Thank you everyone for a really great discussion on Thursday! The discussion really helped me to make connections to our readings for Week 4. Additionally, I feel like the discussion opened us up to the possibilities of discussion genre in the classroom. I'm more of a Literature and Creative Writing person, however, the opportunity to discuss genre in relation to rhetoric and composition has opened me up to studying rhetoric and composition beyond our course.
Having time to reflect on Thursday's discussion, I wish I would have provided examples of prompts that are similar to the example that Kill provides in her article. I think it was valuable to look at the syllabi, so I think the discussion would have been richer had I provided examples myself. I also wish I would have focused more on the quotes that I selected. I think this would have been helpful in understanding Kill article (for those who may not have been comfortable with discussing it).
Additionally, we didn't have the opportunity to really talk about perpetuating power relations. We talked about it a little when discussing the syllabi, but I wanted to really get into how power can affect our relationships with students, especially how our the various genres (syllabi, writing prompt, etc.) can prevent us from building transferable relationships with students. We could have also talked more about transfer value in relation to student writing.
Additionally, I found the discussion (and Kill's article) to compliment our other readings for Thursday. It gave us the opportunity to talk more about our own performance and identity as teachers. Further, facilitating this discussion was different/awkward for me because I am not a first year composition instructor. However, I have learned things from you all that I will think about when preparing to teach in the fall.
I appreciate you all talking the time to listen to my story. I hope that you all found it helpful in understanding performance and identity. Also, I hope you all found my questions helpful in understanding Kill's essay.
-Simone
This blog is the shared writing space for ENG 592A, Rhetorical Theories and the Teaching of Writing, a graduate seminar in English at Ohio University.
Simone,
ReplyDeleteYou and I both are coming from "unfamiliar subject positions" in this class, so I feel your pain in addressing a subjects outside the regular wheelhouse. I did enjoy the discussion in class and appreciated your bio. I thought it repositioned you with the rest of the class in a way that would have made Kill proud. You put a little of yourself in the genre of class discussion, and it gave us a sense of comfort and stability. You killed it <-- purposeful terrible pun :)
Thank you so much, Aaron! I really appreciate having you in our class. :) Lol at the pun!
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