freetowrite

MiraCosta Basis Skills Initiatve Narration

Worked on a brief voice narration for a video about MiraCosta's Basic Skills Initiative work, and I decided I wanted to save some of what I wrote for it here on my blog as food for thought, reflection, etc.

"Literally thousands of students graduate each year from our feeder high schools testing below proficient in reading, writing, and mathematics skills. With this in mind, teaching basic skills in central to MiraCosta's commitment to the communities we serve. When we teach basic skills students, we contribute to hope, change, and opportunity. For this reason, basic skills students belong at MiraCosta. They come from every community and cultural group represented on our campuses, and they participate in courses in every discipline and program."

For the past five years, California's Basic Skills Initiative has researched and documented best practices and provided some funding to initiate these efforts on our campuses. This best practices research indicates that colleges need to rethink how we teach in the classroom--employing new approaches and pedagogies -- and outside of the classroom--through counseling, tutoring, and other services. Ultimately, the state initiative seeks to help students successfully navigate California's higher education system. Whether returning directly the work force, continuing with career and technical education, or transferring to four-year colleges, basic skill learners can and will reshape our communities and our shared future."

A Saturday Afternoon Bike Ride

My four year old son Ben shouted this out to me as we went on our daily bike ride through the neighborhood on Saturday.

"Daddy, your shorts are falling down. Your butt crack is showing. I don't want people to see that!"

Shouted.

At the top of his lungs.

Oh the humanity!

That I have become a father who subjects his son to such humiliation!

mysantapicsnightmare.com

Ah the joys of pre-holiday season consumption in America!

I made the mistake of cutting through the mall (to go see the outdoor Christmas tree) with my kids yesterday. Much to my horror, Santa was not only highly visible--even from the second floor of the mall--but also completely available. My four year old seized the moment and before I knew it I was asking the cheerful teenager selling the photo packages if Santa took plastic. "Of course he does," she answered, "this is America!."

Yes indeed it is. And now I endure three times a day tug-of-wars between my children over who gets to carry which of the preposterous eight pieces of the absurd photo package of Ben's flashing his grimace grin into which of the already overflowing with all manners of crap rooms of my now worth less than half of what I paid for it five years ago house.

"Wait...is that noise coming from the washing machine...

"Daddy...it looks like an ocean in here..."

mysantapicsnightmare.com will prove nothing compared to my buyanewwasheranddryer.com nightmare.

"It's that most wonderful time of the year.."

Syllabus Workshop with Mt. San Jacinto College Faculty

  Yesterday I led a syllabus workshop for faculty from Mt. San Jacinto Community College. They were great: energetic, creative, engaged. But I did not feel good about how the workshop went. I had some tech glitches at the that limited what I could show the faculty and the size of the group and limited time with them left me feeling rushed and a bit discombobulated.

For those who attended the workshop and would like more time to think and work through the ideas presented, here is a revised version of my Powerpoint (Download Syllabusworkshop )that you can download and review. You can also visit my syllabus web site. And here is a syllabus and a calendar from this semester that you may find interesting: 

English 202 Fall 2009

• Syllabus: Download 202newsyl_2187
• Calendar: Download 202calsamp

You can find other sample syllabus on my syllabus web site as well as links to some great syllabus development resources on the web.

Even with my concerns about how the session went, I still learned so much from facilitating this workshop. Here is a quick list of a few things I learned while purportedly "leading" a this weekend's workshop:

• The Power of the Invitation: a math instructor shared an amazing invitation question for a College Algebra syllabus--I am going to butcher the language but it was something to the effect of "how can we identify the unknown?" or "how can we determine the undetermined?" or something supercool like that (how sad that I am mutilating her genius!). Her question reminded me how exciting this practice of identifying a guiding question (this is Ken Bain's idea, see his wonderful site for more) for our courses can be. I have been thinking about how Bain's idea of the invitation connects to James Zull's thoughts about teaching, learning, and the brain. I think that is material for a future post and perhaps even a new workshop...

