Candid Beauty

It may just be my mood, but I didn’t find the last third of this book as engaging as the first two thirds. That being said though, I think chapter 18 is not just important for multigenre writing, but writing in general. “Indelible Moments, Central Acts, Crucial Things, and Meaningful Places” really describes what writing is all about. I’ve had many teachers who meant well, but gave out the uninspiring assignment “write about something that changed your life.” I’m sure they even went past this and tried to give some examples, yet they were probably generic like, “When you see a kitten bathing in sunlight” or “When your grandfather sat you on his lap and gave you a Werther’s Original candy.” I have two points I want to make about this. As I’ve already mentioned I think these moments in life are what everything’s about. They’re not just memories, although many of them are, and memories are indescribably important. These moments are times when all the elements, especially those that are inexplicable, come together and a person becomes saturated with pure emotion. They can be when the love of your life expresses their reciprocal feelings, or when you’re driving to work listening to music. They’re proof that there is a layer to this life that will never be understood, only felt. Accurately portraying theses through any form of art, to me, is the highest and purest form of expression. Every person has these, whether their emotion is happiness, despair, indifference, or disillusionment. If students can identify and be helped to truthfully write about these moments, or the feelings they produce, a great accomplishment will be reached by all. But there is where the problem lies. Although I believe everyone has these moments, not everyone is conscious enough to identify them. The most important thing for a teacher to do is explain them thoroughly through sincere, not watered down examples, examples of these moments accurately expressed through art (perhaps in a popular song, movie, etc. the students might recognize) and in extensive verbal explanation.
One of the last things in the book talks about giving students a kind of survey about their experience with the multigenre assignment. I strongly agree getting student’s feedback is crucial grading the students, and in improving the assignment. But I’m not sure writing answers to questions will get truthful answers. I’ve been trying to come up with something that might solicit a more honest answer, but as of now nothing’s come to mind. If anyone has any suggestions when reading this, please include them in your comments.
I’m at a bit of loss as of what kind of link to leave on this page. So I’m just going to put one for a page that has different opinions on No Child Left Behind. Enjoy.

Opinions on NCLB

This set of chapters was full of very diverse ideas and topics. I actually started with nine, although I think we were supposed to end with nine last week. Chapter nine did two things for me. Jeff’s multigenre piece was fun, and the back story on it and Stephanie’s student teaching experience was inspiring. But an unexpected side effect of reading about the Allosauras reinforced my desire to teach highschoolers, specifically upperclassmen. Perhaps it’s the quality of writing, the ability to look inward a bit more or in this case the maturity of the voice. I’ve always known I wanted to teach high school English, but never really knew why. It sounds really odd, but his chapter set off a sequence of thoughts that gave me a pretty good explanation. My junior and senior years in high school are when I really started to see literature and writing the way I do now. I’m sure that’s not the case for everyone, which makes me question whether it’s a good reason. Well good reason or not, I still have the strong feeling that’s where I belong. How’s that for nonsensical gibberish?
Chapter 10 addresses an extremely important topic. Secondary English teachers are not going to be teaching a classroom full of themselves. Not everyone’s going to major in English, or even cares for the subject. I would guess this a major problem within the profession: Many high school English teachers should be teaching creative writing in college. Although there will be those extraordinary “tie-dyed future artist” students whom we want to cradle and nurture, our responsibility lie in developing the skills and abilities of every student. I agree with Romano in that multigenre assignments may be difficult for students who like a lot of structure, but on the other hand I think “uptight future engineer” students may also have an easier time with multigenre writing. For example a math equation or blue prints could be possible pieces within multigenre writing, could they not? Once the open endedness of the assignment could be shown to be an asset to their personality type, I think any student could run with it.
Chapter 16 was another that jumped out at me. In fact it gave me the idea in the previous paragraph for more left brain students to “branch off” into subjects that better fit their interests and way of thinking. The possibilities really are endless. An idea that came to me while reading about the pianist who assembled her writing as a program, was that audio and video could be brought in. Many student’s thrive on different types of technology. A recorded conversation, song, or just sounds may be a powerful addition to multigenre project.
Below I’ve included a link to page that some students at MSU made. It walks students through the multigenre process. It has links to examples of different types of genres and a bunch of other stuff. Pretty cool, you should check it out.


