Letters in the Tree Nook

Paola Ursuline Book at Amazon.com

2011-03-14T22:12:00.004-05:00

Journeys of Ursuline is now a reality--all 252 pages of Paola Ursuline memories captured from scrapbooks, photo albums, newspaper clippings, and even the Miami County Historical Society's archives. The most special part, at least in my estimation, are the personal narratives--30 or so--written not only by alums but also by people in the community. This is a treasure, especially with the maps of the original land use and the early pictures of the buildings. I just hope that the word gets out to the alums, because they will want this final memory of a very special place.

I like the fact that it is available at Amazon.com because people clear across the country will be able to access it--if they know to do so. I've sent messages to as many as I can think of. Wish I knew how to handle Facebook more efficiently to get the word out that way. Oh well, we'll hope for the best.

Ursuline's Oriental Evening

2009-03-28T14:19:00.004-05:00

"Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea...." I not only can sing it, but every year around high school prom time the over-powering fragrance of Puff tissues fuses with that Peter, Paul, and Mary anthem from the '60s. I recall the Ursuline prom of 1963--my class's Junior prom and one that remains vivid in the mind of the class's day students.

Being a day student at a boarding school was a challenge. We sort of straddled three worlds--our school's, which very much was developed around the 24/7 resident culture; our homes', where we were expected to fulfill family obligations while also living up to the school's numerous after-class time commitments; and the world of our local peers. As children, my UA day student peers and I had developed friendships with lots of local kids through Scouting and other community activities. But now in high school it was difficult to retain friendships, especially with other girls who often regarded Ursuline, with its many attractive Latin American students, as competition for the local male population. In addition, some interpreted our choice to attend a private school as disdain for PHS and downright snobbishness. And it wasn't always easy within UA either. I remember the Monday morning my senior year when day students learned at 7:50 that we were having a College English mid-term over Beowulf and Chaucer at 8:00. The resident students had received the information over the weekend, but none of them chose to pass the word to a day student. That was OK, though: two of the top three grades were garnered by day students taking a mid-term as a pop quiz.

Day students in the Class of '64 were bright and creative and risk takers and incredibly persistent. Those traits, the fact that three of the five class officers were day students, and the happen-stance that our sponsor was way too busy to do her job helped the 1963 Ursuline prom become one of a kind. Early on, our sponsor, Sr. Barbara, confessed that she was just too busy to oversee our class projects and she knew we were mature and capable students and so, "Surprise me," she said. She actually said that, and we actually did.

Until 1963 Ursuline proms were always held in the Alumni Room (later called the Wicker Room) in the Convent itself. Just imagine trying to convince a guy to take you to a prom in a Convent. And then add to that a strongly held tradition that the nuns loved and the students and their dates loathed. Before the prom began, all gathered in a circle around the six foot tall statue of the Blessed Virgin (elevated even taller by a pedestal) in the rotunda of the Convent to say a prayer for purity. There were rumors that some of the local boys were going to boycott, and we definitely wanted something more sophisticated than the crepe paper affairs that had been the norm to this point. With no sponsor to ban the discussion, someone proposed the unthinkable: "Let's have the prom off campus."

I have no memory of who signed the contract for the armory (at the old location to the left of the main entrance to Wallace Park in Paola), but it had to have been a parent. What I do recall was all the construction we did in Moe Cole's garage. As a class we had decided on a theme--Oriental Evening--and we committed to constructing real prom decorations--none of that crepe paper stuff for us. We decided on two pagodas--one large enough for a band--and a bridge for an oriental garden. And then we had the challenge of covering lots of gun racks and recruiting posters. This last we left to our Latin American students who created beautiful wall hangings. For the big stuff, we moved into Moe's garage. Mrs. John Cole, the grandmother and guardian of our class member, Robbie Dugan, lived at 503 E. Miami at the time. Her free-standing garage abutted the alley and was within easy walking distance for day students, who ended up doing the brunt of the construction. And this is where Puff comes in.

Not having a tradition of proms with real, three-dimensional pieces, we didn't know about those tissue paper squares--Pomps is one brand name--that fill up chicken wire quickly. Instead, we thought we needed to make tissue--as in Kleenex--flowers. And we did--tens of thousands of them. As luck would have it, Puffs came on the market at that very time, and, in an effort to draw people from Kleenex, the manufacturer filled supermarket shelves with boxes for a dime. We bought out our town and the surrounding towns. (I can only imagine what Puffs marketing specialists thought when they got the feedback from Miami County, Kansas.) Soon Moe's garage smelled like a perfume factory, and we were, literally, up to our knees in tissue flowers. When the monumental size of the task became apparent to us, we recruited family, the entire student body of Ursuline, and the Ursuline Sisters, including Sr. Charles, the Mother Superior, to help us make flowers. Knitters stopped their knitting to make flowers; dads stopped their woodworking to make flowers. Even little brothers jumped in to help. To get the flowers attached to the roofs of the pagodas we needed lots of hands, so we started inviting boarders to our houses for weekends of work, pizza, and song, including the popular hootenanny hits, with "Puff" at the top of our list.

By the time prom rolled around everyone who was in on the flower making--most of the Catholic population of Paola by this time--knew of the prom plans--everyone except Sr. Barbara. When she finally did learn a week or so before the prom, "ballistic" doesn't begin to describe her reaction. "Sputtering" is closer. She was furious, livid, etc., etc. But we had a contract, plenty of parent sponsors, and hundreds of people with a hands-on commitment--thanks to the Puffs project--to see this prom through to a successful ending. After her flower-making sister Sisters talked her blood pressure back to normal, Sr. Barbara finally "consented," provided that we include the "Blessed Virgin" in the prom. The prayer for purity tradition had to remain.

We were aghast. This was going to be a prom with no guys. What were we going to do? That's when our creativity combined with our persistence to create just a wee bit of deception. One of us said, "That's fine, Sister. We'll have a statue in the oriental garden at the prom." And we did: one of our dad's six-inch high dashboard Mary's got plopped in the middle of a fern in our lovely garden that evening. As for the prayer--well, it seems that the Sisters driving Sr. Barbara to the prom were a little late getting started, so she never got to see whether we circled around the shine-in-the-dark Dashboard Madonna--or not.

2009-03-20T19:17:00.004-05:00

Look on the menu for other Ursuline topics.

Greetings from Mary Pat McQueeney!
As the Ursulines prepare to leave Paola, I am requesting your help with a bit of storytelling and social networking that will benefit the Miami County Historical Society’s Ursuline in Paola project.

Miami County Historical Society (MCHS) seeks to fill a gap in the Ursuline history—the interaction between the citizens of Miami County and Ursuline (both as place and people). They wish to collect narratives for a popular/cultural history that will perhaps lead to a book. We’re fortunate that Sr. Charles wrote an institutional history of Ursuline, and, while she includes the details of the initial commitment by Paolans, noticeably missing from that account is the story of the day-to-day and person-to-person impact of Ursuline on Paola and of Paola on Ursuline. Because I value the history of both Paola and Ursuline, I volunteered to assist with this project. And now I need your help. Will you tell your story? And will you pass copies of this letter and publication release on to three or more of your acquaintances who have their own story to share from the Paola perspective?

This initial mailing is going to over 20 people, so, even with duplicates and non-responses, we could have 50 or more substantial stories fairly quickly. And that is important because the project coordinators at the MCHS are beginning to realize just how complex the Paola-Ursuline interaction has been. I would like a strong response soon (say, by May 1) to demonstrate that there are numerous stories out there just waiting to be told. Paolan Roger Shipman volunteers to recover photos for their projects and they have numerous yearbooks to work with, so we can look forward to a nicely developed archive.

If you're like me, the problem isn't WHAT story, but WHICH story to tell. For some of us, Ursuline is a place; to others it is people or a spirit or values or memories. Perhaps you can narrow to "your story" if you imagine a historian coming to Paola, say, in 25 years to capture the history of the place or the people or the spirit that was Ursuline. This researcher can consult the Ursuline archives that will no doubt be lodged with some Kentucky historical society by that time. And he or she can read Sr. Charles's book. But what does Paola have to share? Where is the voice of those who lived in Paola while Ursuline was thriving?

Newspaper archives will provide some perspective, but what about the people's stories? Of the Master Garden project, the little stores, the tunnel, the bell, the "U," the walkers on campus, the food pantry, PACA, piano and art lessons, cultural opportunities, buildings, the senior center, Lakemary's founding, the capital campaign, UA and PHS relations, Camp Ursuline, the costume room, the plays? What of the students who became teachers as a result of the junior college Normal School program? And who will know the narrative of being a day student, escorting Latins to proms, being a neighbor to a convent, serving on organizations with the Sisters, doing business with the Sisters? And who will know the stories of grade school teachers who set so many on such strong paths with so little funding and even less training? And, no doubt, that historian will wonder about that cultural center standing there by itself, and Angela Drive, and Lakemary and adjacent property, and that strange little Miller Street.

I’m sure you can think of many more aspects of this relationship that would be worth capturing. We'll create the richest history if we each choose some aspect of the Paola-Ursuline story that we know well, and tell it as we remember it with some depth. We each have a piece of this puzzle that together would give a vibrant mosaic of Ursuline in Paola--from the Paola/Miami County viewpoint.

FAQs
How long should my story be? We welcome sentences and book chapters and anything in between.

What details should I include? Identify your relation(s) to Ursuline (former student, neighbor, etc.) and the approximately years of that relationship along with your narrative.

How should it be sent? Return your narrative, typed or hand written. Or--better--if you have email access, you'll speed up the process if you will send your document electronically.

What do I do if I have a story to tell but don’t want to write it? If you live in Miami County, you could make arrangements to give an oral history at MCHS. The phone is 913-294-4940.

