Although this reflection may not (1) list the issues from the readings that we should discuss in class, (2) dialogue about the readings or (3) relate the readings to actual pratice in the WC, I do believe that this reflection serves as a vital role in my experiental and epistemological frames of race and the writing center, and to reflect, clarify and draw relationships to my attempts to tackle this admin project along with my final paper (incomplete).
I have often told those close to me that race haunts me, within my constant collides with race and language in the writing center I am open to the fact that I and the writing center space are seperate beings, with distinct/different historial backgrounds. In my ESL admin project and my final paper I attempt to answer the following questions:
1. If as Matsuda/Cox argues the reader formulating a response is the most important part of the WC session, In what ways do the racialization of writing influence listening or erasures (Ratcliffe)?
Erasure-as Ratcliffe contends is when a person disregards the racialization or contents of a speaker when/if they are identified as "racial markers"
2. How do tutors and writers silence issues of race or culture in formal sessions?
3. How can whiteness studies be used to bring forth a WELL NEEDED CONVERSATION on race and the writing center?
4. How can rhetorical listening be used as a code-of cross-cultural conduct to which can be utilized within writing center professional development, theory and practices?
5. Does/Can cross-cultural conversation influence/contribute to better academic writing?
In seeing race as a trope and examining the ways in which this trope is employed in the writing center; like literacy, I believe (as Grimm contends) this trope liberates and dominates; demands submission and offers promises of agency. As in Patricia Bizzell's article "4th of July.."where she contends that others/outsiders etc. who learn the dominate discourse can then utilize a "shared" vocabulary and a "shared" view to which can allow them to persuade the dominate rhetorics in their own wrong doings.
In Nancy Grimm’s book Good Intentions she contends that “writing centers cannot resolve the national confusion about literacy, but I believe that over time they can contribute to a deeper understanding of literacy and to more democratic approaches to literacy education. To do this, writing centers need to be more fully engaged with the paradox of literacy” (xiii). I am concerned about the notion that the “national” confusion of literacy cannot be healed or “resolved” by writing centers. Does history bind writing centers in the same way that academic instiutionalization bind identities and language?
...to be continued
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Admin Project: ESL and Cross-Cultural Conversations
Event Description(s) & Conversation Themes
A series of topics surrounding relationships between cultural communities and academia are the premise of this ESL/Cross Cultural conversation group event. A total of 3 conversation groups will take place in multiple locations across campus during the semester. The following topics are suggested as conversation themes to begin Fall 2008 conversation groups: Contact Zones & Safe housing , Whiteness, Assimilation & Acculturation: Negotiating Culture and Standard English, Material Culture & Globalization and Popular Culture Music, Movies & The world wide web. Although the themes outlined may seem abstract, we hope to narrow content and revise themes so that specific subjects are clear and direct. Such workings will take place during event planning which will begin the week of August 25th. Given the deserve to provide a comfortable setting that enacts the professional yet, eclectic communicative feel of a coffee house or guest room, I outlined on-campus spaces that took on characteristics, or could take on characteristics of what I saw as a visual reenactments of a Burkean Parlor room. Kenneth Burke’s Burkean Parlor room had much influence on the designated location and characteristics of a space that would fuel assorted dialog. Most importantly, advocating and promoting various participants to enter and exit an ever evolving and continuous conversation at their own well, surrounding the above listed themes along with need based themes that participant’s suggest is the means of this conversation group. A conversational space that allows for listening, talking and re-inventing world views allow for critical consciousness, one’s ability to see him/or herself outside of their selves. Corder (1985, p. 16, 31) contends that “we are more particularly narrators, historians, tale-tellers”. As such, language creates recognitions and representations of world views, “creating a world full of space and time that will hold our diversities”.
