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After spending some time reading through all of the sessions running tomorrow, I think I have my schedule for tomorrow:

• 10:30: “From Textile Mills to the Entrepreneurial University: Confronting the Political Economics of Writing”
• 12:15: “We Have Been Here Forever: Towards a History of Composition(ist)s of Color Rewriting Rhetoric within and beyond NCTE/CCCC”
• 1:45: “‘Driving into the Wreck’: A Feminist Inquiry of the Dissertation in Composition”
• 3:00: (no choice on this one, this is my panel) “Labor Rhetorics and Academic Organizing: Possibilities and Predicaments” 
• 5:00: CCCC Labor Caucus Interest Group

Hello all comp/rhet followers.  We’re only two weeks into the semester and already it’s exciting.

As you may know, three of us–Linda Cullum, Amy Lynch-Biniek, and I were in San Francisco at MLA interviewing candidates for our tenure-track position in Comp/Rhet.  This week we begin our interviews.  On campus interviews are always hectic, but from my perspective they are one of the  most interesting parts of my job.  It’s an opportunity to talk to great people who are doing excellent work in both their classrooms and  their research.  At the very least, it’s an opportunity to build networks of connection with other Comp/Rhet folks across the country.

If interviewing candidates for one position was not intense enough, we decided to push to search for a second tenure-track position this year.  The position: Digital Literacies/Visual Rhetorics.  Our initial plan was to search DL/VR next year along with a position in Multicultural/Multi-ethnic Rhetoric.  But when opportunity presented itself to push the search to this year, we went for it.

If we are able to hire both positions this year we will have a total of 6 Comp/Rhet faculty, which will put us in an excellent position to focus on program development over the next couple of years.  The addition of a faculty member in Multicultural/Multi-ethnic rhetoric in 2010 will give our little-program-that-could further depth.

In any case, we are looking forward to an exciting few weeks!

Ah yes…today was a blogging day.  I should say it was a good day for blogging.  But, alas, I had no time (it’s the last day of the semester here) and now I am to tired to reconstruct.  Not to mention the fact that I have a whole lot of papers yet to grade.  So, in an attempt to prevent some of my thoughts from vanishing into the void, here are a few snippets of what I wanted to write on today:

• The limits of judgment.  In particular, judgment as exercised by liberal/progressive folks.  Here I am talking about the way that so many folks on the left side of the fence seem to equate “judging” with action.  I want to review several episodes of a radio call-in show such as Radio Times out of WHYY in Philly and examine how so many callers who self identify (or demonstrate themselves to be) as “liberal” show a very limited understanding of public argument.  This is a similar line of thought that Lakoff
  discusses in progressives misguided belief in certain Enlightenment-informed assumptions–such as “the facts speak for themselves.”  [taking a break...Rowan is crying] Other points of connection.  Public arguments made in university spaces–public forums, organizations, meetings.
• Elephant in the room.  Limits of “the process” and the ways in which problematic behaviors/practices are systematically reproduced by silence.  Or, when an institution looks the other way and the kind of justifications given for not doing the right thing.
• Podcasting ideas–Fictions of English departments and state schools.  Short takes on writing.  Academic literacy narratives.

OK…gotta go burp the cannonball.

I’ve started yet another project on my very long list of projects.  As part of “building” the comp/rhet program at KU (introducing a concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies [CRLS], developing new courses, hiring three new faculty over the next two years) I’ve wanted to give our comp/rhet program a distinct face on the web.

The most ambitious part of this project to date was to migrate–ok, really reconstruct–our program web page to WordPress.  That allowed me to add a blog, a more flexible interface, and to more easily link different aspects of our program in one place.  Having our program web page in WordPress also makes it easier to add administrators/editors/authors to the page.  Put another way, as we build the program it will be easier for other members of our program to contribute content to the page and to shape our web presence.  And, not to mention, the page just looks a lot cooler.