When is the deadline? We don't have a firm one yet, but I'm asking for this part of the project to be completed by May 1, if possible. It will serve to jumpstart the rest of the project.

What is the release form? This is permission for the Miami County Historical Society to make your story available to researchers and to use your story if it publishes a book.

To whom should these materials be sent?
Email: drpatmcq@sunflower.com is the email I'm using for this project (Please include a release statement similar to the one included in this mailing.)In person: to the Miami County Historical Society

How do I share this mailing with others? I started this mailing from my Christmas card list. You might do the same. You might find it easiest to photocopy this letter with the release and mail it to friends who have a Miami County connection with Ursuline.

I thank you in advance for your participation in this project, and my apologies for not sending personalized letters.

Miami County-Ursuline Narrative Release

I, _________________________________________[please print], give to Miami County Historical Society (MCHS) my interview, narrative, or oral history regarding Ursuline and Miami County. In doing this, I understand that my interview, narrative, or oral history will be made available to researchers and may be quoted from, published or broadcast in any medium that the MCHS shall deem appropriate.
_____________________________
_____________________________
_____________________________[Donor’s signature and address]

Respect the Text

2008-11-11T20:39:00.001-06:00

Our local community college writing center just distributed its tutor-written journal of work developed as part of its tutor practicum. Two students, Evan Harmon and Scott Young, authored "Dialogue Strategies," a piece that argues for the value of students' owning their writing, even when they choose to ignore tutor suggestions. "Tutors need to understand their role as tutors that help with the writing process," Harmon and Young state, "and less with what is actually written. We must emphasize process, not product," they conclude (24). That thought has prompted an exchange among English faculty at our school about the legitimacy of the theoretical approach, and, by extension, of the instruction of the writing center director. Is it appropriate "to let a student leave a tutoring session" with a paper having substantial flaws in content, the faculty member initiating the discussion asked.

While the relationship between tutors and tutees as well as the ownership of student papers are issues worth discussing, to be sure, I am troubled that student attempts to enter the academic conversation are not being read as student papers. I think that if we, as English faculty, use our skills of textual analysis, we could put this tutoring tale in context and, in the process, give credit to a legitimate student effort.

To begin, we need to consider the rhetorical situation. Here, we have writers and a student editor who are freshmen or sophomore college students. This is a product of a student practicum--a student publication, in other words. The authors are writing for the general public, or at least the school public, as they attempt to enter into the academic conversation. We can recognize that effort by the complex concepts that they have some difficulty negotiating. For example, "When prioritizing the challenge of student assertion over the challenge of student receptivity, it becomes clear that the answer to the latter, far less important, challenge has already been indicated--to pursue the student's reception of what the tutor thinks is 'right' automatically discourages the far more important development of an already present student assertion" (23). They are working with theory here, without yet fully understanding that the best theory is clean, clear, and direct. Still, they are making an effort, and they wisely move to a concrete example.

They apply the theory by presenting what they refer to as "a real-world scenario" about Lisa, a student who wants a quick review of specific lower order concerns but is reluctant to address higher order problems with a persuasive draft paper (23). Here is where we need to remember that we are reading a student effort to apply theory to practice. Notice, for example, that we don't know whether the Lisa story is real or fiction. The authors didn't write "actual" or "real," so it is unclear whether this was a recounting of a real event. Given the use of pseudonyms elsewhere in the journal and the absence of one here, we might assume that this is real-like rather than reality. This distinction is important, I think, because of what is and is not included in the dialogue between Lisa and the tutor, and the conclusions drawn from what isn't stated.

The authors want to emphasize the interaction between the tutor and Lisa, and Lisa's assertiveness about her own writing. We learn that the tutor recognizes higher order concerns--the usefulness of counter-arguments in a persuasive paper--and appropriately attempts to tutor at that level initially. We learn that Lisa is not receptive to those suggestions, though, but we do not find out why not. We do learn, however, that she does assert her interest in addressing passive voice and commas--issues that the instructor had flagged as problematic in previous writing.

For all we learn about Lisa and the tutor's interaction, it seems even important to note that there is a lot that we don't learn. Perhaps this because the student authors are focusing on points that will develop their thesis. Or, perhaps this is because these student tutors are so immersed in their tutoring world that they assume their audience shares knowledge of their world. At any rate, we don't know, for example, whether Lisa has been at the writing center before, or whether the tutor is familiar with the standards Lisa's teacher sets. Has the tutor seen the assignment for the persuasive paper Lisa is drafting? Does Lisa's teacher typically emphasize discourse level excellence, or is the emphasis on sentence-level correctness? After all, we know that Lisa has received prior feedback that leads her to want input on punctuation and voice. Does she know that is all that will be required or her, or is she on a deadline? (She glances at a clock (24).) We also aren't reminded that tutors fill out a form at the end of each tutoring session. In this case, the report would apprise her instructor of the tutoring process and the choices Lisa made: that Lisa had the opportunity address discourse-level problems with the draft but that she had insisted on sticking with the lower-level concerns.

Please note that I'm not criticizing what's not in the text--it needn't be there. I am concerned, however, by the reasoning of colleagues who ascribe to a writing center director conclusions that her tutors reached. We are reading their paper, not hers. We shouldn't deny these student writers their authorship. This is an article in which two student authors work through issues of ownership of text, free will, and their relationship with writers and their drafts. In the process, they are able to console themselves that what may initially appear to be a failed tutoring effort can, in fact, succeed by giving students opportunities to make the right choices and the freedom to choose to do so--or not. I suggest that their text deserves as much respect as they gave to Lisa.

Work Cited

Harmon, Evan, and Scott Young. "Dialogue Strategies." In the Pockets of Yesterday's Pants: Theory, Practice, Theory. Overland Park, KS: Johnson Country Community College Writing Center, 2008. 23-25.

A Rhetorical Spin on the Prez Debate

2008-09-28T18:24:00.005-05:00

After last Friday's presidential debate the spinners seemed committed to avoiding substance for style. News services conflated Obama's remarks so that he was recorded as repeating time and again phrases similar to "I agree with Senator McCain that...." In an effort at equal distortion, John McCain was conflated to repeat time and again, "What Senator Obama doesn't understand is...." Of course, of the two the repetitions made McCain appear to be more authoritative.

While some of the commentators have noticed the differences in "style," none that I have heard have pointed out that the two were using different rhetorics.

McCain's a Classic

John McCain was adhering to classical rhetorical principles, which aims to "win" by refuting the opponents' points in order to convince the public of the superiority of the speaker's position. From time to time, however, he committed a classical fallacy, ad hominem (to the man). He chose to focus on the man, with his comments about Obama's lack of knowledge or understanding and, finally, on the statement that he thought Obama was unqualified to be president.

Obama's a Rogerian

Barack Obama was operating with a type of rhetoric that is less focused on winning, convincing and refuting than on achieving civility, consensus, and common ground. Here are the steps of a rogerian argument: cite the problem, state the others' position, acknowledge others, state own position, accommodate to achieve common ground while remaining true to ethics.

* * *

I'm not taking a position for one over the other, but I think it is important to understand what and why people were speaking the way they were. I leave it to others to decide what form of thinking and rhetoric they think we need.

Child of God

2008-08-01T11:22:00.011-05:00

All day yesterday, I was at a conference on using technology in education, and all day yesterday I was thinking about Sister de Lourdes. Sr. de Lourdes, who now goes by her given name of Sr. Rita Redmond, taught many of my friends from Paola, and she taught religion on Saturday afternoons to public-school rebels like me. I'm sure my thoughts strayed to her because I had just learned that she is very sick. But I also had her on my mind because just a year ago 30 or so of her former students surprised her with a reunion. It was what happened at that reunion that kept coming back to me as I sat hearing about how technology is the key to improving instruction.

Too bad more of us don't have Sister de Lourdes's secret--the secret that so many of her students appreciated--even 50 years after sitting in her classroom. Caring. That's all that it was. She cared for her students, and they cared for her. And they credited her with their success, and thanked her for the caring that many of them, especially the boys, had not experienced before.

Because I hadn't been a full-time student of hers, I positioned myself at the edge of the group for much of the reunion, contented with taking pictures and enjoying the exchanges with this lady I know to be so shy, quiet, and fragile. What struck me and stays with me was the number of men--very successful men--who were there to thank her. In fact, the day had been organized by one of the class trouble-makers, who was also one of her greatest admirers. The keynote speaker was another man who would have turned his remarks into a marathon of praise if time had permitted. What had this woman done to make such an impression on 10-year-old boys that 50 years later they wanted to say thank you?

A woman who had returned to Paola for the first time in 40 years just for this occasion gave the answer. Sophie reminded us all of Sister's special gift when she said, "I came back because you were the only person who understood how out of place I felt as a child of first-generation Americans." And then she added, "You always called me 'Child of God,' especially when I did something wrong." That phrase meant so much to her that she raised her children with the same words.

Child of God. What a blessing and what a responsibility. Person after person at the reunion refined the story as they related the personal consequences of being labeled Child of God. She would use it as a reinforcement: "My dear child of God." Or it could be her best effort to control her temper: "Oh, you Child of God." Whatever the tone, they all had received the same message: They were valued. God was with them, and so was she. With that support, they had great potential--and she expected them to use it.

They did. We can only guess at how much her heavy doses of self-esteem affected our lives, but clearly something had happened. For a town as small as Paola, that room was filled with a disproportionate number of the best and the brightest--financial experts, attorneys, medical professions--and average folks like me, too, who have made their own little contributions. She was the teacher that so many of these people regarded as the one who made the difference for them, the one who had set them on the right path as a student, and as a person. In this time when students are filled with so much artificial self-esteem that ends up being equated with a false sense of entitlement, I find it valuable to think about her efforts that came from the heart.

