Author: danifernandez8

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[Seriously] Vexed Questions

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First, I would just like to point out how appropriate the title of Chapter 2 is: “The Literacy Thesis: Vexed Questions of Rationality, Development, and Self.” Special emphasis on vexed. Collins and Blot really knew what they were doing because I felt pretty vexed while reading.

But let’s back up…as some of my peers are aware, I am a notorious mindmapper. As a visual learner, mindmaps help me make sense of what I read as well as helping me make connections. Also, purple pens. Enough said.

image1 (1)

Now today’s mindmap looks a bit messy. There’s no real flow to the thing, just a ton of words and arrows. In retrospect, I’m having trouble articulating how on earth this is helpful…I suppose I’ll start at the top.

The Great Divide = Literates vs. Nonliterates. In the Post-WWII period, literacy became tied to stages of civilization, grammatical elaboration or racial order (10). Literate became synonymous with qualities like morality, economic prospects and civic virtue while nonliterate was tied to criminality, poverty, and political apathy. According to Goody and Watt (1963), the two key elements of a literate mentality are: 1) capability of thinking historically and 2) capability from distinguishing truth from opinion (23).

The problem I have with these connections is due (in part) to my own inability to 1) think historically. In my mind, I read the words “literate” and “nonliterate” and immediately replace them with “educated” and “uneducated” because most of the modern United States is literate but many do not achieve higher than a high school education. Even today, 7% of high school students drop out without receiving a diploma. Despite this inability to think historically, I am both literate and educated. In terms of 2) “distinguishing truth from opinion,” I run in to another problem: everything in this chapter is opinion but it reads more like truth. The “facts” are published by respected ethnographers and scholars and we are taught in primary and secondary school to trust text written by researchers, despite the fact that there is room for error in interpreting research. Collins and Blot call this a “literate bias,” which is part of our academic common sense (17). If it is peer reviewed and published by an author with the prefix “Dr,” we are expected to trust it. So what is the truth and how do I, as a literate and educated woman, separate it from all the opinions outlined in this chapter?

In the same period when literacy was synonymous with morality, literacy was also intimately connected to writing. Writing was the essential feature that distinguishes civilizations from simpler human societies (10). Writing was also the necessary ingredient for transforming simple, native languages into modern languages. Collins and Blot make it very clear that (according to scholars in the Post-WWII era) oral native languages had no place in the contemporary world. “Oral” became synonymous with “myth” while “written” became synonymous with “history.” And even when previously oral languages create a written component to their native language (Tolowa Language Committee in Northern California, for example), the politics of tribal recognition and academic authority stonewall the attempts at making that oral language legitimate to the modern world.

So now I’m really frustrated. We expect people to read and write or else they’re criminals. We also expect all languages to have a written component or else it is not worth learning. We also expect writing to be historically accurate and therefore truthful because writing has the power to coordinate social action on an unprecedented scale (17). We expect all of this out of reading and writing and we expect so little from talking. My confusion here is the reason for separation between “speaking” and “writing” and Collins and Blot made me wait all the way till the end of the chapter before they got to deCereau (1984) who said that writing and orality are actually complementary modes of expression. THANK YOU. Because I was really confused about why oral traditions have been viewed as unimportant. Because we cannot confirm stories as easily? Because memory changes a story every time you tell it? Last time I checked, history (remember “history” = “written” = “truthful”) is written by the victors and the versions of histories that end up in high school textbooks are rarely “truthful.”


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Tuesday, September 23: Group B

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Today’s quote was beyond perfect. After taking way too long to draft my previous post (my first real attempt at analyzing my notes so that I will eventually have something to write for this thesis thing), it is very important for me to remember both why I started and why I need to keep pushing towards this transformation. If I want a productive writing life, I have to make it happen. So thank you, Pinterest, for the lovely quote found below.

