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.

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.

Make It Your Own

I read across a wide spectrum of subjects. One of them happens to be sports uniforms. Uni Watch is a blog that not simply covers sports uniforms ("athletic aesthetics" they would say), but delves deep into the subject.

Here's an essay submitted by a Uni Watch reader named Matt King. He details his decision to own authentic jerseys with his own name on the back. The normal practice (and some would say the only acceptable practice among true uniphiles) is to purchase an authentic jersey with the name of an authentic player on the back.

I think he makes a good case for the practice losing its taboo status. I like that he took it upon himself to defend his Own Name On Back decision. He stops short of championing the movement, but he goes into the context of his own decision (which originated before authentic apparel was widely available) as well as giving us general reasons for putting your own last name on the jersey of your favorite team despite never playing a down/inning/minute for the club (now that authentic apparel is readily available).

Never an Off Day

It's Sunday. I'm not at work right now, but I was thinking this morning, for whatever reason, about writing and research, about simple assignments and the complicated papers that can grow from them, and I decided on something I would like to do in the context of a research+literature class (like Pima's Writing 102).

It's in two stages for two specific reasons.
Stage 1: Meet an Author
Stage 2: Tell Someone Else to Read an Author

Here's the first stage. I'd like to have students research contemporary and recent authors. That could be pretty broad in terms of places, but I'd try to keep the timeframe fairly recent. I think I would make a list of authors and tack on a little info about that person. I'd let them choose who they want to look into. They could even go off the list as long as they convince me their choice is worth it.

Here's the reason for the first stage. I work with a lot of student writers who don't have the knowledge of their subjects and arguments that they need to form a solid essay because they have not invested the time into the process of research. I'm not blaming anyone here. I'm not pointing my finger at lazy students or teachers who rush through a semester. I'm just saying: writing is a result of thinking, so let's give folks we expect to write a little time to think. Let's make sure they have it. Let's make sure their brains can soak up enough information to form an opinion.

The first stage allows the student to get to know the research process while getting to know their author. We could work on database searches, knowing what kinds of sources are legitimate*, how to quote and paraphrase, choosing what to quote and what to paraphrase, organizing information from sources in a paragraph in your own paper, and all kinds of other little things that pop up in research.

The second stage would move on to adding in an argument. Here's my plan**: As a class, we would present our findings on our authors. Then each student would choose an author to support as someone people--not just academics or students or bookworms or nerds or kids whose parents don't buy them XBoxes--should read. They would have to think critically and connect who that author is, what that author writes about, where they came from, where they went, when they lived, and other contextual whowhatwhenwherehows with the same kinds of contextual issues in the people they are saying should read their author.

I'd love to see the arguments people come up with. I guess this comes from my desire to simplify assignments in order to let the complications grow organically from the students' thought processes, my hope that people see value in reading, and my observation that Writing classes often ask people to learn a skill which they have never seen in use. This assignment (which would really stretch over an entire semester in three large parts; the third being a revision stage that rarely gets taught but nearly always needs learning) would allow students to form their own ideas about something they have worked at gaining familiarity with, argue for time spent with your nose in a book, and learn more about people who choose to spend their time writing.

*Too many times I see people rushing through a research paper of one kind or another and all they've done is go to a few different basic sites like encyclodepias, Wikipedia (No!), About.com, or some other surface level biographical site with information gleaned from some other surface level biographical site. That's shoddy researchmanship.

**This is all just thinking and hoping because I'm not teaching right now, and if I were, I would be teaching Writing 70, which exists to help people write a solid sentence and then a solid paragraph.

Now You See, Me Now You Don't v. Up, Up, and Away

If I were in a classroom environment where I was charged with teaching people how to argue, I would start here, I think.

Invisibility v. Flight
You get one of these superpowers. Pick one. Quick, pick one, no thinking. Now, write down the reasons you picked this one.
This is the gut reaction part. We would use this part to talk about how people often have opinions before they think through their reasons, but there are reasons buried in the heads of those people. This is the part where I get the students to realize that opinions and even guesses don't come out of nowhere, and that they can be unearthed with a little work. (Then we do a little work to unearth our reasons for our gut decisions, our choice of invisibility v. flight.)
Let's listen to some other people make this decision: This American Life's "Superpowers" Episode.
Act One of this epidsode is thirteen minutes of people choosing invisibility or flight. This is the part where we listen to how other people think through choices. Students would write down all the reasons they hear and make note of reasons they did not think of and any reasons they would choose for themselves after hearing them on the show.
Now, think of reasons why someone would pick the other superpower. Not the one you picked. The other one.
This is the part where we think of The Other Side, where we learn to think through the opinions of others, even if we don't agree with them. Students have to come up with reasons for the other power (at this point, some could be waffling on their original choice, but I would simply have them examine the one they didn't go to on their gut instincts).
Taking all of this into account, now you get to make a new choice. Invisibility or flight? You also get to come up with intelligent reasons for your choice. That will turn into a fun-yet-intelligent essay.
This is the part where they work on producing a piece of writing based on all this thinking. We'd probably work on outlining and revising and proofreading, but the basic idea of all this is that Invisibility v. Flight is not a supercomplex issue for them to deal with, but a simple choice that turns into a more complex and mature thought process.

We could also:
-have a class debate
-look at the benefits of both superpowers in actual comic books (in the lives of "real" superheros) -imagine the drawbacks of each power in everyday life (outside the lives of superheros)
-imagine the benefits of each power to a regular, non-hero-type person
-establish rules for each power (what would and would not turn invisible with you, how fast and high you could fly, etc.)
-move on to discussing something a little weightier like the agreeing or disagreeing with the claim that begins F. Scott Fitzgerald's essay "The Crack-Up": "Of course all life is a process of breaking down..."

Meaning is Everywhere, Even in Honey Jars or Cartoon Savannas

Here are two thesis ideas for essays I overheard in the Writing Lab today:

1. All the major characters from Winnie the Pooh are different aspects of Christopher Robin's personality. The person who said this went through an exhaustive list of each character and which part of Christopher Robin's personality they correspond to. It was really quite impressive.

2. The Lion King is Shakespeare's Hamlet in Africa. And Disney-fied. No, Simba doesn't feign insanity, or put on a play-within-a-play/movie, and he doesn't die in the end, and Scar doesn't marry Simba's mother, but there are enough similarities between the two stories there for that argument to stand (there is a father's ghost in each, which is important for any comparison including Hamlet).

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.

Argument Analysis: Join So I Can Take Your Loot

Sabrina, a student, and I, were working on arguments. She was writing one about government childcare benefits, and Adam, a Writing tutor, stopped by. Here is what happened:

Sabrina types her essay. Scott sits, waiting to answer her next question. Adam enters, sits down, and pulls up a website with some sort of virtual island on it.

Adam: You have to join this.

Scott: What is it?

Adam: You have to join it.

Scott: Again, what is it?

Adam: You have to get on here. Then I can take your loot.

Scott leans down to Sabrina, who is still typing

Scott: See, this is not a good argument. He's giving me no information about what I'm supposed to join, and the only information I have tells me that he will steal from me when I do join. That benefits him, not me.

Sabrina laughs a little, looks at Adam, and keeps typing.
Scene.

You should tell people basic information like what you want them to join pretty early in your argument. Also, you should tell the person you are trying to convince why joining will benefit them not you (especially if you plan on stealing from them once they do what you ask).

In Adam's defense, he was very excited because of the online pirate game he discovered (who wouldn't be excited about commanding tiny, virtual ships on virtual seas, firing virtual cannons and destroying other virtual pirates?). When he calmed down, he explained. Maybe that should is something you should do, too: calm down before you argue.