Center for Writing Tutors attend Conference

Students in Thinking and Writing are fortunate to have the support of undergraduate tutors who work at the Center for Writing. The tutors bring to their work practical experiences working with writers and theoretical understanding of the mission and philosophy of the course.

On April 10, Center for Writing tutors Josh Starkey, Allison Siwacki, Karah Dunn, Kate Curtis, and Administrative Assistant Jahleh Ghanbari presented “Close Knit or Closed Off?: How Writing Centers Project Images of Inclusion and Exclusion” at the Northeast Writing Center Association’s annual conference at Boston University. Their presentation included an analysis of data from different constituencies on campus in order to understand how writing centers are perceived by faculty, students, and administration.

Our writing tutors work closely not only with student writers, but with faculty as well. In addition to arranging opportunities for their students to visit the Center, faculty meet with tutors in a Partnership Program designed to strengthen the support for first-year students in the ITW course. In addition, faculty member invite tutors to conduct workshops in class on all aspects of the writing process. These peer-to-peer teaching workshops reinforce the necessary and ongoing work that is required to produce an effective piece of writing.

 

Writing and Integrative Studies

Faculty teaching thinking and Writing have asked whether we have any information about how Keene State College students are doing as writers once they move beyond the first year course.

A report on writing assessment released in the fall of the 2009-10 academic year suggests that our students are transferring some of what they have learned in the Thinking and Writing course. The assessment is based on a random sample of assignments submitted by students from ISP Perspectives and Interdisciplinary courses that had identified writing as a primary area of skill development. A total of 60 assignments, 20 per evaluator, were assessed.  Dr. Susan Whittemore, Professor of Biology, Dr. Katherine Tirabassi, Assistant Professor of English, and Dr. Michael Cullinane, Associate Professor of Mathematics, completed the writing outcomes assessment of student assignments.

The following table summarizes the results of the assessment.

Outcome	Needs Improvement	Meets Expectation	Exceeds Expectation	% Meets or Exceeds
#1 Develop complex perspectives, positions, and/or arguments.	12 out of 60 (20.0%)	30 out of 60 (50.0%)	18 out of 60 (30.0%)	80%
#2 Support complex perspectives, positions, and/or arguments.	2 out of 60 (3.3%)	35 out of 60 (58.3%)	23 out of 60 (38.3%)	96.7%
#4 Use grammar to effectively communicate ideas.	11 out of 60 (18.3%)	35 out of 60 (58.3%)	14 out of 60 (23.3%)	81.7%
#5 Use organization to effectively communicate ideas.	11 out of 60 (18.3%)	35 out of 60 (58.3%)	14 out of 60 (23.3%)	81.7%

Students were successful in meeting all four of the outcomes assessed, though the success in meeting Outcome 2 was extraordinarily high. Compared to the assessment results from Spring 2009, the percentages of students who met or exceeded the expectations for Outcomes 4 and 5 were about the same, while performance relative to Outcomes 1 and 2 improved significantly.  In particular, the Spring 2009 results show only 42% of students met or exceeded the expectation for Outcome 1, and this percentage nearly doubled to 80% for Fall 2009.  Evaluators did not have assignment descriptions in either semester, but we suspect that many more of the fall assignments required students to provide interpretations or perspectives beyond their own personal ones. Some of this may also be attributable to faculty adjusting their assignments so that they are better aligned with the writing outcomes. There is good reason to believe, moreover, that the overall strong performance of students relative to the writing outcomes is correlated with student work and faculty efforts in the foundational ITW 101 experience.

We recognize that snapshot assessments of artifacts seeking to assess student performance do not address the changes taking place in a writer as they move from the first year. As Nancy Sommers and Laura Saltz write in “”The Novice as Expert: Writing the Freshman Year,” a longitudinal perspective on student writers suggests that changes in attitude about academic work and the ability to see a greater purpose in writing beyond completing an assignment are crucial to continued development across the four years of an undergraduate education. “The story of the freshman year is not one of dramatic changes on paper,” they conclude, “it is the story of changes within the writers themselves” (144). How students experience writing in the first year course therefore matters very much.

