Diachronic Paradigm

On Sunday afternoon, Ed's mom and I went to a Trindentine Mass at Holy Trinity church - the first I'd ever been to - and it turned out to be really interesting, but also pretty passive from my place in the congregation. I didn't know any of the prayers; the congregation said practically nothing, or they whispered responses; I could barely hear the priest, whose back was turned to us, and couldn't follow along in the Latin/English missal I was given because of it. I also screwed up during communion by putting out my hands, which apparently was not done back in the day. (I'm sure the priest is used to such infractions at this point. One learns new things when one was born more than a decade after Vatican II.) The Mass was sparsely attended, and many of the women and girls wore chapel veils. 

But it was a really beautiful church, and it included a gift shop where I was able to pick up a small wall crucifix and, finally, a missal (I haven't even been able to find one online; I cancelled an order after waiting for five months; the delivery date was pushed back one month, then two; finally, the customer service representative couldn't even guess when it would be delivered).

On Saturday, May 14, 2011, Ed and I were married in the same church in which my parents were married in 1969, and like them, we were surrounded by our parents, family, and friends. Despite my initial hesitation of having a traditional wedding, our wedding day was one of the best and most fun days of my life. My mother remarked that our wedding just felt happy. This is the best compliment I could have wished for; nothing complicated, just simply happy.

It's a rare occasion that one gets to have so many of the people one loves in one place for a happy occasion. We couldn't believe the distance that some of our guests were willing to travel to celebrate with us: Long gone are the days of the bride and groom growing up in the same part of the country, staying there, and having extended families and friends in the same area. Aside from my parents and some cousins who lived in the Lehigh Valley, guests came from New York, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Utah, Canada, and Ireland. Our bridal party hailed from Long Island, Salt Lake CIty, San Francisco, Albany, Boston, and Virginia to be there with us. 

Some good things happened during the course of the year: I got offered a teaching job at a local university the day after our wedding; I was also hired later that summer as a teaching assistant at a local middle school. In January I was offered a job teaching at Salt Lake Community College, where I continue to teach; I've been able to continue teaching as a substitute teacher. Both are excellent places to work, and I'm lucky that even though these are part time positions without benefits, I get to do work I love.

Some not-so-great things happened, though, too: Ten days after our wedding Ed was told that he might or might not lose the job he'd held for a number of years; after a six week period of uncertainty - a time of great stress; there an agonizing uncertainty in not knowing something like this; financially we would have been devastated, probably lost the house and lost the health insurance I had just gotten for the first time in over ten years - Ed's position was eliminated for budgetary reasons. Although he was almost immediately offered another job, followed by an even better-suited one within the same company, this was a financial setback we weren't expecting, and from which we're still reeling. However, Ed manages to continue working for SkyWest Airlines, where he has been employed for over a decade, in a position that he enjoys, excels at, and in a department in which he is valued. 

Even worse, we saw the marriages of friends and family end in divorce. Seeing people you love, who through the years have been such an important part of your life, go through such difficult times, especially when one's own marriage is new and happy, is difficult and poignant. We were contemplative, watching these changes happen around us.

In many ways, our first year was easy, in ways that might not be for others in their first year of marriage. Whatever problems we faced were not because of each other; our struggles were financial, the result of external factors over which we had little control. There were some initial bumps as we learned to merge our lives and renegotiate the manner in which we handle our problems, but things have been overcome easily enough. (We've come to the conclusion that we must be doing something wrong: We're not fighting.) We know we'll encounter unforeseeable problems, but we have begun a pattern of communication that will (hopefully) serve us well throughout our marriage: No screaming matches, no throwing things, no personal attacks, no drama.

There is no doubt that I made the right decision.

Today was my last day of classes for the spring semester at SLCC. I really enjoyed my students; they were a lot of fun; they worked hard; they had a sense of humor (I cannot emphasize how much this helps). My evening class especially was fun this way - not that my early morning class wasn't fun, too, but 7 a.m. is hard to swallow and hard to exhibit any enthusiasm for, even in the best of circumstances. I was kinda bummed when I came home this evening; I get really attached to some of them.

