The Penn State sex abuse scandal has rocked the core of our campus. Students, Faculty, and Staff are reeling as they struggle to find ways to talk about an issue of this magnitude and complexity amidst the swirl of information and misinformation. This situation is unprecedented, which makes it all the more important for us to remember that the higher-level administrators are not the only leaders at this institution and that leadership comes from a variety of people on this campus. While it is difficult to know how to guide conversations about a still-unfolding crisis, there is nevertheless more to do than to speculate about motives or to call for firings.

The Center for Democratic Deliberation believes that deliberation about such an emotionally fraught issue is most fruitful when it begins in established communities, particularly when those communities care about inquiry. At the end of the term, such communities of inquiry have been built in Penn State’s classrooms, student groups, residence halls, fraternities and sororities, as well as many social and interest-based organizations.

We are grateful for resources such as CAPS to help individuals work through personal turmoil. At the same time, we believe in the importance of 1) thinking about these issues collectively in groups, and 2) learning how to deliberate about community and social issues in real time. It might not seem like it now, but the discussions we have today and in the coming weeks and months will shape our campus and community—both in how we live together and how we are perceived. Penn State is a lot of things, but it is foremost an institution of higher learning, and there is learning to do in this midst of this crisis. In the week leading up to Thanksgiving, the Center for Democratic Deliberation urges instructors to devote class time—or to continue to devote class time—to structured conversations about issues important to the Penn State community. Finally, we urge students to remember that this is their conversation as much as anyone’s.

To these ends, we invite instructors and students to use the questions and resources on this page to help generate productive dialogue.

The following was sent to faculty and graduate students in the English Department and Communication Arts and Sciences Department:

The Center for Democratic Deliberation believes that deliberation about emotionally fraught issues is most fruitful when it begins in established communities, particularly when those communities care about inquiry. At the end of the term, such communities of inquiry have been built in Penn State’s classrooms. The CDD is urging a teach-in for intro GWS courses (English 15 and 30; CAS 100) for classes held on Wednesday and Thursday, November 16 and 17. We invite instructors of other courses to participate as well. During this time, we hope that you will devote at least part of your class to discussing issues raised by the recent scandal.

I’m developing a tutorial to walk students through deciphering essay assignments by breaking them down into task-oriented pieces. You came to mind as one of my friends who reads a great deal of student essays and likely has some strong opinions to share. Do you have a top 5 or 10 laundry list of items students should pay more attention to, misinterpret, or rarely do correctly?

I thought I’d go ahead and share my thoughts here:

1. My major suggestion for interpreting an assignment sheet is to find and clearly articulate in your own words what the purpose of your essay is. Good assignment sheets should be clear about the purpose students should write for, but some are vague, or the purpose is buried in a paragraph. You should read the assignment sheet, and be able to articulate the general purpose of your essay, something along the lines of: “The purpose of my essay is to ___ in order to ___.” For example, I often assign a critical literacy narrative assignment. Students reading the assignment sheet should be able to say “The purpose of my essay is to tell a narrative about one of my experiences with literacy in order to question or complicate a commonly held belief about literacy.”

2. The best assignment sheets have requirements clearly laid out, but others have them embedded throughout the assignment sheet. I suggest reading through the assignment sheet and making a list of all the requirements of the assignment. Some of them are straightforward: 4 double-spaced pages, for example. Others, a bit more complex or idiosyncratic: make a comparison to an interesting cultural phenomenon, for example. Either write on the assignment sheet and number or highlight the requirements, or make your own list, putting the requirements in your own words. Use this checklist as you write and revise, and before you turn in your essay.

3. Prioritize those requirements. For example, you might be assigned a “research paper,” and the title of the assignment might make you think the biggest priority is to report on research. However, the actual genre and requirement might be to “make an argument incorporating research,” in which case your top priority in terms of requirements is to make sure first that you are making an argument, and then that you are using research in order to support your argument (not just report on the research).

4. Be familiar with terms and what they mean (or what your teacher means by them). Assignment sheets often ask you to evaluate, analyze, research, and perform other intellectual tasks. Some of these terms seem straightforward, but others, especially for new college students, might not be. If terms seem unfamiliar, ask the teacher or refer to your textbook.

5. If a teacher provides examples of the assignment, read them and ask yourself how they fit into the assignment, as well as how they could be improved. Do not assume (unless you are told) that they are A-level examples of the assignment. Many teachers will give B or C level examples (as well as A-level examples) not only to help you see how the assignment can be executed, but also to possibly foster thought on what can go wrong with the assignment.

