Allen Apparatus Q's

Getting Ready to Read

     I think that writing constructs with professional writers are all just imaginative devices to make us believe we might not be able to do what they do. I think we make up things in our minds to deter us from trying. I believe the same is with students, that they have beliefs on what a good writer is and talk themselves out of believing they, too, can be a good writer.  I think the similarities are that both types of constructs end up being a hinderance to writing, in general, but I think the difference is, for professionals, they push forward with hope and students settle with their work.

     I believe that professional writers write on their own terms, but I've been around enough to know that this is the case. they write when they feel inspired and try to push through the blocks. However, students give up way too easy because they do not know it's like that for everyone.  It's not easy at all, it's just an acquired practice.

    My process is staying up all through the night when inspiration hits. I write until I can no longer write and then I rest. Sometimes the wave of inspiration goes away for a while, and sometimes it doesn't. to get back the inspiration, though, I sometimes do random word games and connect words I wouldn't usually.

  

Applying and Exploring Ideas

 I do agree with Allen that the purpose of writing is connection, but I also think that the reason some are better at writing than others is because of connection as well. For instance, I’m not a big fan of having students write about assigned subjects because they don’t connect to everything. The better written essays are ones that students connect to, therefore can help others connect to as well. Some of the other reasons could be to further help themselves to connect by learning more, but also just for fun and to find a different audience for their work.

Questions for discussion and journaling

 Allen poses that the inspired writer does not exist. I have to half-way disagree. I have met people who can sit down and write something brilliant on request. However, I believe that these writers are incubation writers, in other words, they’ve thought about and connected with the material for a while, worked on their thoughts, and are ready to write. Not everyone works this way. Allen says the idea of such a person intimidates students to believe they are not good writers, and I agree with this. I think students need to be taught many different ways of writing so that they know this is not the only way possible.

I guess technically I have colluded but did not know it was a form of plagiarism. Honestly, I understand constantly having someone edit your papers will keep you from learning how to correct grammatical mistakes, however, we do pay editors to look at drafts and help with mistakes. This is a very sticky question. I know people who think imitation writing is wrong as well but it all depends on the intent. I have typed Flannery O’Connor’s “Country Matters” over 27 times to understand her methods of timing and word choice. I love her short stories, though. I’ve never combined her words and mine, though. However, I have had friends look through my short stories for mistakes. Whether or not that’s collusion, I’m not sure. But Allen suggests having teachers and peers “suggest” changes. I’m honestly not sure of the difference.  

·       Meta-moment

·        In my early days as an undergraduate there would be nights were I would fall asleep so upset with myself because I couldn’t write something brilliant in a first draft before morning because I thought that some people could. I honestly almost dropped out of college for the very reason. But I learned what my process as a writer is. I look at an assignment as soon as I get it, then I stew on the idea and questions. I read it as often as I need to, then the day before I prepare a rough draft that as Hemingway puts it—first drafts are always shit. So I know this ahead of time. The next morning, I edit and change what I think is bad about it. But I had to learn this. It wasn’t something told to me in class or in Allen’s article. For many students, though, it will be this article. I plan to tell them Hemingway’s thoughts on the matter, too. That way they will figure out their process.

Murray Dialectical Journal

sent electronically via e-mail, because I still cannot figure out how to post the format in the block form others are doing.

Berkenkotter and Murray IWA

In reflecting on this particular reading assignment, I have noticed several important things, one being there is no specific way to measure one’s creativity and potential by a set plan. There are only ways to evaluate the processes in which each of us write and perhaps measure our productivity in a set amount of time. However, we must be cautious in how we measure productivity because as we’ve learned from Carol Berkenkotter, writers like Donald Murray spend a large amount of time in the planning and incubation stages. Therefore, if an author has not reached the end of planning and incubation, how then can we measure how far they’ve come? This leads me to our first question of discussion and journaling.

            My impresson of Murray’s writing processes were first of envy; how nice it must be to have someone to dictate to! I agree with his statement of the freedom he must have, especially with non-fiction to allow a more natural flow (233). Secondly, my process of planning by thinking and noting before officially writing is similar to his. Sometimes I will spend days processing ideas before typing the first word, which I do not think is uncommon. For this reason, I find standardized testing on creative people to be flawed. A writer that begins writing immediately upon a prompt can succeed in the situation, however, a person who spends the majority of their time thinking and incubating upon subjects don’t have the same advantage. Murray also said he did much better in his process when he could read his work aloud (220). Many creative people prefer to do this; specifically poets. There is no reading aloud during standardized testing unless the test taker has a reading disability. I find very large similarities in Berkenkotter’s experiment with Murray to the situational demands of the GRE.

