HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 17:13:25 -0500
From:         "(Raul A. Huerta)" <kendo@UC1.UCSU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Standardizing

David,

Thank you for your discussion of how you work with the TAs -- I was curious
about how _explicit_ this pedagogy is made to the students...Do they get
concerned about the need for some hierarchical student/teacher relationship --
I could see that happening with returning adult students and others right out
of high school --> seeking the need for validation --- If this doesn't
occur -- I was wondering what strategies you use to overcome such qualms...

Thanks

Raul
kendo@uc1.ucsu.edu
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Date:         Mon, 21 Dec 1992 19:48:21 CST
From:         Irvin Peckham <peckham@CWIS.UNOMAHA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Standard English
              Montpelier" at Dec 21, 92 10:09 am

>
> OK Irv, I'll bite: if you don't put grades on your students'papers, what
> do you put in the box labelled "grade" that your registrar gives you
> to fill out at the end of each semester?
>
> Rhoda Carroll*Vermont College of Norwich University*Rhoda@Norwich.Bitnet
>
Rhoda:
I put a grade.
Oh, oh, that sounds too smart, doesn't it?  Sorry about that.  I just
wrote a long description of how I get away with not putting grades
on essays to someone else on the list.  I'll ask him to bounce it to
you.  It's really a bit long, so I'll ask him to send it to you
personally.
Irv

--
Irvin Peckham
University of Nebraska at Omaha
peckham@unomaha.edu
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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 08:25:00 CST
From:         SLATIN@UTXVM.BITNET
Subject:      RE: High school/college comp cou

Hold on a minute-- I just caught something I'd missed earlier.  If indeed
"high schools set the expectations" for college-level comp courses, it seems
to me we have a problem.  No disrespect intended for those high school
teachers reading this list, but wouldn't it make more sense to flip things
around, with college-level people working *with* K-12 to define expectations
all the way up the line?  I don't mean micromanagement, and I don't
necessarily mean that expectations should be formalized and set in
bureaucratic or curricular concrete; nor do mean we should get ourselves into
some teleological mess.   Hell, what *do* I mean?  Just that something seems
out of whack if the high schools are determining the college curriculum.
Maybe I'm being naive, though, so I'll shut up.

John Slatin
UT Austin
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Date:         Thu, 24 Dec 1992 04:27:32 -1000
From:         James Shimabukuro <JAMESS@UHUNIX.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Standard English / time of class/day

On Wed, 23 Dec 1992, Bob Whipple wrote:

> Somewhere in my graduate education I heard that a survey someone ran showed
> that the time of day makes no discernible difference in the quality of
> a class.

With so many variables, I'd think it'd be difficult to isolate a single
factor such as time of day.  My instinct tells me that time must have an
impact.  It systematically distributes students into certain periods.  For
example, parents who need to drive children to and from school are
eliminated from specific time blocks; those who work 9-to-5 shifts are
relegated to evening classes.  Mode of transportation, traffic patterns,
and sex (m/f) might mean that certain hours are out of the question.

> Now, I know that "quality of class" is impossibly vague.  But has anyone else
> heard of such a survey?  Am I such an intensely morning person that I'm
> alone in avoiding afternoon classes (I use afternoons to attend to writing
> program business)?  Or do others feel the same way?

I've found that the morning classes are the first to close during
registration.  The ones who sign up for the early classes tend to be
traditional students, i.e., younger and full-time.  Those who register for
later classes tend to be nontraditional, a bit older and/or often part-time.
This past semester, my best, most dynamic class met from 1:30-2:20 in the
afternoon.  The students appeared to be from a completely different
population, and I'd love to be able to draw from it, exclusively.

As a very early morning person, I was pleasantly surprised.  Like Bob, I'm
curious to know what others have experienced re time of day and "quality
of class."

Jim Shimabukuro
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Date:         Wed, 23 Dec 1992 12:08:00 EST
From:         BURT@BRANDEIS.BITNET
Subject:      RE: Standardizing sections of composition

I had a fair bit of faith in my staff in the nine years I was a WPA
(they just ended in September), and I did a lot of handholding and reasoning
with my staff as they worked out their syllabi. We also for the most
part had a common philosophy of composition and a common taste in readings
and exercises. I found that as long as they had to provide a reasoned account
of what they did (and had to defend it to their peers) that my staff's instincts
about what to do in their classes were pretty trustworthy, and that the
slightly different flavors of each sections were not bothersome either
to me or to the students. Quite the reverse--I was able to use them as a
laboratory to try out ideas on a pilot basis. We enjoyed relatively
good esprit d'corps (sp?) here, and one of the reasons was that comp. teachers
could follow their bent, as long as they could make their bent make sense
to me. What I was most proud of, however, my institution may not have seen
the same way, however. At least the new curriculum which will be imposed on the
program over my already dead body is being justified on standardization
grounds.

