Randy's favorite class back in the '70s.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Outstanding SSTF Piece in the La Mesa Patch!
Are Community Colleges Meant Mainly to Crank Out Workers for Business?
AFT pair: “All of us know what the replacement of funding based on
enrollment with funding based on completion would mean—cuts and scarcity
and a ‘streamlining’ of the community college system that would limit
access and eliminate programs and classes.”
Editor’s note: The following letter—titled
Who’s Behind the “Completion” Agenda?—was sent Tuesday to teachers in
the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District and San Diego
Community College District by their union, the American Federation of
Teachers, AFL-CIO. It is being reprinted here with permission of Jim
Mahler, president of AFT Guild local 1931.
To the editor:
In past communications, your AFT has warned against the creeping academic Taylorism that comes with the movement toward student learning outcomes and pointed to the long history of American corporate interests seeking to discipline and, in turn, profit from institutions of higher learning—whether it be plutocrats railing against the dangerous ideas in the academy or business leaders seeking to transform American colleges into narrow job training factories that provide them with skilled workers without the accompanying bother of having to foot the bill for this service in the form of paying their fair share of taxes.
With the release of the California Community College Board of Governors task force on Student Success report, we see yet another push by some “system representatives” and their “external partners” to push for a dumbed-down, totally instrumental view of our mission that focuses nearly exclusively on making community colleges more efficient machines cranking out workers for business.
The latest stalking horse is completion, with all the requisite hand-wringing and intellectually disingenuous bracketing off of the larger socio-economic forces that make it harder for our students to complete their degrees.
It’s all about the students’ success, they remind us, as if we had somehow forgotten them on the way to collecting our fat paychecks and gold-plated pensions.
In sum, the report recommends a comprehensive revamp of community colleges, noting that, “Taken together, these recommendations would reboot the California Community College system toward the success of its students.”
The “reboot” metaphor says it all about the ideology behind the report: It’s mechanistic with a open bias toward a technocratic business model that favors reductionist measurement systems over the failed human judgment based system of old.
It’s time to stop allowing students to “wander” through the curriculum and track them more efficiently. If only we do a better job of tracking and push our lax, waste-filled system with more accountability measures, all will improve despite a historic budget crisis the largest gap between the rich and the poor in modern history, and the legacy of systemic racism.
The end game of all this is, of course, funding based on these mechanistic “outcomes,” but the report doesn’t take us there quite yet. As the authors note, they were “split” on whether this was the solution at present:
Not surprisingly, in addition to the “system representatives,” the report received help from the Lumina Foundation and other corporate funded “external partners.”
And these sorts of “external partners” are far from being neutral players with a high-minded interest in the public good. They are, in fact, part of a larger network of interests interested in privatization, union-busting, pension reform, and more.
As Eric Kelderman noted in The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Fortunately, John Nichols, in The Nation, has a much keener eye. In a recent piece on ALEC, Nichols outlines their origins and history:
That is why there is nothing about creating educated citizens for our democracy in the BOG report, because that is simply not part of their agenda. Corporate interests collaborating to impose the business model in public higher education want efficient workers trained to follow top-down orders,not critical thinkers who might question their agenda or buck up against the slow creep toward “outcomes based funding” that would serve as a Trojan horse for privatization.
It is in keeping with this agenda that the Draft Recommendations of the California Community Colleges Student Success Task Force would, “Encourage students to declare a program of study upon admission and require declaration by the end [of] their second term” (Recommendation 2.5).
To those who seek to cut waste out of government expenditures on public education by eliminating the temptation students have to explore intellectual horizons and to learn about diverse vocational fields, this requirement compelling community college students to compartmentalize themselves in narrowly defined majors, soon after admission to college, seems entirely justifiable, notwithstanding that students in four-year universities have until the junior year to declare majors.
In the effort to discourage frivolous intellectual experimentation, the report asserts, “Declaring a program of study is much more specific than declaring an educational goal. Doing so sets incoming students on an educational pathway and builds momentum for their success.”
To that end, “A student who is unable to declare a program of study by the end of their second term should be provided counseling and other interventions to assist them in education planning and exploring career and program options.” And, for the rebels, “If these interventions fail to meet their desired end, students should lose enrollment priority after their third term.”
How to deal with students whose curiosity might get the better of them, even after committing, on cue, to a program of study? Recommendation 3.1, on enrollment priorities, reveals one hammer: “Continuing students should lose enrollment priority if they do not follow their original or a revised education plan.”
Woe to the career tech student who might venture to take a course in geography, philosophy, or fine arts! What is the utility of radiation technology or mathematics students enrolling in political science to learn about legislative processes or the impact of free-trade agreements on the national economy and labor force demand?
Recommendation 4.1 certainly would eliminate that option for working-class students stretching to meet the costs of community colleges: “Under this recommendation, students having the course in their education plan would pay the credit enrollment fee, while students not having the course in their education plan would pay a fee covering the full cost of instruction” or market value.
No allowance for the pursuit of interdisciplinary knowledge in this model! Straight and narrow utilitarianism only! The prospects for reducing public education expenses in running course sections in dangerous majors, such as history and sociology, or literature seem almost endless.
While recent discussions of the “Buffet rule” have focused people’s attention on the fact that the rich have gotten richer while the rest of us have suffered, they have also exposed the truth that, as opposed to the decades-old mantra of the anti-tax zealots, the affluent pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than the rest of us.
The rich have gained, the poor are poorer, and the middle class is shrinking. You don’t have to have a Nobel Prize in economics to know that this is not fair.
What this phenomenon has done is push us further towards plutocracy or the rule of the dollar.