I would also like to point out that a dance class takes place next door to this classroom and 50s swing music blaring in the background is beyond distracting to listen to while attempting to transcribe.
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It’s not about perfect. It’s about effort. And when you implement that effort into your life…every single day, that’s where transformation happens. That’s how change occurs. Keep going. Remember why you started.
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In this class, it has become a norm for students to pull up anything they may need help with each day on the teacher’s computer as they walk through the door. This way, the mentor can skip the “what’s everybody working on” portion of the class period and get right to the workshop part of the class.

Today, Students B and C each had drafts of a paper to workshop so the Mentor split the class in to two groups:

Mentor Intern
Student A Student B Student C Student E
Student D Student F

I will focus the content of this post on the Mentor’s group for two reasons: first, I know that this is this Mentor’s first attempt at workshopping in this way and second, I was simply closest to this group.

After straightening out a few kinks with the Google Docs and Internet connections (and Students C, E, and F teaching the Intern how to log in Google Docs on a borrowed iPad–another cool example of students taking on expert roles and teaching something new to the Mentor/Intern), the Mentor allowed the students to divide themselves in to groups. Student C chose to work with the Intern and Student B chose to work with the Mentor. The other students simply divided themselves accordingly.

Before allowing his small group to begin reading the draft, the Mentor asked Student B to explain the assignment:

Mentor: “So, [Student B], let’s–let’s tell us, um, where you’re at with this and then what we can do for you.”
Student B: “So, basically you have to include two authors in your quotes so I can’t compare and contrast. So I did one author that I agree with, one author that I know that I can compare and contrast with [....] I need like evidence, like, some like stats from, like, outside resources.”

By asking Student B to explain what he needs help on in this assignment, the Mentor has both determined Student B’s understanding of the assignment and allowed the student to direct his peers to points in his writing that he feels are weak. This simple gesture gives Student B authority over both his writing and his practice as a student and a writer. It also allows the Mentor to step back from his usual role as the “more experienced peer.” In all honesty, the Mentor has no way of knowing what the assignment is asking and where the Student feels he needs the most help. This seems obvious, but, in my experience, it is almost instinctual for less experienced mentors to lead all discussions in the space.

In an interesting move, the Mentor then re-asked the same question of the Student and received a surprisingly generic response:

Student B: “Am I, like, going in the right path?”

Mentor: “Ok, so he wants to know basically, then, is he doing a good job making the argument? [....] So let’s read this and let’s see if, one, we can follow what he’s writing, and, two, if, by the end of what he’s written, we know what his argument is.”

This vague response is in direct contrast to his previous statement in which he points out a very specific gap in his research: statistics to support his claim and then the Mentor restates the student’s response to the group. This move effectively put the Mentor back in charge of the discussion and I am not confident that this was the Mentor’s intention. I imagine his intention was to ensure clarity. A minor bump in communication, but interesting nonetheless.

After giving the group time to read the draft, the Mentor asked for feedback and diligently typed all of the students’ comments as they came up. This is another move that puts the Mentor in charge. Instead of asking the students to type their own comments in the margins, the Mentor unconsciously inserts his own language into each student’s verbal comment as he writes.

While the other mentor began the discussion portion of the class by asking students for positive feedback, this Mentor began the discussion by asking students to explain Student B’s argument:

Mentor: “So, after reading, let’s start with the basics: what’s his argument?”

The first student to comment (Student A) instantly mentioned a surface level error. The Mentor responded by stressing the importance of looking at content before worrying about surface level errors and, to appease that student, was careful to leave time at the end of class to allow students to fix those distracting surface level errors.

The students had little to say about the content of the draft so the Mentor asked each of them to try researching to help Student B to find an additional source or two. The Mentor offered what we call a “Pro Tip” to his students by explaining his personal method for finding sources online. He suggested opening multiple windows in Google and using different search terms:

Mentor: “violent tv shows,” “violent tv shows benefits,” “violent tv shows helpful”

The students were instructed to copy and paste any relevant sources they found into a Google Doc and given minutes to search through Google. This is something that I also practice in my 30 space. I’ve found (and I think the Mentor found) that it encourages students to bring in their work at all stages of the writing process. Every stage is important and every stage has its own set of challenges.