Students need to accept their status as novices, for sure. But we need to learn how to help them (and not punish them) as they struggle to accept their role as novices. Helping students write their way into expertise gives most of our first-year students their first taste of serious academic work. The challenge for us is to make that experience something these students can build on as they meet new challenges in their subsequent years of school.

 

Writing as a Means of Becoming: “Religion, Secularism, and the Pursuit of Justice”

Thinking and Writing begins in the idea that writing matters. Robert Daniel Rubin, a professor of American Studies, believes that the practice of writing brings order to a young person’s life—helping them to understand the world in all its diversity and to construct a supple, open belief system. Writing propels students through a series of cognitive and emotional changes that enable the student to see and speak in new ways. This concept of writing as a means of becoming drives Rubin’s ITW course, “Religion, Secularism, and the Pursuit of Justice.”

During the present historical moment, questions about religion’s place in society and government have ascended in the popular imagination and in academic discourse. Students in “Religion, Secularism, and the Pursuit of Justice” consider whether separation of church and state fosters or hinders fairness within society; whether a government needs to rely on religion in any form when it chooses to inculcate its young citizens with civic virtues; whether, in a constitutional republic such as the United States, a majority should be able to impose its preferred moral vision, or whether protecting the rights of religious dissenters takes precedent; whether a religious political movement inevitably occupies the right wing, and whether certain circumstances give rise to religious political groups that lead the vanguard of progressive politics.

In Dr. Rubin’s course, students typically investigate some aspect of religion’s relationship to issues such as abortion, homosexuality, stem-cell research, euthanasia, music and art, advertising, war, poverty and wealth, public education, and the election of public officials. Where do students end up? The essay titles and brief abstracts produced in Dr. Rubin’s class suggests how one group of first-year students are finding in writing a means of becoming:

• “Science, Ethics, and the Religious Obligation”: The scientific method is an appropriate and reliable method for knowing; therefore, it, and not religious doctrine, should be taught to schoolchildren as a method for understanding the physical and social worlds.

• “Music and Its Effects on Society and the Church”: Christian churches’ use of music from popular genres signals a cultural shift over recent decades—one toward a less formal liturgy that younger Christians experience as a more authentic way of worshipping God.

• “Abstaining from Sex and the Religious Influence”: By continuing to encourage abstinence from premarital sexual intercourse, the Catholic Church continues trying to controlling its members rather than trying to serve their practical needs.

• “Ideological Diversity”: The primary virtue of U.S. politics is its ideological diversity.  This diversity is grounded in regional cultural differences.  In particular, the South provides a necessary counterbalance to our generally liberal electorate.

• “Domestic Violence and Religion”: Although the world’s major religions generally discourage or forbid domestic violence against women, many adherents draw the contrary conclusion.  Schools everywhere should use religious scripture in counseling against the domestic abuse of women.

• “The Public and Private Uses of Religion”: American religious leaders should emphasize the those aspects of religion centered on ethics and justice. Those same leaders should stop using religion as a cover for fighting battles over personal (sexual) issues.

• “A Few for the Many: America’s Democratic Dichotomy”: Society’s need to survive outweighs the individual’s need to survive.  The U.S. should thus determine church-state policy more democratically than it now does—it should minimize the Supreme Court’s authority on such matters.

• “Religion in the Stadium”: Americans fill sporting events—particularly, high-school and college football—with religious significance.  Ultimately, this is the product of a nationalism that relies on demonstrating God’s favor toward “team” America.

• “Christian Denominations against or Supportive of Homosexuality”: Although churches have traditionally helped repress homosexuals, America’s churches are increasingly helping many individuals live dignified lives as openly gay men and women.

• “The Exploitation of Women in the International Egg Trade”: Governments worldwide have a moral imperative to protect the interests of women tempted to sell their ovaries for stem-cell research.

• “Destructive Religious Cult Leaders’ Power Takes Over”: Charismatic leaders of destructive cults attract vulnerable individuals seeking guidance.  Rather than guidance, such leaders frequently draw out their victims most self-destructive impulses.

• “Ethics and Morality in Stem Cell Research”: “Pro-life” opposition to stem-cell research is hypocritical and counter-productive.  Strong support for stem-cell research is much more compatible with a genuine concern for protecting life than is an oppositional stance.

