It's Not Me, It's You

One of the teachers here at Desert Vista assigns a persuasive letter as her third essay in Writing 100 every semester. This semester's crop of essay topics has been the best I've seen. Instead of students trying to get the State of Arizona to completely overhaul their education system or convincing the government to change laws, these students picked accomplishable goals: Dad, stop smoking; downstairs neighbors, stop filing all those complaints; suitor, look elsewhere for romantic involvement; teacher, amend your assignments; etc.

These are manageable requests, and working with these students has generally centered on two ideas:

1. Me, Me, Me
The students know what they want. Knowing what they want is the first hurdle they overcome. And the first obstacle they face. It's what the student wants, so their rhetoric focuses on how this change will meet their needs. They pretty much stop right there. They don't realize that while the request they make originates in a need they have, the action will take place on the other side of the fence, so they need to go over there and see it from that person's perspective.

2. You, You, You
What they need to do is think about who they are persuading and what their idea involves for that person.

Instead of presenting tons of medical information to get your father to stop smoking, think about why your father smokes in the first place. What if he doesn't care so much about his health, but cares more about appearing manly because he started smoking on a ranch as a preteen because his father let him? Data about lung cancer may not hit the bullseye.

Instead of asking your neighbors one floor down to "put yourselves in my shoes," you need to slip into theirs. They complain about the noise your two-year-old makes at ten o'clock at night because they want to go to bed. If you want them to stop filing complaints, explain your situation (why is that kid up at 10:00pm?), explain what you'll do to try and be quieter, and maybe go so far as to invite them up for a meal so they will think about how wonderful you and your family are instead of curse you and call the apartment office the next time they hear stomp stomp stomp when they are trying to fall sleep.

Instead of pointing out how much of an idiot he is, lay out the differences between what you want and what the guy who keeps asking you out wants in a relationship. Be objective. Sure, he wants to be a drug dealer and you think basing your life on illegal crime is a bad idea, but he's not going to change if you tell him he's stupid. Take the emotion away for a bit and present your case rationally. You want security. Comfort. Not men with guns. Maybe he'll see that getting a real job isn't so bad, especially if he wants to date a girl.

Instead of asking your teacher to rework her entire semester's worth of assignments to exclude personal details, think about why she set it up that way (hint: you already know yourself and don't have to do research in a non-research class) and how much work would be involved in crafting an entirely new class. Then think beyond your desire to not talk about your bad memories and examine why focusing on other things might help more people learn to write. Oh, and give her some ideas about what you would be willing to write about. You don't want to appear "like [you] don't want to participate." Help her out and think about what she's trying to accomplish: getting you to write essays without sinking you into deep research.


These are interesting conversations. The students don't realize they are focusing solely on their own needs. Or they don't realize they are using broad arguments that don't necessarily apply to their audience. Bringing it up changes their papers from a general repetition of their basic premise to specific thoughts aimed at actually getting something done.

Evolution as It Pertains to Introductions

I've noticed myself repeatedly saying something new about introductions lately. It's the natural evolution of my usual advice.

My usual advice on intros: Wait.Work on the body paragraphs. Know what you have to say first. It's okay to work on the middle before the beginning.

See, people jump in and write their intro first because it's the first part of their paper. They jump in without knowing what they have to say. They just know that they need to get this paper done, so logically start at the beginning and try to work from there.

The problem, as I said, is that they don't know what they have to say. Thus, the evolution.

The evolution in my advice on intros: Your intro should introduce your paper, not the general topic you're working with.

Student writers sit down with a blank Word document and they start generally writing about whatever it is that they are supposed to be writing about. They make broad statements that include all people everywhere or every time anyone has done a certain thing or been a particular place. They are doing the wrong work. They are trying to go from general to specific before they know the specifics. They are not introducing their paper. They are trying to introduce a subject, an assignment, a big idea, but they are not introducing what they will cover in their essay.

So I've started to talk about that specifically with people whose intros are painted with broad strokes. It seems to be helping because it removes the stress of getting the paper off to an interesting/humorous/engaging/thoughtful/never-before-seen/amazing start and subtly plants the seed that they do in fact have something specific to say with this paper.

Why We Do What We Do

Part I.
Yesterday in the Writing Lab, a conversation about my 22-month- and five-week-old daughters turned toward the H1N1 Flu shot:

Ania: Did you give your daughter the swine flu shot?
Me: Yes, we did.
Joe: You did?
Me: Yes
Joe: I wouldn't do that.
Me: Why?
Joe: I know lots of people who aren't doing that.
Me: I know lots of people who don't save money, but that's not a reason to not save money.
Joe: Well, yeah, but it sure is controversial.
Me: Yes, but that's not a reason not to give her the shot, either.