And I hope it wasn't lost on any of us that, in addition to her caring, is a tremendous humility. She really didn't know what to do when we showed her how much we valued her. She just sat on a chair in the middle of the room, looked around at all of us with her shy but mischievous grin, and then said very quietly, "I'm going home to my room, now, and think of each of you."

We're thinking of you now, Sister.

In Search of Truth

2008-07-22T14:11:00.004-05:00

I came to the study of the memoir and creative nonfiction more broadly as a result of my interest in genre theory and the way that the issue of genre played out in the James Frey/Oprah debacle. It seemed to me at the time that the deception or misunderstanding, or whatever it was, occurred as a result of different perceptions of truth. My reading about memoir indicates that, indeed, "truth" is a major conundrum for both writers and critics of that genre.

At one level, the fallibility of the writer tweaks truth. Truth is truth as I understand it at this moment. And the interpretation I make of that information is based on my thinking at this time. Tomorrow I may remember more, and that may affect my interpretation of the facts as I understand them.

This is truth as it is available to me. In addition, factors beyond my control may keep me from knowing all the facts--facts that might modify the truth. I appreciated Lynn Z. Bloom's comment that family mores restricted her pursuit of the truth: " I know that I cannot now or ever ask my parents about this Linda [her twin sister, deceased at birth] I have never met" (277). I have felt the same. Perhaps I should have pursued certain aspects of our family story before Mom died, but I would be violating family standards for privacy had I done so. And I would have made Mom think that I thought she was dying.

But what about what I do disclose? Do I use the names Mom recounted to me when I retell her stories, given that many involved cannot now give permission? As Bloom points out, some argue against pseudonyms, saying that the deception is a slippery slope that can move a text toward fiction. Others argue that the value of the narrative is worth the loss of detail. Am I willing to alienate the dead and some of the living in the interest of "truth" that probably wouldn't be damaged by a pseudonym or two (honestly disclosed as such, of course)?

What is the standard, then, for leaving out information? Silence and selectivity are rhetorical choices, Anne Ruggle Gere points out (see my "Silence" posting), but they can also be deceptive if employed unethically. If I characterize someone, must I include warts and all--even though the details may be of marginal relevance to the greater point?

What if my memory conflicts with others'? Must I defer to others? Acknowledge others? Or can my tale be my truth as I remember it? Bloom argues that creative nonfiction should not be compromised by either censorship or consensus (279). On the other hand, she acknowledges that ethical sensibilities may cause writers to compromise, in order to prevent betrayal of damaging secrets, for example. I noted that more than one author in the special issue in which Bloom's article appears wondered what their parents would think if they read what was being written about them.

That's another angle on truth. Does motive matter? Must the story have a purpose in order to be told, especially if the truth will have a potential negative impact on some. As a writer, I might say yes, because the writing is a value in itself. But would I feel the same way if others included me in their stories, knowing only the fragment of me that they encountered? In my memoir draft I write about our neighbors in the palliative care unit--a large family agonizing as their mother battled with the final stages of pancreatic cancer. What if the daughter from that family wrote about me--the woman who was often gone from the dying woman's bedside next door? She wouldn't know that I was juggling a full-time job, Medicare/Medicaid matters, funeral preparations, nursing home vultures trying to usurp my Mom's room, exhaustion, concerns for my family and my pet. She wouldn't know that I was taking breaks to walk with my pet in order to steel myself to keep calm with my mom who had been my house mate and best friend for 29 years.

When I'm tempted to share too much I need to remember what truths I don't know, and when I write, I need to recall the power of writing. It's never harmless, and it's never neutral.

Works Cited

Bloom, Lynn Z. "Living to Tell the Tale: The Complicated Ethics of Creative Nonfiction." College English 65.3 (2003): 276-289.

Gere, Anne Ruggles. "Revealing Silence: Rethinking Personal Writing." College Composition and Communication 53.2 (2001): 203-223.

Improving First Year Composition

2008-05-12T14:48:00.005-05:00

In addition to giving voice to the value of what we do in First Year Composition, Lee Ann Carroll, in Rehearsing New Roles: How College Students Develop as Writers, draws on the full longitudinal
study of students at Pepperdine to make recommendations to improve composition programs. I found several useful reminders and some new ideas. Do these ring true to you?

Think of student work as literacy tasks rather than merely assignments.
Focus on students' writing differently rather than better.
Audit the writing program to fill in gaps in literacy instruction.
Provide a variety of writing opportunities and set them up so that students have to negotiate complex tasks, including ones that will lead to failure.
Scaffold assignments.
Teach discipline-specific research and writing skills.
Design assignments that challenge all students, even if the final products are less than perfect.
Use grading so as to award improvement.
Schedule interim deadlines for longer projects.
Require classroom workshops and teacher conferences.
Determine whether "what the teacher wants" (students' perception of with writing is all about, in other words) is a match for what the discipline needs or should want.

I found the term "literacy tasks" very helpful, especially in light of Carroll's discussion that people would not be so quick to collapse writing down to competencies if they unpacked the number of literacy skills students have to have in order to complete a single paper for a discipline-specific course. She details how students' actual writing processes contrast to compositionists' understanding. What a good reality check!

If I really believe in the various components of the writing process, then I have to design courses so as to provide incentives to make students learn their value as well. At the same time, though, I really ought to be aware--and I should share that awareness with students--that there are many occasions where the process isn't appropriate in its traditional forms. Sometimes, there simply isn't the occasion for revision, for example.

Work Cited

Carroll, Lee Ann. Rehearsing New Roles: How College Students Develop as Writers. Carbondale: Southern Illinois P, 2002.

Is FYC worth it?

2008-05-12T14:20:00.005-05:00

As the semester ends, perhaps now is a good time to recall what First Year Composition (FYC) can do. Lee Ann Carroll recounts her observations of the value of the first year of college composition, especially in terms of students' other writing experiences over four years of college. While this qualitative study is from a school with a demographic very different from mine, it still is a good reminder that Comp I and II are not "contentless," as some like to argue. Nor should they be abolished, as others claim.

Carroll reminds us that FYC can provide a protective environment where students can cultivate their writing skills without the pressure of assimilating subject-area content. This environment gives students

opportunities to move beyond high school-based assumptions about writing--that five-paragraph writing is standard, for example, or that personal comments are sufficient

the challenge to move beyond the popular culture standards for reading and writing

new "basic skills"--reading and evaluating difficult texts that offer diverse points of view

practice in locating information, evaluating it, and making sense of it

the chance to work with new knowledge in terms of their personal experience--to meld the two
the opportunity to learn and use conventions of multiple genres of writing

skill at learning to write as an "expert" for multiple audiences

These rather sophisticated skills come in addition to the following that we might all recognize as similar to our course objectives:

finding a fitting organization

using paragraphing appropriately

incorporating transitions

crafting a controlling idea

writing effective introductions and conclusions

adapting a rhetorically appropriate style and editing according to conventions

This second list of six is pretty much to be expected from any FYC course, but I found the first list of seven a helpful guide as I think about my design for next fall's courses. Do these ring true to you?

Work Cited

Carroll, Lee Ann. Rehearsing New Roles: How College Students Develop as Writers. Carbondale: Southern Illinois P, 2002.

Silence

2008-04-24T19:09:00.002-05:00

As I was debating whether to post "Condolences" on this blog I happened upon "Revealing Silence: Rethinking Personal Writing " by Anne Ruggles Gere. My immediate interest in the topic dealt with a major problem associated with students disclosing personal information--their over-disclosure. Students sometimes seem to assume that more detail, no matter how personal, is more appealing to instructors. Gere's argument is that we should teach silence as a tool of discourse. Specifically, if we emphasize the difference among aesthetic, ethical, and political dimensions of silence (209), students will be better equipped to choose and use silence as they write.

This characterizing of silence makes sense. Students will be less likely to assume automatically that any and all detail is needed for personal writing to succeed if instructors make clear that they value it as a positive rather than as a null set and if they provide students with a heuristic by which to evaluate silence types. Silence creates a dichotomy with disclosure; as a result, the two together force choices, which automatically increases intellectual engagement--just what we want our students to develop. Once students realize that silence can potentially have as much if not more power than disclosure, they can recognize the value of judicious use of both.

Reading about silence as a rhetorical tool brought to mind that I've been told it sometimes takes courage to speak. I'm thinking, for example, of those individuals willing to buck the trend of the "don't be a snitch." And, less dramatically, I'm thinking of those young college students accustomed to the cool of quiet in high school who, nevertheless, make the leap and participate in class exchanges in college. I'm also thinking about two moments when what I considered "stating the obvious" was called courageous.

In the first case I merely posted an email to the interim president of our college as an alternative to attending an open forum he has holding in the wake of the sudden exodus of our school's president of 25 years. He had asked for suggestions, and I had a couple. First, I had been disturbed by the silence of school leaders in the days and months following the departure of the president. The lack of any sort of communication was deafening and debilitating. My suggestion was that the interim president, as a leadership specialist, was in a unique position to address these deficits. Second, I pointed out what I knew he already knew--that the school was misusing the Baldridge competition, making it into a "coronation," I believe my word was, rather than a process that would invigorate the school. Instead of abandoning the competition, though, I argued that the process was exactly what we needed at this point. An administrator to whom he copied the mail wrote that I was on target but one of the very few who had the courage to put such thoughts in writing. I was shocked to think that I was working in an environment where reasoned suggestions for institutional growth would require courage. I found myself wondering how many reasoned suggestions have been silenced through intimidation.

