes where people pursue projects involving the deepening of their knowledge of the things of their own lives. Imagine: a young person taking the initiative to study the why's and wherefore's of the consumption of alcohol. Imagine: that young person waking up to the possibility of understanding why's and wherefore's, period, of opening up the thought processes of those around, of seeing that what we do and say is not Dumb Luck or What We Are Supposed To Do And Say, but that it has reason--conscious or unconscious--that it has cause, and that that cause can be put under a microscope to see its cell walls and its nucleus.

Fourth, she'll probably remember this paper pretty well. She might even win a few bets, or astound a few friends, or become a beer connoisseur. It's not like beer advertisements are going to go away, so every time she sees someone selling Budweiser or Heineken or Guiness on television, she'll be reminded that she knows a little something about where all that came from.

*Among those that come to mind: Salt, Cod, A History of the World in 6 Glasses.

First of All,

2008-10-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a student who had no idea what she was going to write about was worried about her introduction. Today, I asked a student who needs to revise a paper what she plans to do; she said, "First of all, I need to make it longer."

No. First of all, both of them need to figure out what they are saying. It's like they are planning trips without deciding where they are going. Actually, in the second student's case, she took the trip with only a vague idea of where she was going, didn't really map out her route, and didn't remember her trip well enough to make it worth her while.

For the first student, the one who worried about her introduction: Her teacher was standing with us. I asked the student which one, her teacher or me, she could introduce better. She said her teacher. All she could do for me, since she just met me, was remember my name and my job. Not an absolute failure of an intro, but not a thorough one, either. I told her she shouldn't worry about introducing something she doesn't know well. She should figure out what she has to say (she was leaning toward arguing something about coaching methods for children, about keeping it about teamwork and the like instead of becoming a raging lunatic who only cares about winning and forgets that the kids are more interesting in the orange slices after the game) before she tries to write her intro. I told her to write her introduction last if she wanted. She seemed calmer and more willing to explore an idea instead of stressed about completing a paper.

For the second student, the one who wanted to first of all make it longer: longer about nothing is worth nothing, so first of all, we talked about her core idea. Second of all, we broke down what she meant and where she could take that idea in terms of smaller ideas (paragraphs!). Later, as she was working, I asked her about one of her statements. She spat out a general "explanation" in a tone that said You Know, Or At Least You Should Know Because I Know. We talked about her job as the writer--the expert--to give us the details, about how we don't know what she knows, and about how that is where the length of papers can come from, in the provision of clear, meaningful details that help people know what they didn't know.

How, or A List of Items Which Students Should Practice in the Space of Their Writing Instruction

2008-10-07T11:19:00.000-07:00

1. Curiosity
2. Breaking Words into Pieces
3. Dissecting Ideas
4. Finding meaning in what appears meaningless (or at least meaning-indifferent)
5. Wrestling with Words

Notes:
1. Can it be awakened? Can we find ways to make people ask questions of the world, to inquire more, to explore without a hot academic branding iron threatening them from behind their chair? Can we be curious ourselves and pass that along to the minds we are charged with cultivating? Can we teach people how not only to answer but to ask?

2. Words: pinatas, easter eggs, matryoshka dolls, shipping crates, envelopes, cocoons, cargo planes, Armored Personnel Carriers, lockets, mason jars, lunch boxes, milk cartons, et cetera.

3. This must be one of the great powers: to find the ways in which Something can become This Thing and That Thing and Those Things. It is an unstoppable force because we can find ways to stop all kinds of physical projectiles and pathogens, but we cannot defend our ideas from the sharp scalpel of an intelligent mind.

4a. There is always meaning.
4b. It is there, beneath the surface, poking a corner through, showing a bit of color, waiting.

5. In a cage, with folding chairs. In the backyard, against older brothers. In a mask, flying from the top rope. In the arena, dusty and gored. By the bike racks, for your lunch money. By a river, for your name. When you come out the other side, you are less stoppable than you were before.

Writing is in the Smallest of Increments

2008-09-25T10:36:00.001-07:00

Learning to write well is learning to think well, to notice well, and then to draw meaning out of what you notice. Learning to write well is learning that a ruler is used to measure inches and also eighths of inches and sixteenths of inches. It is learning to see subtleties and small changes, to find big meaning in the smallest of things, to measure large objects or ideas in small increments.

This is what I find people need to discover. Students come in with generalities, with things measured in inches or even feet, and they need to look closer and closer until they begin to see what only they can see.

