Writing as Praxis

              One dictionary definition of Praxis states: Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, practiced, embodied, or realized. "Praxis" may also refer to the act of engaging, applying, exercising, realizing, or practicing ideas.

              Paulo Freire defines Praxis as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (190). Robert Yagelski works from Freire’s definition as he discusses the loss of “ontological” way of writing with students. The school systems in general teach students how to churn out papers meeting the state and federal standards. Yagelski contends that students should learn to write as an experience, an everyday practice, which explores the students’ thoughts, ideas, and life experiences at the moment they are writing.

              In this class and one of my other classes we have been exploring our reading and writing histories, from past to present, which pushes us to define and understand where our ideologies began and how they were/are shaped in relation to society. Yagelski does not want students to wait until grad school to discover their ideologies.

He states:

“When we write, we enact a sense of ourselves as beings in the world. In this regard, writing both shapes and reflects our sense of who we are in relation to each other and the world around us. . . . A truly transformative pedagogy of writing, therefore, begins with an understanding of the act of writing not as the writer thinking (as in a cognitive view) or communicating (as in a social view) or constructing himself or herself (as in a poststructuralist view)—all of which are valid but limited ways of understanding writing—but as the writer being. (Yagelski, 2009, pp.7–8)

As a creative writer I understand Yagelski’s statement and totally agree with his assessment. A large part of me comes through when I write creatively my experiences and dreams are intertwined with my stories. The question that has come up multiple times in various classes is how can I incorporate more creative writing in the classes that require composing papers. In other classes we have discussed critics and theorists who state that students should be able to draw on personal experiences when writing papers for school. So where does all this theory and debate get us?

              While Yagelski’s article is empowering to read, especially the seventh grade student’s digital story about her mother, these are pockets of teachers in school systems that allow flexibility in the classroom. Why don’t these present day critics and theorists come together and make a change in the system itself? Yagelski discusses the empowerment of writing in relationship to the writer. He says, “The writer at the moment of writing is experiencing him or herself through language” (192). Why not take this concept along with all the other theories and present a cohesive, clear, concise argument and make a case for changing the overall education system.

              Some may think I am being facetious and maybe I am a little, but I see the frustration on the teachers in my grad classes as each theory/idea is presented as another way to engage students, but it always comes back to: time, standards, testing, uneven levels of literacy, and student engagement. So we can enjoy our theories and revel in the idealistic moment of creating the ultimate classroom, like we did in ENGL516, but unless the state and federal governments have a flash of brilliance and actually listen to their teachers, the teachers will continue to find avenues of bringing engaging practices into the classroom all the while adhering to the STANDARDS.

Youth Voices and What They Tell Us

As I read through the chapter on “Youth Voices and What They Tell Us” by Sam Intrator and Robert Kunzman the CTAC124 (Speech) class that I observed, assisted, and taught a couple of times repeatedly came to mind. This was an all-freshman class in their first semester, which brought in itself first time jitters, nerves about fitting in, and the fear of public speaking. These factors were plainly written on each student’s face as she or he walked into the class and took a seat. What was not so obvious was the cultural, ethnic, educational, social backgrounds, and experiences that wove together and shaped each student’s ability and willingness to learn. With this in mind the professor created an anonymous survey asking questions that would give her insight into the classroom dynamics. Some of the questions asked were about family, religion, travel, birthplace, happiness level, what made them unhappy, etc. In addition, the professor had each student line up across the room in order of confidence in public speaking, with a scale of one being least confident and ten being very confident. This information combined with the survey gave the professor a good beginning to understanding her class environment. She shared the results of the survey with the students, so they too could begin to understand their classmates.

What this professor implemented in her class speaks to Intrator and Kunzman’s citing Peter Smagorinsky and Cindy O’Donnell-Allen’s theory that “engagement and disengagement of individual students cannot be understood without considering students’ individual social worlds as well as their prior experiences and relationships with the school culture” (39). In this particular class the students’ previous experiences in a school setting and outside social experiences played a significant role in the dynamics of the classroom environment. As the semester played out students experienced the loss of a parent, relatives being shot, having to parent younger sibs from a distance, and the struggle of learning to manage time wisely. As an observer in the class I watched the professor maintain the delicate balance of empathizing with those outside pressures and holding the student to the class requirements. 