I am fully aware that all these initiatives challenge my ability to sustain them.  Put another way, sustaining the momentum we have in our program requires work–and work requires people to do that work.  Currently our four composition faculty are all working close to our capacities, so introducing new initiatives is tricky.  But, I guess I am trying to see what is possible and what works.  For example, we have a CRLS reading group which has its own blog.  Usually we have a small group of people who come to each month’s meeting.  This past month, however, only two of us could meet.  That’s part of the realities of having a faculty doing a lot of good work–our energies are pulled in multiple directions.  The fact that we were able to persuade our department to prioritize new composition faculty, is incredibly encouraging and promises be able to build sustainably.  I should make it clear, that it’s not like we had to push extremely hard to convince other department faculty to support composition hiring–as a department we’ve been having the discussion about the place of composition in the department over the past few years.  And, having some our best undergraduate and graduate students choose to pursue graduate work in composition and rhetoric at places like U of Illinois and Carnegie Mellon only helped underscore the importance of developing our composition program.

Anyway, what got me thinking about this was yet another one of my little initiatives.  A KU Comp/Rhet YouTube channel.  As one of my colleagues said yesterday “how 2005″  .  Yup.  And now we only have THREE years to catch up!  So, if you’re looking to burn some time, check out our new channel.  And, I have a request.  As you will see, I’ve added a bunch of “favorites” that deal with writing, rhetoric, and comp/rhet stuff.  If you know of any other YouTube (or other) videos send me the links or post them as a comment.

In the meantime, here’s my introductory video for the KUCompRhet channel:

I can’t believe it’s already November 19th.  Wow.  Since Rowan was born, my days and weeks have felt like one huge blur–no doubt aided by some serious sleep deprivation.  I didn’t realize how far I was off my game until this week when I started to get back into a quasi sleep/work routine.  So, here I am…welcoming myself back to CwD.

For all you fans of Rowan, you’ll be happy to know that my little cannonball is breaking the 13 pound barrier this week.  Yup.  The kid’s doing some serious growing.  There are days I come home from work and could swear that he grew while I was gone.  Incredible.   I was hoping to upload some new photos today, but the batteries in my camera died just as I inserted the cable into the USB port of my computer.  So, perhaps later.

Since I’ve been away so long, here’s a little update on what I’ve been up to:

• Changing a lot of diapers. Surprise, surprise.
• Making up songs to sing to Rowan.  There’s the “Me and You,” Juno-inspired song and the latest “Rowan Likes to Walk Around.”  I’ve been making my way through Kimya Dawson’s new CD, Alphabutt, which is all the inspiration I need to believe that I too can produce a kids album some day.
• Thinking about my next book project. Working title: Barring the Impossible.  Since Democracies to Come: Rhetorical Action, Neoliberalism, and Communities of Resistance was published in May, I have focused my conference proposals/papers on moments of rhetorical intervention–vote of no confidence against our university president, union strike preparation, campaign to save the Early Learning Center at KU–and I’ve continued to explore intervening in “micro-negotiations of hegemony” in my teaching.  Barring the Impossible will begin there.
• Began reading The Lord of the Rings to Rowan.
• Finished reviewing all applications for our tenure-track hire in Composition.  Booked flight to San Franscisco for MLA, December 27-30. Interviews will be conducted there.
• Finished writing my new course proposal, “Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy”  It will go to the department for review/approval in December and then on to the college and university curricular committees.
• Continue to pray that my Honda Civic with 195,000 miles on it is good for another 50,000.
• Have found some amazing sites for toy robots to add to the CRLS robot arm.
• Figuring out the best–and easiest–way to develop a comp/rhet podcast for our program–students are being VERY helpful!
• Attempting to make my way around the new channel line-up since Sirius merged with XM.

That’s a little window into my world at least.  There is so much that I’ve wanted to write lately…here’s hoping that with Rowan sleeping a good 5 hours a night these days that I’ll be able to get back to at least a weekly visit to CwD.

It’s hard to believe that we are already in the fourth week of the semester.  Wow.  I must say that we’re off to quite a start.

