Tag Archives: Blog

Journals, Lovitt, and Getting Students to Pony Up

Carl Lovitt’s inspiring essay on journaling makes me want to try journaling again with my own students. Lovitt’s piece has also encouraged me to try my own hand at journaling (once again for the umpteenth time). I am incredibly impressed with the self-reported results the students share toward the end of Lovitt’s essay. Those quotes are priceless. How I’d love to achieve those same great learning outcomes with my students – and for myself.

Unfortunately, I’ve tried journaling with my students and things didn’t turn out as well for us as they did for Lovitt and his gang .With rare exception, my students put precious little effort into their journal entries, writing only what they felt was the bare minimum to fulfill the assignment and appease me. In some journals I saw what looked like bunches of journal entries dashed off in a single sitting. I even saw journal entries that looked remarkably similar to those of classmates, suggesting either lots of discussion or outright copying/amending. So many of the entries I read in student journals were shallow and brief. I found the exercise of collecting and reading them to be a huge let down.

In fairness to my students, I have to admit that I have tried my hand at journaling and have never found a way to stick with it (hence the umpteenth time reference above). I’ve started many a journal with gusto and great intentions and then life happens; I don’t keep up with the writing. I put journal writing up there with doing situps – they’re good for me and I should do them, but when I’m tired, busy, or lazy, I don’t. When I’ve been writing a lot for work and school, the last thing I want to do is write some more in a journal. Perhaps I, too, am a victim of schoolish behavior when it comes to journaling. I will produce good writing when I know others will read it and that it “counts” for something (it will be published, graded, seen by my boss). When it’s just for me or just to get a checkmark from the teacher, well, let’s say the writing probably isn’t my A priority.

Our ENG 610 blogging seems to me to be a pretty decent way to stimulate the kinds of writing Lovitt seeks and to give students a reason to do a better job of it than my students did. Yes, as Lovitt suggests, having teachers (and peers) read and evaluate journals (or blog entries) has the potential to add a communicative dimension in the writing situation (p. 242). That isn’t what Lovitt was after, I know. But it seems to me to be a small price to pay to get students to produce journal entries of quality, entries that reach for deeper and more meaningful connections with the text. Public journaling may be what most of us need to give the writing our best effort.

Something else I might also do differently next time is to devote some class time to journaling and to journal in class along with my students. I think even the most schoolish among us will pony up and give a greater effort if the activity is done in class and even the teacher is doing it. I see my students putting great effort into pair and group work that’s not graded or to written exercises. Why not journal writing? – Laura Hills

The Curmudgeon of ENG 610 Asks Two Questions

At dinner last night, my husband and I engaged in one of our usual spirited conversations. This one began with theories of leadership that I’m studying in another course, but honestly, we could have been talking about goat herding. The topic didn’t matter. After several volleys, Cornell told me that I enjoy arguing. Moi? Enjoy arguing?  I jabbed back that he couldn’t be more wrong. I lock horns with Cornell during these discussions, I said, because I have strong opinions. That’s all.However, reading my four blog posts up in my office early this Sunday morning (while Cornell is downstairs eating breakfast), I have something to admit to all of you, my colleagues. Surprise, surprise, I see that my dear husband is right. The truth is that I’m downright cantankerous.

I didn’t realize until right now that each of my first four blog posts for ENG 610 argues something, and that that something is without exception based upon a negative. Here’s what I mean:

  • Blog Post 1: I argue that my instructors failed me by not teaching me how to read poetry and for not sharing with me that poetry is difficult.
  • Blog Post 2: I argue that Bass’s oral assessment method is cause for concern – three concerns, in fact.
  • Blog Post 3: I argue that the way we teach literature studies today is just a fashion trend – as was New Criticism – and that things will change again.
  • Blog Post 4: I argue that the lecture still has merit as a teaching and learning tool despite the fact that practically everyone says it doesn’t.

So Question #1 is: Why does Laura Hills keep coming at these blog entries with both fists up and so much vinegar and sass running through her veins?  Do I really just like to argue for argument’s sake?

Yes. When tasked with writing and posting my response to the readings in this course, my first thought each and every time is: What’s wrong? What’s troubling? Where did the author leave himself/herself open for a knockout punch? And, dear readers, what will make for interesting reading for you, my darlings?  I don’t want to tell you week after week what is right or good in what we’re reading. That’s a snooze. I focus instead on what is wrong, where the weaknesses are, where I can stick my scalpel, open the patient wide for you, and expose the hidden infection so you’ll see it and recoil in horror.

What’s most interesting to me about this observation is that in most human interactions, I’m not like this at all. I’m actually a nice person. Really. I am always the one looking for points of agreement between disputants, seeking ways we can achieve consensus, thinking about what makes us more alike than different. Ask the people I work with. Ask my students. They’ll tell you that I dwell on the good and that I’m the heart of the little university where I work. That leads me to:

Question #2: Why am I such a curmudgeon when it comes particularly to intellectual tasks like theoretical dinner table conversations with my husband and reading texts?

I suppose I’m no different from the rats in B. F. Skinner’s famous experiments. I run through my maze and press my little bar time and time again to get my little pellet of food. I argue in these situations because it’s hugely rewarding for me to do so. I’ve made the bulk of my money in my career not as a teacher but as a writer. Sass gets me the big bucks. (Figurative bucks, folks. They’re not all that big.) My ability to argue has also gotten me a bucket of A’s throughout school. Here I am in my last course for my doctoral program – nine years into my graduate school odyssey — and I see that I’ve built my academic career and success hugely upon argumentation. There are big rewards for taking the low road.

Argumentation has also become personally gratifying for me. If I told you in blog posts that Randy Bass and Sheridan Blau have great ideas, I’d not only probably bore you all into a stupor but I’d feel useless. It’s far more interesting, fresher, fun and satisfying for me to spit tacks at them. Frankly, it feels good to land a good one right on the kisser every now and then. In some circles, they call that scholarship. (Sorry, fellow 610-ers, there’s that sass again.)

In the spirit of learning something new this term, I’d like to try an experiment and I need your help. Next week, when we write blog posts based upon our readings, I promise to focus mine entirely on positives. I won’t point out faults or weaknesses or concerns or predict gloom and doom. This will be difficult for me. But I’m willing to play nice just this once to see how it feels. Then I can figure out what to do next.

What I need from you guys is to read what I write next week and to tell me what you think of it – really think of it. I’m going to let the curmudgeon take a holiday. But first, I’m going to join my husband for breakfast. I need to ask him to read this and to tell him that he was right. Oy! – Laura Hills