As to whether all this amounts to a conspiracy, we urge you to consider the extensive activities of American Legislative Exchange Council. As the Center for Media and Democracy’s ALEC Exposed website explains:
It is not a conspiracy of the imaginary “nefarious elite”; it is how the very real economic elites have highjacked our government at every level (including education). It’s how the Koch brothers’ money talks and democracy walks. To put it another way, this is what plutocracy looks like.
To review ALEC’s activities on a state by state level, see where their money comes from and which politicians are part of the organization, see: www.alecexposed.org.
In particular, go to the privatizing education page and scroll down to the find the “treating universities like manufacturers” link.
Jim Miller and Jonathan McLeod
Miller teaches at San Diego City College and Jonathan McLeod at San Diego Mesa College. A debate on this issue was published Nov. 20 in The San Diego Union-Tribune under the heading Stressing Success.
About this column: Letters can be
emailed to ken.stone@patch.com and are subject to editing. Please use
your real name and give your hometown. Thank you.
To the editor:
In past communications, your AFT has warned against the creeping academic Taylorism that comes with the movement toward student learning outcomes and pointed to the long history of American corporate interests seeking to discipline and, in turn, profit from institutions of higher learning—whether it be plutocrats railing against the dangerous ideas in the academy or business leaders seeking to transform American colleges into narrow job training factories that provide them with skilled workers without the accompanying bother of having to foot the bill for this service in the form of paying their fair share of taxes.
With the release of the California Community College Board of Governors task force on Student Success report, we see yet another push by some “system representatives” and their “external partners” to push for a dumbed-down, totally instrumental view of our mission that focuses nearly exclusively on making community colleges more efficient machines cranking out workers for business.
The latest stalking horse is completion, with all the requisite hand-wringing and intellectually disingenuous bracketing off of the larger socio-economic forces that make it harder for our students to complete their degrees.
It’s all about the students’ success, they remind us, as if we had somehow forgotten them on the way to collecting our fat paychecks and gold-plated pensions.
In sum, the report recommends a comprehensive revamp of community colleges, noting that, “Taken together, these recommendations would reboot the California Community College system toward the success of its students.”
The “reboot” metaphor says it all about the ideology behind the report: It’s mechanistic with a open bias toward a technocratic business model that favors reductionist measurement systems over the failed human judgment based system of old.
It’s time to stop allowing students to “wander” through the curriculum and track them more efficiently. If only we do a better job of tracking and push our lax, waste-filled system with more accountability measures, all will improve despite a historic budget crisis the largest gap between the rich and the poor in modern history, and the legacy of systemic racism.
The end game of all this is, of course, funding based on these mechanistic “outcomes,” but the report doesn’t take us there quite yet. As the authors note, they were “split” on whether this was the solution at present:
After considerable review, the Task Force was deeply divided on the topic of outcome-based funding. A vocal minority supported implementing some version of outcome-based funding, while the majority of Task Force members did not support such a proposal at this time due to various concerns, some of which are noted above. For many Task Force members, the lack of evidence demonstrating that outcome-based funding made a positive impact on student success was an important factor in their decision to reject implementing outcome-based funding at this time.
While some states have identified positive impacts, others have not and have terminated implementation of their outcomes-based funding models. The Task Force suggested that the Chancellor’s Office continue to monitor implementation of outcomes-based funding in other states and model how various formulas might work in California.Of course, all of us know what the replacement of funding based on enrollment with funding based on completion would mean—cuts and scarcity and a “streamlining” of the community college system that would limit access and eliminate many programs and classes that don’t accommodate the Academic Taylorist party line.
Not surprisingly, in addition to the “system representatives,” the report received help from the Lumina Foundation and other corporate funded “external partners.”
And these sorts of “external partners” are far from being neutral players with a high-minded interest in the public good. They are, in fact, part of a larger network of interests interested in privatization, union-busting, pension reform, and more.
As Eric Kelderman noted in The Chronicle of Higher Education:
The Lumina Foundation for Education has become one of the best-known higher-education philanthropies in the country, spending nearly $50-million annually on projects to improve college completion ... the foundation is shifting its focus away from giving money to new projects to develop policy ideas. Instead, Lumina will work to enact the changes needed to drastically improve college graduation rates ...But Kelderman’s characterization of ALEC as “conservative leaning” soft-pedals the significance of this group to the point of completely missing the significance of the connection between Lumina and ALEC.
Still, Lumina's change in focus doesn't mean that the organization will be spending less money, he said. In fact, the foundation will expand its efforts by convening business leaders, lawmakers, higher-education groups, and faculty members to build consensus on specific policy measures . . .
In addition, he said, Lumina will draft model policies for states, including legislation. The group is already working with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative-leaning organization, to write and introduce bills in statehouses.
Fortunately, John Nichols, in The Nation, has a much keener eye. In a recent piece on ALEC, Nichols outlines their origins and history:
Founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich and other conservative activists frustrated by recent electoral setbacks, ALEC is a critical arm of the right-wing network of policy shops that, with infusions of corporate cash, has evolved to shape American politics.So when Lumina joins forces with ALEC it means more than just a move toward influencing legislative policy; it means they are part of a larger network of monied interests pushing our country further toward plutocracy and corporate domination.
Inspired by Milton Friedman’s call for conservatives to “develop alternatives to existing policies [and] keep them alive and available,” ALEC’s model legislation reflects long-term goals: downsizing government, removing regulations on corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account.
Corporate donors retain veto power over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces. The task forces cover issues from education to health policy. ALEC’s priorities for the 2011 session included bills to privatize education, break unions, deregulate major industries, pass voter ID laws and more.
In states across the country they succeeded, with stacks of new laws signed by GOP governors like Ohio’s John Kasich and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, both ALEC alums.
