Research: Student Ownership, Choice, and Design

At the beginning of March, I read an editorial in the New York Times titled, “Let Kids Rule the School.” I was  drawn to the title because I’ve always felt, to some degree, that my job as a teacher is to make myself obsolete.  That is, to reignite some type of motivation for independent learning while helping students (re)learn how to learn and think on multiple levels on their own.

The article presents a group of high school students in Massachusetts who design and run their own small school within a school.  The eight students, including two who were on the verge of dropping out before this project, created a more rigorous reading curriculum than that of the school’s AP English courses, and sought both math teachers and online sources for help with math equations.  They also taught each other.

Admittedly, at first, the idea of letting “kids” design their own curriculum seems idealistic at best and anarchic at worst. Yet, I couldn’t help but think about the motivation that comes with choice and independence, especially for kids in their late teens. And, more related to our class and my project, how the Internet and blogging could play a large role in the success of a project like this.

Yet, the students were not completely left on their own; they did have supervision and guidance from a counselor and a few teachers. And the project was incredibly successful, with one student who had been failing math teaching other students how to solve probability problems.  The article highlights the fact that the success of students designing their own curriculum wasn’t remarkable because these were not all honors students, but instead, the students “are remarkable because they demonstrate the kinds of learning and personal growth that are possible when teenagers feel ownership of their high school experience.”

Granted, my project is not about students creating their own curriculum (maybe I’ll save that for an Ed.D. dissertation someday…).  Right now, I’m interested in blogging as a way to build higher order thinking and writing skills.  I think student choice and design play a large role in the appeal of blog writing for students–not necessarily the online “place” that they’re typing their text into, but the type of writing that they’re doing and the types of conversations that they’re entering into while they write (and read).  It is this idea that I’m exploring in my project.

No Thanks Coach; I’m Comfortable on the Bench.

Currently, Girl Talk is the hit mashup musician. He also happens to be a biomedical engineer specializing in tissue engineering. (This is almost not surprising because, really, what’s more remix-y than using tissues to substitute or improve biological functions?)  In addition to his “lawsuit waiting to happen” style of unauthorized sampling, he offers up his music on a “pay what you want” per download basis (a la Radiohead). This is an awkward sentiment considering the fact that, had he been sampling music some 15 years ago, most people would say he was stealing. Girl Talk creates music via online digital technologies, but it is the live performances that come out of this music–by him and others–that seem to resonate with his listeners.

In fact, Anne Marsen became famous overnight when she was featured dancing to Girl Talk’s album All Night in the online edition of The New York Times Magazine. By responding to a Craigslist ad from aspiring art photographer Jacob Krupnick asking for dancers:  “all skills, all ages, all bodies,” Marsen became a part of an “epic” 71 minute video in which she and two others dance across Manhattan.  In the article, Krupnick describes Marsen’s own mashup style:  “She’s playing with her body movement the way a rapper might play with words.” She dropped out of ballet school and takes classes in ten different styles of dance–from salsa to West African to pole.  This is a kind of remix on its own.  It’s one that is physical, but whose aesthetic appeal gained popularity via a combination of digital media: film, Girl Talk’s All Night album, and the online edition of The New York Times.

Clealy “participatory culture” isn’t limited only to online communities, but what I’m interested in is the influence of one on the other.  When I read Henry Jenkins’ definition of participatory culture, I got nervous.  This is mostly because I realized that I’m not a part of it, at least not really.  I’m blogging here, for class, but I don’t have my own blog that I’ll continue to update after this semester.  I’m on Facebook, but I hardly consider my snarky comments or sharing of Democracy Now! clips to really matter–they don’t seem to be changing the world or even my own little community in any way. I find that I do more reading and watching than writing when I’m supposedly “participating” in online digital culture. If anything, the more time I spend online, the less involved I feel in my community–or any community for that matter.

Larry Lessig explains to his audience that kids are taking the songs of their parents’ generation and remixing them. He goes on to say that this technique has been democratized, that “anyone with access to a fifteen hundred dollar computer” can take both “sounds and images from the culture around us and use it to say things differently.”  I’m sure that if I learned, I too could do this.  But the truth is that I’m comfortable not (really) participating, not producing things online.  I enjoy consuming the videos, commentary, news, and remixes that others create, but I have little desire to join in and create alongside of them (Unless, that is, I’m creating a hyperlink to their online product like I did above).

I’m wondering what it means to not be a part of online participatory culture, what the spaces inbetween the online and offline worlds can create (that couldn’t (wouldn’t?) be created without one or the other), or if it’s even possible to not be a part of participatory culture.

Adventures in Interdisciplinary Composition

In part two of Richard Miller’s “This is How We Dream,” he asks, “What would it mean to build a building that united the best of the humanities and the best of the sciences?”  He even has a 3-D architectural model, one that takes out the parking lot in order to add a science wing onto his current humanities building.  I love this idea.  And not just because it gets rid of a parking lot.  Especially because I teach composition, it’s becoming easier, or maybe just more necessary (even obvious?) to see the broadening definition of what it means to compose.  With Miller’s idea for (the best of) English and (the best of) science together under one roof, it seems only necessary to adopt Brian Morrison’s definition of composing: “the thoughtful gathering, construction, or reconstruction of a literate act in any given media” (Yancey 2004, p. 315). And with this changing definition, it’s exciting to dream of the excellent interdisciplinary adventures that could ensue.

