Argument Fallacy Day!

At this point in my teaching career, I have a number of dedicated days I really enjoy. Minor Threat Day, in my maker culture class--especially if I've got an 8am class at which to blast "Straight Edge." Or Play Day, another first year composition fun day.

Both of these days are rather recent additions to my teaching arsenal, added during this past year as a Brittain Fellow, as I've incorporated more multi-modality to my classes. However, there are some activities which I've pretty much consistently relied upon since I began teaching--and among these, Argument Fallacy Day is one of my favorites.

As I explained in the blog post about Play Day, I use Argument Fallacy Day at the beginning of the group project unit in my first year composition class. The major project in this unit is a group manifesto, in which students compose manifestos arguing for the application of maker culture principles to the classroom.* I use Argument Fallacy Day to introduce the students to working in their groups, with the low stakes of a classwork grade to give them practice in working with each other.

For one class period, students are assigned a reading about argument fallacies. In the past, I've relied upon textbook readings for this; this semester, I assigned this reading from the Purdue OWL site. We go over a basic set of fallacies, and then each group is assigned a fallacy. (I start by asking for volunteers--there are usually a couple of people or groups who have a strong preference, and then the others take what's left.) They spend the rest of the class period coming up with a 3-5 minute skit that demonstrates the fallacy.

The next class period they perform the skits. They're so much fun! Even the reluctant performers usually get into the spirit of the day--and the relaxed class period is a nice change of pace. Other than the time parameters, I don't give any other restrictions, other than the work should be appropriate for the classroom. I've had some wonderfully memorable skits--from a Charlie Sheen Twitter feed announcing his run for President, Miley Cyrus lecturing on the environment, and a slippery slope argument that legalized marijuana will lead to both the Zombie Apocalypse as well as Donald Trump winning the Presidency (both presented as equally terrifying).

My current teaching interest is on the role of play in the college classroom. Incorporating these fun, low-stakes assignments as part of larger projects encourages students to be more open to creative solutions in their work. By beginning a major group project with a fun assignment, my intention is to make group projects--loathed by many students and instructors alike--a less onerous prospect. Group projects and committee work is nearly unavoidable in almost any line of work, and it's important to me that students have positive group experiences. With Argument Fallacy Day, I try to not only teach about argument and logic, but also how to work well with others.

*I'll say more about this assignment in a future blog post.

In Defense of the Irritated Young Woman

Check out my new post on the Flannery O'Connor Society's webpage--what teaching Flannery O'Connor's works at a tech school has taught me about her characters as role models.

I'm back!

The realization which led to this new tagline is what finally made me dig in and get this blog unlocked (I was having all sorts of password issues). Watch for new blog posts about post-doc life, Flannery O'Connor, and my newly discovered pedagogy of cake.

Do the next thing versus Make it new.

So, here’s a brief recap of what the year has been like:

*January: I attended (and presented at) MLA conference, no interviews

*March: I had a phone interview for a TT job. Invited to a campus visit; didn’t get the job

*April: I was invited to Skype interview for a post-doc at Georgia Tech

*May: I was offered a postdoctoral fellowship at Georgia Tech

*June 24: I defended my dissertation

*June 25: My partner and I got in the car and drove to Atlanta to find a place to live

*July 1: He dropped me off in Milledgeville, Georgia, for a month-long NEH seminar on Flannery O’Connor

*July 30: I flew back to Baton Rouge

*August 9: Picked up and loaded rental truck—the rental truck we got several hours later than we had requested—and a truck six feet shorter than we had reserved

*August 10: Drove to Alabama, where we spent the night

*August 11: Drove to Atlanta, where some lovely people we hired got the truck and car unloaded (and the truck swept out) in half the time it took to load it. That part was fabulous

*August 14: Fly back to Baton Rouge

*August 15: Hooding

*August 16: Fly back to Atlanta

*August 18: First day of week-long orientation

*August 25: First day of classes

And at this point, having just finished grading 72 first year composition papers, I’m really wanting to spend about a month lying in a hammock in the woods.

All of the boxes are unpacked—even the drum kit!—but nothing’s on the walls yet. Getting everything unpacked was a big accomplishment—once clothes and kitchen stuff are unpacked, it’s awfully tempting to keep passing by the boxes. And admittedly, my sewing stuff is kind of in a number of big stacks in baskets; it really needs some order put to it. However, it feels a bit more settled now, rather than temporary.

Which brings me to what I want to think about here, about turning the corner from what, for the last six months or so, has been a lifestyle of “do the next thing.” Dissertation revision; pack; dissertation; move; orientation; class prep. There’s so much new to adjust to that’s it’s been really easy to just do the next thing—class on Tuesday prep. Pay rent. Read articles for Digital Pedagogy seminar this week. This lifestyle, though, of just keeping up, has made me feel awfully unsatisfied. Crazed and crazy, at times. 

After having a pretty intense jazzercise routine in Baton Rouge—I went four or five times a week, at least, and even twice some days—part of my craziness has been due to losing this workout routine. I finally made it up to the fitness center in my new apartment complex a couple of weeks ago, and that first workout was like a drug. I was high from the chemical release. I’ve been trying to get into a new habit of going up to the fitness center (which, admittedly, is little more than some cardio and weight equipment in a room—similar to a hotel fitness center), but it’s difficult to figure out when that fits into my day, now that I’ve got seventy-two students’ work to deal with, new class prep, new seminar readings, and a new schedule that requires I be on the train at 7AM. 