That is why there is nothing about creating educated citizens for our democracy in the BOG report, because that is simply not part of their agenda. Corporate interests collaborating to impose the business model in public higher education want efficient workers trained to follow top-down orders,not critical thinkers who might question their agenda or buck up against the slow creep toward “outcomes based funding” that would serve as a Trojan horse for privatization.
It is in keeping with this agenda that the Draft Recommendations of the California Community Colleges Student Success Task Force would, “Encourage students to declare a program of study upon admission and require declaration by the end [of] their second term” (Recommendation 2.5).
To those who seek to cut waste out of government expenditures on public education by eliminating the temptation students have to explore intellectual horizons and to learn about diverse vocational fields, this requirement compelling community college students to compartmentalize themselves in narrowly defined majors, soon after admission to college, seems entirely justifiable, notwithstanding that students in four-year universities have until the junior year to declare majors.
In the effort to discourage frivolous intellectual experimentation, the report asserts, “Declaring a program of study is much more specific than declaring an educational goal. Doing so sets incoming students on an educational pathway and builds momentum for their success.”
To that end, “A student who is unable to declare a program of study by the end of their second term should be provided counseling and other interventions to assist them in education planning and exploring career and program options.” And, for the rebels, “If these interventions fail to meet their desired end, students should lose enrollment priority after their third term.”
How to deal with students whose curiosity might get the better of them, even after committing, on cue, to a program of study? Recommendation 3.1, on enrollment priorities, reveals one hammer: “Continuing students should lose enrollment priority if they do not follow their original or a revised education plan.”
Woe to the career tech student who might venture to take a course in geography, philosophy, or fine arts! What is the utility of radiation technology or mathematics students enrolling in political science to learn about legislative processes or the impact of free-trade agreements on the national economy and labor force demand?
Recommendation 4.1 certainly would eliminate that option for working-class students stretching to meet the costs of community colleges: “Under this recommendation, students having the course in their education plan would pay the credit enrollment fee, while students not having the course in their education plan would pay a fee covering the full cost of instruction” or market value.
No allowance for the pursuit of interdisciplinary knowledge in this model! Straight and narrow utilitarianism only! The prospects for reducing public education expenses in running course sections in dangerous majors, such as history and sociology, or literature seem almost endless.
While recent discussions of the “Buffet rule” have focused people’s attention on the fact that the rich have gotten richer while the rest of us have suffered, they have also exposed the truth that, as opposed to the decades-old mantra of the anti-tax zealots, the affluent pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than the rest of us.
The rich have gained, the poor are poorer, and the middle class is shrinking. You don’t have to have a Nobel Prize in economics to know that this is not fair.
What this phenomenon has done is push us further towards plutocracy or the rule of the dollar.
As to whether all this amounts to a conspiracy, we urge you to consider the extensive activities of American Legislative Exchange Council. As the Center for Media and Democracy’s ALEC Exposed website explains:
ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line.
Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.)
Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills.
ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. We agree. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door.More specifically ALEC (which is 98 percent corporate funded) pushes a corporate agenda at the international, national, state, and local levels with regard to union busting, workers’ rights, the privatization of education, healthcare, the environment, energy, agriculture, voting, taxes, prisons, immigration, and much more.
It is not a conspiracy of the imaginary “nefarious elite”; it is how the very real economic elites have highjacked our government at every level (including education). It’s how the Koch brothers’ money talks and democracy walks. To put it another way, this is what plutocracy looks like.
To review ALEC’s activities on a state by state level, see where their money comes from and which politicians are part of the organization, see: www.alecexposed.org.
In particular, go to the privatizing education page and scroll down to the find the “treating universities like manufacturers” link.
Jim Miller and Jonathan McLeod
Miller teaches at San Diego City College and Jonathan McLeod at San Diego Mesa College. A debate on this issue was published Nov. 20 in The San Diego Union-Tribune under the heading Stressing Success.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Randy Holiday Classics
Darlene Love will be on Letterman again soon! Watch for her. May you have a healthy and happy Festivus.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
The English Literature Club: This Friday!
The Hungry Reader at the Feast:
Model Writers, Model Readers.
Or, Which Fork Do I Use With Hemingway?
--Matt Duckworth
Friday, December 2, 1:30-2:30 p.m. in Batmale 349.
This talk is meant as a tour, of sorts, as a modeling of and reflecting upon dynamic literary exchanges from the perspective of an avid lifelong reader.
I'll be looking into work by Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast!), Richard Ford (including Ford on Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner), William Hazlitt (quoting Coleridge on WW and STC), John Fowles, Richard Holmes (on Shelley and Byron's marksmanship and on literary biography as pursuit), Barry Lopez, Rebecca Solnit, Virginia Woolf, and others, as needed.
I will have handouts. There will probably be coffee and treats.
Please tell your students. Please attend, if this seems intriguing.
Thank you.
MD
Monday, November 28, 2011
Ben at Berkeley!
Hello Colleagues,
This
Thursday, December 1 at 6:00 p.m. sharp, U.C. Berkeley’s famous “Story
Hour” series will host me reading from and providing literary analysis
of my novel, Barrio Bushido.
At the beautiful Morrison Library inside of the Doe Library building,
with arms extended, I welcome you and your students to attend this
unique, unprecedented event. Never before has U.C. Berkeley’s “Story
Hour” opened its doors for urban literature. Many times urban fiction is
portrayed as senseless and ultra-violent. At this event I will explain
how Barrio Bushido both reinforces and smashes those stereotypes.
Many
of you know my story and work. I come from the streets, the Marine
Corps, and academia. Many of our students can relate positively to my
background. I have performed throughout the state and have led functions
that go beyond the literary level, including a first ever Ya Basta!
