Kathleen Blake Yancey

Rhonda rounded out the presentations (at last!) very nicely with Yancey, who was certainly my kind of woman. Yancey believes in responsibility, purpose and patience. Responsibility, according to Yancey, goes both ways and is to be embraced by teacher and student alike. Purpose is emphasized mainly in what is being taught (through assessment) and why we, as teachers, do what we do. Patience is necessary on the part of the educators, mostly as a means of evaluating/assessment.

Responsibility in the classroom is often placed primarily on the teacher (how well that teacher teaches is reflected in how well the students perform), but in Yancey's classroom, students are to be responsible for their writing. Teachers, then, are left to concentrate on their responsibility with regard to last point, patience.

Purpose in the classroom becomes a fairly large question, which is gathered through a few assessing questions: what, as educators, is our intention? Is it to help our students to create a body of work that they can coalesce into a portfolio (and Yancey is a proponent of ePortfolios for students)? Is it to help our students to write so that an audience will be able to understand their points? Is it to "create writing publics" (i.e. blogs)? The answer to these questions, and many others, will greatly influence how we teach. Yancey argues that our students are already writing vigorously, through blogs and emails, and they will do it with or without us. With us they can write more purposefully, and more effectively.

Patience, the last point, falls mostly to us as instructors. We must recognize that students come to us from various writing backgrounds and will have varied capabilities. It is up to us to be open-minded and flexible enough to teach all of these students and not cling to old methods. We also have to realize that our students might have ideas that differ from ours, and we should not gage their effectiveness in writing by our own beliefs and prejudices.

The most interesting concept in the presentation was the ePortfolio. I found myself wishing that we'd had such a thing when I was an undergrad.

Cynthia Selfe

A very encouraging point of this week was that most of the presenters seemed to have a surprising affinity for their theorist's ideas and, even, ideals. Cathy was probably the most enthusiastic. That enthusiasm does not, however, seem unwarranted. Cynthia Selfe is, as Austen might say, "A very accomplished woman." Her interests and accomplishments range further than most theorists, so far as we have studied them. The most emphasized point of the presentation, though, seemed to be the focus on balance.

Cathy presented three important points that Selfe promoted, the first being the knowledge of the professor, the second on technology us and the third on technologic dependency. The first of these was pretty easy to relate to. Selfe has kept up with technology during its entire evolution, and says that other responsible educators should do the same. Not to do so is irresponsible, and it can create a "gap" between students and teachers that might make teachers ineffective in their teaching.

The second point is that technology is lovely, but sometimes it is used too often and is not used conscientiously. Students, therefore, need to learn to use technology judiciously. Most often, the trick is knowing which sites are supported by educational institutions, which sites need to be used with caution (like Wikipedia), and which sites to avoid entirely (for instance, sites that are entirely opinion-based and have no textual/reasonable support for the assertions made on them).

The third point is that computers are often viewed as angels from heaven or demons from hell when, in fact, they are neither. Computers must be used as needed and a teacher must not become dependent on their usefulness. Like the now-old ruse of parents letting the television babysit/raise their children, teachers must not allow computers to teach students. We are the educators, we are responsible, to some extent, for what is learned in our classrooms. Therefore, we must be active participants in what computers are used for in our classrooms.

Overall, Selfe encourages good judgment, common-sense and a certain adventurous and open spirit. If these things can be achieved, then we can use computers to our advantage in our classrooms.

Erika Lindemann

I have been reading the Rhetoric for Writing Teachers for my final project and have become even more impressed with Lindemann since Rebecca's presentation, which was very engaging and I enjoyed the interactive bit as well. Lindeman's courses are primarily student-driven, and her primary concern is in taking in all of the potential writers who come to her doorstep (whether they be strays who have previously been rummaging around in the garbage or well-bred animals) and nourishing them to help them become healthy writers.

I also find it very interesting (I must not have gotten to this part yet) that she believes that literature has no place in composition courses. At first, I disagreed with this and I thought, if students don't read it in composition courses, when will they? Then, as has become a daily epiphany for me, I realized that it really doesn't matter. The purpose of a composition course is, after all, to get students ready for other college courses and for the "real world." Indeed, it will be our job to teach students how to use language both effectively and correctly and, in the end, it will not matter if they have read Shakespeare, Swift and Shelley (the husband or wife). What will matter is if they can be understood by others in their writing. Like Donna said, if students want to read "higher" literature, they will take a literature course.