But I’m wondering if, first, it’s beneficial to imagine what a composition would begin to look like if several branches of the humanities (say, historians, linguists, and trustworthy philosophers) built a series of courses together. Or maybe it makes more sense to look at a more specific branch of humanities, like English studies. With partnerships between film & media, communication, and cultural studies alone, students could take classes that build their composition skills. That is, courses that build upon what they already know about producing, consuming, and critiquing texts–print or digital or whatever we conceive them to be. When I think about what English courses often do (gatekeep) versus what they could do, I feel a simultaneous jolt of excitement and sad resignation.  What should English do, except help students more successfully tell stories, understand  voices–their own and those of others, study the world, and critique all of these things, all with an end goal of helping students to navigate life, doing more than nudging them toward a predetermined social place. And if life is becoming more multimodal, more intertextual, then classrooms can play a crucial role in helping students to not only develop these types of digital literacy skills, but also critically engage with digital texts and cultures.

Yet, according to Yancey, “we have already committed to a theory of communication that is both/and: print and digital” (p. 307).  This simplistic acknowledgment, of course, isn’t enough, and I’m glad that Yancey questions the ready availability of technology in the composition (or any) classroom. She argues that “students will not compose and create” or, I’d like to add, make use of their ability to push the boundaries of language, persuasion, design, collaboration, and presentation, if their interaction is simply to “complete someone else’s software package” (p. 320). This seems to lead back to a question that Kory asked during one of our first classes: do students need to learn code in order to be able to truly understand and produce an online composition? (or something to that effect.)  The answer to this question may mean that the interdisciplinary work of English studies that  I envision won’t be enough. We may need to build English (or composition or humanities or…) courses with help from the best of the sciences (whatever Miller means by that). Maybe we do need to bring them over to the HUM building. Who’s good at writing grants?

Consumer, Producer, Critic (Not necessarily in that order)

In her article, “Popular Websites in Adolescents’ Out-of-School Lives: Critical Lessons on Literacy,” Jennifer Stone analyzes eight popular websites that adolescents commonly use outside of school.  What’s incredible (or maybe not so incredible in this age of NCLB, that is, based on what I know about it from The New Yorker) about her study is this:  she found that students who were labeled “struggling readers” in school, spent hours outside of school reading websites full of complex sentences and vocabulary.  What’s more, these websites contained much more complicated vocabulary and syntax than the reading they were doing in school.  Her point is not to convince teachers that they should be using popular websites to teach reading and writing.  Rather, she is arguing for an expanded view of literacy, one that includes the popular websites that students read and interact with regularly. According to Stone, acknowledging students’ use of these websites as a valid literacy practice would lessen the social divide between what counts as “inside” versus “outside” the realm of school.  That is, between what counts as “real” reading and what counts as a lesser version in the minds of teachers, parents, school officials, and even students.

Stone’s push to modify the definition of reading isn’t anything new, especially in terms of critical literacy (Defined here by Ira Shor).  Rather, what has changed is the type(s) of texts that students are often reading. What Stone refers to as “intertextual connections,” is the norm in online writing and reading. Yet, she admits, “we cannot merely celebrate these literacies; nor should we destroy the pleasures of popular culture,”  but in terms of a classroom practice, she argues, “At the same time, there is certainly a need for schools to start helping students to unpack what these texts do and how they do it” (p. 61).  To me, this sounds similar to critical literacy.  In her 1994 book addressing critical reading, The Culture of Reading and the Teaching of English (link to the Google book here), Kathleen McCormick suggests that students learn to read “symptomatically.” That is, “to look for the symptoms or signs of the power and contradictions involved in that culture’s ideology” (p. 77), something Stone asks teachers and students to do more of.

Unlike critical reading in print texts, however, when students are reading on the Internet, they may comment on their friends’ and peers’ Facebook pages, or on blogs, discussion boards, and articles. They are shaping their identity through online sites via what they read, subscribe to, and post. Online, they are both consumers and producers of text.  But this doesn’t ensure that they’re acting as critics (self- or otherwise) in the sense of critical literacy. Since most, if not all, students are already using new literacies online (is that redundant?), it seems like we should be helping students to move from being consumers, to producers, to critics, in reflective, rhetorical, and reciprocal ways.

If we look at teaching critical reading in the context of new literacies, it does seem similar to critical literacy; it’s about empowering students and building their metacognitive skills.  Here, however, it is also to raise their awareness of what they’re doing on the Internet, how it works, who it benefits, and in what ways it is (and is not) beneficial to their face to face and online presence or identity.  This seems especially important in a world where “social” is not contained to an in-person community of peers, but rather, almost uncontained in an online world where each and every person is simultaneously negotiating their identity to different ends.  I think it’s important to teach and maintain a balance and an awareness of the differences between online and face-to-face worlds.  We don’t want students to believe, like Allie Brosh, that adulthood is something that can be won in one fell swoop, like a trophy, and that once won, they can go back to an unrestrained life on the Internet (see my favorite blog for Brosh’s self-reflection, “This is Why I’ll Never be an Adult”).

That said, I think that Jennifer Stone is right: it is crucial for teachers to understand how online texts “are shaping students’ literate lives,” and to be aware of institutional views of online texts that “[push] these literacies into unofficial spaces and renders them invisible” (p. 61). When these literacies are invisible, students, teachers, and school officials see them as less valuable than traditional texts (possibly even those that Stone proves to be less critical or complex than some online). This makes me wonder: if students’ understanding, reflection, and articulation of the rhetorical moves they and other online authors are making was to improve, would online literacies (even those related to popular websites) be given more credibility and become valued as school-based literacies?  For some reason, I doubt that schools will broaden their view of what it means to be literate any time soon.