“Do you presume to criticize the great and powerful Oz, you ungrateful creatures? Think yourselves lucky that I am giving you audience tomorrow instead of twenty years from now. The great Oz has spoken. […] Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” —The Wizard of Oz
“Would the student perhaps find it more sensible to correct a theme before it is finally graded? To correct it afterward surely holds no more joy and sense of accomplishment than would be attendant on curry combing a dead horse” –William G. Perry, Jr.
“ the […] chief means of getting started writing (and of keeping at it) is to return continually to the question of what it is that the reader needs to know. Writers who learn how to let the what help them discover the how are learning the use of limits.” --Ann Berthoff
“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water? --David Foster Wallace
The Teacher's Role in the Classroom
Revision
Writing As a Discipline
Blogs & Blogging
Genre
Resistance through Composition
Rhetorical Ecologies
Identity
“Most bloggers are acutely aware of their readers […] calibrating what they should and should not reveal.” --Diane Nardi, et al
“Writing [...]is never a simple translational tool; it always functions as a way for individuals to enact particular motives in a complex setting fraught with division and expectations." --Ann Merle Feldman
"Technology provides [individuals] a site for resistance, an opportunity to contest social, cultural, political assumptions in favor of images or texts that they consider more representative.” --Annette Powell
“Ecological exploration points to the co-constitutive work of writers in complex systems, through which people related and, we would add, contest, pull, push, and grab at one another as ‘social beings’” --Nathaniel Rivers and Ryan Weber
Too often, teachers act like the “great and powerful Oz,” refusing to reveal that the human being "behind the curtain." While this impulse to preserve authority is understandable, I favor Peter Elbow's and Mina Shaughnessy's visions of a more transparent and cooperative learning environment. I love Peter Elbow's call for teachers to “show we are still learning, still willing to look at things in new ways, still sometimes uncertain” (332). Productive learning can come as teacher and students puzzle out a difficult paragraph together or start a genuine dialogue about a complex issue. I want to embrace the option of being a supportive co-learner, while also providing my students a structured classroom and motivation of high standards. Shaughnessy also emphasizes the necessity of understanding the preferences, biases, and limits that I inevitably bring to the classroom as an instructor. Like Elbow, she focuses on the fundamental idea that teaching is not simply shaping students, but a reshaping of one’s own assumptions. If I cannot change myself to see problems in a new light, or to grasp how students might see things differently than I do, I will never be an effective teacher. As Shaughnessy so astutely notes, even though ideas may seem “so transparent and compelling to [me]” they “are not in fact simple at all, that they only appear simple to those who already know them” (299). Practically, I believe there are several ways to address Elbow's and Shaughnessy's concerns. First, meta-critical assessments such as anonymous mid-semester evaluations allow students the opportunity to express their opinions and concerns about the course and give feedback about what they are taking away from class. I also believe that written student reflections about writing assignments and other classroom activities can give an excellent picture of where the teacher and the class may diverge in their interests and comprehension of the topic at hand. As Shaughnessy says, I hope that I can make “the decision to remediate [myself], to become a student of new disciplines and of [my] students [myself] in order to perceive both their difficulties and their incipient excellence” as I teach (301).