Earlier today the Composition Conference Committee met to begin planning our annual conference.  Next April will be the fifth year of the conference.  Last year’s conference was a grand success thanks in large part to Amy Lynch-Biniek’s tireless efforts as Chair of the Composition Conference Committee, the work of committee members, Keith Gilyard’s excellent Keynote Address, and the fabulous work presented by all of our student participants.  While it’s still only mid-September, we’re already planning the conference theme, keynote speaker, and getting materials ready to distribute to faculty and students.

Last week the Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies Reading Group met to decide what we would read this semester/year.  We decided on the following texts:

Here’s a look at the other texts we will be checking out this year:

• Kathleen Blake Yancey, “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key.”
• Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning ‘First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies’.”
• Jonathan Alexander, “Transgender Rhetorics: (Re)Composing Narratives of the Gendered Body.”
• Nancy Welch, “Living Room: Teaching Public Writing in a Post-Publicity Era.”
• Min-Zhan Lu, “An Essay on the Work of Composition: Composing English against the Order of Fast Capitalism.”
• Donna LeCourt, “Performing Working-Class Identity in Composition: Toward a Pedagogy of Textual Practice.”

We’re starting out with Yancey’s article for our October 9th meeting and go from there!  And you may have noticed that CRLS Reading Group has replaced the CRG group and blog.   Since we are working on developing a concentration in Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies, it seemed to make sense to link our curricular work with the reading group.  As you may notice, many of the articles we chose for this year focus on different approaches to composition and rhetoric and curriculum development.

And of course, Composition Conversations are in their second week.  As we get closer to the due dates for our first papers, we’ll be sharing ideas for responding to student texts, effective workshopping, designing assignments, generating class discussions, and a whole range of other things!

All in all, we’ve hit the ground running.  If you want to know what’s going on and where, check out our new Composition Calendar!

A little over a week before we were to begin Directed Self-Placement and the summer Connections orientation programs, I got this email from a member of the College of Education’s Connections staff:

As we understand the Connections “Writing skills” presentation, the students are allowed to self-select either ENG 022 or ENG 023 given their self-assessment of writing skills. Unfortunately, the College of Education course structure does not allow for flexibility in scheduling. If the student self-selects ENG 022, the course is counted as an elective. The difficulty arises because the COE does not have built-in electives- essentially, the course “doesn’t count.”

Would it be possible to not offer the ENG 022 self-select option to the College of Education Connections students? During our part of the Connections presentation, we do outline the advantages of using the Writing Lab, library services, etc. We sincerely appreciate the need for the ENG 022 course but hope that you understand the limitations of our program.

I thought about this for a long while. My initial, rather short response ended up accidentally in my “drafts” folder and never got to the intended recipient. As it turns out, that was a good thing. It gave me a little time to think more about how to respond more in-depth and to explicitly articulate the principles of Directed Self-Placement. Here’s what I wrote back:

I apologize for the delay in my response. I thought that I had replied to you last week when I returned from vacation, but I just found my previous message in my “drafts” folder. Sorry for that. I want to take a little time to respond to your inquiry and let you know how I have incorporated your concerns into my Directed Self-Placement presentation at this point.

Pragmatics: Given the way that Directed Self-Placement works, it is impractical to tailor the presentation to each major. The time I am allotted is packed as it is. In the past I have regularly mentioned that some majors do not have any General Education electives and in that case if students elect to take ENG 022, they may be taking an additional class.

Academic/Pedagogical Philosophy: Directed Self-Placement is grounded in a several key principles.