Leadership Conference and more recently a successful Leadership and
Education conference entitled “Inventing Your Destiny.”
Please
come to this U.C. Berkeley event and suggest that your students come as
well. Perhaps they can receive extra credit for attending this event
that may change their lives.
If you would like to find out more about this event, please click on the links below.
Thank you and have a great rest of the semester,
Benjamin Bac Sierra, English Instructor
Filmmaker Ralph Bakshi and Poet Melvin Wilk in Conversation with Richard B. Simon
LIVE! Saturday December 3,
2011, Tikva Pop-Up Record Store, San Francisco
Rich Simon will be "in conversation" with
animation legend Ralph Bakshi (Fritz the Cat) and his old friend from the neighborhood, poet Melvin Wilk,
this Saturday, December 3, at the Tikva Pop-Up Jewish Record Store in
the outer Mission in San Francisco.
Sponsored by the Idelsohn Society, the discussion will focus on the roots of Bakshi's work in
his Jewish upbringing in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and will feature an
unprecedented poetry reading by Bakshi and Wilk ... as well as
opportunities to ask questions in an intimate
venue.
First, at 7pm, we'll show
Bakshi's American Pop, about a Jewish immigrant family's quest
for musical glory in America. Discussion, poetry, and Q and A will
follow.
It's free -- with a
donation requested -- but it's a really small venue (a storefront!) so
reserve tickets early.
The Tikva Record Store runs the month of December in the
Outer Mission, where Mission meets Valencia at the foot of Bernal, by
the Argus. It's "The First Pop-Up Jewish Record Store in the
World" -- and will feature
live bands, lectures, films, comedy, food trucks -- and, of course,
lots of rare Yiddish vinyl ...
This should be pretty
cool, folks.
Info and tix: http://tikvarecordsdec3-eorg.eventbrite.com/
American Pop, Ralph Bakshi and the Jewish
Experience:1 show - 7pm
Doors open 15 minutes prior to show time
Limited to 2 tickets each
All events are free with a rotating suggested donation at the
door
TIKVA RECORDS
"The First Pop-Up Jewish Record Store in the
World"
Open December 1-28, 2011
(3191 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA)
* All events are free with a rotating suggested donation
* Advance ticket reservations required via Eventbrite
The store will feature an eclectic series of exclusive live music performances, film screenings, academic lectures, comedians, remix workshops, food trucks, and more.
Special events will emulate the historical and cultural
significance of Tikva Records - NYC's most prolific Jewish record
label of the '50s, '60s and '70s. Events will explore the Jewish
American songbook, and Jewish culture in general, interpreted by some
of today's brightest performers, comedians, musicians and lecturers.
Rare vinyl from select Jewish musicians of the past 80 years will be
sold at the new Tikva Records, and we will have all of our latest
album releases for sale including: Songs for the Jewish-American Jet
Set, Black Sabbath, and Mazeltov, Mis Amigos. San Francisco Public
School tours will commence during the daytime hours at Tikva Records,
and food trucks will be carefully paired with each event listed
below.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
Follow-up to the Nancy Sommers workshop
Many people have expressed their gratitude for the Wednesday's workshop on responding to student writing. I know that it recharged my disposition and my essay marking right away, helping me simplify, step back, identify patterns of strength and need, and direct students toward future learning in upcoming online exercises, lab tutoring, and essay assignments.
Maybe there was just too much to cover since the issue of grading deserves its own week-long conference, but we really needed to spend more time discussing the student essay by Estelle Costanza (Frank's wife, George's mother) so kindly and bravely provided by Kristen Hren. (Who else would have volunteered to do this?) This essay was an incredible choice for our workshop, so perhaps we could continue the essay-response discussion in the comment section of this blog post.
I would also ask that those of you who marked the essay give your marked copies to Kristen so that she can compare the different strategies. I had hoped that during the workshop we would be able to go into small groups and compare our response strategies and the aesthetic of our marked papers, but there was not enough time.
One reason that there may not have been enough time was that we may have talked a bit too much about the assignment sheet. That was important, of course, since one of our goals was to analyze the relationship between assignment design and student/teacher response, but we needed to give more attention to what the student wrote and our responses to that writing. We can do that in the blog comment area and discuss ways to help Estelle Costanza reach even more of her potential.
I hope that our dialogue on this workshop material and our dialogue on responding to student writing will continue to unfold.
Again, thanks to those of you who prepped and participated, and a special thanks to Kristen for helping all of us, including Nancy Sommers, by sharing her work with us. We owe her! So give her your marked copies at the very least. Thanks.
To the comments!
Maybe there was just too much to cover since the issue of grading deserves its own week-long conference, but we really needed to spend more time discussing the student essay by Estelle Costanza (Frank's wife, George's mother) so kindly and bravely provided by Kristen Hren. (Who else would have volunteered to do this?) This essay was an incredible choice for our workshop, so perhaps we could continue the essay-response discussion in the comment section of this blog post.
I would also ask that those of you who marked the essay give your marked copies to Kristen so that she can compare the different strategies. I had hoped that during the workshop we would be able to go into small groups and compare our response strategies and the aesthetic of our marked papers, but there was not enough time.
One reason that there may not have been enough time was that we may have talked a bit too much about the assignment sheet. That was important, of course, since one of our goals was to analyze the relationship between assignment design and student/teacher response, but we needed to give more attention to what the student wrote and our responses to that writing. We can do that in the blog comment area and discuss ways to help Estelle Costanza reach even more of her potential.
I hope that our dialogue on this workshop material and our dialogue on responding to student writing will continue to unfold.