The second time I heard the word "courageous" was from a colleague who read my "Condolences" post on this blog. The very fact that he felt the need to use that word says something about the reality of an environment that should be about promoting a free exchange of communication. (Of course, he was one of only two faculty who understood the message, so so much for free exchange.) But I'll admit in this case that I wanted to use the post to violate the social more of silence. After all, people aren't supposed to complain about what they don't receive, especially if it's an expression of sympathy, right? That custom of silence was what people were relying on, no doubt. Had this been about me, I probably would have remained silent. This wasn't for me, however, and since Mom no longer had a voice I had to be her voice.

Communication by definition involves entangling alliances. Some--one would hope--pleasant; others, not so much, though still necessary at times. Ultimately, it all seems to come down to judgment--judgment about your purpose and your audience.Teaching students how to negotiate those alliances using the power of both silence and disclosure is important, it seems to me.

Work Cited

Gere, Anne Ruggles. "Revealing Silence: Rethinking Personal Writing. " College Composition and Communication 53.2 (2001): 203-223.

Communicating

2008-04-23T21:54:00.008-05:00

I learned Tuesday that the hell we went through with 911 in December had some value. Our local Fire and Medical did a quality management review and made some changes that will perhaps prevent some of the delay that led to Mom arriving at the hospital at 7:35 instead of 6:15, as she would with the new provisions in place. That's good, but it was still difficult to learn that the problem began with the nursing home and specifically with a nurse who apparently couldn't distinguish between symptom and diagnosis.

NOTE: Normally I blog mainly for myself, but I hope this entry gets passed on to healthcare and communication educators, who can perhaps help their students understand that language matters.

I last had a conversation with Mom the night of December 9, 2007. We said "goodnight" on the phone at 7:30 as she was getting ready for bed. Sometime before 5:45 that next morning Mom had a massive stroke. Mom is dead, and I'm fully aware that a timely arrival at the hospital would have not made a difference for her ultimate fate. Her stroke was hemorrhagic; the bomb in her head had already gone off, and the damage was irrevocable. But there was other damage done by the delay, and a healthcare professional with stronger communication skills could have made a difference.

When the nurse found her, Mom's face was sagging; her speech was slurred; she seemed paralyzed on one side; her tongue was swollen; and she had difficulty swallowing. Those were her symptoms. I know these because the RN listed them when she called me at 5:50 immediately after she called 911. Unfortunately, according to the documentation, that nurse hadn't shared those symptoms with 911. Instead she gave a diagnosis: "possible stroke."

Zeroing in on "possible" and the nurse's statement that Mom was still conscious, the dispatcher assigned the case to the lowest priority of transfer. A stroke victim would be transferred to the hospital as convenient.

How could a stroke victim be relegated into a non-emergency status? Because the nurse did not communicate the pertinent information. This is a woman who no doubt spoke with a professional voice but with an tone inappropriate for the urgency of the situation. I haven't had the emotional stamina to listen to the 911 tape; however, I know this nurse to be a caring young woman, but one who is very quiet and introverted. As a newly graduated RN, I can well imagine her being careful to sound objective and professional--to a fault. As an employee of that particular institution, where avoiding legal encounters is top priority, I can also imagine that she had been cautioned to qualify statements with words like "possible," since she had no legal right to give a diagnosis.

Combining her naturally quiet nature and the fact that she was nearing the end of a long shift, I doubt that she used a tone that conveyed urgency. At least she wasn't emotive the afternoon after Mom finally got to the hospital. When I returned to the facility to check Mom's room, she was back on duty. "How's 'Miss Millie'?" she asked with clear concern but also in a very matter of fact fashion. When I made an evasive comment about her not being well (I had been cautioned to not yet disclose her condition lest we lose her room), the nurse quietly commented, almost as an aside to herself, "Hmm, I was a little worried about her." That was all--no emotion.

To add to the unfortunate turn of events, at that time non-emergency transfers were emailed to a battalion chief for assignment to an available crew. For some reason, that transmission failed, and the 911 dispatcher did not confirm the communication. Consequently, no ambulance was dispatched until after a second 911 call. When the new shift nurse made the second call, the 911 dispatcher asked if there had been a change of status. Instead of taking the opportunity to state the symptoms or even reiterate the diagnosis, the new nurse simply said, "No, but her daughter is waiting for her at the ER." This nurse clearly didn't understand what would generate a response from 911.

In the meantime, I have no doubt that the nurses did with Mom as I've seen them do with others--deny them privacy and dignity by rolling them to the nurses' station with lights glaring and people passing while they waited for the ambulance to arrive. Mom so wanted to die quietly in her sleep that I am troubled by the fact that she was no doubt very embarrassed and scared and confused by this public exposure. And I fear that she felt abandoned waiting there alone. The nursing director later told me that, at that point, she could still say my name. But I wasn't there to answer; I was at the ER trying to learn the cause of the delay.

The failed transmission did what the nurses could not. Mom's case became "a hot one," and she was delivered to the hospital at 7:35. When she finally arrived at the hospital she could no longer say my name.

Diverse FirstYear Composition

2008-03-23T20:31:00.012-05:00

I began reading Jane Danielewicz's "Personal Genres, Public Voices" in the February 2008 College Composition and Communication in order to learn more about public voices, a concept that seemed relevant to my exploration of memoir writing for my sabbatical project. I thought that the notion of public voices might create an intersection between my developing interest in personal writing and my established interest in academic discourse. I was right.

In addition, the comments in the article about students "negotiating differences" (435), to use Patricia Bizzell's contact-zone terminology, made me realize that this essay could provide useful theoretical grounding for teaching diversity within composition theory. That potential is what I want to focus on here.

I think too often we look only at class readings to determine whether courses address diversity experiences. This is of particular interest to me now that my school has added a diversity requirement for graduation. Fortunately, our school's guidelines are broader than mere content. Here they are:

The course outline for classes submitted as Diversity courses will meet the following criteria:

Course exposes students to alternative perspectives, histories, experiences, and worldviews.

Course encourages students to evaluate their own perspectives, histories, experiences, and worldviews in the context of human diversity.

Course provides students with general tools to understand similarities and differences in the human experience and prepares students to apply these tools.

Course encourages students to experience a perspective that is different from their own. ("Cultural Diversity Guidelines")

Still, the only English course currently on the approved course list is the new English 215: U.S. Latino/a Literature ("Cultural Diversity Approved Courses"). English 215, of course, will be grounded solidly in theory as well as filled with rich content. But, according to Danielewicz, first-year composition courses based on personal genres that address public audiences can be crafted to meet diversity requirements as successfully as courses relying on literature to convey diversity.

The deep theoretical level of the diversity experience is what makes Danielewicz's approach exciting. Working with the students' own varied experiences and their emerging voices as public writers, this type of first-year course does exactly what the school's guidelines request. In this type of course the subject matter is the students' autobiographies. Instead of the "I was born at an early age" clichéd writing, though, students use process writing as well as rhetorical and genre theories to move their writing to a public voice ready for publication. Throughout, they must deal with the diversity of their audiences--from themselves, to peers, to public. As Danielewicz notes, they have to work through ways to "represent themselves and then must contend with how audiences respond" (436). In the process, she says, they develop a "mutual regard"--a willingness "to respect and support differences" instead of feeling threatened by sharing their thinking and writing with others (436).

This curricular approach, I argue, deals with diversity at its core. Besides promoting civil behavior in class as well as an understanding of personal and cultural differences, this approach to first-year composition emphasizes the rhetorical reality that the "I" is never alone. Danielewicz says that "in writing an 'I' story, we invariably focus on relations--to self, family, others, environment, context, world--and end up with a 'we' story" (437). Isn't that diversity?

In an apt application of the concept of the key elements of rhetorical theory, Danielewicz emphasizes that the "story [the rhetorical message] of the self [writer] cannot be told [audience] outside of a cultural context [rhetorical situation]" (437, brackets mine). Instead, the student writers "gain a sense of themselves only when they stand in relation to others, and judge their experiences against those belonging to other social groups or identities" (440). For students who engage in this type of curriculum, the pay-off is social and cultural and personal capital.

When students use their own stories to move "from private to public voices"(441), they not only learn differences and develop their public communication, but they learn to think about public issues that emerge from their personal stories and those of others. The course, then, is driven by the personal but is not confined to it. Danielewicz emphasizes that these student writers write "with authority, knowledge, conviction, and self-consciousness about issues that concern us all" (443). Isn't this what we seek to accomplish in freshman composition?

When students can realize this major composition outcome while "figuring out how to know each other" (442), such a first-year composition as Jane Danielewicz describes would seem to provide effective diversity training.

Works Cited

"Cultural Diversity Approved Courses." Johnson County Community College 22 Mar 2008 http://www.jccc.net/home/depts.php/4601/site/Instruction_committees/EAC/CDApprovedCourses.

"Cultural Diversity Guidelines." Johnson County Community College 22 Mar 2008 http://www.jccc.net/home/handbook/faculty.php/coursedevelopment/EAC/CDGuidelines.

Danielewicz, Jane. "Personal Genres, Public Voices." College Composition
and Communication 59.3 (2008): 420-450.

Condolences

2008-02-19T11:33:00.003-06:00

I went to a funeral in my former hometown Saturday. Our local fix-it man, Mr. Courtney--he was always "Mr. Courtney," never John--was buried with full firefighter's honors. A 31-year veteran of the Paola, Kansas Volunteer Fire Department, who rose to the rank of Assistant Chief, he hadn't died in the line of duty, but with his contributions to the department and his son and grandson both current volunteers it seemed "the least we could do," the Chief commented to me. Perhaps it is a testament to training, good luck, and small town cohesiveness that this is the first time this department had ever performed this ritual, and they "did him proud."

