sample post

Here's something I wrote on my own blog last year, which offers an example of the kind of posting you might do here. Don't consider this a recipe that you need to follow, just a sample to consider.

Key components:
1) Links to articles (in this case, audio clips)
2) My own reflection on those texts
**Note that at no point do I summarize either text: I expect readers to follow the link and read/hear for themselves.
3) Questions posed for readers to consider.

Virigina Woolf delivered this gorgeous "Eulogy to Words" in 1937. Part of the reason that words are dead (or at least are lacking the power they once had), she claimed, was that "we refuse to allow words their liberty, we pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning...the meaning which makes us pass examinations."

Anna West, a local poet, educator, and mother of a son in public school, describes the same problem in our age of state standards and standardized tests in a poem that speaks for itself, beginning with the title: "Battle for the Board of Ed." She describes what often happens in classrooms, evocatively, as "the castration of the tongue." I love the double-meaning of the word "tongue:" on one hand, it's a physical part of us, the loss of which would leave us unable to speak. At the same time, it's our language, often our home language, our "mother tongue."

So this problem isn't new; maybe it's even one of the few things about English that hasn't changed over the past hundred years. The accents and diction are so different it's hard not to laugh at Woolf's ultra-proper sounding speech, but she and West have homed in on the same problem: education is at odds with powerful, artful, personal language. Tests are easy to blame, and we often do blame them, but I think we all know that the issue is more complex than that.

It's a truism in anthropology that the act of observing a thing changes it. Perhaps it's become a truism in education that the act teaching language dries it up and hollows it out. It's frustrating to imagine that we've known about this problem for nearly a century but haven't made a dent in it.

As a teacher, I'm pained to think that I'm harming what I love most (students and language). What if we're asking kids to write expressively and powerfully even as we're undermining their ability to do just that? No wonder so many of them are fed up, frustrated and totally resistant to school. Not much that we've done since 1937 seems to have altered this, so what do we do next as we try to build a system that lives up to its promises? Can it be done by individual teachers in the current system (and if so, how do we enable more teachers to do it)? Alternatively, is it going to require a radical overhaul of that system? If so, what can we do for students while we wait for (and work on) that long-term reform project? How do we educate them in a way that enlivens and empowers them and their language?

welcome!

Welcome to our class blog. I can't wait to read and discuss with you here. Although I'm sure you don't need it, here's a reminder about norms:

-Keep it professional.
Remember that the world is your audience, and that you're representing not only yourself and LSU, but the teaching profession. What we may know is intended as a joke could appear to be utterly serious to somebody who's never met you.

-Keep it topical.
This is a forum for discussing articles and issues raised by them related to language development and diversity. Make sure your postings and comments are relevant.

-Protect your anonymity, as well as that of others.
Use either first or last names in posts, but not both.

-Seek to understand before being understood.
Voicing disagreement is productive. In order to keep it that way, make sure you understand the point with which you disagree before offering your alternative. It's always a good idea to ask for clarification.

-Hold each other to high standards.
Push each other's thinking. Don't let assumptions go unquestioned. Ask tough and interesting questions. Make connections to other ideas we've talked about. Challenge yourself to think deeply about these issues, rather than simply getting the grade.