The quote above comes from a commencement speech David Foster Wallace gave at Kenyon College in 2005. Recognizing the truth hidden behind this rather cliché story, he urged students to an “awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time” and encouraged them to always approach their ‘lived experiences’ as conscientiously as possible. Although he was not speaking about writing, I believe his comments could apply to the composition classroom. According to Michael Carter, within the current educational system, “writing is considered outside the disciplines, the province of English teachers, and thus unable to play an important role in the disciplines” (386). We tell students, “this is how to write,” instead of acknowledging the myriad ways in which written academic discourse differs from writing within other discourse communities. We tell students “this is how to write,” while failing to share that the composition classroom, is a contested, constantly evolving space. We fail because we do not tell them about the water they are swimming in. Carter asks: how can we prepare students to write, and address the difficulties inherent in this act, if we continue to treat writing like an extra-disciplinary, transparent phantom? I believe the answer lies, in part, in Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle's thought-provoking essay "Teaching about Writing Righting Misconceptions:
On the other hand, the “About Me” sections of the Mormon mommy bloggers were used less for establishing credentials than conveying a general, typically positive, message to readers. Natalie, a young, fashionable mother in New York writes on her blog “Nat the Fat Rat,” that “this blog is where i capture all the wonderful things in life. i love bagels + cream cheese, marshmallows + vanilla cones, my tiny apartment in new york city, going on long, aimless walks about manhattan, loving up my fat gurgly chunk of a baby, and i especially love you!” This description is followed by a long list of frequently asked questions about her hair, her makeup and her photography. Her blog is well established, with advertisements and sponsors. Although she does not specifically mention it, her “About Me” description seems in some ways to push against the stereotypes of Mormon women wearing long pioneer dresses and raising large families. Natalie’s modern, artsy lifestyle seems to contradict many media portrayals of Mormon women as oppressed or out-of-date. The tone she adopts in her “About” section suggests her interest in providing a blog that appeals to a wide variety of women, resisting any movement towards an insular religious community. On the opposite end of the spectrum of the Mormon Mommy bloggers is Christina, a “mother of nine children born in 13 years” whose blog description reads: “When I’m not chasing after kids or cleaning up messes, I like to read, run, blog, take pictures and play with Photoshop. Thanks for visiting!” While both Cristina and Natalies’ blogs emphasize family, Cristina’s is much less cosmopolitan. Christina immediately establishes a hard-working, family oriented persona. Unlike Natalie, when she identifies herself as a caregiver she specifically mentions the "messes" of childrearing, positioning herself as experienced and competent. Christina embraces the role she has chosen and resists any pressure to have a career, as well as the more “worldly” or “frivolous” lifestyles espoused by bloggers such as Natalie. By consistently writing about family as her priority, Christina defends her choices and creates a space to explore her identity as a mother of a large family.
Although the first blog was created in 1994, it wasn’t until 1999, five years later, when the term “blog” was retroactively coined. Blogs began entering the popular consciousness sometime in the late 1990s and early 2000s, drawing audiences from across the sociaspectrum: everyone from geeks and political pundits to fashionistas and chefs. But why do we blog? In their article, Diane Nardi and her colleagues identify several social and personal motivations, or exigencies for blogging. Their five broad categories include: “Blogs to ‘document my life,’” “Blogs as commentary,”
There are three things you need to fly a kite: a good set of wings, a strong tether, and abundant wind. Of course, I recall from my childhood that flying a kite also usually involved a good deal of running, stumbling over hummocks of grass, and a fair amount of exertion. However, the exhilaration of seeing my small, brightly colored kite take off over the treetops of the park was thrilling. One of the first rules I learned about kite flying was that it is vitally important to hold onto the tether tightly. I remember once I had the tether jerked out of my hand by a particularly strong gust of wind and my kite wobbled out of control and fell to the damp grass of the park. “Limits” are not something we like to acknowledge in the writing classroom. We don’t want to limit creativity, student involvement, the type of assignments we give, etc. And rightly so. To return to the analogy/metaphor of the kite however, it is the tether, or the limiting factor, that actually enables the kite to fly and offers some measure of control so that flight can be prolonged and enjoyed. The tether is what makes kite flying a viable activity, instead of simply tossing scraps of wood and paper and plastic into the air. Student writing has the potential to soar, but it must be tethered, as Ann Berthoff suggests, in meaningful ways. In her speech-turned-essay entitled “What We Teach” she states that “ the […] chief means of getting started writing (and of keeping at it) is to return continually to the question of what it is that the reader needs to know. Writers who learn how to let the what help them discover the how are learning the use of limits” (21). These limits are not artificial ones such as pages limits or due dates, but instead are constraints that any writer works with, such as audience, genre, style, medium of publication, etc.
Technology, such as home pages or blogs, affords individuals the opportunity shape, or re-shape their identities as they push against or resist portrayals of themselves or communities that have been perpetuated by others. Annette Powell writes compellingly about the connection between resistance and technology when she analyzes an experience she had at a web-based summer camp for students who did not have reliable access to the internet at home. As a part of this camp, the children were directed to design home pages for themselves. Powell writes that this assignment "enables students to use the interface to add their image or vision of themselves to the array of cultural pictures that web pages represent. In this instance, technology provides a site for resistance, an opportunity to contest social, cultural, political assumptions in favor of images or texts that they consider more representative” (196). For the children at day-camp, this was an opportunity to break down stereotypes. Although the "Mormon Mommy" bloggers and "Mothers in Medicine" bloggers do not face the same level of stereotyping and discrimination as the children in Powell's day-camp, they do resist common misperceptions about their communities. For example, women in the "Mothers in Medicine" community resist the roles that they have been assigned in professional communities, especially those women seeking to be midwives or doulas who are often marginalized in the mainstream medical community. In a blog entitled “Mom’s Tinfoil Hat” the author identifies herself as an “idealist” a “mom of two” a “scientist and a hippie” who trained as a midwife and is currently training to be an OB/GYN. Her resistance appears in the comment section on the “About Me” page, in which she discusses with one reader the difficulty of working on rotations with a doctor whose practices she doesn’t agree with. She states: “Well, I am respectful to Obs I don’t agree with. I don’t need to change them, I need to decide how I am going to practice. I don’t agree with them, either, but I don’t try to educate my professors. If I get into a discussion about doulas or midwives, I drop some facts and let it lie. I don’t volunteer the conversation if someone doesn’t agree with me.” This attitude encapsulates the sense of discontent with current medical practices that is expressed in the majority of these blogs.