Reading Fiction is Good for You

2008-09-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

I came across this on Esquire's website today: a list of the seventy-five books that every man should read.

I don't care if other literary folks agree or disagree. I do care that some literary folks decided to sit down and make this list. Seventy-five books is a lot of books in a country where most people read less than one a year. I often wish that I knew more people who actively pursued reading books, fiction in particular. We learn from stories. They grow into us like roots or climbing vines. They stick in the crevices of our brains to be blown free and useful and necessary when the right wind comes up.

Three of my favorite books are on the list: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Moby-Dick, and The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. Also, there are some books and authors I want to read: The Adventures of Augie March, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, The Brothers Karamazov, American Pastoral, more, more.

I always get big ideas when I see book lists like this. Not just any book list, but books lists chosen by discerning people who are not trying to establish a canon, per se, but simple say here is a collection of books that orbit a particular sun. I've been wondering every now and then over the past few months about the possibility of getting my male friends to read the same fiction at the same time, books like Robinson Crusoe or something by Jack Kerouac, adventure and manliness and all that. I don't know if it will work. Everyone's life is already fullfullfull (what would we give up? what would we be willing to give up to create space for reading fiction?). This list was at least a small piece of evidence that there are other men out there who read fiction.

Judging a Person by the Book Cover on His/Her T-Shirt

2008-09-06T09:41:00.001-07:00

I found these literary tees on UrbanOutfitters.com:

1. Catch-22
2. Invisible Man
3. Death of a Salesman

Definitely One of the Top Five Pirate Supply Stores/Tutoring Centers I've Been to Recently

2008-08-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

I've been inspired by 826Valencia in San Francisco for a long, long time now. They are the tutoring cog in the dynamic literary machine that is McSweeney's + The Believer. They are also a pirate supply store, selling eye patches, peglegs, and lard, amongst other piratey things.

Here is the story about how a Pirate Supply Store/Tutoring Center came to exist, told by Dave Eggers, author and founder of McSweeney's and 826Valencia, in his TED Prize One Wish speech:

Quoted Quotables

2008-08-25T16:39:00.001-07:00

The footnote to this entry from July indicates that I wanted to do something with the widsom and insight of students that I run across as a person involved in education. Here is that something in its current incarnation as bookmarks. Luis' words can be found along with four other quotes that I wrote down after reading over student journals or papers or message postings over the last few semesters.

In our consumer culture, we are accustomed to buying/receiving/taking from those we are told we should buy/receive/take from. They are smart or beautiful or popular and we listen to them because they are known as smart or beautiful or popular. It's easy to ignore what we have not been told to pay attention to, and that includes the vast amount of intellectual work being done in educational institutions all over the place. It's a tragedy that so many words are printed simply for the sake of fulfilling class assignments or school projects, as opposed to these assignments asking students for words worth printing in the bigger picture of things--observing, examining, hoping, you know, the work that professional writers do.

Matt and I found some student words worth printing because they were poignant. We put them on bookmarks. Stop by if you want one (or if you want to know what they say). Each quote is on each color.

This is a project that is an example of why I believe in education. The world is full of capable, brilliant people who simply need unlocking or guidance or a push in the right direction.

Expert Testimony: Everybody's Got Their Something

2008-08-21T16:28:00.000-07:00

I always visit several Student Success classes each school year to tell them about -gasp- plagiarism*. I tell them about the consequences, about how it happens unintentionally most of the time, about how I've really not seen it or heard about it from other teachers because most of the people who choose to come here are honest, hard-working folks who know they are here for a very good reason.

This time around, I thought I would add an element to my short presentation: I brought notecards and asked them to write a) their name and b) something, anything, they consider themselves an expert in. In the big scheme of things, the biggest benefit most of those brand-new college students in those classes receive from hearing from me is the fact that they begin to build a relationship** with someone in The Learning Center. I thought asking them about their expertise would help that along a bit, as well as show them that I do, in fact care about what they care about.

