10.30.09
Discourse Communities, or Drama on the Bus
Having just sat through a lecture on rhetoric theory and discourse communities, I got a first-hand immersion in at least 3 different discourse communities bumping up against each other on the 72 bus from the U district to downtown yesterday.
U-District, 3:45 pm
The bus is full, packed tighter than usual. I move in line further and further toward the back of the bus, where a pack of hispanic teen-aged girls is giggling maniacally. Loud sighs from riders around me signal their frustration with the girls’ noise level. They go on, oblivious or maybe defiant. I stand with one hand on the rail, keeping my balance, keeping my eyes on the city streaming past the window.
A young black man to my left suddenly shouts at them to shut up and they respond with racial taunts. The man lets everyone know that he’s a pimp from Vegas who’s done time and he won’t put up with this s—.
Ahead a few feet, a young white man with long hair pulled into a ponytail turns around and identifies himself as a Rastafarian from Tacoma. A few muffled laughs, a guffaw, some disparaging snorting rises from the riders around him. He says he knows when it’s time to chill out. “Settle down, little brother,” he tells the black man.
The pimp yells, “I’m not your m—f—ing brother. I’m black! You’re white, man.”
The Rastafarian smiles and says, “Yeah, but I’m also half Sasquatch. You learn anything in prison, little brother? Like how to modulate your voice in public. You need to mod-u-late your voice, man.”
“I’m a g-damned n—! I ain’t gonna lower my f—ing voice. I’m a snap some necks on this f—ing bus and not give a f—. That’s what I’ll do.”
The girls in the back of the bus start in again on their sing-song chant about charcoal. The black man roars for them to shut up and I move a step away from him, careful to be casual. I’m an accidental player on this stage with no desire for spoken lines.
The white Rastaman reaches in his jacket pocket and pulls out a gun.
“This is a Captain Hook squirt gun,” he says as the bus erupts with tension into small screams and roaring laughter. He lectures the pimp on how he only uses a water gun, how he doesn’t kill. He’s still going strong when the black man throws up his hands, says he’s had enough, and steps off the bus at Convention Place Center. The Rasta exits also. The bus driver, miles away at the front of the bus, drives on.
10.20.09
Transferrable skills
I read an interesting paper today in preparation for one of my classes: Gail Stygall’s “Resisting Privilege: Basic Writing and Foucault’s Author Function.”
She notes that 90% of teachers’ comments on basic writing is negative. You can just see the red angry circles, slashes, corrections, etc. on the kind of papers Stygall describes, and she brings to light an ironic truth: the students that need the most support get the most censure.
So it goes with parenting and my dear first-born. I realized something tonight after a particularly trying interaction: while my instinct is to correct and censure and scold, she needs me to praise her efforts and intentions and look for opportunities to praise. Turns out that being a student and being a parent are recursive roles.
10.18.09
A place to grade papers
Yesterday I practiced grading some papers; that is, I read through essays high school students had written and scored them according to the 6 + 1 traits. This system attempts to make the process more uniform and less subjective than it has traditionally been, and I found it a natural and easy way to make my way through the papers. I’ll find out on Tuesday what the papers actually earned (the essays were from standardized test prompts), and we’ll see if I’m a cranky ogre in need of reform or an old softie inclined to go easy.
Because this was the first time I have actually sat down to grade student essays, I wanted to establish a habit of being completely present for the reading and scoring. I think working from home can be very convenient and constructive for some projects, but for grading and commenting on papers, I want to be away from homespace. I went to the library and set up in a carrell, which worked perfectly for my purposes. I read the papers all in one go, with no distractions, which is one way I think teachers can try to control for the subjectivity inherent in scoring essays.