Project Narrative
University Apartments service a large population of International Students and their families. Additionally, Michigan State University (MSU) is renowned for its Study Abroad programs. The International Center on campus is recognized for it’s plethora of resources made available to all students who seek collaborative affairs abroad. According to Resident Life community assessment survey in the fall of 2007 7% of students living on campus were International students. In partnership with Resident Life, The Writing Center, Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures and the International Center ‘s TA program this event seeks to extend connections and cultural awareness through the exchange of pertinent conversations surrounding popular culture. This event also seeks to initiate cross-cultural partnerships and construct literacy communities amongst students of diverse and multi-ethnic backgrounds. As stated earlier University Apartments houses a number of International families, It is our goal that the ESL & Cross-Cultural Conversation groups will not only bridge the barrier between families and schools where husbands, mothers, sons and daughters “go away to college” to fuel intellectual and economic status in isolation from their families. Particularly families play a major role in many cultural communities, at best some cultural community members distrust academic spaces, thus offering as many family members as participants see fit welcomes an outlet of diverse world views and epistemologies that go across age, gender and nationalities. It is my hope that inviting family members of students will better prepare marginalized students for entering classrooms where their private or home vernacular, language or dialects are asked to be altered, divided, transformed, separated or negotiated given the dominance of Standard English.
The Writing Center staff like Resident Life seeks to advance cultural connections amongst the MSU campus community by creating a space that advocates collective conversations and cross-cultural learning. The Writing Rhetoric and American Cultures (WRAC) department has implemented shared learning goals to increase the number of cross-class conversation and collaboration amongst students and instructors in Tier-One writing courses. This event will allow WRAC students the opportunity to talk through writing assignments, campus frustrations or misunderstandings of various contact zones. Students who enter the conversations groups or leave while the conversation is still going on may find value in the themes and topics discussed. Arnetha Ball and Ted Lardner (2005) argue that conversation has become a significant part of student learning. TA’s should find value in suggesting that students attend the events to compliment readings and writing assignments.
Conversation like knowledge and writing is a process and whether it is formal or informal in context there will always be “pressure” to perform orally. At best the pressure to perform is normal and in many ways healthy, social awkwardness will be discussed and approached during the first conversation group, it is in this first conversation group facilitators (writing consultants and volunteers) will act as guiders, rather then authorities or experts. Facilitators will be asked to only enter and interrupt conversations when they see appropriate and removing themselves in ways that allow natural evolving conversations where in many cases a leader or facilitator of the conversation is created within and on its own terms amongst participants. The theory set behind developing a cross-cultural conversational group disagrees heavily with North’s (1984) argument that “…we are not here to serve, supplement, back up, complement, reinforce, or otherwise be defining by any external curriculum. We are here to talk to writers.” Because students are here, within the University for purposes other then being a better writer.
Paul Kei Matsuda (2006) contends that oral dialog is key to learning the lexical concepts of the English vocabulary for ESL students. This event will do more than just provide lexical and communal ways of knowing, it is expected that this event will allow participants the opportunity to dispel stereotypes and come to an understanding that “differences are not necessarily signs of deficiency” (Matsuda and Cox).
Thus, when facilitating the ESL conversational group it is our goal to pursue the following:
1. Encourage questioning which will foster further growth and understanding of multiple literacy practices within different cultural groups and communities.
2. (Taking a Post-structionalist Position) Utilizing Krista Ratcliff’s ideals of Rhetorical Listening-which advocates for an analysis of dominant cultural norms and an understanding that although we might not agree with each other, we should still value and validate another’s opinion or understanding of the world-by laying another person’s epistemologies in front of us, rather then beneath us.
3. Promote cross-cultural collaboration and foster friendships and professional partnerships.
4. Broaden world views surrounding popular topics or cultural concerns in America and abroad.
5. Promote a consciousness of multi-cultural understanding, language diversity and American writing standards and writing proficiency.
6. Share multiple alphabetical symbols of recognition; writing your name in multiple languages or writing the same sentence in multiple languages, viewing and critiquing the same commercial advertisement in multiple languages and for multiple racial/cultural communities, exploring global markets e.g. material culture & popular artifacts.