Here are the results of my little survey (in no particular order):

Tennis (2)
A Role Model {because of his older brothers being his role model}
Kids
Cooking (2)
Being a Student
Computers (3) {this often related to teaching parents what to do}
Math
Sports (3)
Writing {I asked her what she wrote: stories}
Giving Advice {but she doesn't take her own, she said...hmmm}
Shopping {she immediately began to defend herself}
Eating {written as she was ingesting a bagel}
Softball
Basketball (4)
Volleyball (2)
Being on Time for Appointments
Riding Quads
Texting (4) {one even spelled it "txting" because we just don't need that e}
Being Serious {intriguing, really}
Organizing
Driving {yes, he had tickets}
Doing Laundry
Reading
Video Games
Drawing
Digital Cameras/Accessories {a Best Buy employee, not a photographer}
Sleeping

I enjoyed going around and talking to them about their expertise. They were honest, and I think it helped them understand that the people they would be using as sources in their papers were experts in a similar way. It brought them a little closer to the position of the writer of articles in newspapers and magazines and scholarly journals.

*from the Latin plagiarus, or kidnapping

**Oh, did it work. This time, two wonderful students--sisters, even--brought me a small bag of homemade, delicious oatmeal raisin cookies with a handwritten thank you note. Fantastic.

Making Research Relevant: The Shoes on Your Feet, The Words in Your Mouth, The Borders They Crossed

2008-08-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

I love research. To be perfectly clear, I love the idea of research. I love that there are people who dig, dig, dig for answers to questions. I love that they are passionate about finding those answers and truthful in the the relation of those findings.

Yesterday, I wrote down three questions that, in my notebook, I labeled "Research Questions Worth the Time and Intellectual Effort of American High School Students." I would amend that to include college students as well. They are:

Who made your shoes?
Why do most Americans speak English?
How many Americans come from immigrant families?

They are simple and they are wide-open--and they are direct in their indirection. In the first one, I'm not asking them to research human rights, sweatshops, corporations, outsourcing of jobs, or any other hot button issue with direct language. Instead, I'm skipping the technical terms that experts use on television or in published articles and simply asking them to look down at their feet and start thinking that somewhere somebody had to construct the shoes they see. That can lead them to a lot of places, including human rights, sweatshops, corporations, outsourcing of jobs, and many other hot button issues. It's a back door approach. Really, it's a student-discovery-centered approach, and it's connected to their lives, not some abstract idea.

Asking them why Americans speak English is the same approach to get them to think about a) the cultures and languages that enter(ed) America, b) what happens to cultures and languages in America, and c) how language is liquid and always changing. Asking them about immigrant families brings the present and the past together and highlights the nature of the formation of the current United States.

Discussions of terms and theories and abstract ideas can be tacked on to these concrete questions. Some people are more apt to think in terms and theories and abstract ideas than others; everybody can look down at their shoes and ask who made them.

This is How We Do It

2008-08-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

Writing Process is an interesting term. It implies steps, an institutional kind of order even, a 1-2-3-done kind of thinking--but it also allows for creativity and variety for individuals to invent their own way to bring a piece of writing to completion (and to continue to reinvent that process as needed).

I'm interested in Writing Process in all its incarnations: the overall how-to's that are passed along from writing teachers to writing students, the innovative ways that writers (both students and professionals) think of to help them build an idea into an essay or a story, and the unthought-of, unnoticed little steps that people who are engaged in the act of writing go through that are definitely part of the process, yet outside of what those in the field of writing would discuss when asked to discuss Writing Process.

Here is an example of what I mean about the last of those three. It comes from Robert, a student in my Writing 100 class from this past Spring semester:

"When I'm trying to complete a writing assignment, I sweat a lot, then go into contortions, and then start swearing."

Good Guys Wear Hoodies

2008-08-07T14:58:00.000-07:00

Here's the text from an ad for hoodies made by Howies, a Welsh clothing company (font and bold as printed):

If we're going to ban items of clothing, shouldn't we start with the business suit?

While we don't condone shoplifting, terrorising old ladies or generally making other people's lives a misery, the tabloids seem to be picking on the wrong people. Casual research suggests serious fraud, insider trading or acts of corporate man-slaughter are unlikely to be carried out by people wearing hooded sweatshirts. Photographs of senior executives of British manufacturers of land mines, anti-personnel grenades and cluster bombs have shown no evidence of hoodie-wearers. Businessmen offering large amounts of cash in return for peerages, and the politicians who accept the cash, tend towards less casual items of clothing. When the decision was made to invade Iraq, no-one wore a hoodie. And the men who think Guantanamo Bay is still a good idea do not wear hoods themselves, though they have been known to offer them to guests. Sure, there's the odd villain who wants to conceal his face. But there's bigger villains around who have no such shame.