• “Homosexual Parenting: The Debate within Catholicism”: By opposing the rights of gays and lesbians to marry and adopt children, the Catholic Church helps prevent these human beings from exercising their inalienable, God-given rights.

• “An Unjust War”: The Iraq War failed to meet the requirements specified in the Just War Doctrine.  Because the roots of that doctrine are Catholic, Americans committed to their Catholicism who nonetheless support the war engage in hypocrisy.

• “The Beginning of an End”: The means that Catholics have historically chosen for coping with fear of death, a belief in heaven, only distorts and dampens one’s life experience.

• “Religious Conservatives’ Opposition to the Natural Rights of Minorities: Gay Rights, Women’s Rights, and the Civil Rights Movement”: Throughout U.S. history, religious conservatives have operated mostly to suppress or stop movements for social equality.  A common theme running through the prejudices of religious conservatives has been the supremacy of men, maleness, and heterosexuality.

 

The Life of a Writer

The students who enroll in Thinking and Writing do not often know much about the life of a writer; and, for the most part, students do not know much about the writer teaching their class. The opportunity for first-year students in Thinking and Writing is more than to explore the intellectual work of writing. It is to consider the formidable power of the written word with the support of a professor immersed in a life of writing.

Lorianne DiSabato brings impressive academic credentials to her Thinking and Writing courses—an MA in English literature from Boston College and a PhD from Northwestern University. She is also trained as a Senior Dharma Teacher in the Kwan Um School of Zen. But like many of us who are devoted to teaching college writing, Lorianne is a writer. Her Thinking and Writing course, “The Art of Natural History,” has been a favorite of many students. Lorianne  also teaches sections of Environmental Literature for the department of English. As she explains in a recent reflection on her courses this semester, “Rivers and Literary Imagination” and “The Literature of Birds and Birding,” students learn through writing some of “the way[s] humans derive meaning from natural objects: looking at a river, we imagine the flow of time, or watching the migration of birds, we consider the passing of our own lives.”

The fallen Silver Maple on Fiske Quad, May 3, 2010, photograph by Lorianne DiSabato

Words like these suggest the generative connection between the practice of writing and the teaching of writing, especially in a course designed to develop student writers. In a recent post on her blog, Lorianne writes about a favorite Silver Maple that has long stood along the edge of Fiske Quad. This elegant maple was once described to me by my friend Jeff Garland, the campus arborist, as a beautiful tree in exactly the wrong place. The metal cables Jeff placed to hold two of the four trunks in place were reminders of its fragile place in our lives.

The occasion of Lorianne’s post was “Old Silver,” a tree she describes as “a natural object that I derived meaning from. . .an actual tree and a symbolic one, a being that shared my campus habitat as I’ve tried to teach countless students over the years.” But when the thick metal cable snapped on a clear and windy early-May afternoon as we went about our end-of-the-semester work of reading and grading student writing—as two of the four trunks came crashing down on to the soft green grass of the quad—she began to think. As it happens, one of the things that happens when talented writers begin thinking through writing is that they find their way. And it is not surprising that Lorianne finds in the falling of a beloved tree words that capture the commitment to learning and growing (and sometimes falling) with the students we teach:

This semester, I put a lot of time into helping my Environmental Literature students succeed with the very papers I was grading when Old Silver fell: my students and I spent an entire class period brainstorming potential essay topics, we spent part of another class meeting doing peer reviews, and we spent a good portion of a third class session doing revisions based on my draft comments, followed by a second peer review. I’m gradually learning that although trees sometimes fail for no apparent reason, success is never an accident. If I want to enjoy the papers I’m reading–and today when Old Silver fell, I was largely satisfied with the essays in my paper-pile–I have to take care in designing assignments and actively helping my students produce the kind of work I want to read. Good papers don’t just happen by chance.

Students, like old maple trees, are prone to becoming prone: both gravity and inertia are forces of nature, and at a wearisome point of the semester, it’s easier to give up than stand up. Old Silver has stood for years with a little help from the Keene State College grounds crew, and I’m learning that students also need an occasional prop or prod. It’s easy to get discouraged when it seems like students just aren’t getting the lessons you’re trying to teach; it’s easy to think it’s somehow your students’ fault, or the fault of their previous teachers. Why don’t students come to us, we lament, already knowing the Big and Basic Lessons we see as being so vital? Why does teaching always feel like starting from scratch as we emphasize and re-emphasize the lessons we think our students should have already learned?

