Hello all,
I was waiting to post my CV from my BMCC computer, as the CV on my work computer is more recent/updated than the CV on my laptop. The college network is currently down, or partially down, so I am unable to access my workstation. Hopefully I can post it before we meet today. In the meantime, I’m posting my most recent cover letter, for an F/T position at City Tech I was going to apply for but didn’t find out about the openings until it was too late.
Universal design reminds me in certain ways of participatory design. A few years ago I learned– and was thinking quite a bit– about participatory design, when the entire floor of the tutoring center at the other CUNY college where I work was being renovated, re-imagined and redesigned. Participatory Design originated in Scandinavia in the 1960’s and was championed by labor unions to democratize workplaces. The participatory design approach is one that emphasizes design with and alongside people instead of strictly for people. In short, it’s design that is, well… participatory.
The rehab of the library and tutoring areas at this other CUNY college was the pet project of the vice president at the time, and I was baffled by some of the choices being made regarding the learning spaces, tutoring tables, lab placements, enclosures, etc. But no one asked my opinion, nor were any of the other coordinators or tutoring directors who actually worked in the space asked what they thought might improve student learning there. Decisions were being made by administrators and designers who clearly had no idea what the needs on the ground were in this particular environment. Walls were knocked down, for example, without considering potential noise issues in multiple tutoring/class/lab spaces. In the re-envisioned space, the walls of the computer labs did not reach the ceiling, and were basically glass partitions of so many large cubicles, presumably for a more “open” feel. All tutoring tables were aggregated in the middle of a big tutoring pen in the center of the floor like a Medieval prison yard, with tutors and students at different tables all yelling over one another to be heard. Aesthetically, the new lavender-colored chairs looked nice, and the floor did indeed look and feel more open, but at the expense of approximating the acoustics of a lively morning in the trenches at the New York Stock Exchange. One conversation between the designers/architects and someone who actually worked in the space could have predicted and prevented, or at least drastically mitigated, these problems.
At the time, I had recently had a fascinating conversation at a party with an industrial designer who was telling me about how industrial design is more collaborative and participatory than architecture, which is usually based on precedent. He talked about the differences in the research processes: architects go out and look at what’s been built before, and then they use that to inform what they’re building. Industrial designers tend to look at how an existing space is actually being used, and survey the people working there to improve their design based on the participation of those surveyed. This was one crucial aspect that the former CUNY VP had missed, with results that I would describe *generously* as… whelming.
Universal design as a pedagogical frame in the writing classroom necessarily includes participatory design, which potentially entails a radical reconsideration of all sorts of assumptions one might harbor regarding placement, assessment, participation, student voice and inclusion, co-learning. Universal/participatory design in learning spaces then truly becomes an instrument of social change. I will continue to endeavor to co-create such environments with students. This framework, if effectively actualized, harms and excludes no one, and benefits everyone in the learning space. All boats rise.
In Remixing Composition: A History of Multimodal Writing Pedagogy, Jason Palmeri argues that the values of encouraging students to compose in multiple modalities is apparent. As is apparent in the discussion surrounding the Takayoshi and Selfe essay, not everyone agrees, and the discussion is far from settled. Palmeri defines composing as “The selection and ordering of elements” (26). Considering composing or composition as broadly as that makes it reasonable to include modalities beyond just alphabetic (composition) and musical (composing). When referring to Geneva Smitherman’s work Talkin and Testifyin, Palmeri suggests that examining the same work through different modalities, for example reading the text of Malcolm X’s “Ballot or the Bullet” speech and then listening to Malcolm X’s actual delivery of the same speech, can deepen the understanding of the speech as one mode will enhance the other by adding more information or a broader perspective.
Palmeri also credits multimodal or multimedia composition as a tool to help students release from their fear of “correctness”, or the grading that is typically associated with making errors in alphabetic compositions. Since many writing instructors do not have the experience grading multimedia projects, assessment and grading could tend to be less rigid and students encounter a “freeing” feeling, allowing them to generate ideas and creatively express themselves.He also suggests that multimodal activity might be employed as an organizational technique to use during the planning process for an alphabetic writing project. In other words, multimodal and “traditional” writing projects need not be mutually exclusive, or at odds. That said… (or written, rather. On a computer)
Also, even if the pathos of some of the responses to the Takayoshi and Selfe essay imparted a sense that some sort of gauntlet was being thrown down, I can absolutely appreciate the arguments of those who don’t want to toss out the composition pedagogy/alphabetic writing baby with the multimodality bath water. (Muddled metaphor, anyone?) On some levels, I agree. While I do see many opportunities for multimodal composition techniques to enhance students learning and creative expression, I also feel we should acknowledge that not every student (or writing instructor, for that matter) will benefit from or be skilled at multimodal communications.
