CCCC 2005: ReviewReview: Presenting Ourselves I Think Our Conference Spirit Has Wings Gibraltar size grains Salt love's wounds like the sea waves Wind breaking silence Mouths like tidal baths Flowing and eating cliffside Where word edges word It was hard to leave San Francisco. It is truly a great city and I appreciate the fact that our conference planners brought us there. This year’s conference gained ethical heart by supporting labor but that advance had its cost. The curtaining of our words was unfortunate and daunting. The reviews we present may then emphasize the ability of good teachers to overcome situational difficulties so that we can learn. This year’s location gave us problems but it also gave us a world class city with an abundance of pleasures for us to experience. I began this review with a double haiku because I think it’s necessary to emphasize creative thinking in our profession more than we do. I use it to situate our attention in the context of so many simultaneous and diverse reading and writing activities—our conference each year dramatizes the fact that we are a diverse body of thinkers who practice our profession with more humility and love than most. We do create our own knowledge by collaborating with students and colleagues, we create writing space and opportunities for students to grow, and we observe a large amount of creative writing in the essays we teach with, and in the writing desires of our students. I also use the poem to dramatize the paradoxical nature of our conference. We travel to come together as a very human community of teachers, and at the same time, we want to travel to see new places. In other words, as much as these reviews attempt to capture the sessions and ideas of our conference, they might also creatively reflect some of our desires for fun, amusement and vacationing. The keyword I heard more often than most was “multimodal.” I like the sound of it beyond the fact that it rhymes with yodel. I think that finding a variety of ways for students to express their thinking is more effective for writing instruction than hammering home an essay style that sometimes will “cage” some wild and useful student thinking. I also think shifting activities and using diverse communicate modes in classes helps students learn. Our conference seemed to offer improved use of multimedia and more insights about teaching writing with technology…in other words, we are indeed trying to be multimodal. For Sweeney Schragg that’s old hat—this is true--he plays in the Quasimodal Quartet. For Lawrence Lessing, that means success since WPA-L is already buzzing about his session as one of the best. I saw several sessions using MLA style paper reading and I have to ask why? Aren’t we here to teach other? Do we teach our classes by reading papers to students at stiff speeds so that the time of the speaking is privileged above the ideas and how well they can be received? Are egotistical word streams what our teaching and learning is reduced to when we get such little time together as a group? Louise Rosenblatt passed away this year. Her ideas about transactional learning could be practiced more among us. I understand that good ideas read in monotones still have value, and that we have no limits on presentation beyond time. Nevertheless, we might do more to show and share our teaching wisdom. After all, we are living in a time when multi-media is easily accessible, and we are challenged all the time to work more than one mode. Lawrence Lessig presented one of the most popular and highly regarded sessions offering dynamic images as part of his presentation on “Intellectual Property: Key Issues” and Nancy Sommers presented her featured session using a 15 minute film as the centerpiece of her discussion. These sessions were very crowded and widely enjoyed because of the ideas offered, and also because the thinking was presented dynamically. In other words, rhetoricians heal thyselves! |
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