Finding the "Write" Way

I would like to start this off by thanking my lord and savior, Laura Greenfield, for blessing me with the framework to analyze writing centers in a radical way. Seriously though, her work in The Politics of Contemporary Writing Centers and Radical Writing Center Practices has been influential to me and I plan to use that knowledge to discuss two literacy centers. The first literacy center I will discuss is the Community Literacy Centers in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and the Flanner Community Writing Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. My goal with this blog is to challenge and praise the politics of the two writing centers mentioned before. Upon your, hopefully easy read of this article, you will at least have something intelligent to say about writing centers in your next Zoom hangout with all of your friends.

Community Literacy Centers

            The Community Center of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma or simply just CLC appears to have radical politics in its foundation, but there is something about their “about us” statement on their website along with some student testimonials that just makes my spider-sense go off. Here is the “about us” statement: “The founding members of CLC recognized the correlation between illiteracy and many of the social problems in our community; crime, poverty, health issues, and ignorance.” I take issue with this statement because it villainizes individuals who do not read or write at a certain level. And honestly it seems like many of their students are people who did not grow up speaking English, so now the statement says that non-native English speakers are a problem even though they technically are literate in another language. Which we all know Black and Brown people tend to suffer the most in society due to our unnecessary attachment and praise for standardized English language.

            I don’t think I am being nitpicky or dramatic either because we do live in this Western society where we tend to think non-native English speakers from other countries, especially the Black and Brown people, are not intelligent or problematic because they don’t have mastery over English. I would say the social problems they speak of are more associated with lack of access to resources such as: mental health care, jobs, quality education, and etc. Just because someone probably can’t read Beowulf and write a five-page response to it about how Beowulf is nothing but patriarchal propaganda, doesn’t mean they are going to go rob a bank instead. I mean hell, there are plenty of humans working in the United States government who can read and write quite splendidly. In fact, they read and write so well that they continuously contribute to crime in their own privileged ways. Eve Ewing, the author of Ghosts in the Schoolyard, successfully identifies the ways in which members of impoverished communities suffer in a myriad of ways due to school closures. Ewing also informs us of how these literate school superintendents and other individuals who oversee public school education make conscious decisions to further aid in the destruction of these same communities. Here’s a great conversation featuring Eve Ewing as she discusses these key points that appear in her book. Oh yes, there is no greater feeling than waking up to systemic and systematic racism that is perpetuated by the nice people that can read and write so well. Here is the link to look at the “about us” statement for yourself and maybe you might think something different of it. Maybe I am the one who can’t read.

https://www.communityliteracy.com/about-us

Testimonials

            The CLC has testimonials posted on the website of course to persuade future students into joining. I watched four videos that included the experiences of women including Zahra and Crystal. After finishing the testimonial videos, I do not see how these women are all of sudden equipped to go solve social issues upon completing the program. I’m seriously glad these women are more confident in their reading and writing skills. The videos only show how their experience with the literacy center has helped them read to their kids at home. Which is fine, but the testimonials just don’t match up with the “about us” statement of the CLC. I know the testimonials don’t show us every little detail of what is taught at the writing center, but I wish I could see more.

I mean were they reading material about Marxist theory or womanism? Were they reading books about the complexities of environmental racism? I could go on a lot further with topics, but I am sure you get the idea. I consider the topics I just previously mentioned to be useful in combating social problems because the CLC is primarily comprised of women of color and you really cannot truly solve or even navigate through social issues if you don’t have the knowledge. If the CLC claims to care so much about social problems, then they should make some sort of attempt to introduce the relevant social issues to the students. And I don’t think any topic is too complex to read or write about, they have instructors for a reason. It could just be me being dramatic about the situation. I am waiting for dinner to be ready, so maybe my hunger is making me think irrationally. Check out some of the testimonials for yourself so you can get an idea of what I am talking about.

https://www.communityliteracy.com/testimonials

Flanner Community Writing Center

            During my aspiring Sherlock Holmes type of investigation of literacy centers, I finally found a place worthy of praise. Even Laura Greenfield would jump for joy after reading about this writing center. I discovered the Flanner Community Writing Center housed by Marian University located in my hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana. I know you are wondering what my secret to eloquent writing is and yes, it’s because I am from Indianapolis. I was so excited to read about this writing center and I seriously want to visit it when I visit Indianapolis again. I would say this writing center truly provides the students with an experience that truly leads to liberation of the mind and construction of a more just society. The mission statement of the Flanner Community Writing Center is “the Marian University Writing Center provides a framework for intellectual growth, critical inquiry, and social imagination through the use of rhetorical investigation and collaborative learning practices”. Did you notice how they didn’t come anywhere close to villainizing people with low literacy skills by blaming social issues on them?