A trap that many new mentors fall in to is to be too specific about the kinds of writing are allowed to be brought in for a workshop. This Mentor is experienced enough that he has been able to stress how difficult writing is at every stage of the process and small moments like this one can help students still feel secure in the moments when they are stuck. Everyone gets stuck and, in English 30 spaces, there is a team of people who are more than willing to help. That is one of my absolute favorite parts about English 30. The communities that get built in these small spaces have the opportunity to give students a confidence that they often lack in their skills as writers and readers and students in the university.
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“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.” – Robert Cormier
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Monday, September 22

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I would like to preface this post by stating the obvious: transcribing is difficult and time consuming and not my favorite thing on earth. But by the end of this semester (hell, by the end of this week), I’m gonna be really good at it. Practice makes perfect, right?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like, jump-up-and-down-in-your-chair-can’t-control-yourself-love it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is “You like stuff.” Which is not a good insult at all. Like, “You are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.”” – John Green
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Mentor
Intern 2 Student 9
Intern 1 Student 10
Student 3 Student 8
Student 4 Student 7
Student 2 Student 5
Student 1
As the class period began and students began to quiet down, the Mentor initially addressed the class by announcing that he was having a terrible morning.

Mentor: “I lost my keys, and then, like, I burned my eggs, and then, I was just like, Jesus, what is going on? The 49ers lost again, so I was just like, my world is crashing down around me right now! And that professor we were talking about? On Wednesday? That I don’t care for, I have him tonight so it’s just like, this whole concoction of shittiness (shittyness? shitty-ness?) going on in my life right now that’s kind of….but it’s alright, we’re gonna get through.”

The nine students present looked concerned and the Mentor stopped being the “Teacher” and instantly became a human being, a fellow student who is struggling his way through college. For a moment, the Mentor was so frazzled that he couldn’t remember the prompt for the quick write, but, luckily, it came to him.

Mentor: “So, yeah, um, two part question: you can either write about what your strengths and weaknesses are with regards to writing or you can kinda tell me about your practice. Like, as a–as a student writer. Like how you go about–like, when you have an essay, what’s the first thing you do?”

After giving the students the two possible quick write prompts, the Mentor immediately gave the students an example of how he might respond to the quick writes:

Mentor: “Like for example, like, my weakness is, like, I hate revising. Like, especially with poetry. If I ever have to revise a poem, I just, like, say, ‘oh, it’s not good enough,’ and I just write a new poem. Cuz I don’t wanna revise it, so, I hate revising.”

This is a practice that is very familiar to this mentor and I due to the fact that we are graduate students in the same program. Many professors here are in the habit of using themselves as examples when explaining an assignment like a quick write or blog post.

The students wrote diligently for about 4 minutes. Students 2, 3, 4, and 8 were the first to stop, but the Mentor did not notice until both Intern 1 and 2 stopped writing after 5 minutes. He was busy writing and, at one point, took out his iPhone. In this moment, without his knowledge, his students stopped looking at him as the authority figure or leader in the classroom and this was immediately reflected in their silence when asked to share what they wrote.

As a countermeasure, the Mentor used the age old threat to “call on a random student” and, after less than ten seconds of silence (with students carefully looking everywhere but at the Mentor or Interns), the Mentor called on Student 8. Luckily, Student 8 is not a shy soul (probably why the Mentor felt comfortable choosing him) and immediately responded with a smile.