The term “ecology” has been appropriated and redefined by the composition community since the mid-seventies when Richard Coe defined “eco-logic” as “a logic designed for complex wholes” (232). Coe’s brief definition has been rewritten and substantially expanded as rhetoric has increasingly come to be seen as a distinctly “ecological” activity. However, the term “ecological,” as Marilyn Cooper notes, “is not [...] simply the newest way to say ‘contextual’ [...] an ecology of writing encompasses much more than the individual writer and her immediate context” (367). Indeed, the term “ecology” has been expanded to describe the complex, interrelated functions between texts and audiences that any writer may be influenced by in his or her work. In a recent essay entitled “Ecological, Pedagogical, Public Rhetoric,” Nathaniel Rivers and Ryan Weber have argued that rhetorical ecologies are important inasmuch as “ecological exploration points to the co-constitutive work of writers in complex systems, through which people related and, we would add, contest, pull, push, and grab at one another as ‘social beings’” (192). This straightforward definition is immensely helpful for approximating how bloggers function on the internet as “social beings.” Blogs shape community through various means, including the comment function, which allows for interaction between readers and writers in an unprecedented way.
Each of the "Mormon Mommy" and "Mothers in Medicine" blogs I looked at for my "Rhetorical Turn" project offered a variety of options to explore the online ecology of the blogger, from links to other blogs these women had authored, favorite websites, Twitter feeds, links to resources on everything from “how to organize your house” to the American Medical Women’s Association, widgets, and recommended reading. These gestures are usually marked as personally or professionally interesting to the women, making the reader seem more intimately aware of the writer’s life. Spatially, the location of these links, pictures, and other media is typically prominently beside the blog posts themselves, reiterating the importance of the “personal touch.” Rhetorical ecologies are also made visible through the blogroll, typically a list of blogs which the blogger feels represents their personal reading interests, or that their readers might be particularly interested in discovering. However, the blogroll functions differently then the links mentioned above such as “recommended reading.” The blogroll is a tangible acknowledgement of the interconnectedness of the blogger’s world. Of the eight “Mothers in Medicine” blogs I looked at, five had blog rolls. Although there was a lot of variation in the composition of these lists, at least four of the five had listed the same blogs, such as the popular midwife blog “At Your Cervix” or “Stand and Deliver,” a well-known blog about natural birth. Rhetorical ecologies are rarely so visible as they are with the blog roll.
I remember several times in undergraduate when I received a paper back at the end of a class only to find that the solitary mark on my paper was the grade with no comments or suggestions offered. Conversely, I remember receiving papers in high school that were heavily marked, but mostly for grammatical errors. I would make the changes required and turn the paper back in, confident that I had truly 'revised.' Reading Nancy Sommers' work has helped expand my vision of what meaningful feedback should look like in the writing classroom. My fundamental goal in the writing classroom is to help students move towards becoming self-editors. Ideally, students would be able to ask Ann Berthoff’s question of themselves: “how does [this] change [my] meaning if [I] put it this way?” (“Composing is Forming” 71). I believe that a part of this ability comes from practice and workshops in the classroom. However, a large part of self-editing also comes from guided reflections that students can perform after they have written a piece but before they turn it in. Asking students what changes they might make to their papers and to point out its virtues and flaws provides a valuable move towards becoming a 'expert' writer. While this may seem daunting, Kathleen Blake Yancey is an advocate of this approach, citing Tom Hilgers as having suggested that “all students, even very young elementary students, can talk about writing in the language of writing if their classroom discourse is populated by such language” (39). Even though students may not need to know how to write a five-paragraph essay later in life, helping them talk about and assess their own writing is a skill that will serve them for years to come.