            Murray also experienced the differences in being in a familiar place and a controlled environment in which he was not comfortable.  Immediately I thought of writers such as Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath that worked in very specific conditions and spaces in order to produce a certain outcome; one that they both could not find elsewhere. I also struggle with being able to produce what I find to be quality work in new or even tidy workspaces.  I feel all of these elements play a very big part in planning and developing ideas (revising).

            Bekenkotter’s understanding of writing processes changed because of her ability to see three specific things she hadn’t considered in her original plan: that calculating a writer’s mental processing is not completely possible, a writer moves back and forth between all stages therefore time limitations and gauging are difficult, and we cannot underestimate word and memory association. For instance, When Murray would revise specific sections he would go over the relationship words had with one another and how the sum of sentence added up to his individual memory. The specific addition of “listens” to his sentence about short conferences and teachers allows us to understand that he associates precise with the act of listening, therefore may recall not be listened to and it lasting forever. Also, he revises his title by shaving in the mirror and relating the first time he shaved to his new title “Teaching the other self: the writer’s first reader” (226).  Memory and word association go hand in hand, therefore, it cannot be determined how one writer will link a thought or phrase to a specific set of ideas.  This is probably the reason that his letter to an eleven-year old about death was very short and to the point from an outside perspective; because he had no memory to link creative thoughts and words to that were age appropriate.

            This is not uncommon with writers. The one phrase you learn first off in any creative writing setting is to “write what you know.” Writers often have the inability to accurately describe situations they have not experienced or researched adequately.  I struggle with this venturing out of what I know and sometimes assume that the reader knows exactly the situation I am writing bout. This allows for my revision process to have underdeveloped ideas that cannot stand alone without memory association. Because I do not spend the same amount of time on revising that I do processing and planning, I would categorize myself as a very lop-sided study, extremely heavy on planning and editing and not enough time spent on revising unless the circumstance requires deep analysis. My idea of how I spend my time writing, though, might be completely erroneous as was Murray’s.

            I have learned from Berkenkotter’s study of Murray’s writing processes that all writers do not process the same. What works for one writer may not work at all for another. I may think I am much farther behind in production, when in actuality, I am right on course because what I need more time for I grant freely. I have also learned to try new tecniques; to read pieces aloud, create aloud and let someone else document it, but most importantly, allow myself to revisit what I know needs more work. I will associate things with memories and similar ideas more often to come to the perfect fit of words for myself and my audience. However, revision is more important than I give it credit for. 

Teaching Reflections 9/3-9/7

My second week of teaching has been full of commenting on homework, memorizing names, clarifying that students do, in fact, have to work to keep the "B" in the grading contract, and selecting interesting ways to teach the text. Subjects had several questions about Project #1 and creating a writing construct. I had a student ask "Is it like, if we could break any rule while writing a paper, which one would we break?" And in essence, I think I agree. While they read the intro explaining constructs, we still needed to go through a list of constructs as examples. Since we were out of class on Monday and library research was on Friday (which, by the way, Loraine Wochna did an awesome job helping) I will just talk about Wednesday's class.

I revised my plan for Wednesday, because I think I had planned too much interaction, and not enough teaching moments. So I broke down the exercise I was going to do with them rewriting a news article to the class suggestion of picking out claims from facts out of a funny article. this seemed to help a lot. I chose rare and funny news pieces and then had them argue what they thought was fact and claim. We then talked about the rhetorical moments at hand and how that could have skewed the view.  Overall, many of them related with Shirley out of the Kantz reading, and could see themselves not adding original thought to papers. We talked about original topic ideas and ended reviewing homework and reminding to meet at the library.

Berger and McCloud IWA

Berger IWA:

          Since I was in group one and helped write the summary and frame the reading, I will be using the same summary from the apparatus we've written:

Through commentary on artwork, John Berger helps us understand the situational and gendered placement of men and women in several classical period oil paintings. He details the way in which women are believed to sustain dual existences, which compose a woman’s identity, in being who they are while also being what others think they should be. Berger juxtaposes female identity in this way against man’s embodiment of power, which may be sincere or faked. In support of his claims about these gender dynamics, Berger explores European nude paintings in which women are objects for the voyeurism of a male gaze that constructs spectatorship from willing and unknowing participants. Through his analysis we can see, in artworks over many years, that the view may change, but do the purpose and object evolve, even if the spectators are not aware of the original intent of the paintings?

