Responding to Wiggins and some other thoughts

Tyler's statement from a class discussion last week that this course is a very good supplement to the MA Composition program seems to be a fairly apt description. The assigned readings we've had all reiterate many of the ideas that we've discussed in the MA Comp program. For example, for this week, Mortimer Adler described the teacher's responsibilities as direct instruction, facilitation, and coaching. The direct instruction is the most obvious element but the notion of facilitation and coaching seemed especially relevant to our class discussions. Although it isn't explicitly stated in the three roles, I feel like encouraging student motivation would definitely be included in one of the roles. The article later argues tat students should be able to acquire important information and skills, make meaning of that content, and effectively transfer the learning.

I did however, notice something that brought me back to the notion of student maturity. I wanted to bring it up earlier but I misplaced my notes. Many of the articles that we've read for class share many commonalities in that they emphasize some form of student learning and engagement. All the pieces we've read have been, in one way or another, actively discussed ways to increase student understanding and learning. Most also include some metacognitive aspect as well. For example, Morris's piece on meaningful annotation reminds me of my experience with annotating in high school. It was just meaningless, busy work for me. I'm pretty sure I knew that the material my teachers were trying to teach me would have larger, "real world" implications, but I simply didn't care at the time. My indifference to school work combined with boring, seemingly pointless assignments didn't help me learn much. Or so I thought at the time. I had no idea what I was doing in class, but I never struggled with a writing assignment after struggling though AP English. I think it's unfair to assume so, but what if the majority of high school students aren't mature enough to do the work we're expecting them to accomplish?

Now that I've written out some of my thoughts, I'm depressed to say that it lacks the gravitas I thought it had when I thought about it in the first place. I may have worded it poorly. I'll try and come back to it again. But I suppose my main question remains. Certain concepts are fairly straightforward, but something like critical/analytical thinking is much more difficult to teach. I can't say with confidence that I felt like I knew what I was doing after a specific English class. It was only after a multitude of English classes and some growing up that I felt like I knew what to say and how to say it. I think I had finally figured out how to use what I had been learning. During my years as a high school and undergraduate student, I knew how to make my writing sound like an academic paper, but my words were hollow. Am I just a slow learner? How much does student maturity have to do with the learning process, and if there is, there any way to measure it? It has to be more than just knowing to "sound" academic. 

Responding to Roozen

There were a couple of quotes that I liked from the readings. One was Susan Hilligoss's "we need to recognize and acknowledge the private writing students bring to the university as valuable experiences with writing in their own right, but we should also ask students to explore its relationships to their larger literate lives, to view private writing as a substantial link in a chain or repurposings that has the potential to stretch into classrooms and workplaces."
Another was Roozen's comment that "because languages 'intersect' with one another on many levels at the same time, entry into a community of discourse must begin, not with a renunciation of the 'home language' or 'home culture,' but with those points of commonality that expose the alien within the familiar, the familiar with the alien."
The Roonzen piece was overall a very interesting article but it was surprisingly difficult to find a direct link to reading. Much of the data/observations provided were based on a student's writing rather her reading practices. The only obvious link to reading I could find was the fact that the student grew up surrounded by books. She was described as a bookworm and spent her early years reading and being read to. There were also some references to her positive experiences with her grandfather's storytelling. She was mesmerized by the way that he could paint a picture with his words when he was telling stories. Perhaps it was this characteristic that she was hoping to emulate -- she often felt that her writing style was being stifled in her English classes. During class discussion, my group eventually decided that the most important idea to takeaway from the article was the recognition and incorporation of student writing into the classroom.

I may be oversimplifying (or missing) some of the main ideas, but I felt that overall, the three articles were calling on teachers to be more aware of student choice and abilities as they come into the academic community. For example, Jalififar discusses the potential importance of hedging and that teachers should explicitly teach it in class. Fairclough argues that critical language awareness in instrumental for students to make the transition into the community and that teachers should also actively emphasize its importance in class. And lastly, Roozen argues for the inherent value of the literacy practices students often bring into the classroom. And

Responding to Morris and Salvatori

My initial experience with annotating could be more true. I think I was supposed to learn how to annotate during my junior year in high school when I was enrolled in AP English. However, either I did not have the mental capacity to understand why I was doing what I was doing, or the exercises/assignments weren't designed very well. I've obviously progressed as a reader and student since then, but I am curious to know when and how that transition happened. From an academic discourse perspective, I suppose I had made it from an outsider to an insider. To this day, I admittedly don't annotate that much when I read, but I will make mental notes of specific ideas that stood out in some way. My annotation process often/usually consists of a few highlights and rereads. But as for the direct process of writing notes in the margins, I never liked that. I like to think that even without the physically written annotations, I do partake in all of the core reading strategies that Morris points out. I predict, question, clarify, and summarize.

I thought that Morris's idea about purposeful annotating was echoed in Salvatori's tools of teaching. Especially the triple-entry notebook. The suggested third stage of the notebook was meant to encourage resolution and self-instruction. This last column was meant to induce deep learning. It is the notion that students should not only annotate, but also think about the annotation process that sounded so familiar with Morris.

Salvatori and Morris also emphasize the importance of metacognition. I think this is something that would have helped me during my struggles as a student. I distinctly remember struggling to figure out why I wasn't performing as well I wanted to but I could not figure out what I needed help with. Comments like "awkward" or "expand" on my writing assignments did nothing to help my understand what I was missing.