|
Articles Conference Reviews |
B.28 Ways to Write about TeachingSession B.28
As a young teacher-scholar trying to navigate the publishing world, I thought this just might be the session to get some tips from folks with some serious experience in publishing essays, collections, and textbooks in Composition and Rhetoric. John Schilb, Indiana University, Bloomington, “A Journal Editor’s Perspective” Schilb, editor of College English, began speaking of the need for public discussions on publishing. He and his fellow speakers in this panel provided suggestions for our consideration based on their own experiences as editors. Schilb talked about the idea of publishing based on what we do. We need a set of strategies for scholars who wish to write about teaching writing; “How do we shape our scholarship so that it grabs the attention of the population at large?” he asked. Much conjecture is involved in what gets published; it is currently an ad hoc decision-making process, but could perhaps become more systematic. Schilb went on to describe some of the things he sees with College English submissions. Many authors spend too much time chronicling their life, but this may distract from readers’ interests. He moved onto discuss credibility and relevance. Schilb was jarred by the 80s move more toward social scientific research methods—researchers like Flower and Hayes seeking methodological credibility, even though this was not an absolute take over. But moves toward positivism were replaced more and more with “narrative ploys” that mixed scientism with anthropological narrative. Schilb went on to caution authors to “limit our bragging.” Tales of victory are suspicious. We should not “pose as expert classroom managers,” he suggested. Articles fair better when students are shown as co-inquirers—showing ourselves as students of sorts. He pointed, for example, to how scholars can continue to learn from student facility with new social networking communications. Schilb described how we can make our contributions relevant by situating our pedagogical accounts in the theories of the field. This does not mean we stuff our texts with sources and citations, he advised. But there should be a smart balance between our own thoughts and relevant citations; although, he emphasized that our thoughts should come forward and the citations fall a bit more to the background. Schilb recommended we try to negotiate between commonplaces and what might need more explication. He drew laughter from the audience when he warned us to be careful arguing such overdone commonplaces as “genre is important, or new media is cool.” He ended by giving a list of what the field needs: how best to comment on student writing, how to use peer review, how to conduct student conferences; and he added that there are four questions good teaching essays try to answer: 1. Quoting George Bush, “Is our children learning” 2. What makes you think students are learning? 3. Are you as a teacher learning? 4. Why do the events you describe have to be pedagogical? Christine Farris, Indiana University, Bloomington, “A Collection Editor’s Perspective” Farris starts with some autobiographical information. She relates how she started her own school when she was only 22 years old. Her decision was influenced by a combination of the personal and the practical. She participated in the Teacher and Writer’s Collaborative in NYC where participants were teaching students to write and illustrate descriptive narratives. Farris describes being a research assistant to Sylvia Scribner, where she began to move away from teaching lore toward ethnographic methods, t-units, etc. She reflected on the slight disappointment in seeing her narrative and ethnographic methods disappear. These experiences sent her back to school to try to learn if we can teach students to write in school, and what it might mean to teachers if we can, or cannot, teach students to write in school settings. Places between theory and practice are where she wanted to learn how to teach writing. She described the importance of the unanswered question, and how not knowing the answer ahead of time made each of her three edited collections better books. She warned that submissions that ridiculed student prose would not work for audiences of teachers. She concluded by discussing how the call for her newest book collection, College Credit for Writing in High School, looked for honest descriptions that invited and provoked imaginative modification rather than the ideal that can be easily achieved. Steve Scipione, Bedford/ St. Martin’s, Boston, MA, “A Textbook Editor’s Perspective” Scipione opened by acknowledging that, even though he is not a scholar of composition, he knows that he must demonstrate that he knows what he’s talking about with this topic. He talked about textbooks and the marketplace—the variety and detail involved in textbook needs, but at the cheapest price. He spoke of the complexity of textbook publishing, including honing in on an audience for a textbook. Scipione said there are four potential readers to keep in mind: yourself, students, teachers and sales reps. He described how it is hard for him to try to read with the eyes of a teacher talking to students, including having to negotiate between the voice of neutrality or personality. He spoke of writing that can “cast a spell of simplicity” for the author or even the publishers, but that might prove to be just too intimidating or confounding for students. How much should the textbook teach the teacher, including TAs and adjuncts? How can a textbook be written so that the voice is sustained for students and teachers for as long as possible, perhaps enabling multiple reprints? He ended with some advice on where current student reading populations are at, and where they are going. He said that “Student audiences are more diverse than they’ve ever been in the history of higher education.” He spoke of the importance of finances to these diverse students. Students think that since they pay for college they deserve to pass. Textbook costs are important to students. Textbooks will continue to move more toward the digital, moving further away from the “booky.” Content will be increasingly movable, and costs will continue to go down. “Students will carry whole digital libraries in their backpacks,” he forecasts. Together, the speakers gave audience members useful things to think about when considering content, style, and audience for journal articles, essay collections, and textbooks for our field. |