The fire fighters came as a group to the funeral in their new dress uniforms. Later, a fire truck led the procession to the cemetery, with the Chief in his department SUV taking up the rear. Along the route, cars pulled to the side of the road out of respect, police stationed on the historic downtown square saluted, and the firefighters stood at attention in an honor guard as the procession approached the burial site. At the grave, the department executed the Last Roll Call, with the plaintive wail of the high-pitched whistle and the chilling voice of the dispatcher calling Chief Courtney's name for the final time. I had to think that Mr. Courtney's spirit was chuckling in his Kansas twang, "Well I'll be...they got that radio to work."

The sheer effort of these volunteers to create a fitting tribute was emotional, for I knew what association with this group had meant to this otherwise private man. And having just buried my mom in this small town fifty days before, I understood how much having the support of a group can mean to a grieving family.

I had seen how the group support of his employees helped my brother John at the time of Mom's funeral at the end of December. Working among themselves, they cooperated to continue coverage for the business while bringing a delegation of some 20 current and former employees to Paola for the funeral. Some of these returning employees hadn't been associated with the business for 20 years, and few knew my mother except from visits with her at the company's annual Christmas dinner. Nevertheless, they and their spouses were there, giving their collective respect to Mom and support to my brother.

I hadn't expected that sort of support since Mom's funeral occurred during the semester break at the community college where I teach English. Because the timing was awkward for flowers, our program's typical group response to such things, I added a school scholarship to the suggested memorials to make a group response simple. My thinking was that a group collection could garner a nice gift for a cause whose value we all recognized. Moreover, memorials don't have the time limitation on them that flowers do. Most importantly, rather than a token gift for me, it would be about Mom for student benefit--a good fit, I thought. The scholarship did receive a boost--from Mom's acquaintances. From my program, only my dean and one colleague contributed. While my family certainly appreciated those individual contributions, as a group, the faculty did nothing.

I feel badly about that--for the inequity involved and the awkwardness of the situation. After spending six months of daily advocacy on her behalf, I don't apologize for being a bit defensive about Mom getting her due, though I must say that I never imagined that I would have to advocate on her behalf to my own faculty. As a matter of equity, however, I argue that my parent deserved the recognition comparable to those extended on behalf to two other parents--a mother and a mother in law--who died within a week of Mom's funeral. Because of group dynamics, group condolences need to be consistent; deviations discriminate--positively or negatively--but discriminate they do. And discrimination does damage, sometimes to the individual, but surely always to the group.

On her behalf, I am frustrated that my parent was not recognized by my colleagues, and I am irritated that I have been put in an awkward social situation. Advocacy for Mom reinforced the value of thanking people for their good efforts, especially when doing so on her behalf. But in this situation I was left without any communication of what, if anything, had been done on her behalf by my colleagues. Were people expecting a thank-you note? For what?

For nothing, it turns out. Because my dean had not monitored his email and, thus, missed the funeral, he chose to leave any acknowledgement up to the faculty members as individuals. (Apparently he notified faculty of this decision by email; I did not receive that message.) The effect of this decision was to silence the collective voice, I think. Eliminating a group response troubled me, and it should not have seemed right to others in the faculty either. Our relationship is professional, not personal. It is group-based and organizationally motivated, in other words, not driven by individual alliances.

My point is that the nature of the remembrance needs to fit the relationship and the situation, and I also suggest that it is best when it emerges organically--from within the group itself. If the dean missed or overlooked or ignored the value of a group condolence, why didn't faculty members step forward to initiate their own collective effort, as my brother's employees had? Why not at least a card that the group signed? One of the most touching and re-assuring remembrances my family received came from the Palliative Care staff at Lawrence [Kansas] Memorial Hospital on Mom's 97th birthday--two days before she died. The entire staff turned a placemat with a big, bright birthday cake painted on it into a card, which they each autographed and posted on the wall by her bed. It was merely a make-shift card at one level, but the message was clear: "We're here for you." Isn't that really the message of a group condolence?

To me, because the power of the group is so significant, its absence is profound. I certainly feel that absence, but it also occurs to me that such activities are as important for the group's growth and development as for the individual's healing. I think that the firefighters and my brother's employees understand that. I wish my faculty colleagues had.

I'm Back

2008-01-01T21:07:00.001-06:00

It has been over a year, but I'm back. I must say that this past year has been challenging, with this past month especially so. I gained a sabbatical, which begins now, and which will include this blog as a key component. But when I applied for the sabbatical, I was fairly confident that Mom would still be lucid and able to help me interpret the several logs she kept over the years. My hope is to use them as part of a memoir project. That was not to be, however.

The last week of June, Mom became very weak, ended up in the hospital and then had to go to a nursing home. Up until Thanksgiving, she was still lucid most of the time, but after that she seemed to grow very confused from time to time. Specifically, she seemed to be obsessed about our living room--after I had suggested that she might want to come home for Christmas. We had a lovely afternoon Dec. 8, enjoying a Christmas party at the nursing home, and we talked three times the next day--the last at 7:15 p.m. as she was getting ready to go to bed. Sometime between then and 5:45 a.m. Monday she had a massive stroke and died ten days later (Dec. 20). We just buried her Dec. 27.

Irony of ironies. She can't help me any more with her logs, but one of her friends just sent me a packet of letters Mom had sent her over the last 30 years. I went through some, but had to stop when I read her describing her thoughts about Dad's illnesses back in the 1970's. It's just too soon. In fact, I'm wondering how hard this memoir project is going to be because right now I'm feeling pretty raw.

Turnitin Letter Draft

2006-12-13T20:52:00.001-06:00

Here's a draft of a letter that I'm proposing English send to the powers that be on campus in order to get them to protect the students' intellectual property from Turnitin abuse.

Our students’ intellectual property is in jeopardy, and we must protect those rights. As faculty, we are committed to helping students develop a sense of authorship and ownership of their thinking and writing. It should be no surprise, then, that we feel compelled to express our distress at the recent decision to purchase Turnitin plagiarism detection service.

Of the detection systems, Turnitin is especially egregious in that it exploits students’ original work, using it for its own profit without acknowledgement or compensation to the authors. That, as some of our students have noted, is the definition of plagiarism. Many JCCC students do not yet have the confidence to claim their intellectual property, and, certainly, they do not comprehend how misuse of their property now may have substantial ramifications for them in the future.For this reason, we instructors would be remiss if we did not speak on their behalf. Turnitin operates under the assumption that teachers, rather than students, have rights to student original work.

That premise runs counter to everything we know about both pedagogy and writing. Especially serious is the prospect that, without restriction, some faculty would archive documents created by former students no longer under the jurisdiction of JCCC. As an institution, we protect the privacy of students’ personal information, including their grades. Shouldn’t we, then, protect their rights to their thinking, as raw and tentative as it may be?

Some argue that this use of their documents is a legitimate part of the educational process. To the contrary, the educational process should be between the teacher and student, not between teacher and corporation, a corporation that uses student work for profit and to data-mine for “unoriginal” writing.Schools that choose to use Turnitin while respecting students’ rights to their intellectual property insist that Turnitin eliminate archiving of their students’ papers.We believe that JCCC should be a school that protects its students’ work by refusing to have their work archived.

Related to the issue of protecting students’ intellectual property, we are concerned at the apparent lack of infrastructure related to Turnitin. What will be the opt-out policy for students who object to having their work submitted to Turnitin? What sort of disclaimer will inform students of the use of the service and their rights related to it? What will be the process for dispute resolution for both faculty and students when disputes arise in interpretation of the reports? What agency will assist faculty in interpreting and responding to the raw data? Turnitin, on its web site, claims that only 30 % of students plagiarize, and that amount may well be even smaller because inadvertent error is not distinguished from intentional plagiarism.

To our knowledge, JCCC has no universal reporting procedure for incidences of plagiarism. Do we have a benchmark, then, against which to measure the success of this service? Even without one, it would seem important to collect data to measure cost effectiveness. What agency will collect that data?

We’re sure that ATAC [committee] considers this purchase as a technological service to the school. Turnitin, however, is not primarily a technological matter; it is a technology that affects instruction and learning. Its nature creates ethical, educational, and procedural ramifications for both teachers and students. Consequently, it is unfortunate that there was not broad faculty involvement in the decision making process, especially in impact and implementation. In the absence of that discussion, we appeal to you to act to protect our students’ rights to their intellectual property.

End of Semester

2006-12-13T20:43:00.001-06:00

Blogging is a pleasant way to avoid reading papers, though, I have to admit that the ones I have read so far are very enjoyable. The on-campus students wrote a rogerian-style paper on their choice of topic. Several actually pulled off the structure with flair. The online students wrote a researched essay about online learning. Those are always great because they really have a lot to say.

What astounded me this time, though, is that two on-campus students didn't submit their final papers. One likes to push the limit, I know, but the other one is a top-flight student who is risking the entire course. I'm always amazed. It's sort of like their intellectual batteries peter out. So many of these students don't have that second effort to see a challenge on to the end. Too bad.

Turnitin Redux

2006-11-24T22:13:00.001-06:00

Last week, completely by accident, I discovered that a small tech committee at the school has put out bid requests for a plagiarism detection system. In an earlier comment, one member of the committee said something to the effect, "We have the money, so let's go ahead and spend it."

The English program has done its best to make clear that there are ever so many problems with adopting this software. Most of those are included in my earlier posting from a conference in August. The essence is that Turnitin exploits students by using their papers for its profit, and we, by adopting the software, demean students by assuming that they cheat. Moreover, we don't have an infrastructure in place to provide a procedure for appeal, nor do we have an agency to provide reliable training for instructors.

I figure that it's hopeless to fight the adoption of the software, because when we have money we spend it. I thought, though, that we could at least avoid exploiting students by demanding that Turnitin not archive students' papers. When I asked the committee chair to prevent archiving, I got more than I could have hoped for.