In any case, in my evening class there had been some early-semester mocking of my artistic skills. (We had been brainstorming and the different ways in which one might organize an essay.) This week we had been discussing the students' ePortfolio, the medium by which the students will showcase their essays (as opposed to hard copies). Two of the assignments, the Writer's Introduction and the Reflective Essay, were similar enough to cause confusion, so I had to resort to drawing on the board, that the Writer's Introduction would need to be uploaded or linked, like their other essays, while the Reflective Essay would need to be copied and pasted as text above their links.

Thus, we had this conversation on Tuesday:

Me: Ok, so I'm going to draw a picture; maybe it'll help, but no making fun of my drawing. These circles are your essays; you're uploading or linking them - this link [represented by a circle] is your rhetorical analysis, this one [another circle] is your op-ed, and so on, whereas your reflection  [where I drew the squiggly lines] gets typed up here. Does that make it any clearer?

[Student raises his hand.]

Me: Yes [student name redacted for reasons that will soon become apparent]?

Student: So it's like a Flintstone's Tablet?

[Students lose it.]

Me: Dammit, [Student].

This afternoon, we had a repeat, only the student drew a little dinosaur to help.

This is about a week overdue, but last weekend, during the Easter Vigil Mass on Saturday, Ed was confirmed in our parish, St. Joseph the Worker. Our parish priest, Fr. Carley, is from Co. Tipperary, Ireland, and has a rather strong snarky side.

It was a large group of catechumans and candidates that were welcomed into our parish.

It was a beautiful service that lasted close to two and a half hours; the parish women's group hosted a reception afterwards. My parents came out from Pennsylvania to celebrate the occasion as well. (It meant a lot to both Ed and myself that they were here for his confirmation.)

 

 

This weekend we celebrate Palm Sunday, which begins Holy Week, the week before Easter, which is of course the single most important holiday in Christianity (if there were no Easter, there would be no Christianity). 

I don't know why I thought of this particular argument this afternoon; RCIA is winding down, and Ed will get confirmed at the Easter Vigil next Saturday night. He had neither been baptized nor received the Eucharist until he was seven because his mother wasn't sure she wanted him to be raised Catholic, but Ed had never really been taken to Mass regularly nor am I sure he was taken to religious education classes while growing up. He started coming to Mass with me because he wanted to spend time with me; the church to which we are currently members is led by a priest who had a sense of humor and explained things in such a way that appealed to Ed. (When I was a kid, we referred to said religious education classes as CCD. Mom was the church organist and my brother was an altar server; we were taking to Mass weekly and on all religious Holy Days of Obligation, and got all our sacraments at the appropriate times.) 

I'd been thinking of the arguments I've heard from parents who say that they don't want to raise their child in any particular religious tradition because they want their child to be able choose her own religion when she grows up.

That's like saying that you want your child to choose her own career when she grows up, so you're not going to send her to school because she'll get all the info on how to choose a career later in life.

I don't know that there are statistics for the number of people who are raised in one religious tradition and fall away from that religion, but if you want your child to have a foundation in some manner of religion, it seems like raising them in one's chosen religion would be a good idea, if for no other reason than for purposes of comparison and analysis.

This is on my mind today because a student recently asked if I would talk to her about my previous experience having flunked out of college, yet having gone back to school and become a teacher. I had shared that I had not done especially well in high school - I can't remember at this point if I was in danger of not graduating, but I certainly wasn't a good student - and that I had flunked out of college in a rather gloriously bad way - I had a 0.00 GPA both semesters, which is easy to obtain if you never go to class or take any tests. I simply wasn't ready to for college when I was 18, and I wasn't ready until I was in my late 20s. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of this; it's simply part of my past, like having grown up where I did. That I've completed college and have 30 graduate credits negates whatever embarrassment I may have otherwise felt.

A few weeks ago in one of my classes, we were discussing a difficult assignment - the rhetorical analysis paper - and why teachers assign difficult things that may or may not ever be used once you leave college. (And that's a different discussion: You simply can't know what you may or may not need to know at some indeterminate point in your life, so students are taught a range of subjects in the hopes that they're being given a basic foundation.)

It was lighthearted, but a valid conversation, and we (and by "we" I mean "I") got on the subject of education vs. college. This is not something I'd ever heard anyone tell me, and I've put a lot of thought into this.

