Sara Leavens
Building a Passionate Pedagogy: Cultivating Engagement in the First-Year Composition Classroom
Writing is a dialog and a composition classroom relies on constant dialog and interaction between students and teachers. If our students are dispassionate and despondent, how can we, as educators, get anything accomplished in our classrooms? My application paper explores various approaches to cultivating civic engagement in the classroom, basically, how to get students to react to, respond to, and possibly care about what they are learning. The composition classroom is a place for liberation of thought, the first taste of adult-level critical thinking strategies. I think that investigating the ways that we can use the classroom as a place for thought liberation, a place where students can sort out their world and discover its seams is integrally important to composition studies, but throughout the disciplines of liberal arts.
Apple, M.W. Ideology and Curriculum. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge-Falmer, 2004. Print.
---. “Pedagogy, Patriotism, and Democracy (Ideology and Education after September 11).” Ideology and Curriculum. 3rd ed. 157-73. Print.
In this chapter, scholar Michael W. Apple analyzes how the gains made by critical pedagogs were invalidated by the resurgence of neo-conservatism that erupted after 9/11, specifically focusing on the complicated effects the phenomenon of patriotic practices and discourses in schools had on teachers themselves as well as their pedagogical practices (159). A unique and refreshing feature of this chapter is the personal narrative that emerges from the text depicting a major event that shaped Apple’s conclusion about how the events of 9/11 changed the direction of American pedagogy, specifically, the bitter fight between the Madison, Wisconsin Board of Education and the citizens of Wisconsin over the school board’s voting against a bill that would require all students enrolled in Madison Public Schools to say the Pledge of Allegiance or sing The Star Spangled Banner on a daily basis. This piece speaks in conversation with Giroux’s chapter on the politics of student voice, describing the outcome of what happens when critical dialog and struggle against the status quo are stifled by a lingering response to tragedy.
Bloem, Patricia L. and Klooster, David J. The Writer’s Community. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995. Print.
Klooster and Bloem’s discourse community driven textbook, “The Writer’s Community,” is an excellent resource on how to build a practicality-focused curriculum. Although the book is nearly 20 years old, I think it stands up to the needs of today’s students, covering topics such as how our students can transfer what they are learning in the composition classroom for use in other college classes, how writing will affect their lives after college, listening and participating in academic conversations, and original ideas. The classroom environment that would be most friendly to the application I propose in my paper would be one supported by a textbook like Klooster and Bloem’s.
Feldman, Ann. Making Writing Matter: Composition and the Engaged University. Albany: SUNY, 2008. Print.
---. “Introduction.” Making Writing Matter: Composition and the Engaged University. Print.
In the introduction of her 2008 text, Making Writing Matter: Composition and the Engaged University, Ann M. Feldman, director of First-Year Composition at the University of Illinois, Chicago, sets up her central arguments in favor of overhauling first-year writing programs to focus more on an engagement with the university and the general public rather than disciplinary isolation. Feldman claims this civic engagement will help the students become better writers by giving them the gift of a clear and direct purpose for what they are writing stating that, “When students see writing as a situated performance, they see themselves as agents called to action; writing becomes something other than a means to demonstrate to the teacher that the student has learned something” (1). The arguments outlined in this section of her text are intrinsically connected to the type of teaching environment I am promoting in my application. When we as instructors can “make writing matter” for our students, they will be able to care about it and actively engage in the classroom environment.
---. “Writing As Participation.” Making Writing Matter: Composition and the Engaged University. 41-70. Print.
Continuing her argument for situated performances engaging students in the composition classroom, Ann Feldman spends the majority of the second chapter of this text outlining opportunities for instructors to give their students room to demonstrate the function of writing as a situated performance by choosing active genres (such as petitions and publishable opinion pieces for newspapers) for writing assessments. Feldman specifically advocates for a “greater acknowledgement of participation in communities” as a way to get our students to care about the writing they produce instead of simply regurgitating or mimicking what we, as composition instructors have told them to write because it is the “right way” to do it (41). I think that this piece describes the kind of writing that takes place once Palmer’s “emotional nexus” has been achieved in a classroom and informs the genre decision I made for the application featured in my paper.