Student 8: “Um, so basically, I hate revising. Because, um, when I’m revising someone else’s paper, I feel like, if I write something down, they won’t like me cuz, like, I write something bad–I don’t know. I feel like I might mess someone’s paper up”

Although the class had moved on, I was stuck on Student 8’s frank statement:

“when I’m revising someone else’s paper, I feel like, if I write something down, they won’t like me cuz, like, I write something bad–I don’t know. I feel like I might mess someone’s paper up”

First of all, I find it fascinating that Student 8 bent his understanding of the word “revision” to include “peer review” since “peer review” wasn’t a term used in the Mentor’s description of the prompt. He is using the same word as the Mentor, but his understanding of the word includes what the Mentor would most likely refer to as peer review. I have no idea what that means, but it’s so interesting.

Second, it seems to me that this feeling of “mess[ing] someone’s paper up” is a sort of residual effect from peer review in high school. It is a feeling that I have come across many times in my past four semesters as an English 30 mentor. So many students are fearful of coming across as “mean” to their peers and are therefore intimidated by those students who are not afraid to offer constructive criticism.

So, I guess my question becomes: how do we alleviate that fear? In my 30 space, it feels absolutely critical to have a conversation about how we will conduct peer review in the space and that conversation stems from each student’s previous experiences with the practice. Many have admitted that their previous teachers (or current English 130 professors) use rubrics to facilitate peer review and do not collect these rubrics, so students are not held accountable for their work. Also, students are forced to print copies of their paper/narrative/memo/etc. but their peers do not write on the copies. They simply read them and write notes on the rubric.

To my surprise, that conversation didn’t happen when I expected it to. Granted, the students have already begun the process of peer review within the space and a few (Students 1, 2, and 4) seem to have little concern with offering constructive criticism to a peer’s work; however, Student 8 made it clear that he still feels that fear and, ironically, it was his day to bring in a piece of writing to workshop.

Using his background as a creative writing student, the Mentor asked the students to begin their discussion with positive comments after they had silently read Student 8’s paper in a shared Google Doc. Positive comments included compliments on his topic, his skill at including quotes to support his argument, his inclusion of the opposing argument, etc.

When asked how the paper could be strengthened, Student 7 dropped in the term “code-switching.”

Student 7: “Code-switching is basically knowing when and how to speak and to who [.....] It’s basically saying, like, how I talk to my roommate or how I talk to my fellow peers, I wouldn’t talk to my boss like that. Or I wouldn’t talk to a professor like that.”

This was possibly one of my favorite moments from this class period because a student who had hardly spoken (she is usually very vocal in class) had the opportunity to demonstrate her expertise in a subject that the Mentor and Interns were unfamiliar. Not only did the Mentor acknowledge her expertise by asking her to explain what the term meant, but she also was able to help her peer further his understanding of his topic and give him an opportunity to expand his argument. It was a pretty cool moment to witness the Mentor relinquishing the reins as the “teacher” or the “more experienced peer” and giving that power to his student.
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Learn to love the process.
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Fair Warning

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So up until this point, I have been one of those annoying college students who “hates blogging.” I hated it so much that I refused to implement it in my syllabus for the freshman comp class I teach. If I hated writing them, I wasn’t interested in forcing my students to write them. Period.

Then I read danah boyd’s paper “A Blogger’s Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium” and, to my horror, I realized that I don’t hate blogs at all. What I hate are the “discussion posts” that so many professors refer to as “blogs.” Those aren’t blogs at all? I love writing, how could I ever believe that I would hate to blog?

When asked to define a blog, an experienced blogger told danah:

“It’s a blog because a blogger’s doing it. It’s a blog because it’s caught up in the practice of blogging. It’s a blog because it’s made on blog tools. It’s a blog because it’s made up out of blog parts. It’s a blog because bloggers are engaged with it, and everyone points at it and says, “It’s a blog!” – Carl” (9)

So here I am, blogging. I’m a blogger(?) Weird. In the spirit of trying new things with an open mind, I am attempting to build a productive blogging life. What does that look like? No, really, what does that look like? Cuz I don’t have a clue, but I’m trying. I suppose it looks a lot like a productive writing life, just in a space where people can see what I’m writing…

In conjunction with blogging for the Connected Course and Kim’s grad class, I’m going to attempt to use this as a space to organize my thoughts about the data I am collecting for my thesis (emphasis on “attempt”). Four times a week, I sit in on two small group mentoring spaces that we refer to as English 30 (each group meets twice a week for fifty minute periods). I take copious color-coded notes that look more like a play-by-play than actual observations that make any sense whatsoever. I also record the audio from each session (I’ve found that students get nervous if I set up a camera and end up censoring themselves but will forget that I’m recording their voices if I set my ipad on the desk next to me).

