A Measure of Success

A student who has come in regular intervals over the past few semesters shows up. We each say hey, and he take off his hat and looks at the crown. See, I tease him about wearing Yankee hats. We have a no-Yankee hat policy in the Learning Center*, but he was sporting the Sox (White, not Red) logo, so he was safe. I pointed out that he didn't even know what hat he was wearing today, and we laughed about that.

The hat policy wasn't all he was learning about. Later, after he filled me in on his assignment, a summary of the movie In the Bedroom, he was running through the basic ideas of the story. The class is writing about revenge, and he got to the part in the story when one of the characters wants to take revenge because he got "angry and stuff like that."

The student stopped and said, "No, 'not stuff like that.' He was angry." Then he continued. I felt awesome right then**. I didn't say anything about his use of such a vague phrase. It was like he took a giant pen and scratched a line through what he just said***.

That was cool. That made my morning.

*I find stuff like this helpful to disarm a place like this. It would be easy for a Writing Lab to feel like a nerdcave, academically isolated and only focused on papers papers papers. When we create faux policies like not allowing Yankee hats or requiring people who do math in the writing area to bring us donuts, we poke fun at the institutional nature of the place, show an awareness of the outside world (those Yankee hats never have to do with papers) and show a little humanity (donuts = hungry). Everything is strategic around here, even disdain for that NY logo that shows up on the heads of so many students who can't name their Yankees.

**It only had a little bit to do with the fact that I find myself doing this automatically when I hear words. I don't tell people when I do it. That's rude. I always tell people who ask if I'm going to correct their grammar that I have a policy of not correcting people's grammar out in the real world because people who do that don't have any friends.

**"...angry and stuff like that..."

A Whole Lotta I Dunno

This is the first week of Spring classes here at Pima, and most of the questions I've answered have related to schedules, class locations, online classes and other nuts+bolts kind of things that come up at the beginning of the semester.

One of the interesting facets of the beginning of a semester is that I see what school does to people. Not classes, not subject matter, not teachers, not a component of the educational system, but the system itself: it freaks a lot of people out.

One guy was working on his first assignment for his Technical Writing class. He had to answer a few questions in the form of a memo. The first page in the chapter he was directed to showed an example of a memo and broke down its characteristics.

He asked me to help him clarify and then just kept talking about the class. Eventually, I asked him what he was hoping I could clarify. He pointed to the example of the memo and asked if he should write his like that. I said, "That or...?" He said, "I don't know." I pointed out that his teacher asked him to write a memo and gave him an example memo, so it makes sense that he should take what he's been given instead of assuming there are other possibilities he has no idea about.

For some reason, he assumed there were other unspoken options than the obvious one. Interesting.

Another guy was registering for MathXL, an online tool for math classes that I often see math students using on the Learning Center computers but know little about because I'm not the math guy around here. Larry the Math Guy was busy with another student, but he gave the student a registration sheet to follow and off he went, registering away.

At one point, he raised his hand and said, "Should I click the first one?" As I walked over to see what the first one was, I asked him if the first one was true. He read it out loud. It went like something like this: "I am using MathXL for a class and need to sign on to my teacher's class in MathXL."

Again, I asked if this was true. I looked over his shoulder and saw the second option was something about "studying on your own." He took a second and then said yes, the first one was true and clicked it.

For some reason, he needed confirmation to go ahead and choose something he already knew was true. Interesting.

I find this fascinating because of something I heard in a TED Talk recently: "Education doesn't actually work by teaching you things. It actually works by giving you the impression that you've had a very good education, which gives you an insane sense of unwarranted self-confidence, which then makes you very, very successful in later life."

That's a quote from Rory Sutherland, an ad man, speaking about intangible value, not education, and I think he's right. It's a bold thing to say, and a potentially difficult sentiment for a teacher to hear, but I do think the value I received from my education was not the small items of material, the facts and figures, concepts and ideas that were passed along. It was the fact that I don't shy away from problems or assignments because I know I can figure them out if I give them a shot.