I no longer expect students to understand difficult ideas the first time I explain them, and I no longer expect students to master complex skills without repeated opportunities for practice. I no longer expect students’ previous teachers to have taught them the skills I want them to have…or, more accurately, I no longer expect students to recall the lessons their previous teachers taught. The business of teaching is grueling work: it’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Sometimes it takes a whole lot of failing before you can succeed; sometimes your approaches to teaching–just like your students’ papers–need to be revised.

Lorianne’s words resonate deeply for all of us who have worked to make Thinking and Writing an essential piece in a Keene State College education. Her words capture the real work of teaching, and the challenge of learning (and relearning) we all experience in our day-to-day work with students. If you are interested in reading all of the blog post, and I’d recommend it, you can find it at Lorianne’s blog, Hoarded Ordinaries.

 

Course Profile: The Great Hunger

Ellen Moynihan’s Thinking and Writing course, “The Great Hunger,” examines the causes and consequences of the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840s: one million people died from starvation and disease, and another million were forced to leave in “coffin ships,” many immigrating to America.

Students in professor Moynihan’s course consider challenging questions. Why wasn’t the fungus, known as the “blight,” that destroyed the potato crop prevented from spreading? Why was the grain grown in Ireland exported by the British, instead of fed to its subjects, the starving Irish peasants? What was the relationship between the poor, Catholic, tenant farmers and the rich, Protestant, absentee landowners? Why was relief delayed?  What economic, social, moral and political defects of the times contributed to the genocide? How did other countries help? What had the Irish culture been like, its family life, traditions and beliefs, before the famine destroyed everything?

Cover of Liam O'Flaherty's Famine, first published in 1937

As students pursue these questions, through stories of the potato famine, complicated historical analogies arise: How might the nineteenth-century Irish famine contribute to an understanding of famine and genocide in Native American communities on the American Frontier? What about the Armenians, the Serbs, the Jews during World War II, and in recent years the devastation in Rwanda and Darfur?

“The Great Hunger” exemplifies the core principles of Thinking and Writing: students are challenged with genuine questions and are invited to engage in meaningful intellectual work. Their reading and thinking and writing reminds them of their place in a country of immigrants and their own family histories. Why did our ancestors come to this “melting pot?” How were the conditions of their “old country” like, or unlike, those in Ireland which led to wide scale emigration?

 

ITW Faculty Dinner: April 8 2010

In Attendance: Tracy Botting, John Hitchner, Steve Kessler, Kate Tirabassi (English); Ellen Moynihan (English and Communications); Mark Long, (English and American Studies); Anne-Marie Mallon (English and Women’s Studies); Len Fleisher (Education)

Announcements

President’s Writing Award: Each academic year the President’s Writing award recognizes the work of a student in Thinking and Writing with a $250 cash award and recognition. (This year, we designated a winner and a runner-up, but both students had transferred.) If you had a student write a great paper in one of your ITW sections, in either the fall or spring semester, please urge her or him to send it to me at mlong@keene.edu as an e-mail attachment. I will only accept papers that have your endorsement (you do not need to write a letter of recommendation, but a quick “I recommended that the student send you the paper” will suffice.) It is helpful to have a copy of the assignment as well. We are looking for papers that demonstrate complex thought and are well-written and researched. Let’s celebrate our successful students’ work!

ISP Assessment: All final essays from ITW courses will be once again submitted as part of ongoing ISP assessment. The ISP-Submission-practice-sp10 blackboard site is now available to show students how to prepare and submit their artifacts. In addition to written directions, there is also a video clip. The ISP submission blackboard sites will be open from 8:00am, April 21, 2010 until 5:00pm, May 7, 2010. Students may submit their artifacts anytime during that period. If there are any questions about ISP assessment, please feel free to contact Yi Gong at ygong@keene.edu. If students have questions, please direct them to Yi.

Mark needs three volunteers for ITW assessment. Last year, Phyllis, Lorianne, and Judy Hildebrandt reviewed the essays and wrote a report. Please let me know if you are interested. Len voiced his interest in the results of the writing assessments we have been doing the past few years. Mark promised to share the documents and write a brief summary of what we have learned.

