Days 7/8
Yesterday we spent pretty much the whole day in the computer lab on photoshop. I had used photoshop intermittently when necessary since the late 90’s but have switched to Fireworks in the last few years because it was free at OU. It was nice to get formal training, but since graphics programs mostly work similarly it was quite figure-out-able. In other news, I caught a cold. Who catches a cold in August September you ask? Me, I guess. It’s just sort of a low-grade annoyance.
Today, the pre-quarter workshop for new TAs focused on the final assignment we’re to give our students: a call to submissions for an online journal called Commonplace. This assignment was originally constructed by two Ph.D. students, Michael Harker and Aaron McKain, and involves asking students to write a 750 word op-ed piece. Teachers then pick the eight best (or most interesting or whatever) and those get to go through a blind peer-review system (basically trading sets of essays with different first-year classes where they are then peer edited by other first-year students). What I think is really, really good about this: real audience, in-depth peer evaluation. What I’ve yet to be persuaded about: that first year writing should ever, ever be about giving the best students the most opportunities (the other sixteen essays only receive feedback from the instructor; now why should the best writers get the most feedback??). That the amount of time this takes in a very short 10 week quarter course is worth the benefits.
I will, however, teach it, as unbiasedly as possible, and will let you know what I think.
Day 6
First, day 5 has been misplaced. I spent time with Lisa instead of writing about it and now I don’t really remember anything about it. Oops. On the other hand, she and I had an awesome labor day weekend. She flew up from Okie land on Thursday and stayed through Monday. We spent some time exploring Columbus and doing the things everyone said we HAD to do (including the Greek festival and Gallery hop) We also went to this giant mall called Easton. Twice. Not that, as grad students, we can afford decent food, let alone anything in that mall! We did have an excellent time. I would like to blame this on her, but it wasn’t her fault (don’t click if you’re super squeamish). I just fell in the shower for no reason.
Today we spent the morning talking about feedback. Scott Dewitt used Nancy Sommers’ 1982 article on responding to student writing to discuss giving feedback. We did not talk about assessment and aren’t going to until Friday. I did appreciate the feedback pointers–that’s something I never feel quite confident about and I think it’s because by the time I finally get around to giving written feedback I’m always pressured for time and so therefore don’t take the time to do a first read without a pen or the seven minutes per page. It’s more like, set the kitchen time for 10 minutes. When it dings, finish up real quick and move on. That comes from the days of teaching three courses (75 students total) when I was adjuncting. Since I’m only teaching one class (but 24 students–sadly not the 19 at OU) I’m hoping to really start reading student work early and giving myself enough time to respond effectively.
This afternoon Scott continued introducing the second assignment in the sequence, the visual remix. He asked us to do a low-tech (think crayons, scissors and glue sticks) remix of an army ad that Nan Johnson used the other day when she came to speak. My group took the basic layout of the ad (a progression or timeline with an image on the right and some text at the bottom) and reworked that layout for an ad to young women using the same timeline to make a commentary on the interests of young middle class white women as opposed to the audience we saw the original ad aiming for. Anyway, it was a pretty fun activity. Tomorrow we’re learning photoshop.
Day 4, or the day in which I try to not be impatient.
So we started out today by talking about the “micro” teaching assignment each of us has to do tomorrow. Basically I just have to do a 15 minute lesson plan to five peers and an experienced instructor. This seems quite doable…my job is to introduce my course theme by using some sort of primary source. I’m going to focus particularly on research questions and how asking a certain set of research questions might lead me to my primary source because I feel like it’s rather impossible to just come up with a primary source when you haven’t thought of what you might like to research. So…I was thinking about using some examples of facebook groups to ask questions about whether it’s possible to have community on facebook and under what circumstances communities might exist given the rigid form each facebook group must conform to. I’m sure people have written about this sort of thing, but that doesn’t matter much; I just need to get people thinking about what kinds of limitations space might put on community development and what kinds of communities would seek certain spaces.
The second half of the morning and most of the afternoon (after a group picture and lunch provided by our publisher which was no other than Jimmy John’s because those mediocre sandwiches are following me) was spent in the computer lab giving us the opportunity to familiarize ourselves more with the library resources and Carmen aka D2L. It turns out that those awesome librarians have actually come up with some really nice resources for us, down to the powerpoints we can present and the activities we can have our students do in class and for homework. I love librarians! Especially when they make my job easier 
)
I admit that I have my entire D2L site set up, down to the grades all entered (we’re required to teach a pretty rigid curriculum so much of it was like data entry).
Oooh, I think it’s going to rain. It just got kind of dark in here. I’m picking Lisa up at the airport tonight at 10:30…I am currently counting down the minutes!!
Day 3.
First off, I have to mention the wait for the bus this morning. As usual, I got to my stop at 4th and High this morning. There was a guy standing around, but it wasn’t particularly clear if he was waiting for the bus or just waiting. for. something. I waited a bit and the bus came. I headed to get on and he called to me, “have a nice work day!” to which I slowly replied “have a nice…day.” This was honestly because I couldn’t see that he would be heading to work and I didn’t want to do that dumb thing where someone says “Hope you feel better” and you say “You too!” only to realize that of course they are feeling just fine. As I sat down on the bus though I started to feel like I had been a bit classist or racist or both by assuming that because there was this African American guy with a wife beater and baggy jeans on leaning against a building that he wasn’t heading to work. I’m still not sure what I should have said though. He wasn’t acting like he was going to work…
The rest of my day went without mental reproach until the end. This morning we discussed the research project our students will be doing in more detail, including “the method.” I don’t think you care what “the method” really is, do you? I had lunch with Elizabeth and Lauren and Sarah at the Wexner center, which was enjoyable if a bit quiet. Elizabeth, who just graduated from her bachelor’s program at OSU, invited us all to this mexican place for $2 margaritas tonight. I declined. This afternoon Nan Johnson came in and gave us a wonderful presentation about rhetoric, which she named “the rhetorical point of view.” She is a really, really engaging speaker.