Again, thanks to those of you who prepped and participated, and a special thanks to Kristen for helping all of us, including Nancy Sommers, by sharing her work with us. We owe her! So give her your marked copies at the very least. Thanks.
To the comments!
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Thank you, Nancy Sommers!
Nancy Sommers provided a truly wonderful workshop on responding to student writing yesterday in Batmale Hall. Many of us have been energized by the dialogue, and hopefully that dialogue will continue. Another way to continue the dialogue is on Nancy's blog:
http://blogs.bedfordstmartins.com/hackerhandbooks/. There you will also see links to Nancy's movies with students and teachers.
And, hey, if you haven't seen the free videos at Re:Writing via the Rules for Writers companion site, take a look. You and your students might like them, among other things.
Jump to Video Central.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Is Proper English Dying? And Should Us Care?
This Jeff Yang piece is in the October 29 Wall Street Journal.
If, as Laurie Anderson sang, language is a virus, then English is the common cold.
Already ubiquitous — English has an estimated 1.5 billion speakers — it’s only growing more so, given its status in fast-growing emerging markets. Especially the fastest-growing and emerging-est market of all, China, where it was estimated last year by the China Daily newspaper that up to 400 million people are currently actively learning English, or nearly a third of the population. (It’s this statistic that led Jon Huntsman, former Ambassador to China and soon-to-be-former GOP presidential candidate, to remark recently that in a few years, China will have more English-speakers than America.)
Read the entire article in the October 29 Wall Street Journal . . .
Friday, October 28, 2011
Gene Yang at the SFPL on 11/5
You and your students might be interested in Gene Yang’s upcoming lecture on the inner workings behind graphic novels and his latest project(s). He is a rising star in the graphic novel narrative art form, and his novel ABC has been taught at CCSF and featured in reading groups. You can find out more at his site: geneyang.com
Event: Leveling Up with Gene Yang: Mixing Magic with Graphics
Date: Saturday, Nov. 5, 2011
Time: 1 – 2:30 p.m.
Place: San Francisco Public Library, Main Branch
100 Larkin Street
Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room
San Francisco, CA 94102
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
John Delgado on "The Practicality of an English Major"
In the words of Alison Schoenberger, English Literature Club President . . .
"We will be holding a meeting this Friday, October 21, Batmale Hall room 349 from 1:30-2:30 p.m. That is all the same, however, our speakers have been moved around. For this meeting we are excited to announce Professor John Delgado speaking on 'The Practicality of an English Major - Learn how to make English as your major work for you while you're matriculating through undergraduate and graduate studies. Make stronger social and professional connections, earn more money on a part or full-time basis, use the literature you've learned to overcome obstacles in your life, personally and professionally.' 'You either have it, or you've had it!'"
Coffee, treats, a congenial lecture, chatting afterwards, and planning for future talks and events: the usual mix!
Christoph Greger's talk, originally scheduled for this Friday, will now take place on November 18th.
Thank you, and we hope to see you this Friday!
--Matt Duckworth
English Literature Club Advisor
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Al Davis was an English Major!
And now the commitment to excellence
shall dominate our labs and classes more than ever.
shall dominate our labs and classes more than ever.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Newly Proposed Course ID Numbering System
Many if not all us have received requests to comment on the recently proposed Course Identification Numbering System (C-ID), a supranumbering system being developed to ease the transfer and articulation burdens in California’s higher educational institutions. This is something that could impact the look, content, and feel of our courses. We have just a little bit of time to comment on these descriptors by registering at the C-ID site and then responding to what has been proposed. You might love or hate what is in the works. To learn more about C-ID, please visit their ABOUT page. To access FAQs for faculty, please click here.
I have linked the proposed descriptors here, if you don't want to use C-ID's simple registration. You could comment (anonymously) here in our blog, and we could compile those comments (hit the comments link below) and send them to C-ID and/or our articulation officer.
Here are the descriptors:
ENGL 110: Freshman Composition
ENGL 115: Argumentative Writing and Critical Thinking
ENGL-CW 100: Introduction to Creative Writing
ENGL-LIT 100: Introduction to Literature
ENGL-LIT 105: Critical Writing and Thinking Through Literature
ENGL-LIT 160: Survey of British Literature 1
I have linked the proposed descriptors here, if you don't want to use C-ID's simple registration. You could comment (anonymously) here in our blog, and we could compile those comments (hit the comments link below) and send them to C-ID and/or our articulation officer.
Here are the descriptors:
ENGL 110: Freshman Composition
ENGL 115: Argumentative Writing and Critical Thinking
ENGL-CW 100: Introduction to Creative Writing
ENGL-LIT 100: Introduction to Literature
ENGL-LIT 105: Critical Writing and Thinking Through Literature
ENGL-LIT 160: Survey of British Literature 1
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
THE BOWLING EVENT OF THE CENTURY: 10/21, PRESIDIO BOWL
You got a date on Friday, October 21, baby!
We will be bowling with and against the CCSF librarians at the Presidio Bowl (presidiobowl.com).
We will be bowling with and against the CCSF librarians at the Presidio Bowl (presidiobowl.com).
The sign-up list is on the whiteboard in the English Dept office. You will see options to roll during one or all of the hourly slots: 4-5pm, 5-6pm, and 6-7pm (the bonus round). We will have four lanes at $50/hr per lane, which includes shoe rental. Up to 6 rollers may use a lane. They have a bar/restaurant because, well, the Presidio Bowl is a bowling alley. This bowling event is in place of the softball game we were going to play with the librarians. We will save that for the spring.
So who's going to roll? Sign up!
Hey, it might be more convenient to use the blog's comment space
to sign up for your rounds, but that's, like, just my opinion, man.
to sign up for your rounds, but that's, like, just my opinion, man.