Jon Matthews

I love that they are making an argument against the opposite style of clothing they are selling. I love that it is so focused on one particular item of clothing. I also love that they use specific, tangible references to get their point across. Why is that effective? I originally read this little blurb in a magazine over a month ago; I have not forgotten it since.

And the Award Goes To...

2008-08-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

Best Tutoring Session of the Summer:

Her name is Josie and she was analyzing the poem "My Papa's Waltz." My first goal each and every time I work with a student writer is to find out if they* know what they are saying in their paper. Josie knew: she was comparing the waltz itself to a roller-coaster. I was astounded a) with the certainty with which she announced her premise and b) the truth in her comparison. I saw it immediately: safety + danger, familiarity + fear, risk + excitement.

We went to work. Her paper announced her purpose as clearly as she did, but it did not hold tightly, only mentioning the roller-coaster two times in the following paragraphs. She wandered through memories and experiences of her own dances with her own father, through defences of the drunk father as a good man, and tossed in a mention of carnival rides in a couple of places. We discussed focus. She wanted to make sure her readers knew that this man was not a bad man. I told her that his character was not as important in this paper as making the connection between the experience in the poem and the experience of riding a roller-coaster: What is a roller-coaster like? + How does this dance exhibit those qualities despite having no gears or hills or that clicking sound that you hear while you go upupup to careen downward that first time? That is all you care about, I told her. That is all.

I told her that I loved her premise. I told her that I will never read that poem in quite the same way because of her insight. I said that as a reader, not a tutor or teacher--as an experiencer of literature and poetry and all that words can do to bring other people's lives into my own.

She worked and left and then worked some more on her own. She returned later that semester to say she got an A.

*I'm using this as a neutral pronoun because I honestly believe this will become a convention at some point in the future. English lacks a neutral pronoun, but English speakers have increasingly begun to use forms of they to refer to persons with unspecified genders. I'm cool with that. Some word needs to do that job.

And All of This Comes Down to This One Thing

2008-07-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

"If a piece of autobiographical writing is an essay, it has already moved beyond private confession or memoir to some shareable idea, for which the personal experience works as evidence."
-Gordon Harvey, "Presence in the Essay"

This, the shareable idea, is what I think a thesis really is. I've seen a lot of students struggle with thesis (both on the idea level and the word level; it's a terribly intimidating academic word that is simply not fun to say or hear if you have not been warmly introduced to it at some early part of your life), but I think this could clear some of that confusion up.

I switched to using the word purpose during my summer session class, and that helped. I think the phrase shareable idea tacked onto purpose would be even more benefitial because it not only speaks to the thing (the idea) but it has purpose and audience embedded in its language (shareable, as in something intended to be given or taught to other people).

Also, the concept of the shareable idea makes sense to me because that is why Writing classes exist, isn't it? To help people share ideas better? I know argument is an important word, along with debate, but those seem to set up hesaidshesaid or meversusyou situations before students even get into the idea we ask them to birth and nurture and send out into the wide, wide world. The shareable idea could be a response to a poem or a story. It could be a proposal to fix potholes or stop smoking. It could relate lessons learned from prison time or landscaping jobs. It can be anything that formed in one head and grew into something transferrable to another.

Can we simply share ideas intelligently and objectively?

I Went to This Conference and All I Got Was a Few Books for My Writing Teacher Friend

2008-07-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

Matt just returned from a weekend jaunt to Denver for a conference about Writing. I know, I know, you're wondering why Student Life Coordinator Matt went to a Writing conference: He went to present along with Shawn Hellman, our department chair, about Writing classes collaborating with their Student Life Coordinators (they discussed a project based on the book and movie The Pursuit of Happyness that culminated in hearing a speech by Chris Gardner at the University of Arizona). Matt texted me during the conference to inquire about books I might be interested in because he was being offered book after book after book. I responded that I would be interested in anything a) creative or b) related to tutoring.

Matt returned with a few finds, including Writers Without Borders*: Writing and Teaching Writing in Troubled Times. I've already found it worthwhile**, and I'm not even past the introduction. Here is the second sentence of Lynn Z. Bloom's introduction:

"Creative writers, the writers whose work we read, remember, quote, and read again, set the agenda and determine the arena--the entire world, the universe unbounded to be created ever anew."