John B
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Date:         Fri, 1 Jan 1993 15:26:00 EST
From:         MLB14@PSUVM.BITNET
Subject:      RE: High school/college comp courses

George,

Your post hit right at what I was saying about explaining the context in
which we deal with our students: My students can't write a good narrative,
and no wonder; many of them claim they do more writing in my classes than
they did in all four years of high school.  Obviously, you and I can't teach
the same way because our students' abilities differ so markedly.

As I have been reading what everyone else has to say, I find mysekf getting
more and more discouraged about teaching composition at all.  I have to say,
I agree with many of the points Sharon raises against freshman comp.  To her
points I would add the following:

1.  One problem with FE is that it's full of freshmen.  They really DO come
to college expecting it to be just like high school, and there are 24 of
them and only one of me.  It takes several weeks to change those
expectations as they relate to the course dynamics--you know, to convince
them that they have to read the syllabus and that they really WON'T get
credit for papers turned in without drafts, etc.  I'm not sure their minds
ever get changed about more substantive matters.  At any rate, the first few
weeks feel like high school to me.

2.  Another problem, raised by somebody already, is that FE is required of
EVERYONE.  This fact, too, pushes the "I'm-in-high-school-again" button and
activates the resistance response.  I can't blame them for hating to be told
what to do; I hate it, too.

3.  The teacher-student relationship is NEVER going to allow for true
collaboration among equals.  I might want us to be equals, at least where
the student's writing is concerned, but the student never forgets that I am
the one assigning a grade.  My opinion counts more than anyone else's; in
writing classes where I require students to peer-edit each others' papers, I
inevitably get several comments to the effect that peer editing is a waste
of time for the reviewer, and all the writer needs is to hear what I think.

4.  As David Schwalm has pointed out already, times are tough.  We are going
to be asked to do more with less, all across the board.  As we've all
attested, we don't teach in a perfect world as it is, and the world is going
to get more flawed all the time, at least with respect to money for writing
programs.

SO, why not abolish Freshman Comp as we now know it??  Why not offer greatly
expanded writing centers, staffed by part-timers who could get paid an
honest wage for 20 hours' work a week, instead of getting paid for 20 but
doing 80?  And et's let everyone across campus grumble about how badly
students write--and then send them to the Center.  Students would be there
because they had direct motivation for being there (like, they're about to
fail a course in their major), the default level of instruction would be
one-on-one, and it would save a lot of money.

We may not have a choice about whether or not to take these kinds of
measures in the future.

Marcy Bauman Penn State-Erie
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Date:         Tue, 29 Dec 1992 14:03:59 -0500
From:         ENGMYLES@UBVMS.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Standardizing Composition Classes

David:  I guess I want to ask how you make it possible for your TAs and the
undergraduates to see what they are doing as a collaborative process in
which they work together in and out of the classroom to the same ends?
You almost would have to get the tas to stop thinking they were teachers and
get the freshmen to stop thinking they were students and create a non=
hierarchical situation (like a quality control team in a corp, which must
fight like crazy to keep management from dominating).  Put another way,
the problem is how to organize a hierarchical situation non-hierarchically
and allow the group to establish its own hierarchies, based on its own
definitions of functions and objectives.
The fresh;men do work together, in oblique and semi-furtive ways, in and
out of the classroom; they establish rules governing participation, they
define aberrant behavior and punish it, they probably even establish norms
for achievement.  Can we find and make explicit those rules and ours?
Myles
From: lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Louie Crew)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Subject: Publisher lists: Attn. Writers
Date: 22 Dec 92 22:27:41 GMT
Reply-To: <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.



I can send information regarding journals:

1)  33 journals that accept poetry, from MLA serials directory
2)  77 journals that accept lesbigay materials
3)  65 journals that accept religious materials (possibly open to LBG subjects)

Send me private e-mail with one of the following SUBJ lines if you wish to
request from among these:

   Subject lines for private e-mail:

   MLA periodicals list        
   Lesbigay periodicals list
   Religious periodicals list
   All three periodicals lists

If you use SISSY SOFTWARE FOR WRITERS, I can send the materials to you in the
format readable by that program.   If so, add "SISSY" to the end of your 
subject line.  Otherwise, these will come in standard ascii format as four
lines of address. 