Huber, Mary Taylor. “Caring for Students: Pedagogy and Professionalism in an Age of Anxiety.” Emotion, Space, and Society. 3.2 (Dec. 2010). 71-79. Web.
This essay by cultural anthropologist and accomplished education scholar, Mary Taylor Huber, examines two movements in the United States that attempt to sustain teachers' motivation by rethinking what caring for students requires them to do. The first, a call for a “scholarship of teaching and learning,” directs the professor's attention outward, towards inquiry into their students' learning; the second directs attention inwards, encouraging exploration of “the inner landscape of a teacher's life” (n.p.). The article unpacks decorated scholar Parker Palmer’s idea of the “emotional nexus” between teachers and students—the point when a teacher becomes so aware of their own “inner landscape” that they can rationalize how their students formulate opinions and make stronger connections between their students and the subject matter of the course (as qtd. in Huber, n.p.). Achieving Palmer’s “emotional nexus” is one of the central goals of the classroom environment and application that I propose in this paper.
Giroux, Henry A. Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture, and Schooling. Boulder: Westview, 1997. Print.
---. “Radical Pedagogy and the Politics of Student Voice.” Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture, and Schooling. 119-46. Print.
Renound critical pedagog, Henry A. Giroux begins the fifth chapter in his book, Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture, and Schooling, by discussing the reproductive theory of schooling, a pedagogical trend that was criticized by both radical and conservative educators in the 1990’s. Giroux distills the view of reproductive theory to the following, “…schools are not to be valued in the traditional sense as public spheres engaged in teaching students the knowledge and skills of democracy….(schools) should be measured against the need to reproduce the values, social practices, and skills needed for the dominant corporate order” (119). Giroux continues the essay by deconstructing the problem with the radical pedagogy of that day before spending the remainder of the essay proposing a more proactive and polyphonic theoretical model “in which the notions of struggle, student voice, and critical dialogue are central to the goal of developing an emancipatory pedagogy” (132) that is greatly inspired by Mikhail Baktin and Paulo Freire. Although this chapter specifically focuses on how this approach can be applied to secondary education in the late 1990’s, I think its reach can stretch into the university and is still relevant to our time. In my application paper, I plan to use it in conversation with Michael W. Apple’s piece on the conservative turn education took in the Post-9/11 era to reinforce reasons for my student’s reticence and lack of engagement with their world.
Gorzelsky, Gwen. Working Boundaries: From Student Resistance to Agency. College Composition and Communication. 61.1 (Sept. 2009): 64-85. Web.
This article by the current director of the Wayne State University rhetoric and composition program, Gwen Gorzelsky, analyzes the classroom strategies of a successful critical pedagog in his composition classroom, making the argument that active student engagement in a critical pedagogy classroom happens when the climate of that classroom “strongly supports their agency—their ownership of their developing ideas and texts” (n.p.). Throughout the article, Gorzelsky promotes a balanced, egalitarian approach to critical pedagogy in the classroom rather than an isolating, radical approach.The ideas behind the strongly supportive, humane, respect-based classroom climate I describe in my application paper draw inspiration from the teaching environment outlined in this article.
Juergensmeyer, Erik. “Rhetorical Invention, Conflict Resolution, and Critical Awareness in Composition Instruction.” Rocky Mountain Review. 65.1. (Spring 2011): 79-95. Web.