The link I was talking about in the last paragraph

Despite coming off a 14 hour work day, a first round NCAA MSU loss and 4 hours of sleep, I really enjoyed the Bright Ideas Conference. I’m an MSU alum, so I also took great pleasure in walking the campus again. Never having been to something like this, I thought it might be a bunch of accomplished people tooting their own horns. I was very happy to find out it wasn’t. From what I gathered, which was only from two sessions plus the keynote speaker, the conference was made up of people who passionately cared about teaching English, and who wanted to share what they thought could positively impact others’ teaching. As I mentioned, I saw the keynote speaker, Ernest Morrell. I also went to a session about teaching social justice that was spearheaded by Dan Baker and Shannon Dannison. And lastly I was a host for Les Burns who talked about asserting professional authority.
Entering the keynote address I was less than enthusiastic. The coffee must have mistakenly been decaf because it wasn’t working. But Ernest Morrell almost immediately captured my attention. His personal story was inspiring, and his ideas for bringing popular culture into the classroom weren’t too bad either. Morrell followed along the same lines of Christensen in that many of the skills he was trying to develop in his students were critical in nature. Although his entire presentation was memorable, two things stick out in my mind. The first is his assignment to compare a classical piece of literature and the lyrics of a hip hop song. The idea has occurred to use contemporary or popular music in the classroom, but never to draw parallels between classic literature and modern musical lyrics. The fact that this can enable students to appreciate classics they would usually never give a chance, and show them poetry isn’t only written by dead white guys is exciting. The other thing that sticks out in my mind was Morrell’s comment about questioning censorship. I’m one to fight gratuitous or meaningless explicit material, but I think it’s extremely important to point out that things parents try to diligently shield their children from in popular mass media and music, (drugs, sex, violence), they’re only too happy expose them to in Shakespeare or Romantic poetry. Morrell definitely shared some things that will resonate in me.
The first session I went to, Beyond the Literacy Canon, was basically about incorporating Critical Pedagogy into teaching. There were a couple good practical ideas shared, but honestly I didn’t think this was presented (at least in comparison). An idea that has continued to echo is to show texts that show two different perspectives on the same topic. For example reading Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing,” which show America in quit a idealistic light, and then reading Langston Hughes “I, Too” which is a kind of parody, or response to Whitman’s poem. I like exercises like this that demonstrate two different perspectives vs. telling children, “There are more ways to look at things than one.” The idea for this session was definitely their, but unfortunately the presentation lacked.
The last session attended I had the pleasure of being the host. I was able to meet and talk a bit with the presenter, Les Burns. His speech was about teachers taking control of their own jobs. Much of the talk was devoted to the inadequacies of No Child Left Behind, but this was only to demonstrate that teachers need to do something about things that are harmful to the effectiveness of their teacher, and their profession. Burns’ speech and the discussion that followed were really engaging. More than anything it made me realize how uninformed I am, and that before I can take an active part in this strive for change I need to know what I’m talking about. So I’ve decided when I have a spare moment (after this semester) that I’m going to research NCLB (No Child Left Behind) and become a student member of NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English). If you are interested the links below will take you to the Michigan Department of Education website, where you can read about NCLB, and NCTE’s site where you can sign up to become a student member.

Michigan Department of Education

NCTE

Before this book I had never heard of multigenre writing. But even now as I write this my word processor doesn’t recognize multigenre as a word, so I don’t feel that bad. Three Things jumped out at me as I read the first nine chapters of Blending Genres, Altering Style. The first was I had a nostalgic feeling from reading the first example. As I said I’ve never been exposed to multigenre writing, at least to my knowledge, but it had some quality that made me feel as if I had. Second was one of the shaded in boxes with teacher’s comments. It talked about how much she enjoyed reading multigenre papers, vs. student’s other work. And third, how sincerity and experience with the topic is absolutely necessary for most multigenre writing to work.
While reading “Cosmetic Clips” I was thinking to myself, “This is supposed to be some new, crazy way of writing, but I seem to be absorbing it so naturally.” When I think of new genres of art I picture something trying to be too artistic, like a black and white film narrated and shot by the perspective of a transvestite candy wrapper. Done right, these read like an effortless and authentic piece of writing. Not only does the whole measure up to more than the sum of the pieces, but each individual piece compliments, and adds depth to every other piece.
Multigenre writing is a fulfilling and constructive exercise for students, but advantages exist for teachers too. As Sue Amendt said in Chapter one multigenre papers are much more enjoyable to read than traditional research papers. I could relate for two reasons. One, I immediately enjoyed reading these. Two, much of what I’ve written in my academic career, although well done and crucial to my development as a writer, has been bull*#!@. Voice carries through in these pieces, but one crucial element is needed.
A multigenre paper must be have the honesty and sincerity and that can only come from experience and knowledge of the writer. It’s stated in the text, and demonstrated in class. Trying to take on a topic that’s not a part of the writer will be distant, and maybe confusing. The piece we looked at in class, which eventually was found to be about loneliness, was clearly a valiant effort, but did not have a coherent message. But I may be a bias observer considering I’m a pro-choice, borderline agnostic.
I quite enjoyed this reading; even more so after the examples and discussion in class. If and when I become an English teacher a multigenre paper will definitely be part of my curriculum. I’ve included a link below that will take you to a site where Tom Romano takes you through writing workshop. Although there’s not much about multigenre writing, it still gives some very good teacher advice. It also has audio clips of Romano, which for me, were nice for putting a voice to the writing in our book.

Romano_Link