6. Do not confuse “pre-writing prompts” with the actual assignment. Many teachers try to prompt your thinking about the topic with some important or helpful questions or ideas to consider listed in the assignment sheet. These are often not meant as requirements for the assignment, but an attempt at helping you think through issues before and during writing. Be sure to separate “thinking prompts” from requirements of the assignment. If it’s not clear if something the assignment sheet asks should be included in the paper, talk to the teacher about it.

7. Pay attention to class discussion. Teachers often clarify anything that might be unintentionally vague in the assignment, or might clarify a hierarchy of important components of the assignment.

If any readers have further things to add, share them in comments!

• Composition instructors know it can be difficult to teach using a handbook. How do we approach the text as a useful resource for students? All too often it’s easy to assign pages from a handbook for students to read, or to provide links to online resources and move on, assuming students are going to go there on their own. Rebecca Moore Howard provides ten principles of teaching with a handbook, a useful list that stresses teaching how to use the handbook—a lifelong skill for writers. She has more on what she’s doing in class with the handbook.

• One of the first things those who are new to Penn State learn is that PSU’s Webmail sucks. It’s not pretty to look at, it’s not organized well, emails can get buried easily and are hard to see, the organizational scheme isn’t very “intuitive” — those who have used gmail usually respond to the interface: “Wow, why don’t they code this like gmail — or switch over!” I prefer to forward my psu email to gmail and download it to my Mac Mail client and iPad Mail. Onward State has a recent post with links on how to do just that.

• Blogrolls are a thing of the past, and Traci Gardner provides some reasons why. She doesn’t discuss the increased use of RSS readers, though a reader brings that up in the comments. I don’t think I’ve updated my blogroll in two years or so — perhaps I’ll put that on my to-do list. Gardner also provides a a list of almost 70 blogs in rhetoric and composition.

• Many of us use caffeine to keep our energy up, or to keep our energy stable, or to just survive. Here’s an interesting Death by Caffeine tool to find out how much caffeine it would take to kill you. You can choose your caffeine of choice (many many options!), enter your weight, and find out. I drink mostly brewed coffee (black), and it would take 92 cups to kill me of an overdose, according to this. Or, if I went to Starbucks and got tall coffees, 38 cups of them. It’s not healthy to drink as much coffee as I do, but now I can rest assured that I’m no where near deadly levels.

Rationale
I saw this project as accomplishing the following objectives:

• Students engage with research out of curiosity instead of thesis-chasing. With most research assignments, no matter how much I stress starting with curiosity, many students start out out with a thesis, or a vague idea of a thesis, and gear their research toward that thesis from fairly early in the research process. This can lead to selectively choosing counter-arguments (it’s easier to just ignore the ones that they can’t figure out how to rebut); finding “facts” to back up an argument, at the expense of focusing on the intellectual conversation and debate; and limiting invention to what one already believes and knows. Of course, I’m painting with a large brush here, and these problems don’t have to arise, but they’re pretty frequent. With this project, I asked students to enter historical and archival research with curiosity, and to develop an argument with what they find, rather than start with an argument. And students had to do this because they were dealing with material they were largely unfamiliar with.

• Students develop a larger sense of invention. Throughout the term, I try to stress that writers look at the world as writers, and when they see things, they think about how it fits into arguments, debates, and discussions and what they might have to say about it. I especially stress this with the rhetorical analysis assignment: that the rhetorical analysis is not just an analysis, but an analysis about something interesting used to make a claim or argument. I try to model this by modeling my own curiosity and engagement with artifacts I see. This assignment helps to model this more: find something you’re curious about, and develop various connections and ideas about it.
• Students develop a sense of history here, perhaps denaturalizing what they assume is “normal” and ahistorical Penn State student behavior; additionally, students see that the past is something that is important to the present and can be used for a variety of purposes. Our research in the archives was limited to student traditions at Penn State, which allowed students to see how students lived and experienced Penn State in the past. I ask them to make the history they are researching important to readers and to make an argument about it, or to use the past to make an argument about now.
• Students have fun. This was, of course, important. I mean, this stuff is interesting!

Set up
The archivist and I met two times before the project started (of course, we had met earlier about her presentation to composition instructors). During our first meeting, we discussed a possible time line for research, how we’d have students initially visit the archives, what resources were available, and what topics were possible for student papers. We decided to limit the research to student traditions, and have the archivist select materials to have on a special cart for the course that students could request to see when they came in. We set up a time line: I’d introduce the paper topic, then students would visit the archives as a class, where they were introduced to a special exhibit on student traditions, briefly shown an overview of the materials available to them, shown how to use the online archives for the student newspaper and yearbooks, and shown models of the types of research questions they might ask. Then students had to visit the archives on their own, develop a proposal, email it to me. I put some books on course reserves for secondary sources, and over the next week, students turned in two research logs as they researched and worked on their papers. I also conferenced with each student about their paper; some came with questions about their research or the paper, others with starts of drafts. What was amazing about these conferences was, for the first time ever, every student came with clear, prepared questions about their paper or topic.