I'd told my students that there can be a distinct difference between college and education; that because one does not go to college does not mean that one is stupid, and that going to college does not necessarily indicate high intelligence. I said that there a distinction could be made between "college" and "education" - and some of them, I could just see this look that told me that they'd never thought of such a thing before. I asked if we could agree that we have a need for people who know how to do useful things like fix cars or do electrical work and the like, and most of the students nodded their heads. I said that many of these positions require post-secondary education, but that this didn't necessarily mean that the people who had acquired extra training had gone to college, although it's common now that community colleges and vocational schools offer certificates or two-year degrees.

(On a side note, I have no patience for people who tell me they're "too old" to go to college. That to me says you're simply not interested in learning. You don't have to go to college, but you can still learn things.)

My having been a terrible student who didn't do well in high school and who flunked out of college has, I believe, made me a better teacher than I could have been had I been a great student and done things "the right way." (I did do well later on.) There are a lot of great teachers who were fantastic students in high school, went to college at 18, did wonderfully, graduated at 22, and immediately began teaching. There's nothing wrong with this, but in terms of advising students how to navigate the non-academic world, experience in the non-academic world can be integral. At least, for me it was. And it has helped me enormously when talking to the mostly non-traditional students that I'm teaching because I don't believe that everyone needs college to be successful. I believe in post-secondary education, but I don't believe that always needs to be in the form of a college degree.

I think so many students were, like I was, told that they had to go to college, that college was the only way to succeed, that something beyond high school was vital. And it is true that post-secondary education is vital, but I can't remember a single conversation I've ever had with someone who helped me explore options other than college. It was simply understood that college was the end result, and that it must be done at age 18.

I didn't know how to explain that I was tired of school; I was mentally exhausted and I wanted to work and have some financial independence, to be on my own for awhile. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and going to college would not have helped me find a direction; what was singularly helpful was having experience working and not being surrounded by teachers and the world of education. I needed first a different type of exposure. It simply wasn't a consideration as far as my family was concerned, and for quite some time I was hurt by this lack of understanding. I understand their view and I would be in a better positoin now to explain my thinking, but I'm aware that there are different and possibly better ways to go about presenting a student with her options. I think I would have done better sooner had I gone to work out of high school.

Of course, at the moment, that's an academic exercise, since I have the college degree now and, ironically, I've wound up as a teacher. But I worked in a variety of jobs and wasn't sure I wanted to be a teacher until I had wandered into Stony Brook University's Writing Center, which happened to be under the direction of someone who was the antithesis of most of the previous bosses I'd had. That work allowed me to explore the field and ask questions, which was the most helpful.

In other words, I was talked to.

It wouldn't quite be an English teachers' conference if I didn't buy some books. I was good - I waited until the last day, when the exhibitors were having clearance sales: I wound up buying two paperbooks for $3 each, and three books for a dollar apiece at a different table. In the end, I came away with Grammar Girl's 101 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know; Grammar Girl's 101 Words You'll Never Confuse Again; the Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Novel; Girl in Translation; and You Are Free. 

I managed to have some non-English teacher fun in St. Louis, too. The weather cleared up and on Saturday I was able to take a tram to the top of the Gateway Arch, which was nifty (although it entailed a very long wait; I spent close to two hours waiting to get to the top, and spent perhaps 15 minutes at the top). 

The Basilica St. Louis, the King was a stone's throw away from the Arch, so I took Mass there. It's a really beautiful old church - the oldest Catholic church west of the Mississippi River.

Today was a short day: Since it was the last day of the convention, only three concurrent sessions being held. Between the limited number of sessions being offered, and my brain being a bit overloaded, I only stayed for two speakers at two different sessions.

In the first panel of the day, "Privacy, Rhetoric, and Composition: Addressing the Public/Private Distinction in Digital Environments," I heard my Twitter friend Michael Faris from Penn State speak of analyzing the rhetoric of Facebook's privacy policies, the implications extending to the conflict of public information versus private information and the accessibility of information (how easy it is to access and understand privacy policies, for example, or the overlap between private profiles, public profiles, and the in-between), and the way(s) in which privacy policies affect not only our online presence, but our understanding thereof.

