Teaching Journal XI

Week 11

Monday: Today we read Heilker and Yergeau. Since there was no apparatus, I made them a reading guide. I was hoping this would make them feel more prepared to speak more.  I sort of began class with a disclaimer because I was a bit apprehensive about teaching this. It really helped that Sarah said this was about rhetoric and didn't need an autistic subject--it just happens to have one. I began with a free-wrire: What were your impressions of or (mis)understandings about autism prior to reading this article. How aware of autism were you? Where had you heard or seen a discussion about it before?
Surprisingly or not so surprisingly no one said they were familiar with autism, except for seeing the puzzle piece stickers (?) at Borders or Starbucks. One student mentioned that his roommate told him he had Asperger's, but unfortunately this quickly turned into students asking him what his roommate "did." I wanted to quickly move into the discussion of autism as a social construct, so I showed part of the video of Temple Grandin talking about Einstein and Van Gogh. I explained why it was problematic to diagnose people posthumously with a condition that didn't exist while they lived. I'm not sure they bought my explanation of it being a social construction, though. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure they know what a social construction is (If you'll read my previous blogs, we didn't get to Malinowitz). I had planned a group activity where half of them looked at What Paul Says and the other at What Melanie Says and describe characteristic 'autistic' behavior and explain how approaching that behavior rhetorically changes the meaning of that behavior. Then they were to get with someone who did the opposite person and talk about it. I'm not sure how well this would have worked, but I had to cut it short due to time. I might eliminate group work next time I teach this. I think the puzzle piece criticism by Yergeau resonated the most with them because they were familiar with that campaign. They tend to accept everything they're told (in class) without questioning it or challenging it, so having someone critique that campaign was interesting for them. This was a pretty good class. The students were respectful and I enjoyed reading their responses to the free-write. Even though they weren't familiar, they were still thoughtful (I don't know why some students don't like to share their responses!). They followed me on my discussion of discourse and rhetoric (the reading guide helped with these answers). Next time, I'd like to talk more about empathy and how it can be problematic.

Wednesday: Today's discussion of Villanueva was rather disappointing. Students did not really understand Villanueva's argument. This was the first reading response in which students asked questions in their responses. I tried to address these at the beginning, but I'm not sure they ever followed. I was also very surprised to learn that they had never heard the phrase "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps." Most of them didn't know what the assimilation myth was (even after looking it up), although one student at least admitted that he didn't really understand why it was a myth. Here's where I think I made my first mistake: I began with the Dozen Demons and white privilege. I think in order to understand these multicultural pieces (especially this and Delpit/Smitherman)--in order to understand why identity matters so much-- students have to recognize that their experience is probably different from what these authors are writing about. And they have to understand that this difference is largely due to racism and hegemony. As an undergrad, I read Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" and it was incredibly eyeopening. I showed a video of McIntosh briefly describing why she wrote the piece and then listing the privileges (we didn't watch the whole thing). I was of course expecting resistance to this, but not the type I got. First, I noticed some students (especially one who would comment on this) weren't really watching the screen, and were therefore missing the privileges. I think they also missed McIntosh's point that the black experience is largely ignored in the canon of literature and in the curriculum, which I thought was a good connection to Villanueva. I also think important to these readings is understanding how our schools continually fail our students of color.
     Anyway, after I stopped the video, one girl answered that she didn't see why things were unfair because "they get to go to school for free." I honestly thought this was pretty much a non sequitur, and wasn't sure how to respond. I assumed she was talking about affirmative action, which she didn't know by that name. I tried to explain why it would be fair for students of colors (and women!) to get a leg up (the dozen demons, the white privilege, the racism) but I wasn't prepared to give a lesson on why affirmative action exists. Maybe I should have been? Since this didn't work out, I probably shouldn't show it next time, but I still feel like its an important concept to grasp. Thoughts? I think that if students can't grasp the idea that people of color are at an unfair disadvantage and that many people of color have some sort of identity crisis because they exist in between two or more cultures, these readings will not resonate. The rest of Wednesday's class was spent discussing Villanueva's argument and the connection between memoria and personal, emotional writing rather than logocentric writing. We did a close reading of and unpacked two of the passages, which students did a pretty good job with.

Friday: Today was a workshop day. Usually I make their drafts due at 3 pm (after our class meets), but I'd been feeling like students weren't getting a whole lot out of in-class workshops. So instead of that, I had their drafts due by classtime today and they were to bring in a copy of their peer's paper. Some students brought in their own papers and swapped, which I was trying to avoid in case one student was absent. One girl never turned in her paper, so I had to have a student's paper be peer reviewed twice (which they were hesitant to volunteer for!). Before we did that, we did briefly workshop the Athens music scene sample. I have the students read the paragraphs out loud and then we discuss what we think works or doesn't work, and then I reveal my own comments. We focused on organization, the introduction (how personal and in-depth should you go?), Swales and the student's niche (and synthesizing the readings), how to incorporate interview questions/answers, and how to analyze answers. For the remainder of the class period, I gave them time to start their peer reviews. I projected a few guidelines/questions (mostly taken from the Project 3 instructions). I had planned on giving each student his/her class standing (number of violations) during this time, but because some students had questions, I didn't have a lot of time to get through them.