While observing these spaces, I am looking at identity construction: how does each mentor take on the identity of “teacher”? I use the term “teacher” very broadly here because I have found in my own experience as a 30 mentor that my identity is incredibly fluid. In any given period, I go from the more formal roles of teacher or mentor to informal roles of peer or even friend to my students, depending on their needs. I do this instinctively. I am firm when I need my students to take me seriously and I am soft when my students are vulnerable and that to me is utterly fascinating. I’ve always been interested in identity construction and now I’m curious about how 30 mentors construct their “teacher” identities in their classes. How do they know when to shift? How do these shifts in identity help them reach their students, from the most invested to the most resistant?

Given that this post is titled “Fair Warning,” here’s the warning part: From this point on, I will post quite often and I will use incredibly boring and generic ways of distinguishing between the mentors, their interns, and the students. When I say boring, I mean it. Mentor 1, Interns 1 & 2, Students 1 through 10. So boring. I may be showing my age and inexperience here, but in my mind, it is important for me to think about these students by their real names because they are very real people and I know quite a bit about each of them. While I am in the space, I don’t want to confuse their real names with some pseudonym that I have given them. I would never look at a student are think of them as “Student 7.” The numbers are simply to tell them apart in this blog space.

But perhaps I should back up: 30 spaces look nothing like traditional classrooms. There are a maximum of eleven students in each space and one mentor. It is possible to have up to two interns (upperclassmen who are aspiring to be 30 mentors the following semester). It is also possible that each student in the 30 space has a different English 130 (Academic Writing) teacher. There is no homework, no tests, no final. The only way to not get credit for English 30 is to not show up. Which is weird, because English 30 is fun.

All we do in the space is support students in whatever way we (meaning the mentors, the interns, and the students together) see fit. That could mean workshopping a paper, learning research methods, spending time in the library, playing silly writing games like Exquisite Corpse, etc. Every space looks dramatically different and every space is specific to each mentor and each group of students. That’s part of the beauty of the space and part of what makes it so fascinating to study.

So here goes nothing. Wish me luck? K, thanks.


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D.D.D.D. (AKA An Annoyingly Apt Alliteration)

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After watching Mike Wesch’s talk “Why We Need a Why” in Kim Jaxon’s grad class, Kim challenged us to think about why we chose to pursue higher education. Why grad school? Why pay all this money and put ourselves through all this stress? What’s the point, again?

My “why” began when I was nineteen. It was like one day I was just a “normal” college student and the next day, I woke up in pain and I had no idea why. To be honest, I don’t remember the day it began. It was just there. I was sitting in a cultural anthropology lecture and there was this awful pain shooting up my leg. It felt like something invisible was grabbing my calf and every few seconds whatever was holding me would squeeze so tight, it sent waves of pain racing up my leg. Eventually, I began imagining the pain as a monster with long, sharp claws that dug in to my skin and muscle.

I thought the pain would go away, so I waited it out for a few weeks before I talked to a doctor (I’ve always been a rather stubborn child). A few months, three specialists, a chiropractor, an untrasound technician, and my primary physician later, and I had a diagnosis. Degenerative disc disease isn’t really a disease. I honestly have no idea why they call it that. It’s a genetic condition that no one else in my family has (that dang mailman strikes again). In a nutshell, the discs in my spine aren’t healthy. Three of them are herniated, which means they are bulging and, every time they compress (AKA every time I sit down), they spit acidic fluid onto my nerves. Not cool.