This section provides a sample of some of the writing I have done about motherhood, pedagogy, technology, identity, and rhetoric. I have tried to provide a variety of excerpts to demonstrate the thinking that influenced my syllabus design and particularly the connections between writing, motherhood, and identity.
In system filled with ‘non-genre’ assignments and other writing which does not include any of these constraints, students are at a distinct disadvantage. If the writing classroom must unfortunately be limited to a semester or two worth of instruction, then I feel strongly that the instruction must enable students to recognize and embrace the “limits” of writing. Helping students learn how to use genere, audience, and other "limits" to help them shape and focus their use those to focus their writing will help make their writing experiences more responsive and meaningful. I believe this means using genre and situated writing in the classroom and acknowledging that "good" writing differs according to situation. As students recognize genre and audience it is my hope that they will write more confidently, play with the constraints they are given, and develop their analytical abilities as they assess each piece for the possibilities inherent within it to produce writing that soars.
Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning ‘First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies.’” Downs and Wardle’s goal is show that “writing studies is a discipline with content knowledge to which students should be introduced, thereby changing their understandings about writing and thus changing the way they write” (553). Among the myriad suggestions they give for ways to incorporate ideas of writing-as-discipline, there are several I would like to explore within my own writing classroom. These include my goals to teach a “more realistic writing narrative” (558), introduce writing as a discipline through scholarly essays while continuing a focus on student writing (561), and provide context for students to find their own place in the constellation of writing (568). While I believe the first two goals are fairly self-explanatory, the third one deserves an expanded explanation. Gleaned from Downs and Wardle, this idea argues that students who struggle in the writing classroom might benefit from an acknowledgement of the difficulty of writing and sharing in discussions about the process, product, and discipline of writing with their peers and teachers. Downs and Wardle share the example of a student named “Jack” who did not perform exceptionally well in the “Introduction to Writing Studies” classroom. However, he did gain “the ability to place himself—his background, abilities, processes, attitudes, and writing—in a broader context of what is known more generally about writers and writing” (568). This statement caught my attention because it emphasized the importance of context in writing. If writing is a situated activity, then I see an important aspect of my role as being a facilitator to introduce students to common conceptions and misconceptions about the composing process. I hope this context will reassure students that many people struggle with writing and give them a better sense of how writing can be an empowering activity for them.
“Blogs as catharsis,” “Blog as muse,” and “Blogs as community forum” (43-45). While each of these categories provides a particularly useful point-of-entry into the blogging world, Nardi and her co-authors fail to account for the ecological nature of blogs. For example, as a genre which allows for publication across the entire internet, invites comments, and allows for links, embedded videos, and pictures, blogs are essentially ecological creations. That is, they interact with a variety of genres which they shape and are in turn shaped by. The creator of a blog may answer any variety of exigencies within the framework of an entire blog or within a single blog post. A blog which is ostensibly dedicated to catharsis may include individual blog posts which fit into Nardi’s categories of “commentary” or “community forum.” The clear delineation Nardi's article provides gives the illusion of rigid boundaries in a very fluid online environment, where motivations such as documentation, commentary, community forum, and catharsis may combine to provide singular types of writing and response from the blogging community.
Indeed, individual blogs are complicated combinations of multi-modal genres, motivations, and actions. An excellent example is “Progressive Pioneer,” one of the blogs that I analyzed for a project in my Rhetorical Turn course. On her blog, author Amy Thompson explores issues surrounding the “natural family living movement.” While she articulates the goal of “connecting like-minded people and creating communities of support and encouragement,” in her “About” section, her blog explores many genres and exigencies outside of the exigency of “community forum” (“Progressive Pioneer”). A post about handling a situation with her son turns into a recipe. A book review is posted next to a craft. A personal reflection on the magic of childhood appears next to a link to another blog. The variety of posts, links, pictures and other media on “Progressive Pioneer” answer many of the exigencies described by Nardi, not just one. This hybridity is, I believe, key to understanding the richness of blog world, and essential to any analysis of the performance of online identity.