7. Frequently challenge understandings and ways of knowing regarding communication, survival, identity and politics.
References
Matsuda, P.K, Cox, M.,Jordan, J.,Ortmeier-Hooper, C., et al. (2006). Second-Language
Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. NewYork: Bedford/St. Martins.
Ball, A., & Lardner, T. (2005). African American Literacies Unleashed. Illinois:
Southern Illinois University Press.
Fox, H. (1994). Listening to the World: Cultural Issues in Academic Writing
Ratcliff, K. (2005). Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness.
Carbondale:Southern Illinois University Press
Grimm, N. (1999) Good Intentions: Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times. NH:
CrossCurrents.
Corder, J. (1985) Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love. RR4. p. 16-18
Gonzalez, V. El Camino Real: Where Culture and Academia meet. Diversity Digest. 12, 2 http://www.diversityweb.org/digest/vol10no2/gonzalez.cfm
Bizzell, P. (1997) The 4th of July and the 22nd of December: The Function of Cultural Archives in Persuasion, as Shown by Frederick Douglass and William Apess. CCC 48.1, 44-59.
A series of topics surrounding relationships between cultural communities and academia are the premise of this ESL/Cross Cultural conversation group event. A total of 3 conversation groups will take place in multiple locations across campus during the semester. The following topics are suggested as conversation themes to begin Fall 2008 conversation groups: Contact Zones & Safe housing , Whiteness, Assimilation & Acculturation: Negotiating Culture and Standard English, Material Culture & Globalization and Popular Culture Music, Movies & The world wide web. Although the themes outlined may seem abstract, we hope to narrow content and revise themes so that specific subjects are clear and direct. Such workings will take place during event planning which will begin the week of August 25th. Given the deserve to provide a comfortable setting that enacts the professional yet, eclectic communicative feel of a coffee house or guest room, I outlined on-campus spaces that took on characteristics, or could take on characteristics of what I saw as a visual reenactments of a Burkean Parlor room. Kenneth Burke’s Burkean Parlor room had much influence on the designated location and characteristics of a space that would fuel assorted dialog. Most importantly, advocating and promoting various participants to enter and exit an ever evolving and continuous conversation at their own well, surrounding the above listed themes along with need based themes that participant’s suggest is the means of this conversation group. A conversational space that allows for listening, talking and re-inventing world views allow for critical consciousness, one’s ability to see him/or herself outside of their selves. Corder (1985, p. 16, 31) contends that “we are more particularly narrators, historians, tale-tellers”. As such, language creates recognitions and representations of world views, “creating a world full of space and time that will hold our diversities”.
Project Narrative
University Apartments service a large population of International Students and their families. Additionally, Michigan State University (MSU) is renowned for its Study Abroad programs. The International Center on campus is recognized for it’s plethora of resources made available to all students who seek collaborative affairs abroad. According to Resident Life community assessment survey in the fall of 2007 7% of students living on campus were International students. In partnership with Resident Life, The Writing Center, Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures and the International Center ‘s TA program this event seeks to extend connections and cultural awareness through the exchange of pertinent conversations surrounding popular culture. This event also seeks to initiate cross-cultural partnerships and construct literacy communities amongst students of diverse and multi-ethnic backgrounds. As stated earlier University Apartments houses a number of International families, It is our goal that the ESL & Cross-Cultural Conversation groups will not only bridge the barrier between families and schools where husbands, mothers, sons and daughters “go away to college” to fuel intellectual and economic status in isolation from their families. Particularly families play a major role in many cultural communities, at best some cultural community members distrust academic spaces, thus offering as many family members as participants see fit welcomes an outlet of diverse world views and epistemologies that go across age, gender and nationalities. It is my hope that inviting family members of students will better prepare marginalized students for entering classrooms where their private or home vernacular, language or dialects are asked to be altered, divided, transformed, separated or negotiated given the dominance of Standard English.