I don’t think the binary between multimodality and writing, though, is a useful way to frame these questions. There is, lurking under this writing/multimodality binary some of the same long-disputed assumptions about writing that underlie the literacy/orality binary. There are also questions of power in relation to language and modality, in the oft-iterated new version of the “Johnny can’t write” argument: “what is the use of focusing on different modalities if my students can’t write?!” It is worth noting the particulars of this question, within which context(s) it is put forth, by whom, and in what position of power, to be self-appointed arbiter who can and cannot write, and what is and is not “correct” meaning-making.
Palmeri, Jason. Remixing Composition: A History of Multimodal Writing Pedagogy. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. Print.
Another binary in most discussions in writing studies about multimodal work: it’s assumed we are all referring to digital and non-digital writing, when in fact multimodality encompasses much more (body language, woodwork, sculpture, crochet, performance art, etc.). Just thought these old book covers from the 80s would be an apt multimodal addition to the post. 🙂
“This semester, I have three classes of respectful students who absolutely cannot write. I have sent most to the Writing Center Or english tutors…..they are telling me that the people at the WCenter are not helpful even though they are well-intentioned. Same with the English tutors. Usually, I have a handful of really good writers who I team up with those who cannot. This semester I am not able to do this.”
“These students NEED help with English construction, spelling, everything! Critical thinking does not even play into it at this point. Have a lot of chinese students who are struggling with the English language anyway. Any advice?”
thanks
Professor @
I oversee a staff of writing tutors and an English as a Second Language (ESL) language and computer lab at BMCC. The above email is emblematic of an ever more common kind of referral to our tutoring center, similar to the one from Professor @, from many others across the disciplinary spectrum who include writing in their curricula.[1] Professor @’s classroom is imagined around monolingual Standard American English (SAE) as the medium of instruction and around native English-speaking (and White) students as the norm, whereas in fact, he is confronted with the reality of teaching three multilingual classes full of plural nationalities, races, languages, and cultures. What further struck me when I read Professor @’s message is the fact that this instructor simultaneously exhibits what might be called “monolinguistic deficit-model” assumptions about the writing of his multilingual students, yet also himself deviates from SAE in the language of his email. Were I to critique Professor @’s writing from a similar deficit-model of idealized SAE, I would note that the message includes sentence fragments, for example, and poor adherence to usage rules of punctuation and capitalization. Of course, writing tasks are situated and context-specific: email is informal and often hastily composed, and collegial familiarity might also frame this kind of code-switching in this correspondence. More troubling to me, though, is degree of unequivocality of Professor X’s monolinguistic condemnation of his students: three classes full of students who “absolutely cannot write,” and “NEED help with… everything!” Moreover, this is not a small percentage of aberrant students; they are most or all of Professor X’s students.
Professor @ is very likely a well-intentioned, dedicated educator, and his opinion of the multilingual students in his classroom is not an anomalous one, but rather represents a fairly ubiquitous attitude among faculty and tutors across disciplines. Moreover, his assumptions concerning his students almost certainly do not arise from hostility or indifference, but rather from hegemonic cultural and language-oriented notions that pervade both academic and public discourse. As educators, we all need to pause and reflect on the assumptions we bring into our classrooms when encountering multilingual students, including assumptions about the definition and nature of “correctness,” “critical thinking” and “language proficiency,” as well as what we mean when we say a student “cannot write.” These phrases may well be accurate descriptions of some of our students, from a certain vantage point. However, they may also be illustrative sketches of our own reflexive cultural and linguistic misapprehensions, as well as descriptions of our own struggles with rendering or effectively communicating complex pedagogies within classrooms in which the English language is the norm. This normative standard of monolingualism is not conducive to effective pedagogy within CUNY, or, for that matter, within any higher education environment that shares similar values of pluralism and linguistic diversity.
Several years ago, I attended a John Jay English Dept-sponsored event, at which J. Elizabeth Clark, an English professor at LaGuardia CC and fellow CUNY rhet/comp traveler, gave a wonderful presentation called “Digital Todays, Digital Tomorrows” at John Jay College. She discussed her passion for scuba diving and then compared the history of diving to education, specifically regarding evolving/changing modalities in educational technologies, composition, and research. She was pointedly critical of the teaching modes and methods prevalent in much– perhaps most– writing instruction today.
Clark began by sharing images of scuba diving equipment from previous decades, and emphasized technological advances in scuba diving equipment, and how these advances had dramatically transformed diving activities. She explained, for example, how by the 1970s, pressure gauges, buoyancy control devices, and single hose regulators had vastly improved and functioned much better, and had became the norm, along with other advances such as dive computers in the 1980s. While, of course, diving gear from the early 1900s would certainly still work, Clark insisted, rightly so, that she is not inclined to use that gear for diving. In fact, the history of scuba diving is incredibly interesting, and of course, along with each technological advancement, new methods of teaching and dive training have also been developed and used. Click here if you have a moment: History of scuba diving
This is not to say that diving (or research) is an utterly altered experience from its ancient beginnings. Current technological advances in scuba diving, though, have nonetheless changed much of how scuba divers operate nowadays. To imagine otherwise would be inconceivable. When she started to talk about research projects in her writing classes, Clark asked us why so many writing teachers and writing classrooms insist on discarding new technologies in ways that divers, for example, never would. It would be like diving into the depths in 2022 with 1914 equipment. It was a compelling argument, and reminded me of the many ways that education generally, and research methodologies in research assignments and the teaching of writing in particular, can rely on outmoded ways of operating, and can be much slower to change than, say scuba diving culture.