How it went
These papers were highly successful, I think, in both student engagement with their topics and in paper quality. Students researched a variety of aspects of student traditions at Penn State:

• The history of the Nittany Lion mascot

• Gendered regulations for young women at Penn State
• Cross dressing at Penn State in the 1890s
• Competitions between classes in the early 20th century (called class scraps)
• Dances in the early 20th century
• Rules that freshmen were expected to follow in the early 20th century

Students struggled with figuring out how to make what they were researching matter to readers. I encouraged them to consider not just that this would be interesting, but why it would be interesting for students to read about today. Some came up with strong arguments about gender norms today, or about school spirit. Some waxed nostalgic, or made claims about the meaning of certain traditions. The struggle over how to make this matter was productive: students showed patience with themselves and the research, explored and discussed different approaches, and wrote successful papers.

We spent the last two days of class with brief, informal presentations about their research, requiring a visual (students could take pictures of what they saw in the archives). And these were a lot of fun: we all learned a lot about Penn State history and student life history, and students got a chance to share what they learned and what they thought about what they learned.

Overall, I think my students had a lot of fun with this topic, and so did I. I asked students for feedback on the assignment, and most of them praised some aspect of it: the helpfulness of visiting the archives, the interesting topics available, the fun it was exploring student history at Penn State.

The assignment sheet

Here’s a PDF of the assignment sheet as I developed it for summer term (I took off the librarian contacts in case they don’t want them up on the blog): Archival Researched Essay assignment sheet

Today my students toured Pollock lab, part of the Digital Commons here at Penn State. Great resources: a “whispering booth” to record audio, a green screen room for video, and lots of computers. I don’t think my students were that thrilled, but I was! Awesome resources, which I now feel a lot more familiar with.

Overall, I’m happy with how the course is going. There’s been a few days that I felt I was off as a teacher. Yesterday, I felt that nothing really cohered or came together in class: that our discussion was meandering and unfocused. But overall, some good things. Within three days of class, I had seven students visit my office hours, which is more than I usually get during the first three weeks in a semester class (unless I require conferences for their first paper). Our students also seem incredibly motivated. It’s part of that I’m new at Penn State and want to be a great student mentality. I saw it fall semester too, when my first-year students had great attendance overall and seemed pretty motivated. But this term, we’ve had 10 classes so far (only about 20 left, eek!), and perfect attendance so far. And a lot of interest in doing good work.

I’m still kinda struggling with the pace of the term. It’s hard to know when to introduce a paper assignment so that it gives students enough time to brainstorm, write, and revise, while not distracting them from the previous paper. I’ve tried to link papers in various ways (some scaffolding of papers that can build from prior paper ideas and research) and to link work between Tommy’s class and my class. But their current literacy narratives are proving to be a bit of a struggle for a number of students. Rough drafts due tomorrow, and I know a lot of students don’t have more than a paragraph written as of this morning. I guess this might be normal, but the speed of the summer term kind of lends itself to hurried, last-minute writing. I know it lends itself to hurried, last-minute lesson planning at times.

Last summer I taught business writing at Oregon State, and it was a great experience too. Only then, I only had eight students, and it was easier to compartmentalize assignments and the pace of the course was easier to figure out—despite the fact that the course was only four weeks. It also helped that the course was four days a week instead of five. I’m not used to having the same schedule every day of the week. And since I teach at 9:35 (Penn State has odd start times for classes), it cuts into my normal morning ritual of work. So I’m adjusting to that still, but not getting enough work done on my projects. I need to find some ways to reorganize my time management to adjust to this schedule. You’d think I could have done that after two weeks on this schedule.

Starting Wednesday, I am teaching FYC as part of Penn State’s Learning Edge Academic Program, or LEAP. The program brings in first-year students early, and as a cohort, they take two courses that will spring-board them into college, generally gen-ed courses. My English 015 course is paired up with a Communications Arts and Sciences course, and I’m excited about this. My fellow teacher is awesome, and also a friend of mine, so it should be a fun time working together, teaching rhetoric, writing, and public speaking, and engaging with students.

So, I’ve got to finish a few things for the course, but first, I want to catch up on all that stuff I missed by being in a workshop and meeting so many awesome people over the weekend. Here’s a few interesting tidbits from the Internet.