That is why I am involved in helping people understand words and language and how to use them. People who can think clearly and put those ideas down on paper, out into cyberspace, on a t-shirt or a poster or a coffee mug or a billboard, those are people who can ask what the world can be. They learn to ask and answer questions, to explore and in that exploring find new answers they did not anticipate and new questions they simply must pursue.

*All the cool kids use this, apparently: Doctors Without Borders, Words Without Borders, Teachers Without Borders, MBAs Without Borders, Mothers, Sociologists, Engineers, Reporters, Geeks, Builders, Clowns, Burners, Grantmakers, Acupunturists, Chemists, Hedgehogs, Alpacas, and on and on and on...

**I knew it! Matt came through!

How to (Completely) Write a Paragraph

2008-07-10T12:44:00.000-07:00

I helped a student, Lulu, on a summary paragraph today, which lead to a discussion on paragraphs in general, which lead me to the whiteboard and outlining the pieces of a PIE (Point-Illustration-Explanation) paragraph in orange marker. Here is what I left behind on the board after Lulu departed and I went off to talk to a Student Success class about plagiarism and research:

Point: the idea of the paragraph
Illustration: evidence, details, examples (specifics)
Explanation: what you want your reader to see in those specifics

And here is the addendum I found below these three pieces of a paragraph when I returned from introducing brand new and nearly-brand new Pima students to quotes and paraphrases, a fourth step (not so much a piece of a paragraph, but a progression in controlling the idea of the paragraph):

Destroy: those who do not like your work!!
BWAHAHA!!!

Thank you, Adam. Thank you.

Students Say the Most Poignant Things

2008-07-09T17:26:00.000-07:00

This week, a student, Luis, came in to polish up a short, two or three paragraph scholarship essay. His first paragraph began with the maxim that "giving is better than receiving." As (honestly) ordinary as this idea is, his second paragraph began with a real original thought:

"Our world is in need of generous people."

I pointed out the profound and original nature of his thought*. I told him that it made me stop and think about the world, about myself, and about my status as a generous person. I told him to lead with that thought instead of the cliched idea of giving>receiving.

Bringing up that giving>receiving idea was simply warmup writing for Luis. He had to slog through the run-of-the-mill thoughts to find his way to his original thoughts. He did. I find that student writers often do this sort of slogging through and have not been told that this kind of writing may be necessary in process, but not in product. They need to know they are free to type it and they are free to delete it once a stronger, fresher, more original and striking thought has floated to the surface.

*Matt, the Student Life Coordinator at Desert Vista, and I so liked Luis' words that we hope to figure out a way to put them on a tee or a poster of some sort. Something simply must be done with words like these. Schools should not allow those words to be tucked away in a scholarship essay which will be read and filed and forgotten. Luis wrote something worth reading. We want to publicize that something, and in doing so, begin to discover ways to shed light on hidden student insights and ideas. Perhaps Luis' little proverb could be the foundation for an essay contest. Perhaps it could be used as the basis for a poster contest for art/design students. We shall see.

Show Me the Thesis!

2008-07-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

I just finished an essay in the Jul/Aug 08 issue of Good called "Poor People Unite!" The title pretty much conveys the thesis of the essay:

"What the world needs is an economic superpower that represents the interests of the world's poor: Call it Pooristan."

The rest of article sticks to that point. I think it was a rare example of a piece of writing in the published world that would translate fairly well into a classroom environment. Not only does the whole essay focus on one idea, it is actually an original idea that requires an essay to explain.

Why do I care that I found an example? Because of this quote from Wes Anderson (from a different article in the very same issue of Good):

Whenever I am getting ready to make a movie I look at other movies I love in order to answer the same recurring question: How is this done, again?

Who is Wes Anderson, you say? He's the director--auteur, really--of my favorite movie, The Royal Tenenbaums and four other highly-regarded indie features. He is meticulous in the details on film. He writes the stories. He chooses the soundtracks. He has a group of actors who continually work with him. He consistently uses the same font throughout a film--for credits, titles, in-film buildings and signs, everything. He is generally considered to be one of the best and most original filmmakers currently making films. And he needs examples to get going.

If someone considered among those at the pinnacle of their field needs a little inspiration at the outset of a project, it makes sense that students learning to put thoughts on paper could use a spark to get them going and show them how this is done.

We Hope You Grapple More

2008-07-01T08:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a piece of instructor feedback that I lifted from the pages of an article in College Composition and Communication (Volume 58, Number 2 December 2006 if you're interested; it's from the series of articles on responding to student writing).

