March 24th - English at the Crossroads

This was our first class in a couple of weeks and we had a very interesting group exercise. Over the past three weeks, we had read Selfe's "Toward New Media Texts," Sirc's "Box Logic," Kress' "English at the Crossroads," and Wysocki's "The Sticky Embrace of Beauty." Each of these papers (explicitly or implicitly) make an argument for viewing and practicing English pedagogy through either a Traditional, a Multimodal, or a Neo-Avant Garde lens.

The class split up into three groups that would argue for each of these categories, plus a judges group that would decide which group made the best argument. I joined the Multimodal group, as I feel this viewpoint offers understandability and approachability for students, as well as plenty of creative room for the class to interact and creatively add to the discussion. Our group joined up and had a lively discussion about what arguments we should present to sway the newly appointed judges.

The three groups' presentations were interesting, but somewhat predictable. Although the Neo-Avant Garde group was only predictable in its unpredictability, which was a lot of fun to watch. I think each student in the class would have been able to argue for any one of the three groups, which just means that I think we all understood the basic concepts of each viewpoint. I think I learned most from our group's discussion/arguments about what we should present to the judges. It was somewhat difficult to create a compelling and unique argument for each of the nine of us to present, but I think we did a good job and was disappointed to find that our group failed to convince any of the judges that a multimodal pedagogy is best for English students. Even after hearing the other group's arguments, I still think this is honestly the best way to go.