            To place Berger’s commentary in a modern cultural context, we must remember that the original premise for advertising using women as sexual object is based in these and similar oil paintings. Other similar and arguably artistic depictions of women as objects may also stem from these types of paintings. But you cannot put Berger in a modern context without understanding the gap between his premise and a modern reader’s understanding of gender roles. Modern gender roles are blurred enough that both men and women may, through transcending stereotypical gender boundaries, identify with either of Berger’s gender identity depictions, which are truly dated but applicable to the classical period when the oil paintings discussed were painted. Most people are now aware of how others perceive them, who perceives them, and the connection between the two, making the actual or pretense of power a reality for both genders. This reality is present in all texts, as texts are meant to be understood within the reality of a discourse community. So even if Berger’s research is dated in its conception of gender, we must consider how his ideas of the spectator and the subject still exist in our understanding of perspective. 

I will be assigning one question from each section to my class and the ones I've chosen are:

QD#2:1.       Where have you seen images of posed women in advertising or other pop culture? How have these images compared to the nudes discussed by Berger? How have our portrayals of women in visual media changed or stayed the same?

Specifically I remember a Hardee's advertisement that featured a woman in a 1960's vehicle, wearing the era clothing and sitting in the backseat at a drive-in. She is very aware that the camera is watching her, in fact, she performs "eating a cheeseburger" as the camera films. Hardee's argued that while the model took off clothing, released her hair (similar to Berger's claim of hair equalling power) and ate the dripping cheeseburger, that the commercial was created to make eating look sexy for National Eating Disorder Awareness Month.  Naturally, feminists and some other onlookers were not so happy with the other messages it put across for young women. The images that Berger discusses also address the spectator in a knowledge of voyeurism, but also for a male audience.  I would say that women in visual media has changed but it messages are on polar opposite ends of the spectrum: either the woman in the visual image is blatantly misrepresented and sexually objectified or it's become politically correct and friendly to the max. Think edited pictures on Maxim magazine vs. Dove beauty ads.

AE#1 Can you think of artwork that represents men in a particularly viewed way? Is there a generation gap between the paintings Berger chose and the one you can think of? Do you think that gap contributes to how the image is viewed?

I can think of one contemporary magazine ad that features a man holding a kid in one arm and laundry in the other. My mind goes immediately to how gender role representation has changed in the last few decades. the gender gap has created a difference because a 50's ad for spray starch features a woman in heels and an apron ironing her husband's shirt while he sits and reads the newspaper. The same gap is present between the ads that come to mind and the paintings Berger discusses,  however, some of the same inequalities still exist.  don't think that the gap changes the view, I think the image is viewed the way it is meant to be every time. The understanding of the view changes, though.

Meta Moment:

Why do you think you need to read an article concerned with the similarities and differences between nudes, nakedness, spectator, viewer, art, and advertisement? How could any of these concepts be connected to writing, audience, and authorship?

I think that the article is interested in the differences so that we can learn to define what exactly we are looking at understand the intent of such pictures and how they are to be seen. Intent is part of framing. Framing, we learned from Stuart Green, is the border of what and author or artist wants us to see and the lens in which it is to be viewed. the connection is that the creator of the artwork, whether written or visual, controls how we understand something by supplying us with meanings and insight. The more insight we have, the more we understand and can decipher ourselves what to believe and what to argue.

Scott McCloud IWA:  I also helped write the summary and framing for the McCloud reading as a group one member, so instead of being redundant, I am using the collaborated version from the apparatus:

Scott McCloud demonstrates his belief in human connection and symbols by not just telling us (the audience) about them, but by showing us. By using the comic/graphic format, we can comprehensively connect to his ideas about how we see ourselves better in less detailed drawings while we visually notice the differences in more elaborate images. These less detailed drawings, or icons, are how we begin to perceive ourselves. For example, children often start drawing people and themselves as stick figures. These initial perceptions of ourselves, which also affect how we compose our worldviews, help us to see part of ourselves in similar icons, which is why we identify so well with cartoons:  “We don’t just observe the cartoon, we become it” (14). When we assimilate the nature of how we identify so well with cartoons, we learn that we are programmed to understand universal emotion and react to it both visually and mentally because of how ingrained icon imagery is in us. McCloud taps into the connection to communicate his point.

McCloud uses the comic/graphic format to effectively demonstrate the message he is putting forth for his audience. Perspectives and images/pictures depict the conversation in a visual way, including the use of frames to hold each image separate. McCloud is able to convey his message literally through framing, as defined by Greene, by making the dialog a conversation directly with the reader.  McCloud manages this move through handing the reader the mask (a framing tool) rather than letting the reader define the frame. At this point, McCloud has defined the rhetorical situation:  he (author/speaker) is in conversation with you (audience/decoder) about how you connect with icons/cartoon images (topic). What he has done is allow you to enter his frame, his detailed perspective, on how icons and cartoon images work for people, specifically you (the reader).