Intrator and Kunzman state that “students describe wanting affirmation, acceptance, and support from adults who work with them in the classroom setting. Students yearn for positive relationships with their teachers” (39). A professor from another department found that she was counseling several of her students whose outside life was impacting their performance in the classroom. She had resisted this in the past for fear of overstepping the bounds of the student/teacher relationship, but in good conscience she felt her support was best served by mentoring them through the crisis. Intrator and Kunzman go on to cite Wilson and Corbett stating that “students evaluate teachers on the basis of how caring they perceive a particular teacher to be. They define caring as ‘acting in the best interest of others’ and suggest that students intuitively understand which teachers demonstrate their caring by holding students to high standards and by ‘refusing to allow them [students] to fail’” (39). In each case of the teachers I described they demonstrated Bruce Wilson’s and H. Dickenson Corbett’s theory about caring for the whole student and not just the academic half of the student. With that said, how does a teacher navigate through all the possible scenarios that students may bring into a classroom? Is it the professor’s job to be a counselor as well as an educator?  Intrator and Kunzman go on to say that there is a need for “nonparental adults to take a sustained interest in teenagers’ lives; as adolescents undergo transitions of social definition  . . .” (39). So, if there is this need for nonparental adult interest by the professor/teacher, how does the professor/teacher accomplish this and still teach?

I have to say from my observations the speech professor did successfully engage, support, and push her students to excel not only academically, but to grow emotionally stronger as a student and, more importantly, as a person. But it was a draining semester because there were so many students that needed the nonparental adult interest.   

January 16

What is literacy?

Defining literacy is problematic in itself because there are a plethora of definitions to the meaning of literacy depending on who is asked, which I have discovered by reading various critics. The Webster dictionary states that literacy: is knowing how to read and write. I define literacy as not only knowing how to read and write, but being able to articulate what one reads and writes as one continues to gain knowledge and navigates in multiple societies. Robert Yagelski discuss the complexities of literacy by citing that students need to be able to “understand how language, especially written language, functions in different rhetorical, cultural, and social contexts” . . . and that this understanding may be different then the literacy they bring to the classroom, thereby causing students to feel like they are navigating through a maze of theories and a cultural society they are unfamiliar with or understand (31).

As I study the concepts of multigenre and multimodal writing my research has led me to search out such critics as Shirley Brice Heath, Brian Street, Carey Jewitt, Gunther Kress, and Theo Van Leeuwen. These critics discuss how one’s culture, ethnic background, educational opportunities, and social involvement impact an individual’s journey in literacy, as well. Heath and Street explore communities to see how the people communicate and navigate in their societies, all the while cognizant that being involved with the society may well change how the people communicate. Thereby imprinting their forms of literacy on said community and altering the community’s literacy path. By this I mean that one cannot help bringing one’s own literacy footprint into a community, even if briefly, hence altering how that community views their idea of learning and writing.

For example, in Oakland, California Yagelski states that “Ebonics” was accepted as a language in a local high school. The nation was in an uproar over allowing an African American community to have an official language that defined them. This was counter to the standard approved “English Language.” Even I, at the time, was appalled by the thought that we as an articulate nation would allow an obscure dialect to exist in a forward thinking society. What was their reasoning? I felt like the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, shouting—“Off with their heads!” With that said, I did not search out the reasoning behind “Ebonics” because it did not pertain to me or my children’s literacy. But now as I am doing my grad work in teaching of writing, the various forms of literacy learned through one’s culture, ethnic background and educational opportunities is very important, so a second look at Ebonics to gain a better understanding of that society’s literary path may well be worth investigating.

Both Peter Roberts and Robert Yagelski bring to light interesting questions and problems with defining literacy. Ones that I had not considered until I took a class in Native American literature, and understood the damage that “whites” perpetuated against a society by having the audacity to inflict their perception of culture and literacy on another race. Not all the theories proposed by Roberts and Yagelski were discussed in my class but I have to say I did not consider any these ideas at all before the Native American Literature class, I just merrily road the “standard English language” path to literacy, without looking at the consequences that “standardizing” literacy may have on different cultures and/or societies.