• According to Daily Kos, a gay bar in Forth Worth was raided Saturday night (Sunday morning), on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in NYC. It seems the story is unfolding. (h/t slewfoot at the Blogora.) Towleroad has more.

• Joseph Orosco shares his thoughts on Twitter, Iran, and revolutionary possibilities.

• CNN, in an article whose title is worthy of the Onion: yep, there is.

• XKCD today is awesome: “More harm has been done by people panicked over societal decline than societal decline ever did”

• Sweet! University of Kansas is going open-access for all journal articles written by their faculty.

PS. I love Linus.

This video might be useful to show in a composition course to lead to discussions of how writers represent Others in their compositions — or, in another way, contribute to constructions of Others in the American imagination. Feminist Philosophers has some comments:

• The film doesn’t even hint at the fact that there are problems with hunger and starvation around the world.

• The subjects are getting the worst in American food values.
• The subjects, many of whom appear to be dressed in special ”‘traditional dress” are presented often as oddities with whom one cannot identify. You know that problem: people are treated as means, not ends.
• AND, who ever had the idea that the best judges are completely inexperienced? This is the American myth that gave us Sarah Palin. Seriously, whose view of a restaurant would you trust: someone who has been to a lot or someone who has been to none before?
• And then there’s the phrase, “Whopper Virgin.” Snicker, snicker.

But to this list we might add:

• The Other as “more natural,” more pure (“virgins”), pre-cultural, less-than-civilized (“off the grid”)

• Because they are closer to natural, the Other as having more access to Universal Taste
• The Americans as bringing civilization, as charitable
• The Other as object of voyeurism, as subject to be observed and watched with intrigue

I wish I had spent more time this term on how writers represent others in their writing — word choice, representation, and such. We did spend time on how to summarize and give voice to claims or arguments you disagree with, which seemed to be much more successful (in student writing) than I had anticipated. However, there have been a few moments in student writing that I hadn’t anticipated, the most obvious being calling people of color “colored people.”

Another thing that surprised me: A student writing that American black slavery occurred up until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. I’ve seen this assumption from white students at Oregon State, so I don’t know why I was surprised in this instance, but nevertheless, I am always surprised by this.

EDIT: Sociological Images also discusses the video, calling attention to the framing of people as “outside of things” — which is an ethnocentric concept of “things” that matter. Additionally, they call attention to the framing of the video as a documentary, and what the effects of this might be.

Jon Stewart uses a historical definition:

Keith Olbermann also uses a historical definition. Additionally, he uses classification by defining it as a right:

Dee Garrett uses an extended negative definition (it’s not a civil right):

Americans for Marriage have a formal definition of marriage, but also define gay marriage with an extended discussion of its effects:

I’m not sure which videos I’ll show tomorrow, and I do have some hesitancy showing the videos (because they might offend students or silence students on any side of the “debate”). I wish there was a better video from the pro-Prop 8 side that incorporated a definition of marriage besides a quick “marriage is between a man and a woman.” (Of course, a historical definition of marriage from a conservative point of view is impossible, if it’s historically accurate, because marriage has always shifted throughout history. Although I’d love to be proven wrong here.) But I think it’ll reinforce the point that the textbook makes fairly well: that definition is very important to argument. Hopefully, we can analyze these arguments for what they do (the moves they make) in class tomorrow.

It seems that Ratcliffe’s conceptualization of a teacher’s ethos is useful for graduate teaching assistants to consider. The reason I bring this up is because, with the stress of teaching for the first time, GTAs are often encouraged to think about their teaching ethos mostly in regards to their performance, rather than in regards to promoting student learning. New GTAs are often concerned about dress, titles, appearing knowledgeable, and a myriad of other things that can build their ethos in the classroom. These are all understandable and important concerns that need to be thought through. However, I wonder if the stress on these concerns primarily, at the expense of other aspects of ethos, might rely on the authorial agency that Ratcliffe argues is “[put] on a pedestal” above readerly agency, discursive agency, and cultural agency (131). These “other aspects” of ethos I mention include, but aren’t limited to, fostering an openness to being wrong and to new ideas, and the potentials for greater “readerly agency” and “authorial agency” in our students. An example of the problem of this focus on individual ethos is a GTA claiming he is older and has more experience than he actually does, because of his concern that his credibility will be harmed if he admits to being a 21-year-old recent graduate of college.

I’d like to resist a cultural logic of blame here and instead employ Ratcliffe’s tactic of eavesdropping, which she describes as “purposely positioning oneself on the edge of one’s knowing so as to overhear and learn from others and [...] from oneself” (105). I wonder if we position ourselves on the outside of GTA training to listen to GTAs and professors, what would we hear? I wonder what we would understand and what cultural logics would emerge when we analyzed claims.