Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Any more buffalo than that and I'm done. I tend to get words stuck in my head in the same way people get songs stuck in their head.
*BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO BUFFALO*. Thanks mike.
But thinking about this makes me wonder, why are the Buffalo Buffalo so mean to their fellow Buffalo buffalo? Moving on:

Today's session was so extrememly helpful. I brought in a piece of crap summary --partially because I did it right before class, and partially because I had a really hard time deciding what to focus on in summarizing Muriel Harris's article. It wasn't that I didnt understand the article, there was just so much information! I couldn't figure out a way to efficiently and successfuly simplify it. Kelsey really helped me break down her article and gather my thoughts.

In general "Making Our Institutional  Discourse Sticky: Suggestions for Effective Rhetoric" is about the way writing center's present themselves to institutional audiences. She explains that we tend to define ourselves by what we are not. We aren't a fix it shop, we do not write papers for students, we do not work with only remedial students. Harris notes that this is a poor way to define ourselves; "If we define ourselves by what we are not, we cannot be much to ourselves or others." She says that instead, we should define ourselves in terms that are sticky: "writing that is positive, appeals appropriatley to our audiences, is highly memorable, and is concrete and specific." In writing with stickyness in mind, people "will understand and correctly remember who we are and what we contribute to the process of writing."

Wow. Okay maybe I can incorporate some of what I just said in this blog into my new summary.

As you can see, the over all arguement of the article makes sense. (At least it makes sense to me). But I think what really threw me is the size and structure of her arguement. In her introduction she bassically gives a mission statment of the article:
"I offer here cautionary advice to help avoid some tempting morrasses to unwittingly fall into as well as some more solid ground to stroll along when composing our institutional prose"

So then in the body of the piece she gives three or four methods we SHOULDN'T use to present the center, along with psychological research supporting her arguement for each example, and then she finally concludes with the right way to present the center. I had a really hard time summarizing all of this. By citing her research, was I getting too detailed? Should I incorporate a summary of each of her examples of "the wrong ways" to define the center?

This 20 page article is separated with sections with headings. I initially tried to include a bit from each section, but doing so forced me to create a really awkward body paragraph with little flow. Its really a gross paragraph. I'm actually super embarrased that we have to turn our draft into mike. I would never turn in something with that low of quality.

I've decided to reformat my introduction paragraph with bits and pieces of what I stated above. I'll make a thesis statment of sorts that outlines her article a bit better. I've decided to focus on two parts of her argument, the usagage of negation in defining something, and our tendancy to use abstact, rhetorical language in describing what we do. I'll also summarize her solution to this problem. Okay I feel much better about this.

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Everything above that line is a personal rant for my own benifit. I essentially just talked myself through how I'm going to fix this crappy summary. My appologies for being really boring/selfish in this blog. I'm sure you guys don't really care about my plans for revision.
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PS. I just realized I wrote the title of the article wrong in my first version of this summary. I such a successful summarizer.~

ooooh!!! on the plus side I just hit the spelling check thing and it didn't highlight anything! Usually I spell really simple words wrong/

I may be a summarizing failure, but today I am a spelling champion!!

How can I help you?

Hey guys. I'm kinda in a slump right now. I have a super cool headache. ~

Receiving the new syllabus in class today made me so nervous! Is it possible that we really have less than 5 weeks left? So crazy. And judging by the amount of stuff I have to do, I'm sure the weeks will fly. Summary, reflection, an education research paper, another reflection, and the ever so daunting pedagogy. Oh and then a final project for astronomy. AHHHHH.

Sophomore year is quickly approaching, and I'm really excited to work in the Writing Center.

Side note: screw all the people in the Hollenbeck Lab right now. SHUT UP. This is a quiet zone or something, right??

Anyways, the mock sessions today were really interesting. Too often I assume that our work in the writing center will strictly involve "less experienced" writers, but that is far from the truth. It is entirely possible for a writer to bring in a dense, well-written, almost finalized draft of a paper that is on a subject I don't know about. Previously, I would have thought that I would be able to handle a paper of an advanced level, but the one in class today made me really nervous.

I have no problem flat out telling the writer that I am unknowledgeable of his topic. I'll admit to not reading a particular book, not knowing anything about history, or not understanding technical scientific ideas. What I'm afraid of, however, is not being able to help. The paper we looked at today seemed finalized to me. I had no suggestions. I had no commentary. How do you deal with that in the center? Should I just become really picky and find something minuscule that could be changed?

