What I Learn in School

What I Learn in School

• That there are discrete borders which demarcate areas of knowledge, and there is little traffic between these strange lands. But this is all of little concern to the economy.
• That I can go an entire day without speaking to anyone.
• That I can stare at a single point in space, on the wall, say, and make it go out of focus. And then bring it back. There must be some curricular objective that I am failing to meet at any given point. But this tiny rebellion, while indefinite, can seem worthwhile.
• That life is a series of arbitrary questions of mysterious — no, dubiousorigin.
• That my life goes better when I follow the rules and parrot the predilections of authority figures.
• That my responses-to-stimuli are scrutinized by subjective scientists who may or may not in a given moment have my interest at heart. Or even be able to help me.
• That I am better when I make life easier on the teacher — late homework is the only thing worse than incorrect answers. (Well, and novel answers.)
• That learning is about being correct — never take chances.
• That knowledge is a list of facts.
• That knowing consists of reproducing the selfsame facts from memory after some designated time. Unprocessed, untouched, in their original sequence. Alone, without talking, without any of the resources that would be, in a less controlled environment, at my disposal.
• When I am called upon to produce — and I am called upon to produce regularly, or rather irregularly, but frequently — I must produce. An answer to a question the asker knows (why is he asking then?), a meaningless data set, a paragraph, a prefabricated structure of discourse that is predictable, vacuous, and devoid of any real… ideas? At least the kind that can be transformative, and thus dangerous. What was I saying?
• Produce, produce, produce. No time to stop and think. In season, and out of season.
• That I am a product of periodically entered integers out of ten, or out of one-hundred, crunched, weighted, and curved. Carved in stone.
• That doing better than my neighbor results in accolades, and these are a public reward. And being praised feels nice, and I could get used to it. And the drudgery is just… necessary? Especially compared to the benefits, which are kinda nice. And totally worth it.
• That there is no need to develop interests / passions / perspectives / arguments / expertise of my own.
• That my path will be laid out before me in the form of a checklist, in Times New Roman. It is for me to walk that path and trust in its goodness.
• Grades, by their very nature, are sacred. They come from On High and represent an objective measure of my worth. And a reliable predictor of my future.
• That questions are to be answered; authority is not to be questioned. To ingratiate myself with authority is the answer.
• That the worst kind of question is the kind I actually want to know the answer to.
• That the path of least resistance is the path to take.

Listening to Academics Talk (FYC)

Stand Up, Walk Around, Even Just For '20 Minutes'

Historian Illustrates Racial Intolerance In The Northeast In Post-War U.S.

WRD PROFESSOR SARAH READ RECEIVES CCCC RESEARCH GRANT

March 12, 2015 · by depaulwrd · in Faculty Research. ·

This quarter, WRD Professor Sarah Read was granted a competitive Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Research Initiative grant. Beginning in March, Read along with her colleague Michael Michaud at Rhode Island College, will begin a national survey research project called “Surveying the Status of the Multi-major Professional Writing Course in U.S. Institutions of Higher Education.” As the title of the project suggests, the main goal of this research project is to gather vital data about introductory professional writing courses taught at colleges and universities across the country.

According to Read, what is interesting about these introductory professional writing courses is that they are quite common and offered at most institutions of higher learning, much like First Year Writing courses such as WRD 103 and 104 at DePaul.

Yet, says Read, professional writing courses do not receive the same amount of scholarly attention and research as the previously mentioned First Year Writing courses. We hope to change this with our research.

Another primary goal of Read’s is to use the data collected to create a general set of recommended learning outcomes for these professional writing courses to be used by colleges across the nation.

This survey research project is the product of previous investigations conducted by Read and Michaud in which they explored the possibility of translating the “Writing about Writing” teaching approach (which is most commonly used in First Year Writing classes) to professional writing classes. In a nutshell, “Writing about Writing” encourages students to read and write about writing itself, which raises student self-awareness about writing and communication. This initial project culminated in a February 2015 scholarly article published in College Composition and Communication—the flagship research journal in Rhetoric and Composition studies.

As Read and Michaud move forward with the next phase of their research, they plan to administer their survey to members of the National Council of Teachers of English and the CCCC. This survey intends to collect information from a wide variety of higher learning institutions—from two-year colleges to large universities. Read says that she hopes to collect descriptive data about the courses being taught at each institution represented in the survey as well as subjective perceptions about the overall effectiveness of these introductory professional writing courses.

Once the data has been collected, Read hopes to use what she and Michaud find to garner more scholarly attention and action toward introductory professional writing courses. Many teaching structures and resources have already been created for First Year Writing, but professional writing is less developed in this sense. Consequently, Read’s research is also relevant to the student of professional writing as her goal to create general learning outcomes could lead to increased class effectiveness.

Workshop Idea: “Teaching the Writing-Intensive Course"

We began tackling the incongruence of proof writing with the process goals of writing-intensive courses in faculty development workshops. At Dickinson College, those teaching writing-intensive courses are invited to a half-day workshop entitled “Teaching the Writing-Intensive Course.” This workshop draws faculty from across the disciplines and begins with a discussion of disciplinary genres and conventions before focusing on pedagogical skills like creating clear assignment prompts, designing an effective peer review, developing rubrics, and responding to writing assignments. After this workshop, faculty often elect to have follow-up consultations on course-specific concerns. ("Transfer and the Transformation of Writing Pedagogies in a Mathematics Course," The WAC Journal Vol 25 p. 95)