Using a Theme in Freshman Comp?

Hello everyone! I'm back! Sorry to have been gone so long! (Yes, I know that no one is reading this blog, that it's really for me only, but I thought I'd start with some simple humor to start my day!)

The topic that is most on my mind of late concerns using "themes" in college writing classes (i.e., developmental writing and/or the standard freshman comp. class). Common themes include pop culture (such as TV, ads, music, movies, etc.), a current event (such as an election), multiculturalism/diversity, social justice, work, education, suburbia, etc.

But some articles I've come across recently all seem to argue that any FYC (first-year composition) or FYW (first-year writing) course that uses a theme is a "sham." One problem is simple "truth-in-advertising," that it's really a course about something else, not writing. Another problem is that while such a course may be attempting to teach writing as well, use of the theme takes valuable time away from the study and practice of writing. A third, and perhaps the most troubling, problem concerns the possible "indoctrination" (political or otherwise) of students through the use of a theme.

When I was first taught to teach freshman composition at Mankato State University in the early 1990s, we did not start out talking about themes. We actually started out talking about the writing process and about the "modes" of writing (narration, description, exposition, and argumentation) which, I later discovered, reflected a combination of writing-process theory with "current-traditional" theory. But it wasn't a bad way to start to learn to teach. Later, some of my colleagues did begin to incorporate a theme (often involving pop culture or current events), while others of us incorporated focuses on literature, academic writing, or the various "genres" of writing (memoir, reflection, position papers, proposals, reviews, etc.).

A decade later, after taking other graduate-level courses about the teaching of writing at the University of Minnesota, I began to experiment with using a theme for my writing courses. I first tried the theme of "Work," thinking that it would appeal to my working-class, career-minded, currently-employed community college students. It didn't, really, and, to my surprise, some of my students didn't even have a job yet, had never had one. So, I switched themes, to "Education," which at that time was the focus of the writing courses in the (now defunct) General College at the U of MN. The theory behind having students explore education includes empowering students, having them reflect on their past experiences with education and critically examine the enterprise they are currently involved in. This theme interested me greatly but didn't have the same effect on my students. Some were interested, sure, but many others were tolerant, or bored, or apathetic. And this very mixture of widely varying interests in a theme by students probably occurs in any course, comp or otherwise, theme or no theme.

So, I'm returning to a course focused almost entirely on writing, language, the writing process, academic writing, documentation and citation, grammar, etc. Sure, there will have to be "topics" to writing about, and we will have to discuss some readings (either to respond to or as models). But the focus will be on the list I just gave. And, I'm sure, I'll still have some students who are committed and interested, and tolerant, and bored, and apathetic, etc. But the course will not be a "sham," it will directly address what it's meant to address, and it will, hopefully, help students with their writing, for other college courses and for the workplace.

But I'm also still continuing to think about this topic. It's interesting, and it needs to be discussed. We also need to talk about other "add-ons" to freshman composition courses, such as Service Learning, or Technology Tools, or Digital Writing Projects, etc. Do these also take away from the writing and language focus of FYC/FYW courses, or do they complement the courses in ways that "themes" do not?

For now, here's my bibliography of the sources I've been reading. Enjoy!

Benay, Phyllis. "They Say, 'Templates Are the Way to Teach Writing'; I Say, 'Use with Extreme Caution.'" Rev. of They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. Pedagogy 8.2 (2008): 369-373. Print.

Brunner, Elizabeth. "Assignments for Freshman Composition." N.p. 24 Sept. 1999. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.

Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach?" New York Times 24 Aug. 2009. Web. 22 Oct. 2009.

Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach? Part 2." New York Times 31 Aug. 2009. Web. 22 Oct. 2009.

Fish, Stanley. "What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3." New York Times 7 Sept. 2009. Web. 22 Oct. 2009.

Foley, James E. "The Freshman Research Paper: A Near-Death Experience." N.p. N.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2011.

Grow, Laura M. "If They Say Academic Writing Is Too Hard, I Say Read Graff and Birkenstein." Rev. of They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. Pedagogy 8.2 (2008): 363-368. Print.

Miller, Susan. "How I Teach Writing: How to Teach Writing? To Teach Writing?" Pedagogy 1.3 (2001): 479-488. Print.

Shank, Dianna Rockwell. Rev. of Save the World on Your Own Time, by Stanley Fish. Teaching English in the Two-Year College 38.1 (Sept. 2010): 85-87.

Young, R. V. "Liberal Learning Confronts the Composition Despots." Intercollegiate Review 46.1 (Spr. 2011): 3-11. Print.

Flickr Slideshow of Mankato, MN, and American Literature

The slide show you've just seen is, apparently, an odd miscellany of images from Flickr. There's no explicit, coherent theme, I don't think, so don't think you've missed anything! (Sounds a little like Mark Twain at the beginning of Huck Finn, don't you think? "Persons attempting ....") However, being the English professor that I am, I suppose there's something lurking under the surface. Maybe we can find something there?