Upcoming Campus Events of Interest: Please note two campus visits on research relevant to the teaching of writing. On April 15 and 16 Dr. Nathan Grawe’s will address the use of quantitative reasoning in student writing. Grawe is the Director of the QuIRK (Quantitative Inquiry, Reasoning & Knowledge) Initiative at Carleton College, Dean of the College and Associate Professor of Economics. On April 29, Dr. Ronald T. Kellogg, Professor of Psychology at Saint Louis University, will address what recent neuroimaging of the human brain might tell us about the cognitive processes involved in the production of writing. More information about these two events is on the ITW web site: http://thinkwritelearn.wordpress.com/.

Notes from the Center for Writing: Phyllis Benay will be on sabbatical for the 2010-11 academic year. Kirsti Sandy will be the Director of the Center and Jahleh Ghanbari will continue as Assistant Director.

Call for Tutors: Phyllis Benay is looking for students to work in the Center for Writing. Candidates should be not only good writers, but “warm, outgoing, flexible, articulate, personable, and have a commitment to writing.” Please forward names to Phyllis.

1.Feedback for Phyllis and Kirsti for Think, Write Learn. What are you using? What works”? What needs revision? What might you add?

Think, Write Learn continues to be a common text that is serving students and faculty well. Members of the group appreciate

• the exercises and they use them regularly;
• the sample essay and a couple of participants in the dinner meeting asked for more examples. Mark suggested that more examples would most likely translate into a higher cost/student for the text; and so we talked about the possibility of putting up an archive of examples on the Thinking and Writing web site that people could download and use in their classes;
• the use of the exercises that build out of The Craft of Research.  The vocabulary we are using for the course, they pointed out, is becoming more consistent; however, two or three of the participants would like to see the vocabulary of Graff and Birkenstein—“they say, I say”—in the exercises; we also discussed the strengths and weaknesses of templates but in general people find the general formula to be useful for their students’ thinking;
• the folder, but not the fact that the folder does not accommodate loose papers; though what we did not realize (I did not have my TWL in hand) is that the folder is designed to hold the exercises that are pulled out of the text.

We also discussed the ongoing challenge of teaching students to negotiate the real and perceived differences between “professional” and “personal” writing in the ITW course. Would there be a way to incorporate more on helping with students learning to write authentically while meeting the expectations for what people were calling “academic” writing? We noted the continued interest in talking about conventions of what we are calling “academic” writing and promised to return to this subject some time next year.

2.Feedback for Mark on the ITW Web Site. http://thinkwritelearn.wordpress.com/.

Mark reported on the uses of the ITW web site. Faculty are finding the site useful for more fully understanding the course they are teaching and the complimentary ways that we are teaching from the principles and learning outcomes for the course. The site is also working extremely well as a context for prospective instructors. Before prospective instructors submit proposals, they are now able to see the distinctive nature of the course and its place in the Integrative Studies Program. The site has also generated attention from external constituencies, and Mark has received a few notes of interest and questions from other program administrators. Mark is using the site as a way for us to stay in touch about campus events and other useful information (such as assessment, research on student writers, etc.) and requested that we continue to think about content for the site.

Mark put out a call for sample essays that will be archived on the site. Kate promised to send along a permission slip that students will need to sign if we are to make the writing public. These sample essays can be downloaded and used in the classroom.

3. Open Discussion about ITW. Where are we? Where might we want to go from here? What support do you need? What can the ITW coordinator and the ISP do to improve the course?

Everyone present affirmed the importance of our dinner meetings. Gathering twice each semester serves to focus our attention around common issues we are facing in the day-to-day work of teaching this course. More significantly, comments seemed to suggest, the dinner meetings make visible our common work and the open and honest exchange is a continuing source of inspiration and an affirmation of community. The meetings are welcoming and offer new instructors the chance to find their way into a community of practitioners and to find mentors with whom to work during the first semesters teaching the course.

One important thread in our discussion was the work of making visible to our colleagues what we are doing and how what we are doing shapes what students go on to do in their other courses. How can we connect our conversations about Thinking and Writing to the other pedagogical conversations in the Integrative Studies program and the academic programs? How can we open new exchanges between faculty teaching ITW and faculty teaching other courses? How can we talk with our colleagues about the work we are doing with our first-year students? Please send along any thoughts about these questions to Mark and Kate.