After that, Ania and I had a lengthy conversation about support, arguments, opposition, and credible sources. Too bad Joe left.

Part II.
Today, Brooks, a writing tutor, came back from a trip to Alabama with a Bear Bryant hat. A student came in, pointed to the hat and to me...

Joe B: That hat on him would look just like Crocodile Dundee.
Me: Crocodile Dundee's hat was leather.
Joe B: Details, details. As long as it's a hat.

The Best Worksheet I've Seen In Awhile, Perhaps Ever

Today, a student came in with a worksheet. I'm not a huge fan of worksheets because they usually focus on technical aspects of grammar that are not inherently bad things to know (people would do well to know them) but are generally less than useful in terms of their applied function for writing students.

This worksheet, however, is possibly one of the most useful I've ever seen. It was simple. It took some sentences the student composed for a prior worksheet and had them replace general terms with specific nouns. Students need to know how to do that. They need that practice.

The example was corny (it replaced "elderly man" with "Old Jimmy Two-Teeth"), but the worksheet gave this student a chance to work on a writing skill that I see people struggle with everyday: being specific. I'm all for this and will probably add a similar activity to any classroom work I do in the future.

Coming or Going

Here's something that happens frequently around here:

1. Teacher gives an assignment that can be described as "general." Said assignment usually includes language very similar to "make an argument about a significant experience/place/person."

2. Student chooses experience/place/person. Said experience/place/person is significant for some reason or another, but that significance is elusive and ethereal, tucked away in a messy drawer in the student's brain along with countless other experiences/places/people of varying significance, and thus any attempt to set it down on paper results in vague notions of importance that could be (and are) generated by just about anyone about just about anything.

Example: Student writes about significant place: home. Where is home? A place on the reservation. What place? A house. Student is able to verbalize little more than that. Reading the paper + inquiring verbally reveal that this paper is nearly fully focused on the student's experience with the Catholic Church across the street, specifically during Lent when she would venture across the street, despite not being Catholic, to experience the ceremonies at the church during the Easter season because they were Catholic, yes, but also wove in the ceremonies of her tribe.

This student was having a difficult time zooming in to the specific place. She was stuck on "home" and didn't know that she could write about going from her backyard, where she grew up hearing the church bells and smelling the mesquite wood that the church burned for heat, over to the church itself every Friday and Saturday evening during Lent.

She didn't know that she could choose a topic so small. I see this all the time. General assignments like the significant experience/place/person often lead to big fields of thought, not small ones. To help her see how she could choose, I decided to tell her something about how stories work and go from there.

I drew two circles on the whiteboard. On one of them, I drew an arrow starting outside and ending inside. On the other, I drew an arrow originating in the middle of the circle and extending outward.

I told her that every story is one of these two. It is either someone/something new coming into an established environment or someone/something leaving an established environment to go on some sort of adventure or journey.

She recognized which hers was: Option #2, adventure. She recognized that the established environment (the circle) was her backyard and that the adventure (the arrow) was going to the church. I emphasized that she could pay attention to her time boundaries, all year vs. during Lent. We talked how she could smell the mesquite wood from the church. I asked her if this fell under all year in her backyard or during Lent at the church. Backyard. The Deer Dancer that was a part of the ceremonies? Church.

We talked about the intro could (and should) include details from all year in order to show us that she lives right near the church. The thesis is where the adventure starts. She journeys outside her backyard to the church itself.

I think drawing those diagrams helped her understand how the beginning of the paper related to the rest of the paper. At various points in the conversation, I added on to the drawings. I'd drawn them before, but never added on. I labeled the circle "backyard all year" and the arrow " church on Fr + Sat during Lent." I wrote the word "choose" above the arrow and "forced" below, then wrote "why?" I'd never thought about breaking the paradigm down like that, but it seemed helpful. I doubt that will be the last time that shows up on the whiteboard.

Good Guys Wear Hoodies

Here's the text from an ad for hoodies made by Howies, a Welsh clothing company (font and bold as printed):

If we're going to ban items of clothing, shouldn't we start with the business suit?

While we don't condone shoplifting, terrorising old ladies or generally making other people's lives a misery, the tabloids seem to be picking on the wrong people. Casual research suggests serious fraud, insider trading or acts of corporate man-slaughter are unlikely to be carried out by people wearing hooded sweatshirts. Photographs of senior executives of British manufacturers of land mines, anti-personnel grenades and cluster bombs have shown no evidence of hoodie-wearers. Businessmen offering large amounts of cash in return for peerages, and the politicians who accept the cash, tend towards less casual items of clothing. When the decision was made to invade Iraq, no-one wore a hoodie. And the men who think Guantanamo Bay is still a good idea do not wear hoods themselves, though they have been known to offer them to guests. Sure, there's the odd villain who wants to conceal his face. But there's bigger villains around who have no such shame.