            I especially appreciate its transparency concerning both student tutors and the individuals seeking tutoring. You can tell this writing center is intended to be a truly transformative experience for everyone involved and it’s open to all Indianapolis residents free of charge. This is the type of writing center that will not just help people assimilate but change their thinking entirely. I could see someone coming into this writing center seeking help with writing a paper about the importance of police and then switching that focus of the paper to talking about the importance of defunding the police. Because trust me, the communities in Indianapolis could greatly benefit from some of those funds. I also read that both tutors and instructors are always encouraged to be involved in the community. I find that to be critical when you truly wish to be able to fully support the people you serve, there has to be some kind of familiarity and understanding. I will place a link right below so you can browse the information, it really is well thought out I think.

https://www.marian.edu/college-of-arts-and-sciences/co-curricular-programs/writing-center/about

Nigh Limitless Possibilities of Writing

            I think one of my favorite things about this writing center is the fact that it has such a broad spectrum of the type of writing individuals could seek help with. I really hope people, especially teenagers who live in the disadvantaged areas of the city utilize the center as much as possible. I mean how cool would it be for a teenager who has an amazing idea for a comic book or something else creative in nature and go to this center to fully unlock that potential. I think this will be a great way for these populations to figure out that they could also pursue a career in some kind of writing field. Whether it’s copywriting, education, law, poetry, or screenwriting; maybe these humans who have used this center for writing can carry the torch of true social progression and critical thought with them. Also, I could see the center helping students of marginalized communities become advocates for themselves in their academic school papers by encouraging them to speak radically about their experiences and place in society. I think the center would equip them with the language or critical thinking that they might not get in their regular classrooms.  

            Well gang, we’ve made it to the end. I hope it didn’t seem like an attack against the CLC. The radical approach of the Flanner Community Writing Center should honestly be adopted into all human spaces. No place is and may never be perfect, but I hope you can clearly see the power of leading with radical love and compassion. If it seems like I tried to discredit or demean the CLC in Oklahoma City, I am not. I just wanted to challenge it as an institution, but I think it is useful to the community it serves to some degree. There are many factors that limit the effectiveness of literacy centers including lack of funding and staff. I don’t think there is a right or wrong type of literacy/writing center, but I do think a more radical approach such as the Flanner Community Writing Center is more useful for human development and social progression because it allows space for limitless possibilities. It’s a truly dynamic experience for the tutors, instructors, and the tutees with the way it challenges everyone/everything involved. 

Write Like Your Life Depends On It

For the first time with any of my blog articles, I don’t plan on yelling at you, talking to you like I am a disappointed parent, or distracting you with humor/sarcasm so you can make it through my writing. This is some much needed girl talk, guy talk, or they talk with my fellow writers. When is the last time you wrote something radical? Of course, I mean radical as in something that defies convention and challenges the status quo. Radical writing is one of the most powerful tools that marginalized people can use. I recently just finished reading a book titled What Truth Sounds Like written by Michael Eric Dyson. The book highlighted many Black or African American radical writers such as James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry who were and are important to social revolution here in the United States. As writers, I think it is our responsibility to write radically. Don’t get me wrong, reading your thoughts about the significance of Independence Day in the United States is interesting, but it would be nice if you also wrote about how freedom did not benefit everyone the same way in America and then write about what would real freedom would look like. Regardless of what space you exist in as a writer including teaching, screenwriting, policymaking, or any of the various writing spaces, radical writing can make a positive difference in the world.

As a Black, queer person living on stolen land built by humans who look just like me, I think my writing naturally comes off as radical at times as a survival tactic. For example, I don’t have the luxury of writing about the education system without also including the experiences of Black people or even poor people in this country. I have read articles in class that offer suggestions to assist students in writing, but there is rarely evidence of how the research benefits students with disabilities or other students who might have barriers to learning. I would like to think radical writing encompasses all experiences or at least makes an attempt at doing so.

Coming up in high school and sometimes even in college, I really didn’t feel like I was encouraged to write radically. I was never given a chance to write about the Stonewall riots or the race massacre in Tulsa but thank goodness I got to write about Macbeth because every modern teenager can relate to that. How can a teacher even say they care about their students when they don’t even give their students space to write radically about the world they live in? It’s downright preposterous to even think about a teacher asking Black and Indigenous students to give written responses to whitewashed history of slavery in this country. Even as I got older as a student, I think I was still hesitant to write about race, sexuality, gender, and social issues in a radical way because I was afraid of teacher backlash. I know especially in high school, the teachers don’t have much control over what is read in the classroom, but they need to at least prompt students to respond to the conventional texts radically.