Multimedia, mash-up, genre-bending student research projects, if rigorously undertaken and clearly assigned, can be generative learning experiences for students. As long as we instructors set clear goals by creating concrete rubrics and have a clear vision of our primary learning objectives, it will make it much easier when it comes to providing feedback and assessing student work. Obviously, communicating our teaching goals to our students is of paramount importance. Distributing our rubric with the assignment is a good way to achieve this. By offering specific guidelines about the skills we want them to learn we will insure that students are clear about the assignment.
At the beginning of the semester, during introductions, I usually hand out a letter I’ve written to the students, describing the writing course and my goals in designing it, what I’m excited for, what I promise to do to support them as they learn, and I read it aloud, word for word. (“If I’m going to talk the talk, I need to walk the walk,” I will tell them, reciting from the letter. “If I’m getting paid to teach you writing, it makes sense that I share my writing with you.”) In the letters they write back to me by the end of that class, students often express surprise about the ways in which my letter didn’t sound “like writing,” but like a person talking. This becomes a point of departure to explore genre and audience expectation: If all texts are written by people, to people, why should some writing hide the fact? What about the syntax, punctuation, or diction might make a passage sound more spoken or more written?
Because writing often evolves in startling and unexpected ways, my teaching plans must engage students in acts of writing, and must be flexible enough to notice and respond to teachable moments as they arise. Active listening – saying back what I understand as the heart of what’s been said, in a tone of curiosity or uncertainty (a …?) – is a core practice that I use in a variety of contexts to guide students to the edge of their understanding, and which I encourage students to practice in responding to each other. In response to a memory they are rendering on the page, active listening can help students see where they’ve merely implied what actually happened, and where there’s room – and audience interest – to expand or deepen their description. In response to a research project, it can help both students and me learn more about sources’ arguments and rhetorical aims, not only articulating and clarifying what is known, but also, through repeated queries, reaching toward new connections.
My lesson plans often involve having students bring in some writing they’ve prepared at home, and then engaging in some solo work on it that prepares them for a second task they will engage in as part of a stable working group. For example, students might bring in a list of questions raised by a text they’ve read, and spend 5 minutes sorting the questions according to how they might be answered (e.g. by close reading, by factual research, by extended reasoning); in groups, they can then work together to answer the most immediately solvable questions, and identify questions that could seed a successful essay. During the solo portion, I participate in the same task whenever possible: not only does it aid in adjusting my timing, but I want to signal that I value the work, and since I do value the work, I also want to benefit from it myself. During the group portion, I float from group to group, listening for opportunities to advise, adjust, and make connections. As more than one faculty observer has noted when visiting my class, this approach allows me to fit in a great deal of teaching, at moments when individual students are primed for it, in relatively small amounts of time.
When, as often happens, someone has not done the homework, I try to prepare an alternate activity for the first ten minutes of class that will enable participation in the group; and because some individuals and some groups work more quickly than others, I prepare an extension activity if they finish. The idea in both cases is to counter a possible misperception that what I’m assigning is The Way to Learn to Write. There is always more to learn, and more to do. Similarly, I always try to let students know why I am assigning the work I assign – including the caveats that there is always more than one reason (we don’t have time in a 15-week semester for single-reason activities), and that one recurring reason for my writing exercises is to generate surprising outcomes. If they can find another good way to achieve the goals I’ve laid out, I’m happy to learn from them, and possibly to incorporate it into the next revision of that lesson plan.
A specific way I try to make my goals explicit is through the course site, where I post my lesson plans and assignments, projecting them on an overhead screen to discuss and field questions. Publicly sharing what I hope to achieve helps me and the students to be aware of how much we must get through, and challenges us: if we do make a change, it must be justifiable. The site also emphasizes the ways in which our writing projects are interlinked: first with planned hyperlinks between pages, then with stored and comparable revision histories of pieces the students shape over time, and finally with searchable tags that students add in preparation for their final reflections.
Perhaps most importantly, at the core of my teaching philosophy is an awareness that building expertise involves a shift in perception: where the novice sees isolated acts and instructions, the expert sees purposeful patterns. Composition and rhetoric has given me a vocabulary that guides my choices and attention, and one of my roles as a teacher is to share that vocabulary and what it helps us see. But all of us, as learners, can reflect back and name to each other the patterns we notice in reading and in writing, in processes and products, so we might notice differently next time.
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