"Lousia, a technique that can work well for opening a paper is to begin with an intriguing detail, especially one you find difficult to account for. Beginning in this manner not only draws in your reader, but also forces you as a writer to grapple with a troubling aspect of the text, which can often be a key aspect that you had previously set aside. This, in turn, can focus your thesis and argument."

This instructor, who is anonymously quoted in the article, gives:
1. Useful strategy. Look for a strange detail, something that sticks out, is unique, an anomaly or an outlier. Start there. You, the writer will be interested; your reader will be curious, as well.
2. Permission to grapple*. There is not enough grappling done by readers. More grappling, really, would be quite helpful to education in general.

*grapple, verb: "to engage in a struggle or close encounter (usually followed by the word 'with')"

It Was a Chicago Bear Outside the Tower of London with the Candlestick

2008-06-20T15:10:00.000-07:00

This is something I lifted from the pages of the current issue (June 08) of The Believer. It's from their montly advice column, Sedaritives, started by Amy Sedaris but contined often by guest Sedarises. This month, Paul Feig responds to young Lisa, dreamer, 18, and covers ground that we cover every day here in the DVWC.

Dear Sedaritives,
I just had a dream where I was in a prison tower and a large bear started attacking me because it was angry. I am concerned because in the dream, someone I don't know brought the bear to my house in a plastic igloo and said, "Look, it's my pet!" Is this an omen?
Liz, age 18

Dear Liz,
What kind of a bear was it? Grizzly? Polar? Teddy? Chicago? What kind of prison tower? An old one, like the Tower of London? Older, like the one Rapunzel tossed her hair out of? Or modern, like the kind the guards stand on at San Quentin? And what kind of igloo was it? One of those dog house igloos? If so, the bear couldn't have been that big. It wasn't an Igloo-brand cooler, was it? The bear would be even smaller if that was the case. If you want my help, I need details, girl. Maybe you eighteen-year-olds think this whole vague description thing is the bomb, but for us guys in our forties, we need specifics. You wouldn't be this ambiguous if I was Dr. Phil, now would you? Write be back and get that thesaurus out.
Paul

May Your Paper Be an Ant Colony

2008-06-06T15:50:00.000-07:00

This week, I told a student in my class that a great detail is like an ant: it can heap a lot of information on its back, more than it seems a simple word or phrase can carry.

Then, today in the Writing Lab, a student was writing about an experience that involved her father rushing to the hospital to meet her injured sister. In the first sentence, she not only told us that her father hung up his phone and left, but that he left wearing only a pair of cutoff shorts, no shirt, and no shoes. That doesn't just tell me that he's underdressed for just about anywhere but an afternoon on a pontoon boat, but that he's more than hurried.

It's easy to tell when you aren't wearing enough clothes. You're cold and people stare. This father did not care about exposing his skin to the weather or incurring the whispered comments and strange looks from others. He had one priority: getting to the hospital immediately--that's key because he could have easily thrown on a shirt and slipped on some shoes and arrived at the hospital in a reasonable amount of time. But no. Speed was all that mattered. Any delay was too much a delay, even the basics of public attire. That's what that detail tells me as a reader. It lets me into his head so much that I am able to break down what he's thinking when he most likely did not even do so.

How Do I Start This?: Mario's Miracle, or Scott's Valid Reason to Discuss Kansas Basketball in Class

2008-05-17T18:02:00.000-07:00

In my class last month, we talked about introductions. I didn't plan to include any self-gratifying discussion of the Kansas Jayhawks'* win in the national championship game of the NCAA tournament, but when good writing presented itself in the form of Grant Wahl's Sports Illustrated article on the Jayhawks, I couldn't help myself.

I showed a YouTube clip of the final ten seconds of overtime, shared the context of the game with the non-sports fans, and opened up a discussion of how they would choose to begin writing about the game: the beginning of the season, the beginning of the game, the missed free throws, the inbounds pass--one student even suggested starting from the perspective of a fan looking up at the scoreboard.

Then I shared what Wahl wrote:

"The ball floated through the air, its pebbled surface spinning softly, as serene and peaceful as a space capsule in a low-earth orbit. At 10:29 p.m. CDT on Monday at the Alamodome in San Antonio, the fate of a college basketball season rested on Kansas guard Mario Chalmers -- or, to be more precise, on his last-ditch three-pointer, a make-or-break heave with 2.1 seconds left that would either send the NCAA title game into overtime or give Memphis, clinging to a 63-60 lead, its first championship in school history."