The second moment of mental reproach for me today was one of those moments where you open your mouth and what you hear come out is someone else’s voice. Today it was the 12 year girl who always tattle-tells voice. I piped up at the very end of the workshop and asked Scott Dewitt if he couldn’t in fact just add the people who weren’t on the roster yet to our desire to learn (D2L) site. He was quite polite in telling me that he’d had some problems doing that in the past, but it was totally clear that he was less than pleased with my desire to suddenly say that. Should have kept my mouth shut!! Such is life. I think he’d probably encountered the problems we did when we first started us D2L back in 2005 and maybe just hadn’t tried since. I’ve not had any problems adding and deleting people from my courses…and now as I post this to the world I’m going to let it go!
Day 2, and a note on those little rollover popup things
Note first: if you don’t like those rollover snap things, you can disable them. Let one pop up and click on options. I don’t like them either )
So, day 2. Today I got to campus a few minutes later than I planned and therefore got a seat right in the front of the room next to all the other studious people (the woman I sat in front of told me that old people sat in the front. I think she was describing herself but may have been describing me as well). I was sad originally because I wasn’t sitting next to anyone from yesterday, and then realized that this is exactly what I wanted–to meet more new people! So I met )
In workshop this morning Kay Halasek came in to talk to us and told us about the undergraduate curriculum–she sort of contextualized what our course does and when. There are basic writing courses and ESL courses, and there’s also a vertical curriculum. Our class is actual one of three–there’s one at the 300 level that students take as sophomores or juniors and then one in their majors (WID). I found all this pretty fascinating because I really believe in WAC (writing across the curriculum) and WID (writing in the disciplines). The more writing the better!
I then had a fabulous lunch with Michael Harker. I tried to catch him up on what was happening at OU and he gave me some good advice. He was very adamant that I not pick a committee until forced to; the more I get to know the faculty before I ask people the better. Sounds like good advice from my experience as a master’s student (one of my committee members ended up being gone the year I was graduating so I had to find someone else). Also good from lunch, I found out the writing center hires in the spring and was encouraged to apply (WC work would be beyond by 50% appointment in the English department).
This afternoon we had a presentation by the libraries staff and then headed to the computer labs where we’ll be teaching to do some research on our courses. Here was yesterday’s draft of my course description:
Finding (My/Your/Our/A) Space: Understanding Our Communities and Places
In this course we will be looking at the significance of space: the role communities play in forming and transforming spaces, the role space plays in facilitating or limiting community interaction. We will look at how space can be determined and influenced by gender, culture, class and other identity markers, as well as look at how groups of people have formed/used electronic spaces. You will have the opportunity to construct an argument about a facet of the relationship between space and community for your class project.
This will probably change some, though I haven’t committed my new thoughts to paper in light of the assignment sequence.
Well, off to do homework (really, off to watch tv and wait til the last minute to read the bell hooks article for tomorrow)…
OSU GTA workshop training, day 1
Today was our first day of workshop training and I would like to say, first and foremost, that any time anyone gives graduate students coffee and bagels and muffins (especially from Brenan’s) they will have the eternal gratitude of said graduate students. The day started out with many, many introductions. We (and by we I mean myself and my 41 lovely new GTA peers) met the WPA staff, the libraries staff that works with the WPAs, and the department chair, Valerie Lee. We met each other in a limited fashion, and I’m actually looking forward to getting to meet more of my new peers. I have met a few other rhet/comp people, but I don’t know if I’ve met everyone yet because we didn’t do full-group introductions.
The ice breaker was okay. I’ve always been the kind of person who absolutely hates ice breakers (I think this has something to do with my fear of Other People I Don’t Know), but I have been so conversation-deprived since I moved to Columbus a couple weeks ago that I was actually really excited to get to know some people. Scott Dewitt put a prompt up asking us to write down some notes about a research process we had gone through and then asked us to get into groups of five to share our experiences. The stories were supposed to be memorable in some way. I wrote about my process for applying to graduate school and I’ll tell the story here as long as you promise not to judge me.
When I decided last fall to apply to Ph.D. programs I set about intensively researching. I bookmarked the pages of each of the schools using del.icio.us, I make a spreadsheet of all the programs, deadlines, and required materials. I even made a folder for each school for collecting things in. I decided to apply to 8 schools and told my letter writers as much. And then! Deadlines came nearer and nearer and things in Oklahoma were actually making me want to stay more and more. Mostly her and this. I knew that there was one school I absolutely had to apply to, besides Oklahoma, and I ended up only actually applying to Oklahoma and Ohio State. Best organized plans….
Anyway! Into groups we got and shared our stories, which didn’t take much time. And we shared a few other things. I was disappointed, though, that we really didn’t get to meet people outside of our own groups.
Before lunch, Scott talked a bit about the contexts for English 110; he discussed the national context (WPA outcomes, CCCC), university context (GEC), and that our department really values preparing teachers, which it’s pretty clear it does. 6400 students take English 110 each year. And then we ate lunch.
After lunch we were introduced to the three assignment sequence that we’ll be teaching. Scott drew on the board a diagram presenting the sequence. Click here if the image below isn’t clickable…
The assignment sequence is as follows:
- a 7-8 research project hinging on analyzing one or more primary sources
- a visual remix which asks students to Photoshop an image to create an argument
- a 750 essay (read op-ed piece) submitted to Commonplace, a journal of peer reviewed first-year writing
The course topic is up to me. We’re going to workshop those tomorrow and then I’m sure I’ll write about it.
