February 24 - Commenting on Student's Papers

Unfortunately this week I was very sick and unable to attend class. I did however read two interesting articles about the role of teacher's comments on student papers. Nancy Sommers' Responding to Student Writing discussed how commenting on student’s papers has long been seen as time consuming but essential in student's learning processes. However there are many problems with how it is used today. Her research found that commenting takes the focus away from the student’s topic and places it on the teacher’s instruction and that comments are used like rubber stamps and may not actually help each student understand what can be improved with their paper. She finishes the article by saying that comments need to be paper specific and be geared for a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd draft and should always show students their own writing potential.

In Faigley's article, the author argues that teachers need to see themselves as a coach instead of a judge and that they shouldn't focus on whom they want their students to be. This paper argues that allowing students to write about themselves will help them gain control over their own writing. These two papers are very useful to me in my current education in becoming a teacher for next year. I can see the importance of not just making comments on student papers, but taking the time to make constructive comments that will do two main things: allow the students to maintain control over their own writing, and to write comments that are useful and understandable to the students so as to show they the full potential of their own writing.

February 17 - Composition Process and Teaching

This week we wrote a 5 to 6 page paper about our composing process. To be honest, I wasn't sure of what I had to say about my own composing process. I had always just thought about it as a slow and arduous process of trying to actually get myself to sit down at the computer and get started. Before starting, I thought about what I was going to say and for the first time, realized that I had a different composing process for every type of writing that I engage in. I had never even thought of how I compose emails, which actually probably makes up the bulk of my everyday writing. This turned out to be a very interesting exercise, because it forced me to think about how I write in many different situations, how these differ, and even how I can improve some of my processes. For example, I realized that I didn't really have a good process of writing emails and that I should start treating them like academic papers. Not to extensively plan them, but just to jot down a few key points and then start writing from there. I plan to try this out for a little bit and see how it goes. Different documents need to have different composing processes, but each process potentially has something to offer my writing process in general.

February 10 - Class presentations

Today I will be teaching a short 5 minute segment to the class about Jennifer Meta Robinson's paper: A Question of Authority: Dealing with Disruptive Students. I found this short paper to be very useful and even inspiring. She began by telling antecdotal accounts of teacher's encounters with disruptive students include two accounts of her own. Although this warning made me hesitate about my own potential abilities as a teacher, Robinson quickly gave advice and encouraging words on how to deal with this potential adversity from some future students. This is the part that I will focus on the most during my class presentation. She gave the following steps to mitigate disruption in the classroom:

-Set course policies at the begining of the course
-Maintain immediacay with students
-Encourage active learning
-Seek feedback
-Avoid grade trauma
-Maintain high self-esteem at all times

Techno Literacy Paper

When we were assigned to write a narrative about our own techno literacy, I thought for a while about how I would approach the assignment. Having a great deal of experience in a variety of areas dealing with technology and education, I didn't know where to focus on. Rather than narrowing in on video games, video editing, graphic or web design, I decided to go way back in my memory and try to tell a broader story about my first experiences with technology and learning with technology. By trying to think about my very first interactions with technology, I was able to remember a few things that I probably would have forgotten about. It was really cool to think about how technology has grown up with me over the past 25 years, and amazing to see the impact that it has had on my life. One thing that I noticed is that often times, education through technology is less about learning a specific subject, less about training and more about learning how to live.