In the next session - "Immigration in the Writing Classroom" - Glenn Hutchinson from Florida International University addressed whether education can be illegal; he spoke at length regarding the problems "illegals" can face when attempting to go on to higher education. For me this was an eye opener in that I hadn't quite realized the severity of the situation that students who have lived in this country for most of their lives might face.

I managed to get to quite a few more panels today, many of which were quite interesting:

1. In "What Is Our Profesionalism For? The Role of Composition and Rhetoric Scholars in the Public Practice of K-12 Literacy Educators," Maja Wilson of the University of Maine gave a talk ("The Rhetoric of Literacy Instruction: Engaging Parents") in which she discussed the importance of professionalism as means of engaging parents in an effective manner.
2. The session I chaired ("Designing Engaging Writing Assignments with Video Games and Fanfiction") went well; the panelists were funny, spoke well, and :
   • Mark Mullen from the George Washington University gave a talk ("Getting Back to Basics by Going Back to the Future") in which he discussed his using game reviews to teach critical thinking and writing, as something the students might find "useful" and actively engaging, to cultivate beliefs that writing matters and how much criticism means.
   • In his talk entitled "Deconstructing the Borders of Digital and Analog Identity, Understanding the Relationship between Architects, Rule Sets, and Player Characters," Peter Brooks from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee discussed agency and social structure in games, and how they equal different objectives and rationalization, and how rules are interpreted. I interpreted this as analogous to the classroom, that teachers might be the architects of their classrooms, rule sets their rules, and player characters the students.
   • Daphne Daugherty from Missouri State University and Sarah Wynn from the University of Southern Mississippi gave a talk entitled "The Unexplored Gate: Charting Compositional Energies of Fanfiction Writing"; they spoke of the potential in using fanfiction in the composition classroom because of the skills one might use in writing fanfic - recognizing discourses and code-switching, having a critical eye, analyzing audience - are all things we want to teach in the compisition classroom. They noted that fanfic writers read for a specific purpose, place emphasis on very detailed observations, and place an importance on reviews (a form of peer review). They further suggested that fanfic could be used as a peer review model and editorial authority.
3. Next up was "Critical Food Literacy: New Territories of Inquiry in Rhetoric and Composition," which I'm glad I went to because I'd been considering integrating some manner of food writing into future courses. Maxwell Philbrook of the University of Missouri, Columbia, spoke about food literacy movements (you can listen to his talk here, while Naomi Clark, also of the University of Missouri, Columbia, spoke of the correlaton between food production and writing pedagogy (her talk is here).
4. I also heard Marjorie Roemer of Brandeis University speak of her experiences teaching memior in "Framing Experience, or What I Learned from Frank McCourt." (Her talk is here.) She contended that as an authentic writing assignment, memoir is an effective way for older writers to write.

The last session of the day allowed many of us to come together and talk about developing papers and sessions for next year's convention. I made contact with three other teachers, and we're (hopefully) going to try to put together a proposal for next year's convention, which I'm very excited about. One of the problems, of course, is that it can be difficult to meet folks who might have the same research interests and/or background, so this was much more helpful than I had anticipated.

The convention began Wednesday with pre-convention workshops, with sessions beginning Thursday morning. I, however, did not arrive until Thursday afternoon, just in time to make it for the last session of the day.

I had hoped to attend one of Thursday's featured session, "Gateways to Leadership: A Reflective Roundtable on Opportunities Within NCTE and CCCC," a session designed "to help conferece attendees think about ways in which they might seek out and occupy small or large leadership roles," but the session was double booked, and no one quite seemed to know how to resolve it - and the group kept up and walking off, without making general announcements, so I gave up trying to figure out where they might be headed.

Instead, I randomly wandered into what turned out to be an interesting session: "Online Instruction: Teachers, Assessment, and The Writing Center." I missed part of the first presentation, the result of which led to my missing his key points, but the other two speakers had some interesting points. Nanelle Norcross of Western Illinois University spoke of the benefits of serving contemporary students in the online writing center, opining that the availability of online tutoring sources and resources allowed for students to develop and strenghten different skills. Furthermore, the availability of online tutoring, and well-trained tutors, reached another segment of students who might not otherwise have persused help. And Tim Jensen of Ohio State had used online surveys extensively in his composition courses, namely as a means to get his students more involved and have them take more ownership for their learning, thereby creating a more collaborative learning environment within his classes.