“Degenerative Disc Disease Dani.” That’s what I called myself. For the first few months, it was a dirty secret. I didn’t want anyone to know I was different. Telling my professors on the first day of school felt like confessing a sin. I hated having to explain why I was constantly shifting in my seat, why I couldn’t sit still for longer than a few minutes, why I would have to leave for a few minutes every class period to walk off the pain.

I have written so many creative nonfiction pieces about the negative ways in which this has affected my life, but somehow I seem to avoid talking about the best thing that this weird, incredibly painful disease has done for me. The traumatizing hospital scenes and the miraculous surgery drama are, in many ways, more interesting for a very young and inexperienced writer. But after watching “Why We Need a Why” and talking to Kim, I now know that “Degenerative Disc Disease Dani” is my “why.”

After my diagnosis, I was advised to drop out of school in favor of a treatment offered to me by a chiropractor that would require me to come in to his office three times a week to be hooked up to a machine that would slowly stretch my spine. No matter how gently he described the process to me, it still sounded like a particularly cruel kind of torture. In his defense, he was probably right. When my discs are spitting out fluid that is causing permanent nerve damage every time I sit down, and all you do as a student is sit down, staying in school isn’t exactly a smart move. I told him I’d think about it. When my mom and I got home from his office, I walked into my room, sat on my bed, and let the tears fall. Because even then, in my moment of silent crisis, the pain was there and it was never going away.

That realization was all it took. I wasn’t going to move back home with my parents and have my mother drive me to the doctor’s office three times a week. I sure as hell wasn’t going to be strapped to some high tech torture device for a treatment that probably wouldn’t even work since my discs are in such bad shape. And I wasn’t going to stop living my life just because a few doctors with fancy degrees told me I’m a little different.

So “Degenerative Disc Disease Dani” became my “why.” I’ve always been stubborn and willful and I knew in that moment that I wanted this life more than I wanted to breathe. More than I wanted to live a life without pain. I could deal with pain. At that point, I was in pain every single day. Within ten minutes of sitting down, that monster’s hand was grabbing my leg again. So I stayed in school. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in four years and I will graduate with a master’s this May. Woot woot!

I imagine that most people’s “why” has probably changed over the years. I think the core of mine may always be the same. This disease is never going away. It will only get worse and I’ve accepted that. But I have never once regretted my choice to stay in school. Not even when, three months after that chiropractor asked me to consider dropping out of school, pieces of one of my herniated discs broke off and tangled themselves in my nerves, putting me in a kind of pain that was so excruciating, so mind numbing, there are no words to describe it. And believe me, I’ve tried (remember the creative nonfiction?).

So here I am, post-surgery, soft-core traumatized by my hospital experience, and more driven than ever to stay in school. Most days, I feel very little pain. Some days (like Monday), it takes me 45 minutes to maneuver myself out of bed. Some days, just putting on socks and shoes is a challenge (I’d like to take this moment to point out that I am twenty-three years old and putting on socks and shoes should never be that difficult). I love and hate those days. They remind me that I am not invincible and they are my body’s way of telling me, “For the love of God, woman, SLOW DOWN.” Nearly having this college experience ripped away from me has led to a “do all the things” mentality and sometimes I need to be reminded that I’m only human. And I’m not even a fully functioning human. I’m a little different. And that’s why I’m here.


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[Insert Clever Title Here]

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Hi everyone! My name is Dani Fernandez and I am a graduate student at CSU Chico. I am also a first time teacher and I cannot wait to participate in this Connected Course. For my thesis, I am studying mentorship in small group spaces and the identity construction that goes in to becoming a “teacher,” a “mentor,” a “near peer,” etc. To be honest, I’m a little overwhelmed with this incredible learning opportunity. I welcome and would really appreciate any advice or comments from anyone participating in this course. I am forever learning how to be a better teacher and how to be a better student. Thank you!