This article by assistant professor and community mediation director, Erik Juergensmeyer, outlines various classroom strategies to address student writer’s resistance to critical analysis of perspectives that differ from their own. Throughout the article, Juergensmeyer encourages composition instructors to welcome and insert conflict and dissonance in their classroom teaching strategies, suggesting that inquiry into other’s viewpoints from the perspective of conflict resolution could actually empower otherwise resistant students (79). Creating and releasing tension in a respectful community-based classroom is a central focus of my teaching application, therefore, in conjunction with the texts from Ann Feldman, I use this article to reinforce the methodology of the teaching application I feature within the paper.
Palmer, Heather. The Heat of Composition. Pedagogy. 10.3 (2010): p. 491-502. Web.
This article by poet and pedagog, Heather Palmer, broaches ways to mediate student resistance to genuine engagement in the composition classroom claiming, “…students want to please their writing instructors, to answer our desires, no matter how much we enjoin them to engage with their own desire and write from an authentic voice about authentic interests” (491). Palmer is essentially interested in how composition instructors can enforce ways of writing that “engage the personal, the ethical, and the critical” in spontaneous ways that engage the “heat” of composition (492-93) and calls on students and instructors to be critical of the interpolating quality of language and stand up to the risk completely original, personal thought and writing may bring along with it. Palmer’s article, in conjunction with articles from Justin Walton and Gwen Gorzelsky informs the community- based classroom climate I describe in my application paper.
Walton, Justin D. Dissonance in the Critical Classroom: The Role of Social Psychological Practices in Learner Resistance. College Student Journal. 45.4. (Dec. 2011): p. 769. Web.
In this multi-disciplinary article, Communication Studies scholar, Dr. Justin D. Walton investigates the link between dissonance reduction processes have in fostering resistance to critical learning experiences, arguing that critical pedagogues must be aware of student’s levels of fear need a to be eased into a and that a “learning climate conducive to personal safety and academic growth” is the best environment to cultivate a critical pedagogy (769). In my paper, I use this article to analyze the building blocks of a passion-infused critical pedagogy, one that makes students aware and less afraid of their position as both global (real world) and local (classroom world) citizens who must work together to achieve common goals such as reducing carbon footprints (global) and passing the class (local).
Building a Passionate Pedagogy: Cultivating Engagement in the First-Year Composition Classroom
Writing is a dialog and a composition classroom relies on constant dialog and interaction between students and teachers. If our students are dispassionate and despondent, how can we, as educators, get anything accomplished in our classrooms? My application paper explores various approaches to cultivating civic engagement in the classroom, basically, how to get students to react to, respond to, and possibly care about what they are learning. The composition classroom is a place for liberation of thought, the first taste of adult-level critical thinking strategies. I think that investigating the ways that we can use the classroom as a place for thought liberation, a place where students can sort out their world and discover its seams is integrally important to composition studies, but throughout the disciplines of liberal arts.
Apple, M.W. Ideology and Curriculum. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge-Falmer, 2004. Print.
---. “Pedagogy, Patriotism, and Democracy (Ideology and Education after September 11).” Ideology and Curriculum. 3rd ed. 157-73. Print.
In this chapter, scholar Michael W. Apple analyzes how the gains made by critical pedagogs were invalidated by the resurgence of neo-conservatism that erupted after 9/11, specifically focusing on the complicated effects the phenomenon of patriotic practices and discourses in schools had on teachers themselves as well as their pedagogical practices (159). A unique and refreshing feature of this chapter is the personal narrative that emerges from the text depicting a major event that shaped Apple’s conclusion about how the events of 9/11 changed the direction of American pedagogy, specifically, the bitter fight between the Madison, Wisconsin Board of Education and the citizens of Wisconsin over the school board’s voting against a bill that would require all students enrolled in Madison Public Schools to say the Pledge of Allegiance or sing The Star Spangled Banner on a daily basis. This piece speaks in conversation with Giroux’s chapter on the politics of student voice, describing the outcome of what happens when critical dialog and struggle against the status quo are stifled by a lingering response to tragedy.
Bloem, Patricia L. and Klooster, David J. The Writer’s Community. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995. Print.
