Portfolios Creating Culture

As I glanced through the Content list of TPS, Miriam Dempsey Page’s Freedom and Identity: Portfolios in a Puerto Rican Writing Class stuck out to me, so I turned to page seventy-seven and began reading. Dempsey Page taught a writing course at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez where she had her students create portfolios. Dempsey Page says “Any final collaborative role in evaluation or assessment will mean more if students are free to choose their topics” (Dempsey Page 77). Even though she used this technique for native Spanish speakers, I believe it can be incorporated into any classroom, much like her other methods of using portfolios. 

I’ll admit that I had difficulties when writing my memoir; I found it hard to figure out how I should write it. A part of me wanted the dreaded rubric just so I could have a better idea of what was expected from me. While it was hard for me to get going on it, the broad guidelines allowed me to do whatever I wanted, and whatever made me proud of my final piece. As a future teacher, I will definitely use this technique for my classroom. Not only will it give my students the opportunity to be creative, it will give me the chance to gain a better insight to their lives and opinions. 

            Miriam Dempsey Page says how the students’ portfolios were a representation of their culture. She says that students typically blur the lines between genres and they typically incorporate “life experiences, background, and culture. As a result, students develop portfolios that explore and reflect not only rhetorical variations and purposes but also the nuances of Puerto Rican culture” (Dempsey Page 77). Each student would write about different topics related to their own life or topics they were passionate about. The completed portfolios gave a greater insight to the Puerto Rican culture; students wrote about traditions from parades and celebrations to different religions, like Voodoo and Espiritismo.  And even though every essay was different, no essay was done “incorrectly.” Each was a part of a whole.

Hi, Can I Take Your Order?

On Friday night I went to a Chinese restaurant and the waitress did the "Can I take your order?" spiel and we all ordered our different meals. When she came out with our orders, she ended up giving my friend my order of Snow White Chicken and I got her Almond Chicken. It was an easy fix--just switch the plates and eat what we ordered. Even though this particular waitress confused our orders, we expect our meals to be served to us correctly. And after reading Smith's article on myths I realized that so many of my past teachers expected us to write papers to order. Smith says, "Every experienced writer knows that writing is often most reluctant to come when it is most urgently required, yet quite likely to begin to flow on inconvenient or impossible occasions" (30). We were given explicit directions with rubrics--we were expected to be the waitress and serve our teachers' orders without changing them or giving them something different.

I realized that we can't expect our students to serve papers to us "to order." We have to expect, if not hope for, a different meal; we should leave room for interpretation and creativity from our students.

Sookie is Mine

So my guilty pleasure TV show is most definitely True Blood, seriously it is the most addictive thing on television. My two roommates scoffed at me, saying that they were sick of all the vampire media that has exploded since Twilight and it wasn't until I finally convinced them to watch it with me when they understood. We've been watching it whenever the three of us have free time and last night we stayed up until 1:30 powering through the end of Season 1 and starting Season 2, which consequently made me and one of my roommates to have creepy vampire related dreams.

While the storyline of the show seems ridiculous (and it is), it is incredibly imaginative and always keeps you guessing. I've never really thought that I could write a good fiction piece; I have made some attempts in creative writing classes, but I don't think they could be "publishing worthy"...maybe with some revisions. However, I think that by using inspiration from the show, I could come up with something pretty interesting and maybe something I'm more proud of. Now, I would most definitely not make or tell my students to watch True Blood (for those of you who don't know, it is extremely graphic in many ways...) but I would recommend that they take an aspect of their favorite TV show, movie, book, etc and make it their own, creating an original fictional piece. I think it could turn out to be a pretty good writing prompt to begin a class with.

And to entice you into joining the True Blood obsession, I leave you with the Promo for Season 2: True Blood Promo Enjoy!

STRESSED.

As you notice, I'm writing to you later than I would have liked. While sometimes I can be a procrastinator, I normally like to get things out of the way ahead of time so I actually have some moments of relaxation, or if it's a written assignment, I like to have time to look things over and revise my piece.