Finally, I would appreciate your adding a line telling where you spotted this
announcement

Best wishes.

lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu



  ==========================================================================
  Louie Crew, Academic Foundations Department, Rutgers University, NWK 07102
  lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu                                   201-485-4503
                   Preferred:  P. O. Box 30, Newark, NJ 07101

-- 
  ==========================================================================
  Louie Crew, Academic Foundations Department, Rutgers University, NWK 07102
  lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu                                   201-485-4503
                   Preferred:  P. O. Box 30, Newark, NJ 07101
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Date:         Mon, 21 Dec 1992 22:41:41 -0700
From:         "David E. Schwalm" <IACDES@ASUACAD.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Standard English

Irv, I have a bit of a problem with the multiple genre syllabus. I'm not sure
how much a student learns about a prose genre by having one go at it. The
conventions of all the different types of papers you mentioned are
complicated, not often spelled out very clearly. One of the things we have to
do in our syllabi, in my view, is make choices. We can't do all kinds of
writing.

-- David E. Schwalm, Assoc. Provost for Academic Programs
___Arizona State University West
___4701 West Thunderbird Rd.
___Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100___(602) 543-4500
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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 11:38:25 -0700
From:         "David E. Schwalm" <IACDES@ASUACAD.BITNET>
Subject:      RE: High school/college comp cou

Not so naive, John. The whole point of the work of Britton and Moffett was
that we should develop a k-16 (or K-death) writing curriculum which meshed
kinds or purposes of writing with the cognitive development of students. It's
not so much that colleges should call the shots but that those involved in
teaching writing a various levels should have some idea of where they are on
the continuum. What has happened to Moffett's work is that what he saw as a
K-12 or K-16 curriculum has become a COURSE curriculum all too often, starting
with personal journals, moving to autobiography, then narrative, then etc. on
out to abstract argumentation.

-- David E. Schwalm, Assoc. Provost for Academic Programs
___Arizona State University West
___4701 West Thunderbird Rd.
___Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100___(602) 543-4500
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Date:         Fri, 1 Jan 1993 13:23:20 CST
From:         mcmorg@VAX1.BEMIDJI.MSUS.EDU
Subject:      Re: WIOLE

Eric--

As our Writing Center is being threatened with extinction owing to
lack of space (!), we're looking into creating a virtual writing center
that exists anywhere there is a computer.  Your proposal would help me
muster the arguments I'll need to convince the Powers that Be.  Could
you send me a copy?

Michael Morgan
Dept. of English
Bemidji State University
Bemidji  MN 56601
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Date:         Mon, 21 Dec 1992 19:23:26 CST
From:         Bob Boston <S2.RSB@ISUMVS.IASTATE.EDU>
Subject:      Happy Holidays!

Things are slowing down on MBU as we all scurry off to our revels. Happy
Hannukah, Merry Christmas, and Boozy Bacchanalia to us all. If I've omitted
anyone's Midwinter festival, have a good one of it, too, whatever it might be.

Eat hearty, drink freely, love your fellow humans. And select a designated
driver! Don't sweat the calories or the cholesterol. They're only excuses.

Bobby B.
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Date:         Tue, 22 Dec 1992 19:53:56 CST
From:         Irvin Peckham <peckham@CWIS.UNOMAHA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Standard English/Peg
              92 9:41 am

Peg (and others--except David):
If whoever I sent that to bounces it back, I will rebounce.  I
don't have the heart right now to rewrite it (and I think, Peg,
you know most of it).  I was worried most about David, who
has heard it all before.
Irv
--
Irvin Peckham
University of Nebraska at Omaha
peckham@unomaha.edu
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Date:         Mon, 28 Dec 1992 17:14:00 CDT
From:         Mary OSullivan <MFOSULLI@MACC.WISC.EDU>
Subject:      Re: High school/college comp courses

1
>
>Rhoda, you have touched on a topic in which we all should be very interested
>in that more and more students are getting first year composition credit for
>courses taken in high school (see paried articles by Michael Vivion and me in
>a recent issue of the WPA journal). The notion that a college writing course
>can offer something that a high school writing course cannot offer is critical
>to my objection to giving college credit for high school courses. My main
>argument is from context. I would like to hear what others have to say.
>
>-- David E. Schwalm, Assoc. Provost for Academic Programs
>___Arizona State University West
>___4701 West Thunderbird Rd.
>___Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100___(602) 543-4500

Yes! Resist!  Those of us in the Wisconsin Technical College system (WI's
community college system) are in the middle of being pressured by the Department
of Public Instruction (K-12's state organization) to accept high school
classes for credit. Administrators at the high school level seem to think
it is a good idea too--but not the teachers.  At my school, we forestalled
a local high school's attempt to put an agreement in place that would have
allowed students to get college credit for high school classes, simply by
talking with the high school teachers who ended up agreeing with us instead
of their administrators.  Writing is not a discrete skill that once learned
needs no refining.  Maturity has a terrific impact on what writing concepts
a person can understand and apply.  Students need all the writing instruction
they can; we do them a disservice by by offering them less.