People who write in film, television, gaming, and etc. also need to be more radical in the way they tell stories. Writers are still creating stories that center white people or whiteness in general instead of incorporating other experiences that people have. Most recently, I would say the most radically written television series to be released is HBO’s Watchmen with the way it depicts sexuality, law enforcement, race, and gender. For example, the show portrayed the Tulsa race massacre in a raw way instead of some watered-down version that would probably be more palatable to most white viewers. When people see content like Watchmen it will force people to deeply self-reflect about the world we live in and hopefully move towards radical change. More radical writing in media would also include more diverse types of people in the writing rooms to help tell stories authentically.

We need more radical policy writers as well if we are truly going to take care of our fellow humankind because “all lives matter” right? So why don’t our policies reflect that same sentiment? Just recently the Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair Act was passed in California stating that Black people could not be discriminated against for the style or texture of their hair. It’s sad that we even need to have policy for Black people to just wake up and wear the hair that grows out of their head like everyone else. That is just the start of radical writing in policy making because there are so many other groups who need support including houseless populations, trans people, individuals existing within the prison system, and the list unfortunately goes on.

Someone’s reading what you have to say (just like you had to unfortunately drag yourself through this article), so show your fellow human some love and use your writing to move us all forward because none of us are in this alone. No, you don’t always have to write radically because that would just be draining and you’re not a sewer, right? That’s right, you’re a writing radical, now go push the envelope like you work for the post office!

You're an Awesome Educator, but You're Still the Problem Unfortunately

Peer review is failing in your classroom and take a wild a guess at who is to blame for it. No, it is not the students and their lack of effort. You’re most likely to blame. Yes, you with the fancy degree and cool letters behind your name. Sometimes you have to do some self-reflection and perhaps think of what you might be doing wrong when conducting peer review. I think many teachers find it easier to blame the students rather than blaming themselves. Students deserve instructors who are willing to improve their teaching methods. Reading Lynne Belcher’s A Failure of the Process Paradigm as Viewed from the Trenches and Charlotte Brammer and Mary Rees’ Peer Review from the Student’s Perspective helped me gain some much-needed insight concerning peer review. The survey results include thoughts of peer review from the student’s and instructor’s viewpoint. After reading the articles with my pretty eyes passed down to me from Queen Nefertiti, I suggested three major areas that may be preventing you from having the successful peer review you always dreamed of. If it feels like I am yelling at you, I am, because clearly no one yelled at you at any of your professional development days.

1.   You are not being patient enough during the process

 Your students are not going to be experts at peer review on their first day or first week, just like you were not the god of pedagogy on your first day of teaching. There will be ups, downs, right turns, and many left turns. Okay, sorry, I think I got whiplash from reading that last sentence. An instructor from A Failure of the Process Paradigm as Viewed from the Trenches said, "I've never been completely satisfied with the way it's gone, and students have consistently indicated on course evaluations that they are frustrated with it”. Of course, you may never be completely satisfied with every aspect of your student’s peer review, but maybe try to focus on smaller goals that you would love to see them excel at. There has to be something they do in peer review really well, now build from there and the rest will follow. Try to center peer review around some literature that the students find engaging. The students may rather engage with material that is more current or something more representative of various identities. Have you tried asking your students what they need from you to make them enjoy peer review? They do have intelligence, it is okay to speak to them. Don’t just give up, your life depends on it. Well maybe not your life, probably just your tenure. So yea, your life.

2.   You are not clear in your objectives for the students

 By the time students enter college, they have probably been introduced to all sorts of peer review terminology. Be clear in your instructions and the expectations of the students during their peer review process. By the time students frantically wander into college, they have probably been introduced to peer review terms that range from peer edit to peer evaluation. Your students don’t know if they should just check for grammar and punctuation or do a more reflective analysis. According to the survey in Peer Review from the Student’s Perspective, 77.3 percent of instructors spend less than half of the class on preparing students for peer review. Peer review is not some kind of skill you are born with, you need to teach it like it is a new theory being introduced in the class so students have a clear understanding. There is no way you are effectively teaching peer review in half of a class period. Another statistic that boggles my mind is that 40.9 percent of instructors give handouts to students to teach peer review. With having students with multiple types of learning styles, you have to do more than that. Peer review isn’t just like some recipe for chocolate chip cookies where the ingredients and directions are enough to get a product. You need to do that thing you were hired to do and teach.