Klooster and Bloem’s discourse community driven textbook, “The Writer’s Community,” is an excellent resource on how to build a practicality-focused curriculum. Although the book is nearly 20 years old, I think it stands up to the needs of today’s students, covering topics such as how our students can transfer what they are learning in the composition classroom for use in other college classes, how writing will affect their lives after college, listening and participating in academic conversations, and original ideas. The classroom environment that would be most friendly to the application I propose in my paper would be one supported by a textbook like Klooster and Bloem’s.
Feldman, Ann. Making Writing Matter: Composition and the Engaged University. Albany: SUNY, 2008. Print.
---. “Introduction.” Making Writing Matter: Composition and the Engaged University. Print.
In the introduction of her 2008 text, Making Writing Matter: Composition and the Engaged University, Ann M. Feldman, director of First-Year Composition at the University of Illinois, Chicago, sets up her central arguments in favor of overhauling first-year writing programs to focus more on an engagement with the university and the general public rather than disciplinary isolation. Feldman claims this civic engagement will help the students become better writers by giving them the gift of a clear and direct purpose for what they are writing stating that, “When students see writing as a situated performance, they see themselves as agents called to action; writing becomes something other than a means to demonstrate to the teacher that the student has learned something” (1). The arguments outlined in this section of her text are intrinsically connected to the type of teaching environment I am promoting in my application. When we as instructors can “make writing matter” for our students, they will be able to care about it and actively engage in the classroom environment.
---. “Writing As Participation.” Making Writing Matter: Composition and the Engaged University. 41-70. Print.
Continuing her argument for situated performances engaging students in the composition classroom, Ann Feldman spends the majority of the second chapter of this text outlining opportunities for instructors to give their students room to demonstrate the function of writing as a situated performance by choosing active genres (such as petitions and publishable opinion pieces for newspapers) for writing assessments. Feldman specifically advocates for a “greater acknowledgement of participation in communities” as a way to get our students to care about the writing they produce instead of simply regurgitating or mimicking what we, as composition instructors have told them to write because it is the “right way” to do it (41). I think that this piece describes the kind of writing that takes place once Palmer’s “emotional nexus” has been achieved in a classroom and informs the genre decision I made for the application featured in my paper.
Huber, Mary Taylor. “Caring for Students: Pedagogy and Professionalism in an Age of Anxiety.” Emotion, Space, and Society. 3.2 (Dec. 2010). 71-79. Web.
This essay by cultural anthropologist and accomplished education scholar, Mary Taylor Huber, examines two movements in the United States that attempt to sustain teachers' motivation by rethinking what caring for students requires them to do. The first, a call for a “scholarship of teaching and learning,” directs the professor's attention outward, towards inquiry into their students' learning; the second directs attention inwards, encouraging exploration of “the inner landscape of a teacher's life” (n.p.). The article unpacks decorated scholar Parker Palmer’s idea of the “emotional nexus” between teachers and students—the point when a teacher becomes so aware of their own “inner landscape” that they can rationalize how their students formulate opinions and make stronger connections between their students and the subject matter of the course (as qtd. in Huber, n.p.). Achieving Palmer’s “emotional nexus” is one of the central goals of the classroom environment and application that I propose in this paper.
Giroux, Henry A. Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture, and Schooling. Boulder: Westview, 1997. Print.
---. “Radical Pedagogy and the Politics of Student Voice.” Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture, and Schooling. 119-46. Print.