Monday, September 19, 2011
New Videos on Responding to Student Writers!
Jump to this video filmed locally. You might recognize some of the participants.
For more resources, jump to this handbook page.
For more resources, jump to this handbook page.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Fishy Sentences
Most people know a good sentence when they read one, but New York Times columnist Stanley Fish says most of us don't really know how to write them ourselves. His new book, How To Write A Sentence: And How To Read One, is part ode, part how-to guide to the art of the well-constructed sentence.
Fish is something of a sentence connoisseur, and he says writing a fine sentence is a delicate process — but it's a process that can be learned. He laments that many educators approach teaching the craft the wrong way — by relying on rules rather than examples.
Analyzing great sentences "will tell you more about ... what you can possibly hope to imitate than a set of sterile rules that seem often impossibly abstract," Fish tells NPR's Neal Conan.
A good sentence may be easy to pick out, but learning to understand what makes it great, says Fish, will help a student become a stronger writer and a "better reader of sentences."
Jump to the NPR piece.
Fish is something of a sentence connoisseur, and he says writing a fine sentence is a delicate process — but it's a process that can be learned. He laments that many educators approach teaching the craft the wrong way — by relying on rules rather than examples.
Analyzing great sentences "will tell you more about ... what you can possibly hope to imitate than a set of sterile rules that seem often impossibly abstract," Fish tells NPR's Neal Conan.
A good sentence may be easy to pick out, but learning to understand what makes it great, says Fish, will help a student become a stronger writer and a "better reader of sentences."
Jump to the NPR piece.
What's wrong . . . or right?
What's wrong with our universities?
This fall more than 19 million students will enroll in the 4,000 or so degree-granting colleges and universities now operating in the United States. College enrollments have grown steadily year by year, more than doubling since 1970 and increasing by nearly one-third since the year 2000. More than 70 percent of high school graduates enroll in a community college, four-year residential college, or in one of the new online universities, though only about half of these students graduate within five years. The steady growth in enrollments is fed by the widespread belief (encouraged by college administrators) that a college degree is a requirement for entry into the world of middle-class employment. A college education is now deemed one of those prizes that, if good for a few, must therefore be good for everyone, even if no one in a position of academic authority can define what such an education is or should be. These conceptions are at the heart of the democratic revolution in higher education.
Read the rest of this piece. It offers much to discuss...
This fall more than 19 million students will enroll in the 4,000 or so degree-granting colleges and universities now operating in the United States. College enrollments have grown steadily year by year, more than doubling since 1970 and increasing by nearly one-third since the year 2000. More than 70 percent of high school graduates enroll in a community college, four-year residential college, or in one of the new online universities, though only about half of these students graduate within five years. The steady growth in enrollments is fed by the widespread belief (encouraged by college administrators) that a college degree is a requirement for entry into the world of middle-class employment. A college education is now deemed one of those prizes that, if good for a few, must therefore be good for everyone, even if no one in a position of academic authority can define what such an education is or should be. These conceptions are at the heart of the democratic revolution in higher education.
Read the rest of this piece. It offers much to discuss...
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
The Mechanical Muse
By LEV GROSSMAN
Published: September 2, 2011
Something very important and very weird is happening to the book right now: It’s shedding its papery corpus and transmigrating into a bodiless digital form, right before our eyes. We’re witnessing the bibliographical equivalent of the rapture. If anything we may be lowballing the weirdness of it all.
The last time a change of this magnitude occurred was circa 1450, when Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type. But if you go back further there’s a more helpful precedent for what’s going on.
Read the entire article on this computer screen.
Join the English Literature Club: Fridays 1:30-2:30
The English Literature Club will be meeting most Fridays from 1:30-2:30 p.m. this semester in Batmale 349, the usual place.
This Friday, September 9th, will feature a club introduction, and I will give a brief talk entitled "Roses, Rats, and the Shortest Poems on Earth." I will use short pieces by Langston Hughes, Carl Rakosi, Robert Burns, William Blake, Dorothy Parker, John Keats, and the team of Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser as an introduction to reading poetry. I will focus on voice and character in relation to the unfolding drama of even the shortest poems.
If you have students in your English 1Bs (and other classes) who are a bit anxious about reading poetry, send them to the Lit Club meeting this Friday, and I'll try to help them out a bit.
Thank you,
Matt Duckworth
English Literature Club Advisor
This Friday, September 9th, will feature a club introduction, and I will give a brief talk entitled "Roses, Rats, and the Shortest Poems on Earth." I will use short pieces by Langston Hughes, Carl Rakosi, Robert Burns, William Blake, Dorothy Parker, John Keats, and the team of Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser as an introduction to reading poetry. I will focus on voice and character in relation to the unfolding drama of even the shortest poems.
If you have students in your English 1Bs (and other classes) who are a bit anxious about reading poetry, send them to the Lit Club meeting this Friday, and I'll try to help them out a bit.
Thank you,
Matt Duckworth
English Literature Club Advisor
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
BANG OUT this Saturday at Amnesia!
Please join us for the next BANG OUT reading, Volume XII: BLANK on Saturday, August 13th at Amnesia on Valencia Street in San Francisco!
Amnesia Bar (Valencia Street btwn 19th and 20th)
7-9 pm
FREE and open to the public
With fresh new work banged out on the theme "BLANK" by local writers:
Sarah Fran Wisby
Suzanne Kleid
Diana Turken
Brittany Billmeyer-Finn
Jen Sullivan Brych
Brent Armendinger
Aneesa Davenport
"BLANK" is... the perfect anti-theme, or the spaces we leave or that exist between us, between all things; what we choose to fill them with or how. Blank stares, shooting blanks, whatever the blankety blank -- we always welcome any and all interpretations of the theme.