Sarvanni said something really interesting in class. She said, "I forgot, the writer is aloud to be right." So true. So maybe in this scenario we can comment on positive aspects of the paper, and have conversation with these advanced writers that centers on our understanding of the point they are trying to get across. At the end of the discussion, we may not have any critiques, but at least we can provide a sense of reassurance for the writer.

Regardless, I still hope writers don't come to me with finalized papers. I know no paper is perfect, but providing no constructive criticism would make me feel like I didn't help the writer at all.

Lincoln Elementary

Alright guys, I'm going to be really upfront with this: my blog today is going to be about the tutoring I did at Lincoln this afternoon, and I'm going to hope I'll find a connection to the writing center by the end of it. It may be a stretch.

So for my Philosophical Perspectives in Education class, we're tutoring for an hour once a week, every week, at Lincoln Elementary school. The way they set up the tutoring is that we are each paired with a student from one of the classes, and we sit with that student during their scheduled "reading block" and help them with whatever they need. Basically we join in on the class, focusing on one particular student. Not all of the students get tutors.

Lincoln Elementary is consistently producing poor reading scores on state tests. To fix this problem, the school has decided to focus on the "bubble students": students that are in the middle ground. Bubble students are failing tests, but they aren't so far gone that they can't be helped. These bubble students are assigned Wittenberg tutors. Not all of the students get a tutor. In my class, for example, its just me and one other guy from my education class who are serving as tutors.

Today was different from how most of our tutoring days will be, however, because it was "Book Share presentation day". Instead of working side by side with a student, we sat in the corner and observed. I felt pretty fortunate to have my first day at Lincoln be an observation day; I was able to learn a lot about the kind of culture that exists within the Springfield City schools.

My apologies to any native Springfielders who may be offended by my description of Lincoln and its students, but Lincoln is Springfield's worst school. It is in the heart of one of the worst parts of Springfield. The school itself may look nice with its new renovations, but its appearance is a facade. The school houses students who are consistently behind what is expected for their grade level. Not only are the students behind in reading and math, but they are also behind in social expectations.

I've never seen a class of sixth graders so disrespectful. These kids are what, twelve? And it's like no one has ever taught them how they are supposed to act in a classroom. They were all running around up out of their seats, yelling out, and over all just being rude. The teacher had to ask them several times to sit back down, listen, pay attention. I was surprised by the disrespect. The students talked back to the teacher, denying her command to do anything productive.

Once the presentations started, I realized this was a group of sixth graders unlike any class I had seen before. The range of their skill level was astonishing. While one sixth graders had a well organized report on the lengthy, 750 page final book of the Twilight series, another student had a vague report on a book that seemed to be the intellectual equivalent of Go Dog, Go or whatever. It was such a strange comparison. These students were all over the place. Someone from my class who had tutored earlier this week said that his sixth grader didn't know the differences between "there, their, they're," and he couldn't begin to spell any of them! He wrote "ther". He's in the sixth grade.

I met the girl that I will be working with these next few weeks. Her name is Selena. At the end of the class, I got to sit next to her for five minutes or so while she did a reading comprehension activity, and she seems pretty bright. I can't wait to start working with her and see the problems that might arise. Maybe I'll test some of the tutoring theories we've discussed in class, though with a younger student it might help to be a bit more direct than our advisers generally are in the Center.

OSU writing center

Jeeze. I just googled "Ohio State Writing Center", and I'm already forming opions on the things that I've seen. I realize I have some bias on the subject of writing centers, so I'll try to keep an open mind while reading their description....

Lets be real though: this blog is bound to turn into a post about why I think Witt's center is better.

From first glace, their general definition of the center is similar to ours. They talk about helping with any writing assignment at any stage of the process and so on. But if you continue reading, big bold letters present the title, "WRITING CENTER POLICIES." Cool. Basically they have a ton of rules associated with their center. Wittenberg doesn't have rules, and we function just fine. Chill out, OSU.

I really didn't want this blog to be a giant copy-and-paste scenario, but check out these policies:

You may schedule ONE appointment at our Mendenhall location each week. You may have one walk-in tutorial daily (up to four per week) at our satellite center. People with documented learning disabilities may have two appointments per week.

Clients with too many appointments per week will have the overflow appointments canceled.

If you need to cancel an appointment, please call 614-688-4291 or go online to AT LEAST ONE HOUR before your appointment. Canceling an appointment less than an hour before the appointment will count as a no-show. If you call to cancel more than an hour before your appointment, you may, if we have openings, reschedule an appointment for later in the week.

Clients who miss an appointment without calling or visiting the scheduler system AT LEAST ONE HOUR in advance are considered no-shows and may not hold another appointment that week. Clients accumulating two or more no-shows will have appointments canceled and will not be allowed to schedule another appointment for the remainder of the quarter.