1. It is critical that students take responsibility for, or “own,” their education and their educational choices. Given that higher education is “elective,” students have to re-orient themselves toward education. In particular, they have to begin to become agents in their own educational process. (I have attached an article by Daniel Royer and Roger Gilles of Grand Valley State University. Their article, “Directed Self-Placement: An Attitude of Orientation,” is an excellent discussion of Directed Self-Placement and is quite close to our own perspective. When Janice Chernekoff researched DSP programs as part of building this process at KU, she talked with these folks and looked closely at their program in addition to many others).
2. Standardized tests and high-stakes essay testing have proven to be less than ideal when it comes to placing students into their first-year writing courses. Not only are these tests generally incomplete in terms of their ability to capture a student’s capacity to succeed, they tend to reinforce “deficiency” narratives among poor, inner-city, and minority students who are traditionally the ones who perform the worst on standardized tests. Students who are given the opportunity to make informed choices about their individual needs as opposed to being told what their needs are by some rubric or institutional means become agents as opposed to objects in their educational process.
3. When asked to seriously consider their own reading and writing histories, students will generally make the right choice for themselves. Put another way, guided self-assessment is a key skill that all students need to develop in becoming agents in their own education.
4. Writing ability is one of the key indicators for success finding a job and advancing in one’s career. That is, “the ability to write opens doors to professional employment,” according to the National Commission on Writing’s 2004 report, “Writing: A Ticket to Work…Or a Ticket Out” <http://www.writingcommission.org/pr/writing_for_employ.html>. Likewise, ACTs 2003 “National Curriculum Survey” found that “Even jobs that call for little or no postsecondary education often require strong reading, writing, and computer skills.” Perhaps most significant is the assessment of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich who was arguing as early as the 1990s that “symbolic analytic” work is key to our changing economy. As part of my presentation, I touch upon these issues as a way to stress the realities of our world. I would imagine that the job market for teachers would reflect these trends as well–you would know that better than I.
5. The mission of our university includes an access mission. With that access mission, I believe, we need to do more than “open the door,” we also need to provide resources, courses, and assistance so that all students–especially those students traditionally labeled “at-risk”–can succeed. ENG 022 is one of those resources that responds–materially–to that mission.

My judgment is that it would be a mistake to deny students who may become teachers (we know many students do change their majors) a key resource that may help them make the transition to college and succeed in their academic career. From my standpoint, I have the luxury of not having to advocate for one student’s major over another–I have to look at what I believe is good for all students (in terms of their composition course choices and orientation toward their college career). And I think that the pedagogical and philosophical goals of Directed Self-Placement are sound.

Having said that, I readily admit that my position comes from the perspective of someone who coordinates the composition program, studies writing, and guides students through their composition course choices. You and your colleagues need not agree with me or may make other choices. But, those need to be your choices. In other words, I think the College of Education needs to take ownership of the decision to deny students ENG 022 as a choice. I think it is even more important now as the College of Education has to make significant changes in its curriculum in response to the new PA Department of Ed requirements. For what it’s worth, I think you should make it explicit in your own materials and with your discussions with students and with the administration.

In some ways, this process is already in place. We know, for example, that many education students who elect to take ENG 022 are told later by their advisors to drop it and take ENG 023 because there is “no room in their schedule.” I would just urge you to see if there is another way–for the sake of the students. From my perspective, I think it’s worthwhile privileging the pedagogical and philosphical integrity of our students’ educational process over the more narrow goals of a professional major. But, again, I concede that this is only my perspective and certainly the College of Education is trying to negotiate many competing interests.

In terms of my presentation to students, I now share with potential students your request and my response (not at such length of course). Again, the purpose is to provide students with as much information as possible with which to make their decision. And, of course, students will hear your orientation and meet with their advisors as well.

I apologize for the length of this email, but since you were writing “on behalf of the College of Education Connections staff” I wanted to provide you with a sustained response that you can share with others involved in Connections and the College of Education.

Hope your Cycle I went well!

Best,
Kevin Mahoney

I thought this would be a useful follow up to my previous post! Still early. Still hot.

Summer is certainly here. Today and tomorrow will continue the 95+ degree temps, heat advisories, and all-around uncomfortableness. Barely into June and we have our first heat wave. I’m not a fan of the heat and humidity for sure, but usually I’ll tolerate it OK. This year, however, it’s a bit early and given how cold and rainy May was, this heat feels that much hotter…that “Bermuda high” doesn’t want to leave us alone here in Eastern PA.