Our work with first-year students is potentially transformative and we discussed the purpose of the course and the kinds of experiences we are offering to our first year students. Len talked about the rewards of teaching this course and the deep sense of satisfaction that comes when thinking and writing serves as a path to a more powerful emergence. Our conversation echoed the findings of Sommers and others who note that the important changes that result from the first-year course are often not seen in the writing but rather in the transformation of the writer. Our commitment to establishing a challenging and supportive environment in which to find one’s way into the academic domain is, finally, news we need to share with our colleagues. While a Writing Task Force Newsletter offers some preliminary findings, we need to continue to share the news of what is happening in this course and to seek out new ways to integrate this work into the subsequent years of work our students complete at Keene State College.

Good news! Since we met, I talked with the Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs, Ann Rancourt, who affirmed an ongoing commitment to these dinner meetings through the 2010-11 academic year. Please send along (to Mark and to Kate) your thoughts about discussion topics for our meetings next year.

 

Quantitative Literacy and Writing

Nathan Grawe will visit Keene State College

Many sections of Thinking and Writing are taught from disciplinary perspectives (or draw on disciplinary methods) that require quantitative skills. Dr. Nathan Grawe’s visit will include talks that address the use of quantitative reasoning in student writing. Grawe is the Director of the QuIRK (Quantitative Inquiry, Reasoning & Knowledge) Initiative at Carleton College, Dean of the College and Associate Professor of Economics.  Participants will explore ways of enhancing our students’ quantitative communication skills across a variety of disciplines by reviewing student papers and classroom assessments that help to build these skills. ITW instructors may also find the materials at the QuIRK web site to be of interest.

Schedule

Thursday, April 15, 3:00pm to 4:00pm: Plenary (Huntress 012) “Use, Misuse and Missed Use of QR in Student Writing” (First Session)

Friday, April, 16, 10:00am to 11:00am: Plenary (Huntress 012) “Use, Misuse and Missed Use of QR in Student Writing” (Second Session is available if you can’t make First Session, the content is the same for both sessions)

11:30am to 2:30pm: Workshop (Madison Street Lounge) “Using Quantitative Reasoning to Achieve Integrative Learning” Lunch to be served @11:15

If you are interested in attending Nathan Grawe’s Plenary Session I or Session II and/or his Workshop, please complete this form by April 13, 2010. If you are interested in attending the Northeast Consortium on Quantitative Literacy (NECQL) meeting on Saturday, April 17, 2010, please register here by April 13, 2010

These events have been made possible with the help of Eileen Phillips, Director of the Math Center, CELT,   Provost Mel Netzhammer, Associate Provost Ann Rancourt and Dean Gordon Leversee.

 

Cognitive Research and Writing

The Keene State College Writing Task Force will sponsor a presentation by Dr. Ronald T. Kellogg on Thursday 29 April at 7PM. His talk will address what recent neuroimaging of the human brain might tell us about the cognitive processes involved in the production of writing.

Kellog received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in experimental psychology and is a Professor of Psychology at Saint Louis University. Author of The Psychology of Writing (1994), Cognitive Psychology (2003, 2nd. Ed.), and the Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology (2007), his research currently focuses on the role of working memory in text composition and writing expertise. Recent publications include a 2006 book chapter on professional writing expertise in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, a 2007 article on improving the writing skills of college students in the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, and a 2008 article outlining a cognitive developmental theory of writing expertise in the The Journal of Writing Research. He is a consulting editor for the American Journal of Psychology and also serves on the editorial board of Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Professor Kellog’s presentation, “Acquiring Advanced Writing Skills: Recent Insights from Cognitive Science,” will address how in the past decade, cognitive science has established independent brain circuits for the executive, verbal, visual, and spatial components of working memory. This short-term memory system transiently stores and manipulates mental representations during intellectual tasks such as written composition. A central component of working memory, executive attention, is readily overloaded when juggling the demands of planning ideas, generating cohesive sentences, and reviewing plans and text. Just as young writers must first automate handwriting and spelling to engage higher level processes, college students must automate to some degree their planning, sentence generating, and reviewing. Mastering these high level processes frees attention for monitoring their interactions and keeping in mind multiple representations of the text. The cognitive science of skill acquisition and expertise indicates that writers must deliberately practice and receive feedback to attain such mastery. The implications of these conclusions include a need for (1) increased practice opportunities in college, (2) integrated writing experiences from freshmen composition through the major field courses, and (3) ways to alleviate the grading problem in providing appropriate feedback.