I understand OSU is huge, but these rules are rough. Is it really necessary to limit the amount of appointments a student has per week? I think first come, first serve (aka whoever makes the appointment first) is a fine thing.  Also, I think their strict cancellation rules are comical, considering last time I had an appointment in our center, I changed the time of it like three times --one of those times being 15 minutes before the appointment was supposed to happen. Whoops. I understand the need to have cancellation notice so that other students can have the opportunity, but threatening to ban a student from the center does not set up a warm, inviting atmospere for the center.

Another policy that confused me:

Tutors in the writing center will not tutor students for work in the following courses: Education 106, 107, and 108. To get help with those courses, call the ESL program (292-6360).

I don't know what those classes are, but I'm assuming they are entry-level ESL courses. The idea of separating native speakers from non-native speakers baffles me. Discrimination! They say in their description that they will help any student with any assigment, but then they throw in a rule against ESL kids? What the heck. The writing advisors in their center should be able to handle ALL students, whether they are fluent in English or not.

Speaking of the advisors, I can't really tell if they are students or teachers. In the center's scheduled hours, they list that they are closed from  "1:30-2:18 for staff meeting." If the student's were advisors, my guess is that they would not have to close for this meeting.

I'm not necessarily against teachers as advisors, but I bet if they had some students as advisors, they could expand the size of their center to accomodate for the larger student body of OSU.

Very interesting.

Three cheers for free coffee in the science center!

Three cheers for free coffee in the science center!

I am currently fully energized to write this blog. Does this mean it will be a coherent blog? Probably not, as my brain plus coffee usually leads to A.D.D. As in, I'm currently thinking about a million things all at once. Yay. Get excited. Let's hope I can keep the tangents to a minimum.

#1 Thought: I've come to realize that I love simplistic explanations and definitions. This realization first occurred in my Multi variable Calculus class, and appeared again in class today. In introducing something new to a class, I wish all teachers started with a simplistic explanation rather than diving into a bunch of dense information. For example:

-A gerund is an "ing" verb that is being used as a noun.
-A phrase is a word or collection of words that function as part of a sentence, but the phrase does not have both a subject and predicate.
-The gradient of a function of three variables is a vector composed of the partial derivatives in respect to each variable.
-A clause is a combination of a subject and a predicate.

After these definitions, it'd be appropriate to explain the general use of these things with examples, then move on to bigger and more complex situations. I'm not trying to say Mike/Gordon did not give complete explanations of the grammatical terms, but I think simplistic definitions should be stressed more when teaching. I've sat through entire lectures where at the end of the class, I could not explain the topic in simple terms.

For example, Dr. Higgins's lecture on gradients in Multi variable Calc. Let me start by saying that Higgins is obviously a very intelligent man and I really respect him, but sometimes it feels like he doesn't know how to put things in simple terms. It's like he forgets that we don't already understand the subject. In our lecture introducing gradients, he gave a long definition in mathematical terms and proceeded to give examples of how to find the gradient. At the end of the class, I found myself asking "what exactly is the gradient? What is is it used for?" This was very frustrating, seeing as I had three pages of notes, but didn't exactly know what was going on.

Sometimes I feel like lessons in grammar have a similar ending. Earlier this year, when we first took brief notes on the difference of a phrase and a clause, I had in my notes the a clause contained a subject and a predicate. I did not, however, have a clear explanation of what was in a phrase. All I knew was that it wasn't a clause. It wasn't until today that I was able to go back to those notes and fill in the blanks with the definition I have in the list above.

I hope to remember these frustrations when I become a math teacher. It's so easy to forget that students are not on the same page. I'll start every class with a straight forward explanation of what the formula or subject is, why we have it, and what it is used for. I'll end every class with the same simple explanation.

#2 Thought: Everyone needs to watch Waiting for Superman. We watched part of it in education class today and it made me want to cry. Shitty teachers should lose their jobs. Pardon my French. Screw unions and tenure.

#3 Thought: I declared my math major yesterday! Yay! Wish me luck.

#4 Thought: I've been looking at the open course description thing for next semester, and I might end up with no Tuesday/Thursday classes the first half of the semester. My schedule is super awk (lol awk), and its making me nervous. Three of the classes I have no choice but to take for my major and minor are back to back MWF at 9:10, 10:20, and 11:30, and then all of the classes I want to take as gen eds are also MWF.
Great~.

^ is that how the ~ works?? If so, it may replace the semicolon as my favorite punctuation!

#5 Thought: If I don't have any classes T/Thurs, hopefully I can get some early Writing Center hours on those days so I don't have the option of sleeping all day!