The problem for both of these students wasn't a lack of resources or support. They were each sitting at a public computer in a free tutoring center, holding all their class materials. The problem was a lack of confidence.

The answer in both cases was right there. Write a memo and use the example memo. Choose the option that is true, not the one that is false. The intangible value of education is problem solving, the ability to think, choose, adapt, revise, and to do so boldly. Hopefully, this semester gives those two the self-confidence to know that they can choose what they already see as the right answers.

Fun with Informal Communication

Here a couple of pieces of communication I've encountered in the past week. Ah, words.

1. On a black sweatshirt in the Writing Lab when I came to work one morning, I found a Post-It note with these words handwritten in pencil: "Some Random Sweater."

2. On a peer-reviewed draft (handwritten and submitted for review instead of the typed draft due to a flash drive left behind at the UofA computer lab) of a student essay: "this is g. but you gosta give me more detail chica! and finishing it would help a little."

To Call It an Article or To Not Call It an Article

Good question today: Are the Question & Answer features in magazines called articles?

A couple of students working on responses to articles in The Aztec Press wondered if the Q&As were "articles." I looked up explained what people usually mean when they use the word "article" to describe writing in a newspaper or magazine, and I looked up "article" on dictionary.com to show them the true definition of the word. We talked about all the small lists or graphs or blurbs that magazines publish and how they are different than the articles those same magazines publish.

I liked the question, and the follow-up was even better: If not "articles," what are they called? I'm not sure. I suppose Q&A would apply, but not all of those little bits in the fronts of magazines are answers to questions. Do those have a name? I'm not in the magazine publishing business, but I suppose they do. I'll see if I can do some digging.

On Beer and Research

Another set of valid research questions that are based in reality came from a student working a paper persuading her friends not to do drugs. The questions are tangents, but they are worth mentioning because they a) are genuine, and b) seem like they might have simple answers, but really don't, so they require some research.

Her questions:
1. Why did people make beer?
2. Why do people drink beer?

On No.1: She thought this would be a simple answer to find on the Internet, so she went sleuthing, only to find differentiations between ales and lagers and pilsners (oh my!). The history she found was brief (as in, Ancient Egyptians had beer! Look how old beer is!). She found out that her question was more complex than she originally assumed: instead of When's and Where's, she wanted the Why, which is a great thing to look for. It takes finding When's and Where's along with Reasons and Purposes. Since this wasn't her main project, she cut off her search at this point, but not before I told her about how people write books based on simple research questions like this*.

On No.2: Here, she opened the door to sociology. In her limited experience, the answer to that questions was To Get Drunk, but she sensed there was some bigger reason behind that. We talked about how there are many reasons why people drink beer, and that she could write a whole paper based on different reasons why different people drink different beers.

On Why This Paper Would Be an Interesting Paper to Read:
First, it came from a simple and genuine question. She really wanted to know this--it wasn't thrust upon her by an authority figure wielding a syllabus and white board marker--so the results of her paper would most likely have some life to it (especially if her work was mentored by someone who wanted to help her come alive as a writer and explorer).

Second, the question is not some obscure idea at the periphery of human consciousness or some difficult/too large/too complex idea that she knows nothing about. She knows about beer. She's seen people drink beer. She doesn't have to cross the gap of content knowledge to write about this subject. She's expanding her knowledge on a subject she is already familiar with, so the paper would show the tone of that expansion, not of a deer-in-headlights student bewildered by a topic they do not find intriguing or accessible.

Third, it's relevant to her demographic and her life. Imagine: classes where people pursue projects involving the deepening of their knowledge of the things of their own lives. Imagine: a young person taking the initiative to study the why's and wherefore's of the consumption of alcohol. Imagine: that young person waking up to the possibility of understanding why's and wherefore's, period, of opening up the thought processes of those around, of seeing that what we do and say is not Dumb Luck or What We Are Supposed To Do And Say, but that it has reason--conscious or unconscious--that it has cause, and that that cause can be put under a microscope to see its cell walls and its nucleus.