The Writing Center staff like Resident Life seeks to advance cultural connections amongst the MSU campus community by creating a space that advocates collective conversations and cross-cultural learning. The Writing Rhetoric and American Cultures (WRAC) department has implemented shared learning goals to increase the number of cross-class conversation and collaboration amongst students and instructors in Tier-One writing courses. This event will allow WRAC students the opportunity to talk through writing assignments, campus frustrations or misunderstandings of various contact zones. Students who enter the conversations groups or leave while the conversation is still going on may find value in the themes and topics discussed. Arnetha Ball and Ted Lardner (2005) argue that conversation has become a significant part of student learning. TA’s should find value in suggesting that students attend the events to compliment readings and writing assignments.
Conversation like knowledge and writing is a process and whether it is formal or informal in context there will always be “pressure” to perform orally. At best the pressure to perform is normal and in many ways healthy, social awkwardness will be discussed and approached during the first conversation group, it is in this first conversation group facilitators (writing consultants and volunteers) will act as guiders, rather then authorities or experts. Facilitators will be asked to only enter and interrupt conversations when they see appropriate and removing themselves in ways that allow natural evolving conversations where in many cases a leader or facilitator of the conversation is created within and on its own terms amongst participants. The theory set behind developing a cross-cultural conversational group disagrees heavily with North’s (1984) argument that “…we are not here to serve, supplement, back up, complement, reinforce, or otherwise be defining by any external curriculum. We are here to talk to writers.” Because students are here, within the University for purposes other then being a better writer.
Paul Kei Matsuda (2006) contends that oral dialog is key to learning the lexical concepts of the English vocabulary for ESL students. This event will do more than just provide lexical and communal ways of knowing, it is expected that this event will allow participants the opportunity to dispel stereotypes and come to an understanding that “differences are not necessarily signs of deficiency” (Matsuda and Cox).
Thus, when facilitating the ESL conversational group it is our goal to pursue the following:
1. Encourage questioning which will foster further growth and understanding of multiple literacy practices within different cultural groups and communities.
2. (Taking a Post-structionalist Position) Utilizing Krista Ratcliff’s ideals of Rhetorical Listening-which advocates for an analysis of dominant cultural norms and an understanding that although we might not agree with each other, we should still value and validate another’s opinion or understanding of the world-by laying another person’s epistemologies in front of us, rather then beneath us.
3. Promote cross-cultural collaboration and foster friendships and professional partnerships.
4. Broaden world views surrounding popular topics or cultural concerns in America and abroad.
5. Promote a consciousness of multi-cultural understanding, language diversity and American writing standards and writing proficiency.
6. Share multiple alphabetical symbols of recognition; writing your name in multiple languages or writing the same sentence in multiple languages, viewing and critiquing the same commercial advertisement in multiple languages and for multiple racial/cultural communities, exploring global markets e.g. material culture & popular artifacts.
7. Frequently challenge understandings and ways of knowing regarding communication, survival, identity and politics.
References
Matsuda, P.K, Cox, M.,Jordan, J.,Ortmeier-Hooper, C., et al. (2006). Second-Language
Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. NewYork: Bedford/St. Martins.
Ball, A., & Lardner, T. (2005). African American Literacies Unleashed. Illinois:
Southern Illinois University Press.
Fox, H. (1994). Listening to the World: Cultural Issues in Academic Writing
Ratcliff, K. (2005). Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness.
Carbondale:Southern Illinois University Press
Grimm, N. (1999) Good Intentions: Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times. NH:
CrossCurrents.
Corder, J. (1985) Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love. RR4. p. 16-18
Gonzalez, V. El Camino Real: Where Culture and Academia meet. Diversity Digest. 12, 2 http://www.diversityweb.org/digest/vol10no2/gonzalez.cfm
Bizzell, P. (1997) The 4th of July and the 22nd of December: The Function of Cultural Archives in Persuasion, as Shown by Frederick Douglass and William Apess. CCC 48.1, 44-59.
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