3.   You don’t empower your students enough for them to be confident in themselves

 I know one of my biggest problems in undergrad was me not being confident in my peers or myself. I assumed that because I am not the instructor that I didn’t have anything meaningful to contribute to peer review. My professors did not explicitly tell me that peer review was far more than just being right or wrong. Not every comment on the peer review papers has to be PhD dissertation level critique. Peer review is not reserved for just the privileged or elite, you know, like being a Colts fan. I read in Charlotte Brammer and Mary Rees’ Peer Review from the Student’s Perspective, that almost half of the students feel confident in their ability to review papers occasionally or seldomly. I remember so many times in undergrad where I was frustrated with peer review because I was trying to “fix” my peer’s paper but didn’t know what to say because I felt underqualified. I’m sure lying politicians can relate. Your students are intelligent, let them reflect on peer review assignments in a genuine way. If they don’t reach the marks you have set then simply guide them to where you want them to be, but always reaffirm their intellectual prowess along the way.

            Hopefully I have given you some good advice or encouragement so you can start having successful peer review in the classroom. If any of this made you feel uncomfortable, that’s great, now channel that energy into your peer review. If you feel like you do perform the three major points well, then keep up the good work. Now hurry up and get to class so you can show your students what you learned from my amazing scripture that I allowed to bless your human eyes. Take from this article what is most useful to you and if none or some of this doesn’t apply to you, then just let it go Elsa.  

Writing? I've Never Heard of Her, Does She Go to This School?

After reading the Douglas Hesse blog entry titled, Writing Programs as Squanto, Welcoming the Tall Ships of Teaching Reform, I am left surprised by just how little the academic community cares about writing courses in college. Well the title of the article certainly caught my attention because of the mentioning of Squanto. It turns out this blog post is not a fictional retelling of how Squanto actually defeated the Europeans that came to America and colonized the Europeans as a punishment for trying to sneakily occupy space that is not theirs. The title of the blog post also frightened me a little because normally the mentioning of Indigenous history in American context gets misinterpreted to put it lightly.

Hesse writes, “at several prestigious universities either there is no freshman writing requirement or there is no extensive development program for those assigned to teach in it” and I immediately began to think about an article written by The National Commission on Writing. The article written by the National Commission on Writing is titled, The Neglected “R”, and one of the points in the article was that just because someone is deemed to be an intellectual does not necessarily mean they have the ability to write well. A student may be a computer science prodigy, but that student may not even be able to articulate their brilliant ideas about computer science in the form of thorough writing. Which makes me question the actual quality of education these post-secondary institutions provide because what is the point of molding all of the alleged gifted students if they cannot clearly communicate to their peers and the rest of the world with their writing?

After I kept reading further along in the blog spot, just like I hope you are doing with my blog post instead of falling asleep, I found a reason why colleges have stopped requiring freshman writing courses. Apparently, the colleges with no freshman writing courses are looked at as institutions of higher prestige than the rest. So, I guess for the sake of prestige a college is willing to let their precious biology students show up to their history classes writing papers that my ten-year-old niece could probably compose in her sleep. Ten-year-old children can be great writers I am sure, but I will bet all my money (which is not much) that they probably do not write at the level that a college professor college would expect from a university student.

Now that I am done exploiting my niece’s age for some smiles or maybe even some frowns, let’s discuss the humans who are actually teaching these writing classes. According to Hesse, the academic powers that be seem to believe that anyone can teach writing as long as they have some sort of minimal training from actual teachers of writing or writing center experts. Yes, I get it, everyone nowadays has a Facebook page where people you knew from high school write confidently about subjects such as race relations like they have a Master’s in American Studies. Everyone can write, but that does not mean one can write well or even teach the art of writing. I honestly do not even see the point of having writing courses if institutions are just going to do the bare minimum as far as teaching the subject. It seems like writing is only taught to just check it off on a list and not really have any intention behind it. So many powerful, renowned writers would be surely disappointed to know how writing in schools is being neglected. I bet James Baldwin is turning over in his grave right now and no not because there are grave robbers disturbing him.

I really just do not understand why people think so lowly of the art of writing. Writing is accessible to all who have the dexterity in their hands to perform it, but it does not mean it is not a highly specialized skill or practice. If institutions have strict requirements about who can teach biology, history, music, or psychology then writing should be regarded in the same way. This world was shaped by great writing and well-crafted writing is what keeps society moving forward in every way imaginable, so it is really disheartening to know academics do not take writing as serious as they should. Just imagine a society that without the great contributions to the study of feminism by writers such as bell hooks or Angela Davis. Writing is where a significant amount of our knowledge comes from whether it is in book or digital form. We then use that written knowledge from across all disciplines and genres to help guide us through the world we live in, just like Aladdin showed Jasmine.  