• Rethink How My Syllabus Presents My Assessment Policies: During yesterday's workshop, I realized that the sample syllabus I was sharing does not do a very good job of highlighting the assessment practices that really define my comp course as the students experience it. Specifically the "infinite rewrite" and "outside of class conference based essay grading" elements appear as minor points on my assessment page when I should be highlighting in some creative ways--text boxes, quotes from students, pictures, etc.

• Alignment: One of the ideas that came up in yesterday's workshop--within one of the smaller circle discussions--was the role the syllabus plays in helping the instructor stay focused and organized over the course of the semester. My online teaching hero Lisa Lane recently posted about the struggle to align what we are doing in the classroom / learning space on any given day with our broader objectives. This is definitely a challenge, but the better we achieve this oh so allusive goal, the more sense our course will make to our students. I have been trying to do that in my 202 courses by introducing some visual representations of key ideas that we cover in the course into the syllabus. My goal was that we would return to those pages in the syllabus again and again during the semester. Although including that material in my syllabus has helped me stay focused (and I have frequently used these terms and these frameworks in class discussions and assessment), I have not physically returned us to the syllabus itself to reconnect students with those key visual tools. I think one key step I need to take is to create posters for the classroom from those syllabus pages that I can refer back to each day as we encounter, apply, and explore these ideas.

• Just Say No! I have to learn to say no to shorter sessions--they do not work for me and often confuse or frustrate the participants. I understand how colleagues want to put together rich programs of workshops and offerings, but my session simply does not work when compressed. I should explore presenting just parts of it--that could address some of this--but the key is for participants to have enough time to brainstorm and create--something that is not going to happen in the standard 75 minute session.

Workshops

The Promising Syllabus

A Teacher's Introduction to Blogging

Courses Fall 2009

 
English 202

American Literature

 

American Studies

Web 2.0 Sites

Twitter

Facebook

 

YouTube

A Chronicle Tech Fix

Increasingly I am finding the Chronicle's technology pages worth monitoring--not because they are particularly cutting edge but because they can tell you quite a bit about which way the winds are blowing.

The key resources are their main technology page and their blog (The Wired Campus), which I find particularly interesting. Some samples follow below:

on emerging reader device technology

on social media and college teaching

on videos and college teaching/learning

originally posted in LettersTech

Online vs Onsite: The Plot Thickens!

An interesting piece in the NY Times documents research suggesting that online learners tend to score higher in various testing programs.

Although I have found retention numbers lower in my online and hybrid classes, I have long felt that rapidly evolving technology is erasing the liabilities in the online setting for me. As the article suggests, chat, easy video, and social networking functions are making the online setting much more appealing.

I have been experimenting with a social network based system for my onsite comp course (signsabound.com) and enjoying it so far.

Seeing this study summarized in the Times simply strengthens my resolve to keep developing my online skills.

Posted on LettersTech

15 Books in 15 Minutes

This is a response to my friend Louisa Moon, who forwarded these rules:
Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

I played by Louisa's rules--and then went back and added my comments, lamentations, and other notes...

Unfortunately, I did some cutting and pasting, so they are not in the exact order I thought of them (which would have been fun--but I cannot completely reconstruct that):

1. Ceremony (Silko)--an American masterpiece
2. Nine Stories (Salinger)--when I fell in love with literature
3. Jesus Before Christianity (Albert Nolan)--helped/helps me in my own search for social justice
4. Invisible Man (Ellison)--Luis Armstrong and Ellison--our two greatest modernists in one text
5. Sula (Morrison)--some of Morrison's best prose and most culturally resonant characters/metaphors
6. A Hundred Years of Solitude (Garcia Marquez)--I remember reading it over and over during my year in Peru
7. Song of Myself (Whitman): from lonely women watching naked men swim and whitman bathing a runaway slave's feet to the glories of blades of grass and barbaric  yawps...
8. Bless Me Ultima (Anaya)--such a simple and beautiful gateway to helping younger high school students explore literature, art, and culture
9. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain): if only I had Huck's courage, Jim's wisdom, and one more chance to light out for the territories...
10. The Portable Thoreau: "Life Without Principle" and "Walking" would be enough even without Walden
11. The Portable Emerson: "Self-reliance," "Experience," "The Poet"--the texts every American since seems to be arguing with...
12. La Frontera / Borderlands (Anzaldua)-- what -- identity is a construct not an essential truth -- and that's exciting not scary?!
13. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson: much madnees is indeed divinest sense (especially when presented slantwise)
14. The Republic (Plato) -- am I in the cave--am I out--does it matter?
15. The Norton Shakespeare--Cheating, I know, but I could not face the pain of choosing