One of the committee members actually stated that he wanted the software because he had used the same assignment for 20 years and had lots of papers floating around out there. So he said he needs to have the student papers archived. Apparently he wants to archive all 20 years. Hmm, that sounds like a lawsuit in the making. Can you really archive papers from students who are no longer students???

He said there was no other way to design that assignment. Big error: When I was doing WAC, I designed four dynamite versions of that assignment for another school, and I did not hesitate to tell this individual so. I'm sure I made no friends with my reply to the post, but I felt that I had to ask him if he really was using his own lack of assignment design as a legitimate excuse to spend thousands of dollars on software that would demean and exploit students.

Daisy Ads and Other Research

2006-11-18T00:10:00.001-06:00

I have been really impressed by the way the on-campus students have delved into research above and beyond the call of the assignment (develop an argumentative synthesis paper about one of the political ads) in order to flesh out their papers.

K, especially, has done some solid research on the Daisy Ads. It turns at that there have been more than the 1964 original and the current The Stakes ad. She has moved from web search to library databases, finding more and more to develop her paper about the attempt to use scare tactics in political ads. I can't wait to read her paper.

I think this is a pretty good way to go with research for this level of students. Start with google or yahoo and then move from there. Or better yet, let them decide to move from there. The trick is to figure out a way to get the online students to be willing to do the same. There's so much to be said for that f2f interaction to create the incentive to try just one thing more. K, for example, couldn't find a source, which L across the room found for her. Now, to figure out how to make that work easily online.

Literate Machines?

2006-08-09T20:19:00.001-05:00

Literate Machines? Plagiarism Detection Software

Presented August 3, 2006 (Repeated August 4) at the SIDLIT Conference

KU Edwards Campus, Overland Park, KS

Perhaps one of the most well-known technologies that some use to interact with language is plagiarism detection software. I want to look at the benefits of this software for literacy, its limitations, and the pedagogical and ethical issues that this literacy raises.

BENEFITS

We're all familiar with names such as Turnitin.com, MyDropbox.com, and Eve. Renoir Gather of the University of Michigan is one of several folks who has created a bibliography of these services. Gather's Resources for Instructors: Plagiarism Detection Services includes several types of these "literate machines." The page was last updated in 2004, so the prices may not be current, but the page is still instructional for the information about the range of approaches that these services use.

Individual instructors and institutions can benefit from the publicity attached to these commercial products. I think of this as the "ADT" sign syndrome. The sign itself will deter some thieves. In fact, a statement of use of a high profile tool such as Turnitin will deter not only student academic thieves, but critical patrons. Claiming use of a plagiarism detection service is a sort of inoculation in itself.

A second benefit of these commercial services is that they tap into multiple databases. Turnitin, for example, states that its databases consist of three sources: 4.5 billion entries from the Internet, extensive sources from Proquest, and 10 million student papers that had previously been submitted to Turnitin.

A third, and the most compelling one to me, is that this attention to source-use in writing can help students learn to incorporate sources reliably. Nick Carbone, a writing consultant at Bedford/St.Martin's and a vocal opponent of Turnitin's use of student documents, concedes that he thinks this use of plagiarism detection software is a good one: "The strategy of using [plagiarism detection software] as a tool [my emphasis] to make sources visible is a good one...." His reasoning gets to the nexus between this technology and student literacy: "Sometimes students do...lose track of what words are theirs..., especially when they are moving beyond [patchwriting], and they try to find their own voice, and thus use more summary and paraphrasing" (16 May 2006 posting). "Patchwriting," by the way, is a term that is usually credited to Rebecca Moore Howard. This is writing that, while not quoted precisely, is too close to the origin because, instead of re-wording, novice writers merely delete some words, alter a few structures of sentences, and perhaps substitute words on a piecemeal basis rather than working to understand and re-state the concept. Students in the process of learning how to incorporate external sources often have difficulty managing all the tasks surrounding that activity. Carbone is suggesting that the visual aid that some of these service offer, especially when instructors and writing-center tutors use these screens as teaching opportunities, can help students think about the process of incorporating these sources into their own writing.

LIMITATIONS

While these strengths of plagiarism detection services are valuable, these services also have limitations. Often these are more a factor of the users of these services than of the services themselves.

For example, these services provide reports, not evaluations. Unfortunately, the ill-informed and/or the lackadaisical may interpret raw data as a death sentence.

What is in the report is limited to what is in the databases. Those who rely of these services as their sole detection device may get a false negative. Moreover, many other aspects of student writing aren't distinguishable as original or, to use Turnitin's euphemism, "unoriginal." For example, machines can't distinguish re-use of a writer's own language. For example, I've talked about plagiarism before, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of my phrases from materials that are on the web are very similar to topics and patterns that I'm using here. And speaking of patterns, students learning to write in some disciplines need to follow a standard template for some types of papers. I'm thinking of scientific reports or reviews of literature, for example. I would be concerned that this technology would flag papers that are successfully following conventions. And, of course, these services cannot identify intention--why plagiarism occurred. Plagiarism as a result of deception or laziness seems to be far different from that caused by a serious effort confounded by lack of savvy at managing a documentation system. Neither can these services identify what some call "social plagiarism"--"unoriginal" documents generated originally by Mommies, or friends, or siblings.

And, finally, these services cannot identify original documents written by commercial services. One of these services is ProfEssays.com. As Prof Essay proudly proclaims on its gateway page, "Plagiarism, copy/paste or paraphrasing is not tolerated at ProfEssays·com in any form....Each completed custom essay automatically goes through the anti-plagiarism software. After passing this first security level, the essay goes to the Expert Service Department to be manually checked for plagiarism by our Expert Team. As a result of such scrutiny, all custom essays you receive from ProfEssay.com are 100% authentic."

Authentic. In other words, the plagiarizers are using the detection software to establish their credibility. That behavior reminds us that these services are limited to detection. As Kelly Ritter, Associate Professor of English as Southern Connecticut State University commented, "Isn't this how we commonly talk about plagiarism--as a detection game, aided by software and other trickery--and nothing more?” In the July 28, 2006 posting on WPA-L, Ritter continues, "…[I]f we keep relying on these secondary mechanisms to do after-the-fact work, we should expect that sites like the paper mills will use those mechanisms against us.”

ANALOGY

The situation with plagiarism detection systems, then, is somewhat analogous to our use of antibiotics. I think of the two in relation to each other because both have the potential to do good, when in expert hands. But in the wrong--or corrupt, or impatient, or ill-informed--hands, the damage done can be greater than the good. We all know of the damage that has been done to public health by over-prescription, or under-use, or mis-use. What are comparable challenges to literacy prompted by these detection services?

MAJOR ISSUES

I'm concerned about pedagogical issues and even more so about ethical matters that affect students.

My pedagogical concerns relate to both faculty and students. I'm concerned that exasperated and ill-informed faculty will use the reports as evaluations and take action without informing themselves of the limitations of such programs. I'm also concerned that faculty will have a false sense of security from such services, opening the door for wealthy students to purchase original papers at a premium.

I am troubled that these services send the wrong messages to students. In fact, I've seen this happen. A high school student proudly commented that at his school all papers went through Turnitin, so "you just cannot cheat." In other words, he was relying on the technology instead of learning the process himself. At JCCC, an outstanding writer and extremely intelligent student submitted a major research paper without a single quotation. She said that she had been challenged before when she used quoted material, so she "didn't want to take the risk anymore." Two students commented this last semester that they would like to have drawn in more quoted material, but they knew they "shouldn't have more than 10% quoted material." In fact, for their critiques of a piece of literature, they could easily have had much more. I was baffled at how they arrived at the arbitrary 10% number until I heard a high school instructor who was presenting a session on his use of Turnitin in all his classes. He zeroed in on percentages, giving that arbitrary 10% as the maximum acceptable. And most seriously, I'm concerned that the fear of detection will discourage students from testing their skills, taking risks, and learning.

Of even greater concern are ethical issues. I am bothered that detection services assume guilt, and I am even more troubled that that does not seem to bother students. Equally troubling is the fact that Turnitin, and perhaps other services, usurp the copyright of student papers. I'm not sure what the current situation is, but when I contacted Turnitin two years ago, I was told that teachers--not students--could opt out. That is contrary to standards in my field, at least, regarding ethical treatment of students and their texts as stated in the College Composition and Communication Conference Guidelines for the Ethical Treatment of Students and Student Writing in Composition Studies. And I am doubly troubled in this situation when I realize that those papers are being used to enhance at least one service's capital. As one of my student's said after studying Turnitin for a research project, "How different is what they are doing from what they are accusing us of doing? Aren't they taking our papers without permission and using them for their gain?" And aren't we, as instructors and administrators being complicit if we don't harness these machines to facilitate instruction?

WHAT TO DO

What can we do then?

First, we can develop institution wide responses to issues surrounding academic integrity. Notice that I'm choosing to address the positive--academic integrity. And when I call for this, I am not encouraging rigid, blanket "no-tolerance" policies to violations. Rather, there needs to be evidence of institutional commitment and support with departmental autonomy respected. Institutions need to establish principles; departments establish policies; and teachers execute practices. That way, the various discipline-specific issues surrounding instruction, and writing genres can be addressed by the experts from the field of study. One of those considerations is curricular: Have students had the prerequisite learning to write researched papers in classes in a particular department?
Second, if a school adopts institution-wide use of a detection service, is there appropriate notification to students of this practice, and do they have a respected, viable alternative if they elect not to participate?
And all throughout the process, cost effectiveness needs to be a consideration. Given that the Turnitin web site indicates that current plagiarism rates are 30-40%, is the money spent going to yield appropriate benefits, or could the money be spent for instruction and support rather than detection and punishment?