I’m particularly preoccupied with the heat today because it’s the second week of Directed Self-Placement. Today, Wednesday, and Friday I will be taking 200+ incoming students through the process of choosing their first-year composition courses. The week happens to be the largest sessions of the summer. Based on past experience, the room we hold DSP in will get hot and stuffy. And yes, I sweat. Yuk.

We’ve altered the session this year a bit. First, instead of one big session every twice or three times a week for the month of June, this year we’re doing TWO sessions a day twice or three times a week. So far the double-session has worked out pretty good. It’s nice having fewer students in each placement session–I mean, I can actually see all of the students I am talking to. The comparison to class-size is unavoidable here. In the bigger sessions, there are gaps in the room so to speak. That is, it’s much more difficult to connect to students and hold their attention when you are speaking to a room of 200-250 students. Today, Wednesday, and Friday I will probably have 110+ students per session, which will be a little improvement. I am just hoping the smaller numbers (compared to last year) will cut down on the heat in that room. It’s bad enough I’ve got to walk across campus in-between sessions in the sweltering heat…if that room is hot, I’m gonna be a big ball of sweat.

The other thing we’re doing differently is that we are cutting the usual 5 minute video presentation (which includes the university president and two faculty members talking about the importance of writing) and replacing it with some time to hear “student perspectives” on taking college composition. DSP is part of Kutztown’s Connections orientation program for incoming students and there are usually about 15 or so students–the Connections staff–that staff the sessions, help get students where they need to go, put on presentations about the student experience at Kutztown, and generally serve as peer ambassadors for incoming students. During DSP, the Connections staff helps me by passing out the surveys, answering new students questions when they can, and collecting and counting the course selections at the end of each session. During the “training” session this year, one of the more veteran Connections staff suggested that it might be good for new students to get the “students’ perspective” on their composition courses–since, after all, they’ve been through it.

I thought it was an interesting suggestion, but one that comes with a caveat. During that training session, it became clear that there is a sub-group of this year’s Connections staff that is clearly anti-ENG 022. That is, anti-Introduction to College Composition. For example, a few of the Connections staff suggested that they were “scared into” or “knew students who were scared into” taking ENG 022 because of my Directed Self-Placement presentation. One student relayed that their advisor even told them that ENG 022 was a “waste of time” because it “did not count” for anything–a statement not even accurate (and for this I blame the advisor, not the student–ENG 022 counts as a general education elective). So, as I read it, part of the reason for wanting to present the “students’ perspective” is to dissuade incoming students from taking ENG 022. And, based upon last week’s sessions, that reading seems to hold true. In each session, at least one of the Connections students has spoken out against ENG 022 to “represent those students who were scared into taking it.”

This poses several interesting issues. Last week I described this situation as “subtle guerrilla warfare” against ENG 022 (and, obviously, my presentation of the importance of writing). However, I also know that part of my presentation (and of the presentation when Janice and Walt were doing DSP) has strongly emphasized the difference between high school and college-level writing. And to stress the seriousness of our college composition courses. So, I don’t doubt that I may have made some students nervous–”scared”–about college writing. And, some of those students may have chosen ENG 022 because they were scared. After our first session this year, I was tempted to “defend” ENG 022. I have since decided to take a different approach–especially after re-reading an article by Dan Royer and Roger Gilles about their approach to Directed Self-Placement. I decided to simply emphasized the importance of each students thinking carefully about their own reading and writing histories after hearing the presentation. After all, DSP is based on the principle that students need to take responsibility for their educational choices and that given enough information and opportunity to ask questions and self-assess, they will generally make the right choice (at least in terms of their college composition courses).