Sarah Fran Wisby writes poetry, fiction, memoir and essays, preferring always to deepen and subvert genre by way of the hybrid form. Her book Viva Loss was published in 2008 by Small Desk Press. Recent work can be found in Eleven Eleven Journal and Rumpus Women Volume 1, and heard on Invisible Cities Audio Tour #2: The Armada of Golden Dreams. She’s also been published in Instant City, Sparkle and Blink, Digital Artifact, and The Encyclopedia Project Volume 2, F—K, for which she was honored to write the entry for fuck. She performs her work all over the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, and was a Literary Death Match champion in December 2010.
Suzanne Kleid is the manager of Readers Bookstore at the Main, a used bookstore inside the San Francisco Main Library. Her essays and fiction have appeared in the Believer, Bitch Magazine, Other Magazine, Watchword, Pindeldyboz, and We Still Like.
Diana Turken was born and raised in Los Angeles, Ca. She is currently working on her MFA degree in Poetry at Mills College. She likes to write about railroad barons, cowboys, and Californians. She is a cable news junkie, a basketball fanatic, and makes her own biscuits from scratch. She lives and works in Oakland.
Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, a Michigan Native and Oakland transplant moved here last August to attend Mills College. She is currently an MFA Poetry candidate at Mills, part time retailer, Maya Deren enthusiast, vintage dress collector and loves all things crystals, shells and feathers. Brittany lives in Downtown Oakland where her fellow poet housemates, graph paper notebooks and Magic, their cat, constantly inspire her. Also, Brittany is currently madly in love.
Jen Sullivan Brych has written plays, fiction and journalism for places like the Los Angeles Times, Wired, The Rumpus, Killing My Lobster, the Bay Guardian and blah blah blah. She was a finalist for the Third Coast fiction prize and teaches creative writing and English at City College. She can be seen wrangling her huge baby at various city parks.
Brent Armendinger is a satellite orbiting San Francisco while he also teaches creative writing at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. His chapbook Archipelago was published by Noemi Press.
Aneesa Davenport lives in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Fanzine, Beeswax Magazine, Kitchen Sink, Monday Night, The South Carolina Review, and elsewhere. She has read with Quiet Lightening, Funny/Sexy/Sad, and Don’t Mention It, a 24-hour literary reading. Find her at http://paragraphed.wordpress.com/.
--
From Amick Boone and Kevin Hobson, former curators of the Ecstatic Monkey Reading Series, BANG OUT Reading Series provides writing prompts to encourage new work that is “banged out” for its readings. Hosting bi-monthly readings since October 2008, our aim is to inspire our readers to write and present work that’s fresh and spontaneous and to hear how some of our favorite writers interpret our prompts.
--
BANG OUT: A Quick and Dirty Reading Series
www.bangoutsf.com
Amnesia Bar (Valencia Street btwn 19th and 20th)
7-9 pm
FREE and open to the public
With fresh new work banged out on the theme "BLANK" by local writers:
Sarah Fran Wisby
Suzanne Kleid
Diana Turken
Brittany Billmeyer-Finn
Jen Sullivan Brych
Brent Armendinger
Aneesa Davenport
"BLANK" is... the perfect anti-theme, or the spaces we leave or that exist between us, between all things; what we choose to fill them with or how. Blank stares, shooting blanks, whatever the blankety blank -- we always welcome any and all interpretations of the theme.
Sarah Fran Wisby writes poetry, fiction, memoir and essays, preferring always to deepen and subvert genre by way of the hybrid form. Her book Viva Loss was published in 2008 by Small Desk Press. Recent work can be found in Eleven Eleven Journal and Rumpus Women Volume 1, and heard on Invisible Cities Audio Tour #2: The Armada of Golden Dreams. She’s also been published in Instant City, Sparkle and Blink, Digital Artifact, and The Encyclopedia Project Volume 2, F—K, for which she was honored to write the entry for fuck. She performs her work all over the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, and was a Literary Death Match champion in December 2010.
Suzanne Kleid is the manager of Readers Bookstore at the Main, a used bookstore inside the San Francisco Main Library. Her essays and fiction have appeared in the Believer, Bitch Magazine, Other Magazine, Watchword, Pindeldyboz, and We Still Like.
Diana Turken was born and raised in Los Angeles, Ca. She is currently working on her MFA degree in Poetry at Mills College. She likes to write about railroad barons, cowboys, and Californians. She is a cable news junkie, a basketball fanatic, and makes her own biscuits from scratch. She lives and works in Oakland.
Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, a Michigan Native and Oakland transplant moved here last August to attend Mills College. She is currently an MFA Poetry candidate at Mills, part time retailer, Maya Deren enthusiast, vintage dress collector and loves all things crystals, shells and feathers. Brittany lives in Downtown Oakland where her fellow poet housemates, graph paper notebooks and Magic, their cat, constantly inspire her. Also, Brittany is currently madly in love.
Jen Sullivan Brych has written plays, fiction and journalism for places like the Los Angeles Times, Wired, The Rumpus, Killing My Lobster, the Bay Guardian and blah blah blah. She was a finalist for the Third Coast fiction prize and teaches creative writing and English at City College. She can be seen wrangling her huge baby at various city parks.
Brent Armendinger is a satellite orbiting San Francisco while he also teaches creative writing at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. His chapbook Archipelago was published by Noemi Press.
Aneesa Davenport lives in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Fanzine, Beeswax Magazine, Kitchen Sink, Monday Night, The South Carolina Review, and elsewhere. She has read with Quiet Lightening, Funny/Sexy/Sad, and Don’t Mention It, a 24-hour literary reading. Find her at http://paragraphed.wordpress.com/.