Those are a few institutional considerations, but the instruction staff also need support.

Have instructors learned to incorporate writing into their coursework, and to assess student attempts at academic writing? Are they aware of the prerequisite skills required for the writing assignments they give? Do courses list the necessary prerequisites? Have instructors been given time and opportunity to learn to use the plagiarism detection software?
Has the writing-center specialists been made an integral part of the use of this software? Have they been allowed to use it for instruction?

Above all we can keep our focus on instruction and recognize plagiarism detection services for what they should be--a tool like a spell checker or a grammar checker that requires interpretation and that is but a small component of the writing efforts.

Writing in a Community College

2006-06-18T12:38:00.001-05:00

This is a passage that I wrote in response to a comment on the JCCC faculty association list that we should perhaps focus more on a business model at the school than on a "'pure' academic model."

It seems to me that the strength of a community college is that it has the potential to serve the needs of the community and, I would argue more importantly, stimulate its growth and development--intellectually as well as financially. Clearly, in addition to workplace readiness, a major perceived need of this community is to provide a jump start or re-start or re-configuration of transfer credit courses. That, in no way, diminishes the complementary mission of work readiness, business preparedness--whatever. But they are not the same.

I think a community college is unique in that it can offer a "'pure' academic model" and a workplace model side by side. The purposes and stakeholders are different. I suggest that we already do this to the extent that we offer particular science classes, let's say, for professional programs or targeted writing practice for certain certificate programs. It's not such a challenge to co-exist and to intermingle--universities do it day in and day out. The challenge, here, is for faculty and administrationto put students--instead of Banner--first.

The fact that I felt a need to explain the viability of co-existence of two complementary purposes reminded me that our faculty tends not to think in terms of the various functions of writing. They, I believe, perceive Comp I and II as do-all courses, when, in fact, we see these as prep for academic writing. I thought it especially interesting that on the trial version of their -- not my -- skills levels, the wording was such that almost all faculty saw Comp I as a prereq for their subject-area and certification classes when those of us in English teach Comp II specifically for that purpose.

We could, of course, design our courses to consolidate our divergent purposes, but that would mean that we had to start with an understanding of our purposes--and that simply won't occur. The arbitrary changes on the skills level statements that English had proposed is clear indication of that. What was approved looked like something out of the 1950's, and when I complained, I obviously hit a nerve, given the "energy" of the responses. The bottom line to me is that everyone thinks he/she understands English, but that we don't.

Writers Need to Knit

2006-06-14T19:04:00.001-05:00

My ventures with knitting have been invaluable in teaching me to slow down and follow directions methodically. Skipping ahead when knitting turns a sweater into a purse!

Observing my online students skip over and skip over and skip over very direct step-by-step instructions (as indicated by the 50% who do complete them accurately) makes me think that all students need to knit a potholder before being accepted into class.

Unfortunately, many students come into class assuming that they know the drill. "How many tests?" they ask. "Where are the paper assignments?" they want to know. They want the answers from me, so they can hold me accountable, I think, rather than taking the time to acquire the information for themselves. Or, perhaps it's that they want to put 30 minutes into a task that can't be accomplished in less than 90. Or, it may be that they think all writing classes are the same, so, having had one, they know all that needs to be known.

That's where knitting comes in, I think. I can know the basics--knit and purl and cast on and off--but each pattern is different. And some more complex than others. Neither are all the codes identical from one designer to the next, I've learned. But I've also learned that, if I want to end up with the garment I've set my heart on, I can't get it all at once. I have to give myself time to make it right.

Now why do we understand that with something like knitting or quilting, but not with writing?

Summer Term Week 1

2006-06-09T15:18:00.001-05:00

We're now a week into summer classes--a double section (50) of online Comp II for me. I'm amazed at what a little civil ranting can do: more students than ever actually completed some type of orientation before starting the course. Of course, I could be badly over-praising myself; it may have been that students heard the horrors of WebCT 6 last semester. Whatever it was, the training is making a difference, and, interestingly, we seem to be having very few JAVA problems. That sort of indicates to me that IT really didn't understand the issues until they hit us in the face last January. At any rate, everyone seems to be able to see what they need to see and write where they need to write. Novel--

Of course, there are those who haven't done anything yet, but they are in a true minority. Most of the students seem to be fluent with their informal discussion board posting, though I'm noticing that some are much briefer in posts than typical during the school year. I'll make a point of getting anal about that with this next module where I'm expecting them to work with solid arguments.

Summer is always a good time for testing tools and teaching strategies. I'll try some group work, just to detect its bumps. I think that the group-manager tool will make this sort of thing fairly feasible this time around--better than earlier versions of WebCT. This first content module has them doing some simple research together. We'll see how many conflicts result. I think about how I would feel working with others I've never seen and, up until last summer, I wouldn't have liked it. But I really felt that I came to know some of the people in the Webcetera course--people whom I would be willing to do research with.

What Was He Thinking?

2006-06-06T20:56:00.001-05:00

I just passed on to my dean a request from a student last semester--which I had rejected.

The student had missed two quizzes in the online course because he was out of the country during his university's break, which differed from ours. He had wanted me to make an exception for him; I had refused, explaining that the generous extra credit option was an alternative that would more than compensate for work that expired during his absence. Then, at the end of the semester he skipped several tasks that would have moved him up a grade; instead, he asked that I just GIVE him the points from those quizzes.

What was he thinking? Obviously, he was not thinking of us as his school. Problem 1. Secondly, he was not thinking of the quizzes as any sort of preparation for the major paper they were attached to. Despite the explanations in the syllabus, he was not thinking of the writing process in any way shape or form. As far as he was concerned, class was all about collecting enough points to "get his grade." The irony is that he HAD a passing grade that would transfer to his home university, and a higher one wouldn't have transferred into a higher gpa anyway.

This sort of situation brings home the difficulty of online instruction. I would almost like to include a wildcard that allows me to judge whether or not students comprehend the discourse-level aspects of a course. Of course, in this case, I think the student did, but he elected not to engage himself more than absolutely necessary. I wonder how much of his behavior was based on the assumption that we would be easy because, after all, we are "just a juco."

New Start on Blog

2006-06-06T15:36:00.000-05:00

I've been delinquent posting to "Letters," so I decided to shift it to a blog dedicated specifically to writing-related topics. That way I can link to WebCT and Writing Matters!, my web site, for my students. The chances are these postings will remain "letters in the tree nook," but maybe not always.

I deleted several of my earlier personal posts, but kept some of my musings that relate to writing in one way, shape, or form. From this date on, I'll keep the focus on writing and/or rhetorical matters and perhaps topics that would be relevant to writing classes.

End of Composition Studies

2005-05-06T15:09:00.001-05:00

I just finished reading Dave Smit's book, The End of Composition Studies, which plays on "end" to mean both goal and termination. I don't totally agree with him--I think he expected too much of composition--but his argument that it can't do what it is intended to do is provocative to say the least.

His proposal for change is fascinating in that he calls for the sorts of programs that we tried to start at KU. Interestingly, he avoids dealing with the faculty development component as well as with the student support components (writing centers, for example). But he does point out the obvious--writing only works well when a lot of people set high expectations and are willing to bring students in to their communities. The randomness of instruction is what creates the problems with transfer, I think; not so much that students can't, as they don't see any need to when faculty don't share high levels of expectation.

New SAT

2005-03-07T18:39:00.000-06:00

I read about the SAT writing component today. I was struck by how contrary it is to we know will yield "good" writing. The exam is to be written in pencil in 25 minutes. Hah! High school students no longer learn penmanship that gives them the flowing hand to allow a substantial sample in 25 minutes. They are taught to draw letters instead of sweep through them the way we learned with Palmer penmanship. And they are writing with a pencil--with an eraser--which just encourages students to lock up as they write. It's sad and ugly and stressful and not very smart frankly.

I can see that our students have been badly affected by the prep to write for the state essays. They can write at great length about nothing with utter correctness and mindlessness. Now, we'll have them spending time learning cursive writing all over again when they should be focusing on critical thinking.

On a side note, the whole penmanship "thing" reminded me of a not-so-smart elementary teacher I overhead in the supermarket a couple years ago. She was telling a friend that she no longer teaches cursive writing because students "will never use it." I thought, "So, how will they do historical research if they can't read the letters," but I kept my mouth shut. Now, her students would be at a real disadvantage--although the ones who ended up with her probably wouldn't be able to make it through the SAT's anyway.

Student-Centered Writing

2005-03-05T19:52:00.000-06:00

We have a discussion ongoing on our program listserv, about student-centered writing. From that came a discussion of the I-Search paper, late of Ken Macrorie. While I agree that this type of paper has a lot of potential, a quick search of the Internet shows that it is being used in grade schools. It seems to me that if students are likely to have that experience early on in their education, maybe--just maybe--we could raise the bar a bit.

As I thought more about the postings, it seems to me that we have to take into account the natural writing students do today, and how different that is from what they were doing back at the time Macrorie conceived this approach to research writing. Students have more than a few opportunities to practice student-centered writing--in IM chats, emails, and blogs. In fact, I think that well-researched blogging is sort of the contemporary equivalent of the I-Search.

At any rate, I sense the usual defensiveness--attempting to elevate by denigrating other approaches to writing. It's so counter-productive because the various approaches can complement each other.

Delayed Composition II

2005-03-02T20:01:00.001-06:00

I've been reading several posts on WPA-L about the trend at some schools to delay the second composition course until the sophomore or junior year. Philosophically, I like the idea at the sophomore level, because that would almost insure that writing would occur each year (assuming that students are expected to write in their major).

Practically, I need to think about that trend in terms of WTC, and I think we ought to pay attention at school. Clearly, the discussion suggests that the 4-year schools aren't happy with losing the credit to community colleges--as well as having to deal with high schoolers carrying college credit.