Also, as we learned during Rebecca's exercise, the most important thing (that our group came up with, anyhow) to teach burgeoning learners is critical thinking and how they, as individual thinkers, fit into a culture (or cultures).

Lindemann, in many ways, is also focused on process, and the various kinds of processes that exist in writing. I appreciated Rebecca providing us with the information that she did. I am still, however, a little confused about the Systems that Rebecca spoke about, and included on the handout. I suppose that I will have to do further research into those. It seems that all of these processes and systems generate various modes of learning, so that each student will have the opportunity of becoming a better writer, which is admirable.

Lindemann seems to have great hopes for those that she educates, which should, indeed, be every educator's goal.

Thomas and Brufee

I think that, for the sake of the final, it would be very nice to have Thomas post his Power Point Presentation on Blackboard, because there was a lot of information in the presentation and not really enough time to let it all sink in.

As for the points on Brufee, he, like many of his contemporaries (Lunsford), argues for collaboration. However, his argument principally concerns human interaction, such as peer review, where another mind and voice can add to the writer's piece through questions about point of view and preconceived notions.

Brufee presented "Competing Models" for peer tutoring:

 - Monitoring (which deals primarily with a power-based diad where the tutor is "all-knowing" and the tutee knows nothing)

- Collaborative (the preferred method, where the tutor aids in the fundamentals of writing, an the tutee educates the tutor on the subject matter)

In the Collaborative method, the tutee brings the subject and support to the table, whereas the tutor can help refine the tutees writing methods.

Within the collaboration of education, Brufee commented on The Teacher, The Classroom and The Student. The teacher acts much like the tutor in that she contributes "her knowledge of learning, speaking, writing and thinking." The Classroom acts as a "real world construct" that models real conversation and writing that students will be expected to engage in once they leave academia. And The Students are the primary collaborators.

The benefits of collaboration, in a real-world context, seem to be much more logical than the drawbacks expressed in the presentation. However, Klayton raised a very good point. Some students act best on their own, especially if these students are constantly acting as both tutor and tutee in that they are constantly questioning what they know and are capable of. Lunsford seems to understand that a person can collaborate with a text or other ideas presented out of a real-world construct, and this did not seem to be what Brufee had in mind. I enjoy working in groups, to a certain extent, usually at the beginning of a project when ideas are scarce. When it comes time to get down to work, however, I do not want to be responsible for anyone else's activity, and, likewise, do not want anyone else to have to take responsibility for mine.

Brufee did have some good points, but he also seemed to offer a regurgitation of points already offered through our other readings and other theorists. 

After meeting Dr. Burns it has occurred to me how misplaced the values of Americans are. Here is a genuine celebrity within the academic field, someone who has helped to shape nor only our understanding of composition and computers, but someone who also helped to create many of the early computer programs that run our country. This is pretty major, and yet we revere either people who entertain us or politically control us. Unless we are in the academic community and are acquainted with people like Hugh Burns, we rarely revere people who shape our learning, with a few notable exceptions who have been dead for thousands of years (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc.).

What I really enjoyed about listening to Dr. Burns was his wealth of knowledge, which spread across several disciplines, and was also applicable to just about every area of life, especially if what Graff says is true, that all communication is argument. Whether he intended to or not (although I suspect that a teacher's goal is to always promote further thought and study into what he says), I have several more avenues of knowledge that I would like to pursue with regard to our study of composition theory. I have never read anything by Aristotle, which seems amazing since I have taken so many English classes over the past ten years, and there were several important scholars Dr. Burns mentioned that I have never even heard of (Kenneth Burke, for example). So, if I hope to be a writing instructor, especially a creative writing instructor, I feel that I have a lot more reading to do.

Another aspect of the talk that I appreciated was hearing about the other big dogs of composition that Dr. Burns has known, such as Kinneavy and Booth. Since both of these men are now deceased, it is useful to get a perspective from someone who knew them when they were alive, someone who learned from them, got advice from them and someone who has now passed that advice onto a new group of scholars. For that I am grateful. Thanks to both Dr. Souder and Dr. Burns for arranging for this opportunity.