--
From Amick Boone and Kevin Hobson, former curators of the Ecstatic Monkey Reading Series, BANG OUT Reading Series provides writing prompts to encourage new work that is “banged out” for its readings. Hosting bi-monthly readings since October 2008, our aim is to inspire our readers to write and present work that’s fresh and spontaneous and to hear how some of our favorite writers interpret our prompts.
--
BANG OUT: A Quick and Dirty Reading Series
www.bangoutsf.com
Thursday, August 11, 2011
State's high school dropout rate nearly 20 percent
(08-11) 14:53 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Nearly one out of every five students in California's projected class of 2010 - 18.2 percent - dropped out of high school before graduation day, meaning 94,000 teenagers hit the streets without a diploma, according to data released today.
Perhaps more alarming are the 17,000 eighth grade students who quit before attending a single day of high school, about 3 percent of their class.
These numbers are believed to be California's first accurate assessment of the dropout and graduation rates using a data system that tracks individual students over their four-year high school career, according to the state Department of Education.
Overall, 74 percent of high school students graduated on time. The remaining 7 percent who didn't graduate or dropout were students still enrolled in school or who earned a GED.
In past years, the state used an unreliable system that relied on schools to manually track students and report dropout rates to the state. The data was sketchy at best, with rates fluctuating year to year and among districts with similar demographics.
Over the last decade, reported dropout rates statewide have fluctuated between 11 percent to 22 percent. "For far too long, the discussion about graduation and dropout rates has revolved around how the results were obtained," said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, in a statement. "Now, we can focus on the much more important issue of how to raise the number of graduates and lower the number of dropouts."
Jump to the complete story.
Perhaps more alarming are the 17,000 eighth grade students who quit before attending a single day of high school, about 3 percent of their class.
These numbers are believed to be California's first accurate assessment of the dropout and graduation rates using a data system that tracks individual students over their four-year high school career, according to the state Department of Education.
Overall, 74 percent of high school students graduated on time. The remaining 7 percent who didn't graduate or dropout were students still enrolled in school or who earned a GED.
In past years, the state used an unreliable system that relied on schools to manually track students and report dropout rates to the state. The data was sketchy at best, with rates fluctuating year to year and among districts with similar demographics.
Over the last decade, reported dropout rates statewide have fluctuated between 11 percent to 22 percent. "For far too long, the discussion about graduation and dropout rates has revolved around how the results were obtained," said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, in a statement. "Now, we can focus on the much more important issue of how to raise the number of graduates and lower the number of dropouts."
Jump to the complete story.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Congratulations to Best of the Bay Ben!
Best of the Bay 2011: BEST HOMEBOY SCRIBE
Related:Awash as it is in traffic-stopping murals and radical neighborhood galleries, the Mission hasn't produced a lot of novels recently from its native sons and daughters. So when born-and-bred Missionite and City College literature professor Benjamin Bac Sierra's debut effort Barrio Bushido turned out to be a magical realistic, drug-and-violence-driven, sophisticated lyrical achievement, the 'hood rejoiced in its son. Bac Sierra's readings at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts turned out a capacity crowd, and a retinue of candy-painted, hydraulic-powered low-riders lined the curb outside. With Bac Sierra as a role model, maybe the barrio won't have to wait long for another of its own to follow suit and publish something great.
todobododown.wordpress.com
http://www.sfbg.com/specials/best-bay-2011-best-homeboy-scribe
Thursday, July 21, 2011
From the CHE Ticker . . .
California’s Public Colleges Are Falling Behind, Report Says
July 20, 2011, 1:59 pm
The often-celebrated public system of higher education in California is average, at best, and getting worse, argues a report released today by researchers at Sacramento State University. The report evaluates the state’s performance on six measures and finds major declines in college preparation, affordability, participation, and finance compared with other states over the past seven years. “It is a serious mistake to assume that a subset of high-profile, high-performing colleges and universities equates to a public postsecondary system that is up to the task of educating growing generations of Californians,” the report says.
Read the report.
Read the report.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
SF Fringe Festival Play about a Community College English Teacher
Panic!
EXIT Studio
San Francisco, CA
This comedy traces the journey of a community college English teacher who starts having panic attacks while teaching Hamlet, is repeatedly visited by the ghost of her dead father, and receives advice on reducing anxiety from characters such as Crazy Larry the cynical teaching veteran, Rainbow the yoga teacher, and Elvira the healthfood store clerk. Laura Wiley plays over ten different characters in this solo show on anxiety, middle-age disillusion and listening to your inner voice.Laura Wiley has studied solo performance at the San Francisco Marsh. She is grateful for all the artistic input, script feedback, acting coaching and encouragement that she has received on this piece from four special people affiliated with the Marsh--David Ford, Ann Randolph, Mark Kenward and Rebecca Fisher.
In addition to acting and writing, Laura draws, paints, plays classical and jazz flute, and sings. Her websites are www.lauraaustinwiley.com and www.laurawileyflute.com.
|
| Contact |
| Who: | Christina Augello |
| Phone: | 415-673-3847 |
| Email: | mail@sffringe.org |
| Web: | http://www.sffringe.org |
Thursday, June 23, 2011
History of Teacher Ed
Reflections on the History of Teacher Education
By Jeffrey Mirel
The long-standing divide between education school faculty members and their liberal arts colleagues has hindered teacher education in America. Instead of continuing to debate the relative merits of pedagogy versus content, professors on both sides should realize that prospective teachers need to know not only their subject matter, but also how to teach it so students will understand.
Read the article . . .
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