Journey Into The Possum Den

I know Daniel kept his cool in the lion’s den. But he probably would’ve lost his cool being surrounded by this particular strand of human I like to call, possum. A couple of weeks ago I went to a bar with two friends. I walked into this bar and noticed a young woman wearing pajama bottoms and Jordan shoes. At that very moment, I knew I stepped, tip toed, cartwheeled, and back flipped into some bullshit. Pajama bottoms and Jordan shoes huh? Out of all the Rainbows, Body Centrals, and the overwhelming amount of Marshalls stores in the world she could’ve shopped at and she chose to come outside breathing Mother Nature’s free air looking like a hood sleepover. You can’t get any more disrespectful than that. That’s why Mother Nature is always raining and doing all this ridiculous stuff. You all piss her off everyday! The bar smelled of 6-month-old weaves and peach cigarillos. There were two Go-go dancers and one of them was doing a wonderful job. The dancer on the right (the good dancer) danced like attended like a DeVry University or something similar to get a degree in dance. The other dancer on the left didn’t do too hot; she looked like she was dancing in a Kids Bop 5 video. And she had the NERVE to get a drink of water after she was done dancing like she really did something. Are you kidding me? She was up there doing the damn Macarena dance and thought she deserved a cup of water. Watching the two different dancers was like comparing night to day or like comparing Nordstrom to T.J. Maxx.

I have to admit, there were some beautifully ratchet folks at the bar that night I crushed on; the type that will give you moths in your stomach instead of butterflies when you look at them. I don’t know…moths just seem more appropriate for this setting. Anyway, I am not too sure, but I feel like a group of spiders own and manage this bar. Yes. A group of fucking arachnids, those evil little things that Satan picks from his armpits to send to Earth just to bother us. I’m almost certain they didn’t serve food in the bar, but if they did I bet they only served bologna and cheese sandwiches. Bologna and cheese sandwiches are fun, cheap rat snacks to eat when you’re still waiting on your Auntie to sell you some food stamps. Oh and they probably served sugar water in old pickle jars for dessert, but that’s none of my business. It was so dark and I couldn’t see people very well, but I’m also sure that most people’s hands in there were stained from eating Hot Cheetos (another hood delicacy that I happen to enjoy a lot).

Never fear, I made it out of the Possum Den to tell another ratchet tale.

Damon Dash at The Breakfast Club Power 105.1

          So…Jay Z’s former manager, Damon Dash, did an interview with Power 105.1 the Breakfast Club not too long ago. He literally came out of nowhere, like from the dead low key. Damon Dash wants to be Lazarus sooo bad. It must’ve taken ALL of Hogwarts plus the Power of Three to bring his ass back. Wait. Before I unleash the kraken, I just want to say that I do believe there was some good to come out of his interview. He sort of inspired men and women to want more out of a career. Damon Dash inspired LeNaySha and them to be more than just Waffle House employees and to start thinking about actually owning a Waffle House. And LeNaySha when you start owning your own Waffle House, don’t forget about me sis! Those damn waffles from the Waffle House only come second to an on time God! I really mean that too. Anyway. His raggedy ass will probably have these people out here quitting their day jobs. Can you imagine calling your manager at Taco Bell like “Good morning Wanita I decided to quit because I wanted to boss my life up and start on my new mixtape”? I wish my black ass WOULD.  He had all of the hoodpossums in the YouTube comments giving him the highest praises. You all can swim in the Damon Dash fuckwater if you want to, but I won’t. Don’t drown in it though because I will not save you.   

*Throughout the rest of this scripture, I will assign Damon Dash with feminine sounding variations of his name just for kicks*

            It’s funny how Damonica Dash said he doesn’t like to talk about other men, but he sure didn’t mind sharing his views on how other men should act or think. He went on and on, real men don’t do this, real men don’t do that. I have no idea what a real man is, but he does know. Damonya actually has an Instagram page, but said something about how real men don’t do social media.  And damn it he said, “pause” at least 500 times throughout the interview too. I will tell you what pause means (for all of you grown adults out there) because I know you have never heard it being said before until now. Pause is a word used by mainly teenagers who are not insecure in their sexuality to ensure no gay intent was meant after a seemingly gay word or phrase is said. I would bet my bottom dollar and last piece of caramel cake that Damon Dash and other men who speak and think just like him probably have hidden Jack’d accounts floating around somewhere. Well okay, he probably doesn't, but the way he spoke in the interview could lead someone to think otherwise…but that is a whole different subject. Basically, take Damina’s words with a granule of sugar and go about your business.

            Everyone just needs to stop telling other humans how to live, especially Damon. I only gave you all a brief run down of what happened. I posted the link below for you all to watch at your own risk.

Damon Dash Interview