English 754-001
Post-Secondary Composition-Topics in Pedagogical Theory: Autobiography as Pedagogy for Teachers of Writing
Instr: Buley-Meissner, Mary Louise
Office: CRT 492; 229-4533
e-mail: meissner@uwm.edu
Office hours: TR afternoon & R evening by appt.
Course Information: R; 4:30-7:10pm; CRT 466
Course Description
This course is open to M.A. and Ph.D. students who are seriously interested in the teaching of writing, particularly in becoming more self-reflective and critically aware of how their work in the classroom is inevitably influenced by their experiences beyond it. What do we need to learn in order to teach? One answer is that we must learn to look more closely at the integral relationship between our personal histories and professional identities. Moreover, one invaluable source of guidance in this endeavor is autobiography - particularly personal narratives by other teachers and educational activists. Issues of self, identity, community and society are intricately linked in autobiography -- as they are in our everyday lives and our students' lives. Accordingly, this course proposes that we set aside analyzing our students' deficiencies and concentrate instead on risking a clear look at our own strengths and weaknesses in the classroom. To do this, we must ask questions such as these: What difference does writing make in our own lives? How have reading and writing shaped our sense of purpose and possibility? What insights do we draw from (or suppress in) our personal histories as we define our teaching roles and responsibilities? In working with students whose backgrounds are different from our own, how can we be ethically as well as intellectually responsive to their needs and capabilities? Overall, what makes reading and writing "the most dangerous things" (as Harold Brodkey puts it) - not only promising, but also insisting that we re-imagine what we can do in the world? Through our reading and discussions, we will consider how learning to use language in new ways very often calls for learning to act out new identities, relationships and values -- a reality no less true for us than for our students.
The main project for this course will be a personal narrative integrating autobiographical reflection with professional concerns, specifically in connection with a subject directly relevant to the teaching of writing. This narrative will be centered in individual experience and informed by research. Guidance for an appropriate approach to take will be provided by course reading, class discussion of work in progress, and instructor consultation. One of our main concerns will be to investigate the pedagogical space open (or closed) to what bell hooks calls "education as the practice of freedom" - a process of moving beyond biases and boundaries (e.g., race, sex, class) toward a more expansive, creative understanding of language's power in everyone's life.
You are likely to enjoy this seminar if you enjoy reading, writing, and collaborative learning as opportunities to reconsider what you believe and re-envision what might be true (about teachers, students, literacy, society). Everyone is expected to share responsibility for the seminar itself as a "work in progress" (with the participants' questions and concerns influencing the direction we take together). Given the diverse backgrounds of people in our graduate program, I look forward to a lively exchange of ideas. Whatever your individual interests may be, I hope that together we can experience the extraordinary power of the written word in shaping who we are, what we believe, and why we reach for truth beyond the telling.
Course Books: This is a tentative list, which may change somewhat before the spring term starts. Course books will be available through the campus bookstore.
bell hooks. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. 2003.
Jan Zlotnik Schmidt, ed. Women/Writing/Teaching. 1998.
Joseph Trimmer, ed. Narration as Knowledge: Tales of the Teaching Life. 1997.
Karen Ogulnick, ed. Language Crossings: Negotiating Self in a Multicultural World. 2000.
Vivian Gornick. The Situation and the Story: The Art of the Personal Narrative. 2001.
Gloria Anzaldua. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 2nd ed. 1999.
Sharon Hamilton. My Name's Not Susie: A Life Transformed by Literacy. 1996.
Bernice Singley, ed. When Race Becomes Real: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories. 2002.