All that being said, this week is incredibly busy for me; I feel like I'm swamped in reading, homework and papers. It seems like I'm procrastinating on some assignments for this week, but in reality, I haven't had too much free time to work on all of the assignments. And on top of everything else, I feel like I'm coming down with a cold--just what I need.

Now that that's all out of the way and I've been a Negative Nancy, I don't know how I would approach my students if they were feeling stressed just as I am at this very moment. If any of you have suggestions I will gladly take them and utilize them  for my classroom, and perhaps even use them myself in times like this :)

Difficulties with Grading...

Establishing a way to grade papers is something I am beginning to struggle with. Throughout my junior high and high school English classes, my teachers gave us a grading rubric that they would use to grade papers with. I thought it was helpful--I knew what my teachers expected from me and I could easily mold my papers to be A+ papers. I found my writing to be more impersonal and "voice-less" but, hey, grades were more important.

Now as an aspiring teacher, I want my students to actually enjoy writing and I do not want them to write cookie cutter, boring papers in order to try and please me. As Renee stated in her one pager, I too want my students to "write with wine." When I think about this, however, I do not know how to create a grading system that is fair to all students, especially the ones who ask "What exactly do you want from me?" or "What do you want for an 'A' paper?" As of now, I would ideally want my students to follow a general set of instructions (i.e. answering a general question) and create something they are truly proud of but still relevant to the paper topic.

There are times when I really hate page requirements; sometimes I feel like I say everything I have to but still have half of a page to go before I meet the page requirement. Then I feel like I have to go back and add fillers to make it long enough, making me less proud of my paper. So for my future classroom, I would want give my general paper topics and say something along the lines of "I expect most people to write this in about 4-6 pages, but if you feel content with a finished product under four pages, I'd rather have 3 1/2 pages of great writing that I know you're proud of than four pages of mostly good writing but has unnecessary, clearly filler words and phrases placed throughout."

In my ideal world, though, I don't know how I would create a fair grading system that students can rely on. I suppose I will continue to think about it and learn from others, and hopefully by the time I have my own classroom I will be able to develop something that works and that I'm truly happy with.

Any Road will Take you There...

I hate silence when I'm writing; it's very unsettling for some reason. So I've grown accustomed to listening to music while I write. Right now I'm listening to my George Harrison playlist and "Any Road" came up on shuffle. I couldn't think of what I wanted to write for this week and good ole Georgie gave me some inspiration.

I have been going back and forth about how I want to approach my memoir, trying to think of what would work best before I even started. This wasn't really working for me. So I just started writing, going back to my feelings of when I was a seventh grader working on my Language Arts "end of the unit" project. I tried to add as much detail as I could to really put myself and readers in my mindset. I think this approach is an improvement for my draft. It still needs some work, but I will take improvement.

So, going back to George, I decided to spread some wisdom from the former Beatles lead guitarist. In "Any Road," he says:

You may not know where you came from
May not know who you are
May not have even wondered how you got this far
...
But if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there.


This reminds me of my writing memoir; it is hard for me to remember exactly how I felt or what my process for developing my project was. So when I wrote my latest draft, I decided to take George's advice.  I wasn't sure where my draft would go, but any approach would take me "there"--a different, more reflective tone. And I think it did. As I said earlier, I think it still needs some more work, but overall I am satisfied with it right now.  Thanks Georgie!


If you want to hear the song in its entirety, here's a link! (And for all you diehard Beatles fans, you'll notice some clips from the "A Hard Day's Night", "Yellow Submarine", and "Magical Mystery Tour" movies!)

George Harrison-Any Road

Drafting... And a LOT of Revising

Although I've recently discovered that I enjoy writing non-fiction, I still find it very difficult to write a memoir/personal essay. I have changed my draft completely from the first run-through. I love writing and "letting my creative energy flow," but for some reason, I'm having a very hard time with this draft assignment. My writing memory is meaningful to me, but I'm finding it very difficult to bring myself back to the seventh grade me in order to extend my draft.

To not be a "Debby Downer" anymore, I found last class very helpful; I realized that my first draft would be considered a healthy one, so I'm hoping my revisions will make things even better and I can power through to have an end result that I truly love.

See you all in class!