The questions I will have my students complete:

Before You Read:  ●      Try to recall what your favorite cartoon was or still is. Do you relate to a character and find yourself connecting? What features do you think help you connect?

My favorite cartoon as a kid was The Last Unicorn, in which a very shy girl, drawn awkwardly and very anime, is turned into a unicorn and never truly feels at home in her body. Now, I didn't see it this way when I was a child, I'm sure, but I can analyze it as an adult that I connected with never feeling at home in my body as a child. I was ultra-feminine, wearing the pink dresses and ruffles with long hair, but it was to fit in with other girls and be what I though I had to be to be considered "girly" or "pretty." In all actuality, I was a chubby girl that was bashful and was awkward in social situations.  I connected with the character a great deal.

Q1.      Why do you think adults still like the simplicity of cartoons? Do you think there is an age in which watching cartoons or reading comics is inappropriate? What do you think McCloud would have to say about it?

I think adults like the simplicity of cartoons because it's an automatic permission to laugh and not take things as serious as every day life. While I think some cartoons take advantage of that permission, I think at the end of the day people just need something simple to relate to and unwind. I do not think there is an innapropriate age in which to watch cartoons, but I am a cartoon watcher. I think McCloud would agree that cartoons reach a vast amount of people and can be helpful, so he would agree.

AE 1:      Do you think more teaching strategies should contain visual imagery? What sort of lesson do you think would benefit from it?

I think some people are very much visual learners and I think that's why Youtube is very popular right now. I think any instruction and "how-to" lesson can be amplified by visuals, but I also think that some of the harder subjects that people can not relate to could benefit from a cartoon or visual nature, such as same-sex couple families for children and adoption. "Fun Home"by Allison Bechdel is her memoir of her closeted father and the format used is wonderful. It's a graphic comic that when the subject increases in intensity, so does the drawings. Wonderful book!

For some reason....

For some reason, my blog posts were held as drafts and not posted to my blog. Get ready, because about 10 are about to be posted! I apologize for the timing....lesson to be learned: always view blog after pushing the post button!

Teaching Reflections 8/27-8/31

My first week of teaching was amazing. It was really the best moments of my first week. My expectations were that my students would feel awkward and somehow realize that I'd never done this before. To my surprise, they didn't pick up on my nervousness, that I'm aware of.  The first day, of course they were pretty quiet with several laughs at ice breaking jokes I had planned, but they were also very respectful and asked questions when I hadn't clarified certain things. I had each of them write on a blank note card three of their interests, whether it be sports, hobbies, etc. I explained this to be so that I could relate classroom discussion that sometimes might be dull and dry in places to things they enjoyed more. Through this week, I've occasionally created metaphors that help put into perspective what I wanted them to learn, specifically Kineavy's rhetoric triangle can be compared to a baseball diamond, using the pitcher, the player up to bat, and the game at hand.  Doing this was also a benefit to me, though. I organized the note cards in groups of interests and this helped me learn the three young men's names that were interested in baseball.  One of my female students put the term "diction" in her dialectical notebook. I explained the definition as "shopping for words" since one of her interests she listed was shoe shopping. I explained that diction is the particular word choice used by the author, and shopping for the perfect word is as important to an author as shopping for shoes is for a person who enjoys and applies fashion to their life. And this helped me learn her name as well. I know that nothing is spot on, but I believe it's helpful to them.

Friday was exceptionally interesting to me. We went over constructs again and the intro reading, since their construct proposal is due Wednesday. There was a silence when I asked if there were any questions. I let them process in silence for a moment and then one student asked if the construct was really a rule that maybe  it should be rethought about whether it should be broken or not. Since I had introduced metaphors in class for learning moments, I explored what he was asking and decided, yes, it was pretty much what he was processing. Several students shook their head with understanding and two students turned their construct in early before they left. I'm not having a problem with them doing their homework at all, in fact, they seem to be excited to turn it in. I have several students who are very eager to please me with their work and in intelligent conversation. Others are happy to have good comments on homework returned, and some ask, "What can I do to make it better?" This makes me happy. It makes me connect as a student to them, understanding that no one wants to "settle" for a B. Everyone wants to earn it and more.

This week I felt more accomplishment as a teacher than I did as a student. And it was nice.