Thomas+Krause

Tom Krause Wendt Winds of Change Journal 6 September 2007

Hammer the grammar; that is the approach that many teachers have used throughout my schooling to teach the art of writing. After reading Maxine Hairston’s thoughts on Thomas Kuhn’s revolution of writing I realize that the tools I have been given to write are not necessarily the most effective tools. I agree with many ideas in this article I really enjoyed how Hairston started out by describing a paradigm shift. It gave a great visual on how hard it is to break the norms of teaching—even if the norms are not working effectively. Hairston states “…supporters of the traditional paradigm resist change because they have an intellectual and sometimes emotional investment in the accepted view (77).” This totally makes sense. Some people have worked so hard at teaching a paradigm for some many years that abandoning it may seem like failure to them. I know often times I do things that do not make sense. When somebody asks me why I do something at certain way—I reply “because I’ve always done it that way.” If the person who challenges my methods is nice, they show me a better way to do things. From my experience, carrying a truss is a lot easier when you grab it towards the end. Now that I know that, truss carrying during is quite simple. This is how it should be with teaching writing. As times change so must the methods in which we teach. //**How do we know, though, what changes to make? Just because we know something isn't working doesn't automatically mean we know what will...so we try, try, and try again, be willing to fail, be willing to go beyond the norm and stick your neck out in hopes of finding new ways.**// I found it interesting when Hairston says “Handbooks won’t solve their problems, and having them revise papers does no good (81).” Revising my own papers has always been a part of my writing process. In reality, it is amazing how many mistakes I miss when reading my own writing. It seems that one would learn their own weaknesses by constantly critiquing themselves. As Hairston say, the opposite is quite true. It is important to be conscious of our own mistakes. If we keep overlooking those mistakes when editing our own papers then the process is moot. //**It's important, too, to distinguish between revision and editing: too often students think of them as the same thing. Here I don't think Hairston clearly distinguishes between the two clearly--I think she's really talking more about editing. Revision is VERY process-oriented.**// We talked in class about the writing process. We discussed the exceedingly methodical way in which the writing process has been taught and we challenged that idea. So does Hairston—“…the writing process is not linear, not moving smoothly in one direction from start to finish (85).” I totally agree. Sometimes I start a paper and have to scrap the whole idea. As I write, my mind gets going on suddenly have gone in a whole different direction that I intended. This direction is not necessarily bad, just different. We cannot tell a person how to set up their writings. Every person is different. Every mind is different. Every writing style is different. There is not blue print that is effectives in teaching the writing process. We need to give students suggestions and tools and let them use those suggestions and tools to create their own way of writing. **//Do you have a grasp of how to go about TEACHING process? Hairston doesn't make this clear--hopefully class discussions will help.//** I like where the future of writing is going. We must move on with the times. I feel that as people are encouraged to use their creativity in their writing the more pure their writing become.

Tom Krause Wendt Process and post-process 10 September 2007

To me this article was a bit confusing. //**I expected it to be...**//I am not sure if it was the language being used or maybe it was simply the topic being discussed. The whole time I was reading I felt as though I was in a history class. I felt as thought I was being told the history of the writing process “war.”**//You were...that was kinda the point//** I am still not quite sure what is mean by L2 writing. Right of the bat that made me feel a bit lost. The author’s argument was on the term “post-process” and how it was somehow an inaccurate term. Maybe I am confused just because I have never been exposed to the term “post-process” and therefore I had a difficult time relating to the article. Though I am confused by what exactly the author had to say, I do feel that Matsuda did make some strong points. Matsuda does say “In the bad old days of current-traditional rhetoric, the story goes, students learned modes of discourse and applied them to write their five-paragraph themes on topics assigned by the teacher, which were then graded without the opportunity to receive feedback or to revise (67).” This statement reminded by of the Hairston article the other day. Indeed, the article mentions the “paradigm shift” and Hairston. Hairston spoke of the old techniques in which composition was taught and how we are now moving away from those techniques. Of this I am glad. I feel that revision is a vital part to writing. Matsuda says “By far, the contemporary process movement has been the most successful in the history of pedagogical freeform in the teaching of writing (69).” I am glad to hear this. I felt that Hairston was on track with the paradigm shift. If Hairston is indeed right, then I am comforted by Matsuda’s comment. I was just wondering why this has been the most successful movement? Matsuda says that this has not been the only movement and that others have failed. I thought that this may be an interesting topic of discussion. Perhaps the reason for the success of this movement is some kind of collaboration of educators. But really I have no idea. **//Did discussion in class help clarify this for you? I hope so.//** Matsuda says that there is an “oversimplification” of the movement. I agree that a movement of trying to reform how composition is taught contains a lot of problems and is a very complex situation to deal with. People want to stick to their old ways and texts are not up to date. Is the author complaining about the term “post-process.” I’m probably really confused; why does it matter what this whole ordeal is called? **//Does it matter what we label something like this? How do you feel about the "post" label, which happens a lot?//**