Renound critical pedagog, Henry A. Giroux begins the fifth chapter in his book, Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory, Culture, and Schooling, by discussing the reproductive theory of schooling, a pedagogical trend that was criticized by both radical and conservative educators in the 1990’s. Giroux distills the view of reproductive theory to the following, “…schools are not to be valued in the traditional sense as public spheres engaged in teaching students the knowledge and skills of democracy….(schools) should be measured against the need to reproduce the values, social practices, and skills needed for the dominant corporate order” (119). Giroux continues the essay by deconstructing the problem with the radical pedagogy of that day before spending the remainder of the essay proposing a more proactive and polyphonic theoretical model “in which the notions of struggle, student voice, and critical dialogue are central to the goal of developing an emancipatory pedagogy” (132) that is greatly inspired by Mikhail Baktin and Paulo Freire. Although this chapter specifically focuses on how this approach can be applied to secondary education in the late 1990’s, I think its reach can stretch into the university and is still relevant to our time. In my application paper, I plan to use it in conversation with Michael W. Apple’s piece on the conservative turn education took in the Post-9/11 era to reinforce reasons for my student’s reticence and lack of engagement with their world.
Gorzelsky, Gwen. Working Boundaries: From Student Resistance to Agency. College Composition and Communication. 61.1 (Sept. 2009): 64-85. Web.
This article by the current director of the Wayne State University rhetoric and composition program, Gwen Gorzelsky, analyzes the classroom strategies of a successful critical pedagog in his composition classroom, making the argument that active student engagement in a critical pedagogy classroom happens when the climate of that classroom “strongly supports their agency—their ownership of their developing ideas and texts” (n.p.). Throughout the article, Gorzelsky promotes a balanced, egalitarian approach to critical pedagogy in the classroom rather than an isolating, radical approach.The ideas behind the strongly supportive, humane, respect-based classroom climate I describe in my application paper draw inspiration from the teaching environment outlined in this article.
Juergensmeyer, Erik. “Rhetorical Invention, Conflict Resolution, and Critical Awareness in Composition Instruction.” Rocky Mountain Review. 65.1. (Spring 2011): 79-95. Web.
This article by assistant professor and community mediation director, Erik Juergensmeyer, outlines various classroom strategies to address student writer’s resistance to critical analysis of perspectives that differ from their own. Throughout the article, Juergensmeyer encourages composition instructors to welcome and insert conflict and dissonance in their classroom teaching strategies, suggesting that inquiry into other’s viewpoints from the perspective of conflict resolution could actually empower otherwise resistant students (79). Creating and releasing tension in a respectful community-based classroom is a central focus of my teaching application, therefore, in conjunction with the texts from Ann Feldman, I use this article to reinforce the methodology of the teaching application I feature within the paper.
Palmer, Heather. The Heat of Composition. Pedagogy. 10.3 (2010): p. 491-502. Web.
This article by poet and pedagog, Heather Palmer, broaches ways to mediate student resistance to genuine engagement in the composition classroom claiming, “…students want to please their writing instructors, to answer our desires, no matter how much we enjoin them to engage with their own desire and write from an authentic voice about authentic interests” (491). Palmer is essentially interested in how composition instructors can enforce ways of writing that “engage the personal, the ethical, and the critical” in spontaneous ways that engage the “heat” of composition (492-93) and calls on students and instructors to be critical of the interpolating quality of language and stand up to the risk completely original, personal thought and writing may bring along with it. Palmer’s article, in conjunction with articles from Justin Walton and Gwen Gorzelsky informs the community- based classroom climate I describe in my application paper.
Walton, Justin D. Dissonance in the Critical Classroom: The Role of Social Psychological Practices in Learner Resistance. College Student Journal. 45.4. (Dec. 2011): p. 769. Web.
In this multi-disciplinary article, Communication Studies scholar, Dr. Justin D. Walton investigates the link between dissonance reduction processes have in fostering resistance to critical learning experiences, arguing that critical pedagogues must be aware of student’s levels of fear need a to be eased into a and that a “learning climate conducive to personal safety and academic growth” is the best environment to cultivate a critical pedagogy (769). In my paper, I use this article to analyze the building blocks of a passion-infused critical pedagogy, one that makes students aware and less afraid of their position as both global (real world) and local (classroom world) citizens who must work together to achieve common goals such as reducing carbon footprints (global) and passing the class (local).