Thinking about this, about how difficult new habits are to break in (at the same time that I was planning a unit on writing manifestos in my multimodal composition class), I found myself contemplating Ezra Pound’s famous exhortation to “Make it new!” Making it new is exhausting, but just doing the next thing is depressing. My goal now is to find some sort of balance between the two. I expect this to be the theme of the rest of this semester, at least. Any suggestions? I may start to post more here, to track my adventures in finding the balance between these two themes.

Threats to Freedom of Speech at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Actually, all Tennessee state schools. As Tennessee lawmakers have proposed a bill which would essentially end speakers on college campuses, many Tennesseans are outraged and trying to make their own voices heard. Professor Misty Anderson exchanged emails with Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield over her concerns about the proposed legislation--the correspondence is a fun read, even as it lowers my opinion of the senator even further, if that was possible. It's fun to watch an actual scholar of the eighteenth century respond to wingnutty misuses of the words of Thomas Jefferson.

CFP: Feminists Co-Opting Media

This panel examines the ways media can further feminism rather than co-opt it, such as Pussy Riot, Women Under Siege, Goldieblox, and UN Women. Please send 250 word abstracts to Monica Miller at mmil132@lsu.edu by March 15.

My Real Teaching Philosophy

I've now made it through my first MLA season on the job market--no interviews, alas, but I still have over twenty applications for jobs, fellowships, and postdocs outstanding. The uncertainty about the next year is difficult for me, but I'm trying to think of becoming comfortable with uncertainty as a strategy for personal growth.***

A big part of this whole process has been writing, revising, and workshopping all of those job documents, the various pieces of writing required by various applications. Some of these have been really helpful--while writing a dissertation abstract before the dissertation is complete is rather odd, writing and revising it has ultimately helped clarify my thinking about my dissertation. It was a very rewarding writing experience.

However, in all aspects of my life, I need to have a nemesis. Job docs are apparently no different: I have discovered that my teaching philosophy is the James Franco of my job docs. I'm not sure why I have such a block against it--it just seems so fake to me. Perhaps it's because it's difficult not to sound like every other teaching philosophy--of course my classroom is student-centered. Of course I care about student engagement and analytical skills. I was quite cheered by this Chronicle column, which echoes quite a few of my problems with the teaching philosophy--I'm much more in favor of the annotated syllabus that the author suggests, as that seems like it would be much clearer than an essay.

Part of my problem with my teaching philosophy is just that--while I certainly have larger, more abstract principles which guide my teaching (engagement and analytical skills actually being my biggest priorities in the classroom)--if I were going to talk to other teachers about my day-to-day priorities, they're rather different from what my formal teaching philosophy is. Here, now, is my actual working teaching philosophy:

*Keep up with grading
We kvetch about it on social media, we dread it and procrastinate, but ultimately, I'm curious as to why this isn't taken more seriously. Do you know what many of my students have said they most appreciate in a teacher? Those who keep up their gradebooks on Moodle and Blackboard. And I admit, keeping up with my gradebook on Moodle has actually had an enormously positive effect on my relationships with students--reducing the number of frantic student emails about their grades (not eliminating them, mind you, but greatly reducing them) has actually enhanced my quality of life. So does not having grading hanging over my head. Getting into the habit of keeping up with grading is yet another habit that I'm not always successful at, but when I do, it's such a feeling of accomplishment. This weekend's Monday Motivator from the NCFDD talks about how teaching has built-in, daily accountability: there are live people we see several times a week who hold us accountable for lesson plans and grading. However, it is these very eyeballs which make us feel immediately bad when we do fall behind grading.

*Make sure you're wearing pants
Well, not literally. I tend to wear more skirts than pants. But I do put a lot of thought into my appearance in the classroom--not only on what kind of authority I'm projecting with what I'm wearing (Are pink tights too much? Is this jacket too much?), but on the practicality of what I'm wearing. I know I'm prone to spilling coffee, so dark colors are good. If I'm teaching in Tureaud Hall, I'm going to burn up on the walk to class and freeze once I'm inside.

*Wear comfortable shoes
There are people who disagree with me about this--many young women feel that the sound of high heels projects an air of authority. If that works for you, awesome. But again, I think it's important to think about the physical experience of teaching--what do my feet feel like at the end of a class period? What kind of space do I have to teach in--will this long skirt get caught on things? Will these long cuffs start annoying me if I'm writing on the board.

*Bring your own chalk
It is rare when a classroom I'm teaching English or Women's and Gender Studies in has plenty of chalk or dry erase markers, so I always make sure I have extra with me. However, I always point out to my students when I do so--I think it's crucial that students (and parents) are aware when there's a paucity of resources on campus. My first day of class last semester, I had neither internet access nor enough desks for my students nor chalk. I rolled with it--I pulled in chairs from my office down the hall, and I used my phone as a hotspot so that I could pull up the syllabus online, and I had my own stash of chalk--but I made sure that students were aware of these shortages.

*And finally, have a good playlist before class
I have a number of go-to songs I listen to in headphones before class--"Pretty in Pink," "Fight the Power," and the Human League's "Fascination" are just a few. All of these get me energized in various ways to go teach class. And while not everyone requires 80s music to get in the mood to teach, I do think it's important to have some time before class to center and get into a good head space to teach.

Having spelled all of this out now, I'm struck by how teacher-centered these points are. Perhaps that's what's missing from my formal teaching philosophy--in all of my focus on "student-centeredness," often times what falls out is the actual teacher in the teacher philosophy. Self-care as pedagogy--radical, perhaps, but important.


***Trying, not necessarily succeeding. Uncertainty is a pretty big challenge for me.