Also, Flickr does not let me organise my faves, so there's no way I can impose upon my choices a coherent, linear narrative. Maybe that's where VoiceThread will come in handy? Moreover, my faves seem not to be organised in the order I chose them on Flickr, so that's not even helpful, where one might try to choose images in a certain order so that the faves are organised. (Did you like the British spelling of organize? I hope so. I also think we should go metric! Powers of 10 are so much easier.)

The coherent narrative is this: I went to college in Mankato, and in college I studied American Literature, first with Dr. Robert Houston, and then with Dr. Ronald Gower, both excellent professors--perhaps more on them later, in another blog post. Literature has an imaginative, playful component, much like I'm trying to adopt in this blog post, which some of these images demonstrate, and Mankato has a picturesque past and present, which also lends itself to the imagination. For example, while I could not find any images of the Dakota Sioux hanging in Mankato (it happened around 1862, I think), I did find the image of a Mankato-area man tarred-and-feathered for not supporting the war. This stuff should only happen in the imagination, right?

So there's the coherent theme or narrative. Of course, you might also see things I didn't, and that's OK too. It's what we English professors call "reader response," where the act of reading, or viewing, or interpreting, is as much a creative act as the act of composing. There are no wrong answers, right? Not as long as one can support their "reading" with evidence from the "text." (Sorry! Don't know where that lecture came from.)

NOTE: All images in the slide show have a "Creative Commons" license, which is great, and I thank the artists for allowing their use. (However, limiting a Flickr search to only those images with the "CC" license does, sometimes dramatically, limit your choices. Using your own images and/or checking other image repositories on the web, such as Google Images, might be even better.)

Mankato State University ... Picking a Major

minnesota state - mankato
Originally uploaded by goatopolis

This is where it all began. I began my college career at Mankato State University as a "pre-med" major. But since there wasn't a major called "pre-med," I had to choose something else. So I started with Chemistry, then I switched to Biology, then Environmental Science, then Chemistry, then Math, then Chemistry, then Biochemistry, then English. (But I minored in Chemistry after all that!) The reason for all the switches? I was interested in too many things! With each class I took, I could see myself majoring in that field.

But I was still interested in medicine through it all. (I still am.) So interested that I applied to the Medical School at the University of Minnesota through its Advanced Admissions Program, a program targeting college sophomores. (I think medical school admissions were down at the time.) You could apply at the end of your sophomore year of college. They looked at your grades, your activities, your writing sample, and your interviews. If you were accepted, that was it. No MCAT! You had to complete your B.S. or B.A. degree, of course, and keep up your grades and activities. But you were in!

My interviews were a dream! The first interview was with a professor of public health whose brother played the trombone. And since I knew of his brother because I played the trombone myself, we started talking about music and the interview took off from there. It couldn't have gone any better. The second interview was with an ophthalmologist who turned out to be the assistant of the ophthalologist who had performed three surgeries on my eye when I was about 2 years old--I had remembered his name through my mother's stories. So that interview was more about my eye and him digging around for my file--but he also asked the questions he needed to. Again, it couldn't have gone any better.

And so I was accepted to the U of M Medical School. And then things changed. And it was all their fault! Part of the acceptance agreement was that I could major in anything I wanted, as long as I completed all the Medical School requirements--they wanted well-rounded physicians, not all science drones. So I changed my major, one last time, to English. Another part of the acceptance agreement was that I was assigned a mentor to "shadow" once a month for my last two years of college. He was a professor of Radiology and I met with him for a full day, once a month, for two years. But in talking to him and his residents, it became clearer and clearer to me that the "culture" of medical school and I weren't going to "jive." (Especially when most residents, when I asked, said they wouldn't do it again.)

And at the same time, I was having a blast in my English courses. I had always wanted to teach, and I knew that by going to Medical School, I wouldn't be able to teach for at least 6-8 more years. Then, a bulletin board outside the MSU English Department office caught my eye. Teaching Assistantships were being offered for incoming graduate students. To make a long story short, I applied to the graduate school at MSU, in English, and I applied for a Teaching Assistantship, in Composition. (I didn't know at the time that, usually, one does not go to graduate school where one was an undergraduate--but it made little difference in the end.)

When I received my graduate school acceptance letter and my Teaching Assistantship contract, I applied for a one-year extension from the Medical School ... just in case the English gig didn't work out. But it did. I was having a blast, both with the teaching and with the coursework. So the next year, I notified the Medical School that I wouldn't be joining them after all.

I haven't looked back. And, I have wonderful memories of Mankato State--now called Minnesota State Mankato. Fancy!

NOTE: This photo has a "Creative Commons" copyright.