So that’s where we stand. My one concern is for the “at-risk” students coming to KU. What kind of impact will the new anti-ENG 022 discourse have on those student’s choices? Will fewer students choose ENG 022? If so, will we see more failures in ENG 023? We won’t know that until we run the numbers. But, the choice is still left to the incoming student. As long as I keep on bringing us back to that basic principle–that each student needs to think honestly and carefully about their past experiences and practice with academic writing–then we are in good shape. We will see.

One of the by-products of having the Connections staff included in the presentation is that they are taking on part of the responsibility for incoming students’ choices. That is, if there is a strong anti-ENG 022 discourse that persuades incoming students not to take ENG 022 and then some of those students go on to struggle in ENG 023, then part of that responsibility falls on the Connections staff. That is, a new student could come back to one of the Connections staff next semester and say “I thought you said I wouldn’t have a problem in ENG 023?” That’s what I need to be a little cautious about…I think I need to make those lines of accountability clear in my presentation as well.

Anyway, those are my morning, it’s-already-72 degrees-at-7am ramblings. When I get a chance, I’ll have to post more about some of the stuff I am reading now–English Studies and a book I just got through inter-library loan (and will order for our library now) Cogs in the University Classroom…the latter fits well with my robot themes of late.

Ah yes. A robot army. How else defend planet Earth against alien invaders, ninjas, and zombies. Last night, I studied how to befriend an unfamiliar robot. Tonight, I think I’ll look into riding mechanized calvary. What? Yup. You can thank University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign-bound-student Allie for this. Yes, outstanding English major that she is handed me the manual yesterday. I can’t think of a better way to ease my way into summer! Thanks Allie!

I think I am going to adopt “a robot army” to refer to another project I’ve started to work on with one of my comp comrades. What is this mysterious project worthy of Area 51 designation you ask??? Well, I’ll confess from the onset that it’s not going to be all that interesting to anyone who is not a comp/rhet geek (or at least an academic geek). The project is to build a comp/rhet concentration within our English major.

We now have four, count ‘em four, composition and rhetoric faculty in our department and we’ll be posting a job for #5 in the fall. This is good. But hiring new composition faculty has posed other questions for me, namely: What kind of professional opportunities will there be for new faculty? What kind of courses will they want to develop and where will those courses fit in the overall picture of our program? What is the identity of our little composition-engine-that-could?

So, for the past several months I’ve been poking around looking for info on undergraduate composition majors and concentrations. Most recently I’ve been making my way through Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum. and getting more and more convinced of the importance of an intellectual and institutional space for our composition program. As I wrote and rewrote the previous sentence, I grappled for how to phrase what I’m getting at. I started with “an intellectual and institutional center,” then “focal point.” But neither of those (not to mention the multiple versions of that sentence that are now part of the virtual shadow) really made sense.

You see, I think the most accurate way to describe what we have tried to do in the composition program is to emphasize “conversation” as the model of our program. That is, there is not one direction, one set of principles, but an agreement as to the importance of talking about and discussing student writing, composition and rhetoric as a field, and different ways of approaching our work. A program that encourages differences.

That’s how I’ve thought about it anyway. But, to be honest, it’s not an approach that we’ve sat down and agreed upon or committed to. Our comp/rhet conversation is an approach that developed more or less organically…perhaps indicated some of the implicit commitments we all shared as individuals and members of the bigger comp/rhet conversation. Several of us have developed courses, revised old ones, and done some pretty cool stuff in our classes. Two of us regularly use blogs for example. We have weekly composition conversation and will begin year three of our reading group next fall. So, all in all we’ve been a pretty active bunch.

But, for me , I find myself wanting to take the next step and formalize (not a good word) our inquiry around a concentration/minor/major of some sort. Part of this has to do with seeing some of our best students take an interest in composition and rhetoric after taking classes with one of us. Part of of has to do with the kind of shift in literacies that Kathleen Blake Yancey pointed out. And I think it would be fun. Yes, fun. Comp/rhet geeks like this kind of stuff.

Anyway, I should get back to grading. Last week of the semester this is (that’s my Yoda dialect). More soon!