Fourth, she'll probably remember this paper pretty well. She might even win a few bets, or astound a few friends, or become a beer connoisseur. It's not like beer advertisements are going to go away, so every time she sees someone selling Budweiser or Heineken or Guiness on television, she'll be reminded that she knows a little something about where all that came from.

*Among those that come to mind: Salt, Cod, A History of the World in 6 Glasses.

Quoted Quotables

The footnote to this entry from July indicates that I wanted to do something with the widsom and insight of students that I run across as a person involved in education. Here is that something in its current incarnation as bookmarks. Luis' words can be found along with four other quotes that I wrote down after reading over student journals or papers or message postings over the last few semesters.

In our consumer culture, we are accustomed to buying/receiving/taking from those we are told we should buy/receive/take from. They are smart or beautiful or popular and we listen to them because they are known as smart or beautiful or popular. It's easy to ignore what we have not been told to pay attention to, and that includes the vast amount of intellectual work being done in educational institutions all over the place. It's a tragedy that so many words are printed simply for the sake of fulfilling class assignments or school projects, as opposed to these assignments asking students for words worth printing in the bigger picture of things--observing, examining, hoping, you know, the work that professional writers do.

Matt and I found some student words worth printing because they were poignant. We put them on bookmarks. Stop by if you want one (or if you want to know what they say). Each quote is on each color.

This is a project that is an example of why I believe in education. The world is full of capable, brilliant people who simply need unlocking or guidance or a push in the right direction.

This is How We Do It

Writing Process is an interesting term. It implies steps, an institutional kind of order even, a 1-2-3-done kind of thinking--but it also allows for creativity and variety for individuals to invent their own way to bring a piece of writing to completion (and to continue to reinvent that process as needed).

I'm interested in Writing Process in all its incarnations: the overall how-to's that are passed along from writing teachers to writing students, the innovative ways that writers (both students and professionals) think of to help them build an idea into an essay or a story, and the unthought-of, unnoticed little steps that people who are engaged in the act of writing go through that are definitely part of the process, yet outside of what those in the field of writing would discuss when asked to discuss Writing Process.

Here is an example of what I mean about the last of those three. It comes from Robert, a student in my Writing 100 class from this past Spring semester:

"When I'm trying to complete a writing assignment, I sweat a lot, then go into contortions, and then start swearing."

Students Say the Most Poignant Things

This week, a student, Luis, came in to polish up a short, two or three paragraph scholarship essay. His first paragraph began with the maxim that "giving is better than receiving." As (honestly) ordinary as this idea is, his second paragraph began with a real original thought:

"Our world is in need of generous people."

I pointed out the profound and original nature of his thought*. I told him that it made me stop and think about the world, about myself, and about my status as a generous person. I told him to lead with that thought instead of the cliched idea of giving>receiving.

Bringing up that giving>receiving idea was simply warmup writing for Luis. He had to slog through the run-of-the-mill thoughts to find his way to his original thoughts. He did. I find that student writers often do this sort of slogging through and have not been told that this kind of writing may be necessary in process, but not in product. They need to know they are free to type it and they are free to delete it once a stronger, fresher, more original and striking thought has floated to the surface.

*Matt, the Student Life Coordinator at Desert Vista, and I so liked Luis' words that we hope to figure out a way to put them on a tee or a poster of some sort. Something simply must be done with words like these. Schools should not allow those words to be tucked away in a scholarship essay which will be read and filed and forgotten. Luis wrote something worth reading. We want to publicize that something, and in doing so, begin to discover ways to shed light on hidden student insights and ideas. Perhaps Luis' little proverb could be the foundation for an essay contest. Perhaps it could be used as the basis for a poster contest for art/design students. We shall see.