I cannot even begin to describe the horror of the many authors that I wanted to include but just did not make that first to rise to the top fifteen: ana castillo, luis alfaro, pynchon, de saint-expury, faulkner, baldwin, dubois, chesnutt, william carlos williams, sylvia plath, dostoyevsky, dickens, cooper, flannery o'connor, tolkien, arthur miller, edward albee, suzie lorie parks, willa cather...perhaps this was more painful than it was worth...

But looking at the list, many of the choices had to do with which texts I keep coming back to but also which books I have most enjoyed teaching.

I still remember...

discovering the world of Latino/a literature through Anzaldua and first teaching Bless Me Ultima to Upward Bound students...

the joys of teaching Sula (the phrase "magnificent desolation" which I picked up from Buzz Aldrin today seems so pefect for that book) to many different groups...

an amazing experience I had ending my American lit sequence last year with Ceremony--a book I had not read in years but was once again thrilled by its beauty...

watching students from many years of lit classes perform scenes from shakespeare...

Contacting and Finding Me

On Campus

Office: MiraCosta College OC T318
Office Hours: M-Th 12:30-1:20
Phone: 760-757-2121 x6303

Web Contact

Office Hours: M-Th 9-10 M
email • MiraCosta page • twitter • facebook
course sites: signsabound • barbaricyawps • studyingamerica

Boot Camp 08 Short Video

 

Use this boot camp 08 link to check out a short video of last summer's boot camp.

Amazing Colleagues

Survived a challenging outcomes assessment session today almost entirely because of the brilliance, graciousness, generosity, and commitment of my amazing colleagues. Even though our results were not what we hoped for, my colleagues have renewed me for the new semester with a combination of inspiration and new ideas.

American Lit Textbook List Posted

I posted my American lit textbook list in hopes that students could find cheaper options via Amazon. Anything to break the cycle of textbook ripoffs and recriminations!

Hipster?

Listening to my wife tell me that I am closer to hip replacement than hip. Oh the humanity!

Hooter's Hyphenation

Re-reading a question from student about his semiotic analysis of "Hooters": "Is it a bit over the top to hyphenate ass-ets?

Christmas Show Horror

Lamenting second consecutive disasterous christmas show: sobbing child later bellows repeatedly into microphone. Oh the humanity!

Feral Nursing Mother

Worrying about feral nursing mother claw marks discovered on sliced turkey in the regrigerator. Oh the humanity!

Gymnastics

Watching my son torment his gymnastics teacher. Oh the Humanity!

Seery on the LA Times and the Fourth Amendment

My friend John Seery posted a blistering critique of an LA Times editorial on President Bush's effort to defend telephone companies who spy on Americans for the government.

Here is John's post, and I include the comment I made in response to it below:

Hi John:

This is one of those posts from you that leaves those of us who share your concerns with very little to add.

To me, the Times, like so many other individuals and groups, has lost the broader issue in the back and forth of the political bickering in Washington. Like campaign junkies who follow the campaign--the "race" for the White House--for the sport of it, many of our political commentators have become so caught up in process that they have lost an authentic sense of purpose.

One final thought, this is not a liberal or conservative issue. Our national commitment to the principles of the Fourth Amendment transcends party and ideological lines, which is what makes our current Congress's passivity particularly astonishing (and disheartening).