Tom Krause Wendt Theory of Literacy 12 September 2007

In the movie “Tommy Boy”, Richard (played by David Spade) is talking to Tommy (Chris Farley) and says “There are two kinds of smarts. Book smarts—which waved bye-bye to you long ago and street smarts—the ability to read a person.” I think this quote applies nicely to this article because of the article’s comparison of learning school related materials and everyday knowledge. **//you quoting a movie is a great example of this. Funny how we can remember lines from movies and not a single line from some theoretical discourse.//** I definitely believe that absorbing information that is not school related is much easier than memorizing facts from a textbook. I can recite about every line from the movie “Tommy Boy” but I can’t remember anything from the three chapters of anatomy that I just read. **//Exactly!//** The author uses the learning of a language to explain the reason for the phenomenon. The author states that kids who have troubling learning in school are often seen as “deficient” in some way. The phenomenon occurs when a student seen as “deficient” “could master such complex learning in the world outside school be conside4red deficient with respect to the kinds of learning that were supposed to occur inside school (pg 2)?” I thought this to be a very interesting observation. In high school, I considered myself pretty smart. Some of my peers, though great people, didn’t seem very smart. They seemed to always struggle to get through school. If I were to sit down with one of my classmates that struggled in school and play a video game they would lose me in two seconds. They could problem solve, make plans, look ahead…etc. They showed an incredible ability to learn and apply that knowledge to the game. **//There is a whole new theory of learning called "play theory" that educators are investigating now, based on the ability of young people to learn incredibly complex processes and ideas when they play that they could never learn any other way. Pretty cool, eh? wouldn't school be awesome if you just played and played to learn?!//** Yet they still struggled in school. Reading this article really makes me think. These types of student are just as smart as the next guy, for some reason the teaching style of the schools is not compatible with their way of thinking. Is inability to learn in school more of an attitude than anything? I really liked how the author used the example of learning a language to show that everybody’s brain is capable of learning incredibly complex things. It is true. I’ve heard that English is a very difficult language to learn—still everybody I know can speak it. As the author points out we are constantly surrounded by the language and constantly applying the language. It seems natural that we will eventually learn the language. If one cannot learn their native language they will undoubtedly be a misfit not only socially in other facets of life as well. I like the idea that the author wants to apply the theory to how we learn a language into a classroom friendly set of teaching techniques. It seems that these theories have been quite successful thus far.**//Seems so sensible that it's hard to believe people haven't approached learning to read and write this way before--all deal with language in some way, so it just makes sense.//** The author states: As we began to explore the implementation of these conditions in classrooms, it became obvious that certain processes were necessary accompaniments of the literacy learning context that were created. So far we have identified transformation, discussion/reflection, application, and evaluation. It’s hard to separate these processes form each other and from the conditions of learning. I thought this passage was interesting because it reminded me of the readings of pre and post process that we have been doing. Maybe pre and post process have to go hand in hand. Maybe they have to feed off one another to be effective. I think it may be difficult for these theories to ever be completely successful as learning a language. In America, people are very concerned with their image. If one cannot speak they will have no success socially—an aspect that people hold very important. If one cannot calculate the trajectory of a baseball…what do they lose? Nothing—there is no consequence for not learning in school. That is one possible reason some people may not succeed in the classroom. Once we leave school we do not hear about those topics we discussed that day. Besides homework, is there a realistic way to bridge everyday life and school? **//Can you think of ways? If you can, you will be an incredibly successful teacher--students learn much better if they believe what they are learning is applicable to the "real" world.//** One cannot possibly be caught up in school 100% of the time. Once we find that bridge students will be very successful. Until then, I really like the theory presented in this article. It seems like an awesome idea. At the same time is seems a daunting task to make it work.