Jon Matthews

I love that they are making an argument against the opposite style of clothing they are selling. I love that it is so focused on one particular item of clothing. I also love that they use specific, tangible references to get their point across. Why is that effective? I originally read this little blurb in a magazine over a month ago; I have not forgotten it since.

It Was a Chicago Bear Outside the Tower of London with the Candlestick

This is something I lifted from the pages of the current issue (June 08) of The Believer. It's from their montly advice column, Sedaritives, started by Amy Sedaris but contined often by guest Sedarises. This month, Paul Feig responds to young Lisa, dreamer, 18, and covers ground that we cover every day here in the DVWC.

Dear Sedaritives,
I just had a dream where I was in a prison tower and a large bear started attacking me because it was angry. I am concerned because in the dream, someone I don't know brought the bear to my house in a plastic igloo and said, "Look, it's my pet!" Is this an omen?
Liz, age 18

Dear Liz,
What kind of a bear was it? Grizzly? Polar? Teddy? Chicago? What kind of prison tower? An old one, like the Tower of London? Older, like the one Rapunzel tossed her hair out of? Or modern, like the kind the guards stand on at San Quentin? And what kind of igloo was it? One of those dog house igloos? If so, the bear couldn't have been that big. It wasn't an Igloo-brand cooler, was it? The bear would be even smaller if that was the case. If you want my help, I need details, girl. Maybe you eighteen-year-olds think this whole vague description thing is the bomb, but for us guys in our forties, we need specifics. You wouldn't be this ambiguous if I was Dr. Phil, now would you? Write be back and get that thesaurus out.
Paul

May Your Paper Be an Ant Colony

This week, I told a student in my class that a great detail is like an ant: it can heap a lot of information on its back, more than it seems a simple word or phrase can carry.

Then, today in the Writing Lab, a student was writing about an experience that involved her father rushing to the hospital to meet her injured sister. In the first sentence, she not only told us that her father hung up his phone and left, but that he left wearing only a pair of cutoff shorts, no shirt, and no shoes. That doesn't just tell me that he's underdressed for just about anywhere but an afternoon on a pontoon boat, but that he's more than hurried.

It's easy to tell when you aren't wearing enough clothes. You're cold and people stare. This father did not care about exposing his skin to the weather or incurring the whispered comments and strange looks from others. He had one priority: getting to the hospital immediately--that's key because he could have easily thrown on a shirt and slipped on some shoes and arrived at the hospital in a reasonable amount of time. But no. Speed was all that mattered. Any delay was too much a delay, even the basics of public attire. That's what that detail tells me as a reader. It lets me into his head so much that I am able to break down what he's thinking when he most likely did not even do so.

How Do I Start This?: Mario's Miracle, or Scott's Valid Reason to Discuss Kansas Basketball in Class

In my class last month, we talked about introductions. I didn't plan to include any self-gratifying discussion of the Kansas Jayhawks'* win in the national championship game of the NCAA tournament, but when good writing presented itself in the form of Grant Wahl's Sports Illustrated article on the Jayhawks, I couldn't help myself.



I showed a YouTube clip of the final ten seconds of overtime, shared the context of the game with the non-sports fans, and opened up a discussion of how they would choose to begin writing about the game: the beginning of the season, the beginning of the game, the missed free throws, the inbounds pass--one student even suggested starting from the perspective of a fan looking up at the scoreboard.

Then I shared what Wahl wrote:

"The ball floated through the air, its pebbled surface spinning softly, as serene and peaceful as a space capsule in a low-earth orbit. At 10:29 p.m. CDT on Monday at the Alamodome in San Antonio, the fate of a college basketball season rested on Kansas guard Mario Chalmers -- or, to be more precise, on his last-ditch three-pointer, a make-or-break heave with 2.1 seconds left that would either send the NCAA title game into overtime or give Memphis, clinging to a 63-60 lead, its first championship in school history."

A student said it was like Wahl was in The Matrix, slowing down time, letting the ball spin and spin and spin. Exactly. His entry into the subject wasn't the beginning of anything. It was a zoomed-in look at the middle of the most important moment of the game. In the article, he goes back to the season for both teams (and way back for Mario Chalmers), and he continues on to the future, into overtime and the post-game celebrations, but I love where he started and how he describes the ball itself--not even the teams or the shooter or the fans or the game, just the ball.

*I grew up in Kansas, where basketball=Jayhawks.