A student said it was like Wahl was in The Matrix, slowing down time, letting the ball spin and spin and spin. Exactly. His entry into the subject wasn't the beginning of anything. It was a zoomed-in look at the middle of the most important moment of the game. In the article, he goes back to the season for both teams (and way back for Mario Chalmers), and he continues on to the future, into overtime and the post-game celebrations, but I love where he started and how he describes the ball itself--not even the teams or the shooter or the fans or the game, just the ball.

*I grew up in Kansas, where basketball=Jayhawks.

A Real Writer Really Said This: The Novelist Richard Price is Intimidated and Likes It

2008-05-13T10:20:00.001-07:00

I read this quote in a recent Believer interview with novelist and screenwriter Richard Price:

"I have to be a little intimidated by what I’m writing about. I have to feel a little bit like I don’t think I can do this, I don’t think I can master this, I don’t think I can get under the skin of this, because when you’re a little scared, you’re bringing everything to the table because you’re not sure you can do it unless you . . . really, really get into it. Terror keeps you slender. I need a sense of awe."

He makes a living as a writer and here he is, admitting that being intimidated by his projects (the equivalent of writing assignments) is a positive. A Positive! He likes to be bullied by projects that are menacing, that are like avalanches or rockslides or men with thick necks and enormous, meaty fists. He's like the scrawny underdog in a sports movie who wins in the end because of perseverence and stick-to-it-iveness.

Argument Analysis: Join So I Can Take Your Loot

2008-05-09T14:31:00.000-07:00

Sabrina, a student, and I, were working on arguments. She was writing one about government childcare benefits, and Adam, a Writing tutor, stopped by. Here is what happened:

Sabrina types her essay. Scott sits, waiting to answer her next question. Adam enters, sits down, and pulls up a website with some sort of virtual island on it.

Adam: You have to join this.

Scott: What is it?

Adam: You have to join it.

Scott: Again, what is it?

Adam: You have to get on here. Then I can take your loot.

Scott leans down to Sabrina, who is still typing

Scott: See, this is not a good argument. He's giving me no information about what I'm supposed to join, and the only information I have tells me that he will steal from me when I do join. That benefits him, not me.

Sabrina laughs a little, looks at Adam, and keeps typing.
Scene.

You should tell people basic information like what you want them to join pretty early in your argument. Also, you should tell the person you are trying to convince why joining will benefit them not you (especially if you plan on stealing from them once they do what you ask).

In Adam's defense, he was very excited because of the online pirate game he discovered (who wouldn't be excited about commanding tiny, virtual ships on virtual seas, firing virtual cannons and destroying other virtual pirates?). When he calmed down, he explained. Maybe that should is something you should do, too: calm down before you argue.

We're So Very Proud

2008-05-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

Vija, one of our tutors, was chosen as the speaker for this year's graduation convocation. She was very nervous during the week or so leading up to the ceremony: even though she applied for the opportunity, she still realized that it involved speaking in front of many, many people.

As if that didn't make her nervous enough, she received a call here at the Learning Center from The Aztec Press asking if she would mind if they did a little piece on her. They also asked if she would mind if they sent a photographer down to Desert Vista to catch her in her natural tutoring habitat. Vija wrangled a student/friend into sitting down with her in a manufactured (but still very real and helpful) tutoring session. They discussed the finer points of an essay while the photographer snapped pictures from across the table.

The resulting story-plus-photo can be found in the newest edition of the Aztec Press (or right here). Pick up a print copy and bring it by for Vija to sign for you. She'll love that.

Where This is Going

2008-05-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

Here's the thing: I see good writing everywhere. Because of that, I'm going to put links to articles here. I'm going to publish quotes from magazine articles, books, other blogs--anything written, even student thoughts from work done on our campus.

Here's another thing: I think like a writer. All the time I have spent playing with words has led me to process the world like writers process their work: they generate all the ideas they can and then pick the ones the make connections, break down everyday conversations into rhetoric and arguments and effect on readers, and think of everything in terms of how it could be revised and improved. I'll put thoughts like those here, too (look for analysis of two conversations, one with a Writing Center tutor and one with a well-meaning police officer).

Who knows what else will pop up in this space: Potluck announcements, contests, tutor bios, random quoatations overheard while tutoring, and so on. If something interesting happens in the Writing Center, then I'll mention it here.