 

Course Profile: Encountering Adulthood

Len Fleisher brings to his section of Thinking and Writing professional experiences as a licensed clinical psychologist, professor of education and counseling (formerly at Antioch University and currently at Keene State College) and guide of wilderness-based rites of passage journeys for youth and adults at the Animas Valley Institute in Colorado. Len’s course, “Encountering Adulthood,” draws on the fields of psychology, education, mythology, sociology, anthropology, and spirituality to help students explore the transition from adolescent identity to taking a place in the adult world.

“Encountering Adulthood” is a cross-cultural study of how adults initiate their young into adulthood, with a particular emphasis on modern American rites of passage, that helps students explore a series of consequential questions: What does it really mean to be an adult? And what does adolescence have to do with it? What does our culture tell young people about what it means to be an adult? Where are the messages coming from, and who is offering them? Who in our culture consciously and intentionally initiates young people into an adult life of purpose and intention? How are you being mentored, and by whom? Len’s students consider these questions in relation to their own coming-of-age adventure, in the context of cross-cultural efforts to prepare young people for a life of meaning and passion, with particular focus on cultural constructs of what constitutes genuine or authentic maturity. Students also consider how literature, music, film, and poetry offer resources for emerging adults in American society.

One question “Encountering Adulthood” considers is whether the adult world is really showing up. For young people essentially initiate each other into what they think it means to be an adult, and those surface markers of what the adult world portrays as independence—alcohol, drugs, sex, having a car, money to spend. At the same time, Len’s experience with these young adult students suggests that they are looking for more. They are seeking the guidance of initiated adults who are living lives of integrity, generativity, and responsibility. Len reports that for many of his students this is a revelatory process, as they experience and articulate for the first time through their writing their emerging identity/self, and what it might mean to them to be an adult—what it might mean to them to be fully human.

 

Course Profile: Greatness and the Hero’s Journey

The Monkey King, from Journey to the West, Wu Cheng'en, 16th century

Students in Linda Aldrich’s section of Thinking and Writing learn that the story of a hero’s journey has appeared in every culture on earth for thousands of years. Though the characters and the costumes change, the essential elements of the journey persist within the stages of departure, initiation, and return. Joseph Campbell, the foremost scholar of world mythology, uses the word “monomyth” to describe this “one, shapeshifting yet marvelously constant story” (1). Students read The Hero with a Thousand Faces and discuss the insights this myth offers us about what constitutes a balanced, whole and harmonious life. A truly empowered male or female, according to Campbell, is one who goes through “the desired and feared” journey to the self and emerges as  “a wonderful reconstruction, of the bolder, cleaner, more spacious, and fully human life”(5). Linda introduces students to the journeys of heroes in ancient myths, in contemporary films like Good Will Hunting, The Piano, Frozen River, and in the lives of real people, including Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela.

Yamato-takeru, Japanese warrior hero from the Kojiki and Nihongi

From such a journey, great leaders are made. But as Linda leads her students to see, the hero’s journey is both an outer adventure as well as an inner, psychological quest. The fire-breathing dragons and the annihilating ogres represent aspects of our psyche that hold us back and keep us in a state of constricted consciousness, thereby sabotaging our journeys to greatness. “The Hero’s Journey” asks students to consider the ways individuals and entire cultures are stopped from achieving better, more balanced lives. Students write about physical and psychological challenges of all kinds, including low self-esteem, child abuse, dysfunctional family relationships, addictions, mental disorders, multiple sclerosis, and dysfluent speech (stuttering); they argue for better diagnoses/treatments, more research money, more awareness and compassion; they research shamanic journeys and initiation rites in world cultures in arguing for the continued viability of indigenous practices; and they argue for creating social and environmental laws that might allow for a more just and healthy world.