Writing is never transparent, but opaque, filled with personal ideologies, expectations, and motivations. This is especially true of a genre like blogs, where the personal becomes the very, very public. While it may seem that reading a personal blog post would simply relay information, I would argue that bloggers make important rhetorical moves in these posts that publicly enact their individual and community identities. In my project for the "Rhetorical Turn" I looked at how two communities of female bloggers constructed and resisted their identities through blogging. One community I dubbed "Mormon Mommy" bloggers and the other "Mothers in Medicine" bloggers. One deliberate moment of identity creation can be found in the "About Me” section of a blog.These sections varied widely from a few lines of text to entire pages filled with links
photos, and, in some cases, articles from outside sources about the blogger. Length is not particularly important however--as Annette Powell reminds us, no matter the length of the text, “people do not divorce themselves from the ideologies that they embrace; they use them when creating and participating in the development and the implementation of technology, though often not cognizant they are doing so” (200-1).The emphasis in the “About Me” section for the “Mothers in Medicine” blogs that I looked at seemed to be the desire to establish credentials, both as a professional and as a mother. A typical “About Me’ from the blog “10 Centimeters and Beyond” reads: “I’m a night shift L&D RN in a medium size hospital in the Midwest. I am also a mother of four children [...] This will be about my experiences as I stumble through motherhood, all mixed in with my experiences as a L&D RN, having been on both sides of the stirrups and surgeon’s blade.” Indeed, every blog emphasized the mix of the personal and professional in these women’s lives, citing credentials and children as being equally important for their participation in this online community. Several blogs, including “10 Centimeters and Beyond” and “At Your Cervix” include disclaimers to make sure to seek professional advice outside of their blogs, fearing that their credentials might make even their more informal comments seem like medical advice. One important function of these blogs is in fact to offer these personal perspectives, as well as provide support on professional issues, questions, and debates. By personalizing the professional, these women have created a community in which expands the definition of what it means to work as a nurse, a midwife, or a doctor.
A more pointed comment comes from the “About” section of the blog “Belly Tales,” where a trained midwife writes that, “I think there are a lot of things wrong with birth in our country right now. I think that women have forgotten how to trust their bodies—I think the medical profession in general has forgotten how to trust women’s bodies—and I think the prevailing attitude of birth as an emergency waiting to happen is something that desperately needs to be changed.” While other bloggers established similar viewpoints in their posts, the rhetorical choices made by these two bloggers demonstrate the importance these consciously rhetorical acts can have as moments to resist certain norms. Many "Mormon Mommy" bloggers were also vocal in their resistance of certain attitudes and perceptions of Mormon culture. However, only one of the "Mormon Mommy" bloggers was particularly vocal not only in her resistance to cultural norms but also in redefining how she perceived her membership in the church. Stephanie, the author of “The Mormon Child Bride,” describes herself in the “About” section with the following: “I got married when I was 20. I enjoy sewing. I am afraid of mold. I'm either a complete apostate Mormon, or I'm just saying what we are all thinking. I have two cats, but I don't blog about them because I hate excessive pet blogging. ” Her identification of herself as Mormon while also attempting to engage in a discussion of church policies reflects a growing trend represented by the appearance of websites such as “Feminist Mormon Housewives” or “LDSWAVE: Women Advocating for Voice and Equality” in recent years. Despite her strong statement about the church, Stephanie sandwiches her words between comments about crafts, mold, and pets, making a more cautious, and humorous rhetorical environment. To me this signals that Stephanie is intimately aware of the rhetorical situation she is operating in—people will not read a blog if they are immediately offended or attacked. Instead, Stephanie has employed humor to convey her thoughts and feelings and to do so in a way that will encourage support and community building. These instances of resistance are just some of a large number as women write to resist.
The ecological nature of blog is instantiated other ways, such as the presence of aggregators and other sites that compile lists of blogs and websites. One such site is Mormon Mommy Blogs, which, in the words of its founders, is no longer just an aggregator, but “has blossomed into the amazing community you see today” (“Mormon Mommy Blogs”). Mormon Mommy Blogs works to create an inclusive site, listing “posts of the week,” featuring videos its members might find interesting, and including well-designed print-outs and handouts for women to use at home or at church. One particularly interesting aspect of this website is the need to classify blogs past the more generic outlines given in the name (mormon, mommy). Each blog listed on the site has been placed in one of over thirty different categories, ranging from “Crunchy Moms” “Infertility, Adoption, & Foster Care,” and “Saucy Blogs,” to “Thoughtful Women,” “Military Life,” and “Canadian Bloggers.” While
these delineations can necessarily only act as vague guidelines for discovering the diverse array of blogs they represent, it is an interesting to see how this categorization makes visible and accessible an already existing rhetorical space. Moreover, blogs are not the only genre in which these women shape their identity, as many of them also cultivate an online presence through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, advocacy websites, listservs, podcasts, youtube, Pinterest, Etsy, LinkedIn, cooking sites, mormon.org profiles, and other online forums. All of these sites interact together to create a complex ecological system of women's writing.