Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

Posts from the teacher’s weblog

WRITING AND VIOLENCE (APRIL 20, 2007)

I asked my students yesterday if they had discussed what happened at Virginia Tech in any of their other classes. They shook their heads, no. Do you want to? They nodded, yeah.

We covered …some of the ironies…including the “wrong way” the television media is going about reporting, such as potentially fueling copycat crimes, leaping to the politics of gun control, and competing for audience attention by packaging the news as entertainment.

Questions arose about the intersection of democracy (individual rights to, for instance, confidentiality) and general safety: how could this have been prevented? Students wondered if UMass might create some new kind of policy, but we puzzled over what that policy might cover: when do principles of disclosure, intuition, and prevention cross the line of freedom and choice? How much do we want university authorities to be able to inform/manage us? Do we want a PA system like most high schools? Videocameras everywhere? Constant surveillance and mutual spying? When does reasonable fear become irrational paranoia? How much control is necessary, desirable?

Of course I wonder what might have been different if Cho’s writing for his English classes had been publicly available? What if a wiki or other online technology opened certain spaces of intentional learning to broader scrutiny? What if an audience had been created, or allowed to construct itself, for Cho in a modality he obviously felt able to use to express himself? Why the insistence on speech when writing was how he did make himself accessible?

I am intrigued by the range of individual and institutional responses to his action. Can we engage forms of collective responsibility and creative resolution? How deeply can we learn from this event and transform its aftermath from meaningless media hype to co-constructive citizenship?

WE ARE VIRGINIA TECH (APRIL 21, 2007)

[Nikki Giovanni’s speech at last week’s Virginia Tech Memorial Service] is moving. She effectively contexts this tragedy with all the other tragedies being experienced even now, this moment, by families and communities around the world. A friend last night reflected on his own reaction to the event, his surprise at the depth of shock and surprise so many feel. And indeed, the shock is deep. That we – Americans – can be so stunned by senseless violence illustrates how insulated we are from the indescribable acts violence occurring regularly around the globe, sometimes even in our name.

“A MATTER OF LANGUAGE” (APRIL 26, 2007)

Do we have enough vocabulary to specify the unique relationship that writing teachers form with students? Do we need a precise specification of what the relationship ought to be in order to be the best that we can be as instructors, mentors, even “nurses” to undergraduate writing students? The notion of being a nurse was raised by a colleague based on the pedagogy of Paulo Freire:

“…Freire [has a] strong aversion to the teacher-student dichotomy . . . what Freire suggests is that a deep reciprocity be inserted into our notions of teacher and student. Freire wants us to think in terms of teacher-student and student-teacher; that is, a teacher who learns and a learner who teaches, as the basic roles of classroom participation.”

We’re struggling with the aftermath of the mass killing at Virginia Tech. What does such an horrific event mean for us as teachers? Could anything have prevented the tragedy? Would we recognize the potential danger? If so, is any action possible that would make a difference? And if there was [such] an action, would it not also depend on language?

How much are we willing to say?

Works Cited:

Kent, Stephanie Jo. “A Matter of Language." Weblog Posting. Teaching: Reflexivity. 26 April 2007 <http://www.stephaniejokent.com/blog/archives/002562.html> Kent, Stephanie Jo. “We Are Virginia Tech.” Weblog Posting. Reflexivity. 21 April 2007 < http://www.stephaniejokent.com/blog/archives/002560.html> Kent, Stephanie Jo. “Writing and Violence.” Weblog Posting. Reflexivity. 20 April 2007 < http://www.stephaniejokent.com/blog/archives/002559.html>