Mary O'Sullivan
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Date:         Tue, 22 Dec 1992 16:00:26 EST
From:         "David Tillyer, CCNY" <DATCC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Standard English

On Mon, 21 Dec 1992 23:05:30 -0700 David E. Schwalm said:
>Marcy, you're caught in a classic bind. If you are going to have a writing
>program (with program goals and objectives) rather than a collection of
>writing courses in which each instructor does his or her own thing, you have
>to develop a set of competencies and a standard syllabus.
--deletions--
>we help our TAs and part-timers acquire
>students centered teaching methods; and we try to make the case for our
>approach on the basis of good theory and good practice. We feel that our
>novice instructors are able, in this way, to provide a solid writing course
>for their students and to learn a great deal themselves about the teaching of
>writing.
               --deletions
>better idea of what they are doing. (Most of the "creative" assignments I have
>So, given the
>resources our universities are willing to devote to writing instruction, I
>don't think we need to be too apologetic about being a little rigid.
>
David Schwalm has pointed out a, as he said, classic dilemma.  What do you
do when you DO have creative teachers teaching creatively at cross purposes.
Without a structure, he calls it rigidity, there is trouble.

I would just caution against lumping all "novices" and all "part-timers" in
the same package.  There are quite a few very professional part-timers out
there, many of whom are overlooked because of a kind of suspicion that "if
they were any good" they would be full-timers.  T'aint so.
Peace, David Tillyer, CCNY
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Date:         Fri, 1 Jan 1993 22:13:29 -0700
From:         "David E. Schwalm" <IACDES@ASUACAD.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Standardizing

Uh, it's a little hard sometimes to get faculty to allow TAs to observe their
classes (somehow observing classes is different from attending them). Hmm.

-- David E. Schwalm, Assoc. Provost for Academic Programs
___Arizona State University West
___4701 West Thunderbird Rd.
___Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100___(602) 543-4500
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Organization: Samford University Writing Programs
X-Acknowledge-To: <DHROBERT@SAMFORD>
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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 18:57:02 CST
From:         "David H. Roberts" <DHROBERT@SAMFORD.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Information request

The university where I work provides a computer and a mainfram link for
each faculty member's office.  Mainframe is used for student advising,
university calendar, email, bitnet access, communication with students,
research, and most other academic computing needs for a liberal arts
college, including library catalog search.  On that note, a faculty
member can search the library holdings and order a volume, which the
library staff will deliver to the faculty member's office!
--
We have 11 student-use computer labs on campus and mainframe links in
1/2 of the dorm rooms.  All but two of the labs have mainfram access.
All freshman comp instruction is on computer, as is much of the nursing
school instruction.  If you want more information I will be glad to
supply it.

   __________________________________________
   David H. Roberts
   Director of University Writing Programs
   Samford University
   Birmingham, AL 35229-2207 USA
   Voice: (205) 870-2964; Fax: (205) 870-2384
   Bitnet:  DHROBERT@SAMFORD
   CIS:     72630,3633
   __________________________________________
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Date:         Sun, 27 Dec 1992 11:24:02 -0500
From:         ENGMYLES@UBVMS.BITNET
Subject:      Re: uniformity, real audiences, & evaluation

Russ: thank you for that long message, which makes teaching writing sound
almost as exciting as learning in writing.  Student's don't all have to read
the same thing or write the same kind of thing, and we don't have to read
all that they read, and the discovery of the possibility of difference in
meeting the demands and needs of others (an audience) ought to be one of the
things we let them discover.
Happy New Year, and a different drum.
Myles
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Date:         Thu, 31 Dec 1992 16:44:35 -0500
From:         ENGMYLES@UBVMS.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Standardizing

David: the kind of anxiety mentoring creates isn't even half of the anxiety
David: the kind of anxiety mentoring creates isn't even half of the anxiety that
    simply teaching without knowing what you're doing creates.  And maybe the
anxiety is necessary -- we are accountable for our results.  Let them observe
us, too.
Myles
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