I wonder how long it would have flown below our radar screen if I hadn't bumped into that strand on the list serv?

Demanding Students

2005-02-24T19:38:00.000-06:00

On WPA-L, CL from TCU asked whether we thought students from different academic cultures had different attitudes about challenging their grades on composition papers. That's a fairly provocative question--filled with all sort of implications about class and, by extension, race.

Rather than responses breaking out according to private/public and 4-year/2-year, people suggested that the tendency to challenge is more a factor of the millenial student, motivation, time, and money pressures.

I don't completely agree with the millenial response because some of the most persistent and nagging types I've dealt with are the 30-something females. My theory on that is that they are only now trying to get control of their lives, so they over compensate. They are so accustomed to be "used" that they want to make sure they get every little point coming their way.

I do agree that motivation is a factor, but it works both ways. It all depends on whether the student is motivated to learn or to get the gpa. If it's the former, all is well; if it's the latter, they will challenge anything and everything because we're in the way of their goal. WHO is the motivator also makes a difference. If it's the student him/herself, that's one thing. If it's Dad or, worse, Mom, Katie bar the door. Around here, we become the "enemy," depriving their children of their life goals. As RW's mommie screamed at me on the phone, "You're destroying his life." The fact that he had missed over one-half of the class and had under 40% mattered not one ounce to her, because, in reality, it was HER life that was being damaged. She knew the word would get out to the girls at the club that ol' R hadn't made it, while their darlings had.

Time is especially a problem for the hs students taking college courses--and for everyone else as well. But the hs students really don't have good time-management skills, and they universally under-estimate the work required for the courses. Combine the time with the fact that they have often been taught to write but not think, they are in trouble--quick. They are really not ready for college, so they do what they have done before--and what they see Mom and Dad do: they try to intimidate the teacher. What a pain!

And then there's the money. When people go to school to get the money--via financial aid--to pay bills, the entire system is upside down. And then there's the whole insurance scam: enroll and then don't show up. Later, when students find they have to account for a grade, they start pressuring the teacher. As I said in my posting to WPA, this is a uniquely community college situation. Our low tuition is insurance scam fodder.

Another thing that we failed to mention is the varying quality of teacher responses on writing. Some think that if they can challenge successfully with some that they can challenge successfully with all.

Blue Valley Book Banning

2005-02-22T19:48:00.000-06:00

I managed to get a discussion going this a.m. on the Comp 1 list about the Blue Valley challenge to the recommended book list. I had been waiting for someone to bring it up--someone who lives in the district--but nothing. Not a word. Finally, the talk program, Up to Date, covered the topic yesterday, so I used that link to open up the conversation.

I was surprised at how engaged people got on the topic, especially since it had sat dormant for so long. What troubles me about the issue is that neither side is really in the "right." The school has some real trendy but mediocre book choices mixed in with some modern classics (Lord of the Flies and Catcher, for example). This mix gives the challengers two strands of attack: books with low reading levels and books with vulgaries. What it is really all about, though, is control of the curriculum. As parents in this district are notorious for, the challengers want to control the curriculum.

I about died when I read the list of books the challengers want to impose: Witness by Whitaker Chambers, Middlemarch--a real popular hs book, and Ivanhoe--one that should make both conservative Catholics (the Inquisition doesn't come off very pretty) and Jews mad.

That has a trickle down effect on us, in terms of textbook selection, quality of students, and how much we want to do battle with over-educated, underemployed moms who have been oprahized into psycho-speak.

Study Brittle

2005-02-21T19:35:00.000-06:00

SS asked today if she ought to drop the class; she claims to have difficulties writing the analysis paper. My response was less tactful than it should be, perhaps: "I'm not going to beg you to stay in class," I said, "but don't make the assignment more difficult than it is."

The reality is that she hasn't focused enough on the topic to know what she knows and what she doesn't know. The assignment is, admittedly, a challenge in that I'm asking students to use touchstones to analyze their own previous writing. It's pretty difficult to wing this one, and it's nearly impossible to complete this in a quick-and-dirty form.

It's too bad that some students don't realize that Comp II really, truly requires thinking. They are used to throwing something together as class begins, calling is their best. I may be wrong, but I think this assignment is beginning to make some students realize that they actually have to work at this course. That's difficult when some have been getting by for a long time with no real work. So much has to do with the reluctance--not inability, but reluctance--to read. That's why I like course management software. I provide it, and they have to read it.

I still think that the ultimate culprit here is No Child Left Behind. The more our elementary and secondary teachers are pressured, the more the kids become accustomed to blaming them--holding them responsible. It's a new experience for students to have no one to blame if they screw up but themselves.

Fortunately, these kids are in the minority. We're beginning to see veterans returning. They are stressed but really well-disciplined. They are study brittle.

Letters in the Tree Nook

2005-02-19T19:24:00.001-06:00

I changed the name of the blog today to Letters in the Tree Nook. Driving back and forth on K-10 this week gave me time to think about the whole blogging process. I was struck by how much this reminded me of the story I first heard back in grade school.

I'll have to check back to find the name, but the sixteen year old daughter of a very wealthy KC family was a troubled young lady--probably autistic from the way they described her behavior, though this occurred back in the 1920's or 1930's, so they just shielded and pampered her. Of course, back then a sweet-sixteen or coming-out party would be very popular among the wealthy, and her parents apparently went all out. When her mother asked her to mail the letters, she took them to her favorite tree, which she thought of as a spot to leave messages. Weeks later, after no one came to the party, family members found the letters nestled in the tree hole along with many other notes she had sent to fantasy friends.

This story has always haunted me--mostly for the idea of giving a party to which no one comes. I guess that element of the story struck me because of the Jimmie Henderson memory. Jimmie was probably 13 years older than me, but I can distinctly remember the night his parents invited my parents over to visit while Jimmie had a graduation party in the basement. I was real young, but I recall the "vibes" when no one--not a single person--showed. I think Jimmie knew that no one would come: he had no friends and he knew that. Unfortunately, his parents--especially his mother--saw him differently than did the rest of the world. Mortified is the only way I can think to explain his parents that night. And there we sat, Mom and Dad trying to think of something to say--

Anyway, the Jimmie story is what makes the tree story so poignant to me. But then I was thinking this week that maybe the girl didn't care. Maybe this was her mom's thing rather than hers. Maybe she didn't have any friends, except her fantasy friends, and she didn't want a party. Maybe she was just happy with her world.

That's sort of how I think about blogging--just my little world with an unlikely chance that anyone will ever find my tree or care about my party. That's great--my very own tree hole.

Value of Education

2005-02-16T14:48:00.000-06:00

On the WPA-L today, CJ from Missouri Western commented on how the economics of education were tied to students being used by the banking interests. Keep those student loans and credit cards coming! I thought back to the time Mike Schwartz refuse me a student loan back when student loans were a new thing: "You'll thank me later," he said. And I have--many times. All four degrees with no loans, no debts, and, regrettably, no scholarships. CJ was commenting about students being seduced by banking interests--for student loans and for credit cards. She complains that students aren't taught to make wise economic decisions.

Certainly, they could be taught to be suspicious of business-based threats, but what about educational seduction? How about the profs that seduce students into a second major or an extra seminar, adding an extra semester or year on to their coursework? If the advising were for the students' benefit, that would be fine, but how often is it so a prof can get a class to make or add a prime advisee? And how about programs that schedule required classes so that students cannot graduate in four years?

Or how about programs that let underqualified students in so that faculty have sufficient enrollment for classes? That happened at the graduate level at one school I know. The poor smucks went all the way through their MA programs, only to get nailed on their written exam. When I was called to help them prep for the re-take, I found out that the powers-that-be never thought they would make it that far. The idea was to let a few wannabees in when the program was at its weakest, just to fill the cracks. It apparently never occurred to these folks that the students were increasing their debt in a major that is dead-end for all but the most brilliant. One 50-year-old woman with a disabled husband was $40,000 in debt; a 40-year-old was $30,000 in debt. Today, that woman is a hotel clerk and full-time caregiver to her parent with Alzheimer's. She'll never be out of debt.

I don't disagree that bankers have taken advantage of students, but, given the work of educators', who has the greater responsibility?

I've Been Blogged

2005-02-14T14:55:00.000-06:00

I was surprised today to discover that I had been quoted extensively in a blog for KC women in business: It's all about her . The author did a pretty good job of extracting some of my comments; I hope it will prompt some women to check out the online learning option.

Student Hateteacher Speech

2005-02-13T18:43:00.001-06:00

It's a wet, grimmy day outside, so I was looking forward to using it to catch up with grading. Then I saw the bulletin board post and several responses. CJ really went after the entire concept of the literacy narrative assignment in very explicit language. If he had sent it to me that would be one thing, but he posted it to the bulletin board for everyone to read.

That choice of his put me in a dilemma: do I take it down and deny him an open forum, which several of the other students have seen, or do I leave it up? For right now, I left it up and responded to it--after three sips of coffee and two pats on the dog's head. I also responded to several of the other students--all of whom were supportive of me. But, gee, I don't want them to have to take my side just because one guy didn't read the assignment and decided to let'er rip.

Some of these students are so conservative that I'm concerned that they will think I should purge the bulletin board. Actually, in the one case, I'm afraid that CJ will go after her on her email, which I can't see. She's a Mormon and let everyone know is, so I can just image what he might say.

This type of stuff is so time-consuming and counter productive. I think about what the guy down the hallway said about not being able to have a provocative discussion in class. Instead, students just bail for a "that's my story and I'm sticking to it" position. I guess we shouldn't be surprised when I read some of our own faculty's comments on listserv. Geez!