Cool beans.
Sarah


PS. I just used the spell check and realized I've been spelling "explanation" wrong my whole life. Explaination.... whoops.

Juggling, Gerunds, and Sunshine

Hi Hi Hi.

What a beautiful day it is today! Funny how easily the sun affects my mood. It has been such a good day today! I started my morning class with a trip to Lincoln Elementary school, and started my afternoon class with a much-needed dose of sunshine. Love it. Other than the fact that I was reminded of my poor hand-eye coordination, the juggling session was much appreciated. I love how so many class activities can be justified by an extended metaphor.

Juggling is like a writing center session! Juggling is like putting the pieces of a sentence together! Okay, maybe these metaphors are an excuse to spend twenty minutes outside, but I'm not complaining. The metaphor for juggling as writing works quite well. A writer takes all the parts of a sentence and puts them all together, just a juggler deals with many things at once. A talented writer/juggler takes all the pieces and plays with them in a new, interesting way.

Is it necessary for us to define the parts of the sentence? To an English speaker, the definitions seem to make things more complicated. I am sitting here writing this blog in Hollenbeck, and if I were to take the time to analyze each part of my sentences, it would take much longer. I don't want it to take longer. I want to go back outside!

To English speakers, defining the parts of the sentence is a tedious and seemingly unnecessary process. We don't question the parts of our sentences until we are trying to manipulate them into another language. Perhaps grammar classes are a thing of the past, but there's no denying that the technical terms can help us have a conversation about our writing. When working with a writer and using our terminology, we can give reasoning to our suggestions other than "it sounds better this way."

There is a problem, however. Writing Center advisors may feel it is a waste of time to sit there and explain all of the writing terminology. Additionally, we may intimidate the writers if we choose to use words they don't understand. Using advanced language creates a barrier between the writer and the advisor; they are no longer on the same level. The big words may go right over the writers head.We have to be careful to continue to display ourselves as peers, despite an obvious difference in understanding.

Learn Your Grammar.

Guys,

Remember that one time I filled out the answer to the example question and got the answer wrong? Yeah. I'm embarrassing. It's been a long week. All sense of grammar flew out the window last night lol.

Side note: I'm doing this blog in the writing lab in Hollenbeck again. Yay focus. But I'm really hungry... And I don't think they have a vending machine on the first floor, so I'm going to try to make this quick.

Anyway. I feel like the grammar test went pretty well. Other than the example problem, I only missed like five questions. Of the questions I missed, all but two were just stupid mistakes that I would have corrected had I taken the time to read over my answers. I don't want to say this test was really easy, but it definitely was not difficult. Like Lorena, I thought that this test was taken from some form of standardized test. To be honest, I actually thought it was some form of middle school Ohio Proficiency test.

The fact that this is a test potential teachers have to take as part of the Praxis kind of scared me. I really feel that if a college student doesn't know how answer these simple grammar questions, they need to learn some things before they decide to be a teacher. Maybe we should give a test like this in English 101. I, personally, would be pissed if we talked about nitty gritty grammar things all year in 101, but if students don't know how to do this, they need help.

I realize my grammar has yet to be perfected, but I saw something on facebook yesterday that drove me crazy. There was a facebook status that ended up having 145 comments on it, all arguing about politics, media, and materialism.

When you are trying to make a point, use grammar properly! Clarity is important.
This was a comment:
"Politically you are wrong, media does not rule the world when you have country's like Russia in which citizens there have media as there number I think it's 3 or 4 source of information and most interest in. Looks are more of a younger woman's concern to. Yes people are overwhelmed with what people think of them, but so are they in different ways all over this world. Losing faith in humanity only makes you as an individual naive. We have come so far, and only can keep going. We live in America. Not a third world country."

The whole conversation continued with similar grammar usage. GROSS. College freshman should understand grammar.

On another note, our class today kind of reminded me of my Philosophical Perspectives in Education class today. We had a guest speaker in class, and I'm really embarrassed I don't remember his name.... It was the guy who leads/created the Springfield Promise Neighborhood. He gave a really heavy presentation and told a story about one of the kids from Lincoln Elementary. After explaining his program, he showed us Ohio Proficiency Test scores from Lincoln Elementary. He handed out charts that displayed the percentage of students who were proficient in reading and math tests.

About 60 percent of the third graders at Lincoln were proficient in math. and 40 percent were proficient in reading. Looking at the chart for fourth grade scores, there was an obviously downfall. Only 25 percent of the fourth graders were proficient in math, about 40 percent again in reading! This scares me.

I realize this may not be related to Writing Center Theory, but makes me consider the background of each student who walks into the Writing Center.