1) I'm so interested in what y'all think about Shipka. I love her, but I almost get this sense of naivety about the struggles of teaching. I always want to say, "have you never had an actual student?" because her students seem to be on the level of designers, artists, excellent researchers. They are inquisitive and smart and motivated. Okay, I'll stop.
Question is: On page 286, Shipka discusses having students turn in action sequences that explain the student's course of action for completing assignment. She also discusses how students have instructions for how the reader should experience the finished text.
How might you instruct students to create their own plan of action? How do we get them to make more than "research, write, review"?
2) We've read A LOT about genre between our two classes for today. What do you think the main function of teaching genre and genre conventions to our students should be?
Is it to know how to work within conventions? To critically subvert conventions? Something else?
Hey Joel,
ReplyDeleteIt certainly does seem like Shipka is only using the absolute cream of the crop. I have to wonder how many of her students handed in either bullshit or just something comparatively mediocre. But to your question, I'm not so sure about pre-made plans of action. It might not be a bad thing to get them thinking, but I worry about it having any strict qualities. On the one hand, it would help them plan to hit their audience on multiple rhetorical fronts and obviously would help them unite everything into one project. However, at least if it reflects how Shipka described it, it seems like making a plan of action may cause them to overcomplicate their projects or just generally ruin any organic passion they might have for it. Perhaps breaking it down into its components after the project is made (if it isn't the final project) would be interesting.
In regards to your second question, I think it's about being aware of conventions and knowing how to use them (or not) to your advantage. Be aware so that you're not manipulated by them, and use them to make your own life easier, make your work better, and to make sure your work fits where it needs to. What I mean by this last point is that whether we like it or not, we need to subscribe to a lot of conventions a lot of the time. And knowing how to combine your own work with conventions broadly is useful no matter what field you're in. It's how you get a journal to publish you and/or how you get an audience to listen.