Tag: processing notes

I’ve been working on this project for just over a month and I think I’m getting closer to a plan. It’s difficult though. I’ve taken a lot of notes in my green notebook (59 pages) and written several posts (19), so it feels like I should have something more to show for it.  I’m trying to block out that voice that keeps telling me that I should stop doodling and start writing. At some point, I should listen, but for now I need to remember that this process takes some time. I need to be patient. Ruminate.

Syllabus as Structure, take 2 or 3 or…?

I keep coming back to the idea of using a syllabus as the structure for this book project. This idea has taken many forms. Today’s version involves breaking up the bulk of the book into two parts (in addition to an introduction):

The Syllabus Sections, with undisciplined explanations, interventions, stories. Sections might include: course description, questions to pose and explore, goals (for course, for education in general), expectations/rules, teaching philosophy, methods/structure/format, a few words on blogging/social media, habits/practices/approaches, tips/strategies.

3 “actual” Syllabi that I’ve constructed for the book and that I may want to teach, to/with others, or to myself? These syllabi, which will involve a course description, assignments and course readings, will probably include: Staying in Trouble, Living Beside/s and Feminist Storytelling Online.

Eat Like an Owl

Last week, I encountered this great quotation:

Eat like an owl: take in everything and trust your innards to digest what’s useful and discard what’s not.

Peter Elbow

Yes! Being generous with your readings of others. Not instantly dismissing ideas or authors. I found this quotation in Elbow’s article, “The Believing Game: Methodological Believing.” In it, he argues for the importance of developing methods for believing in others’ ideas as opposed to instantly doubting and rejecting them. In my notes I wrote in bigger letters, GENEROSITY. I think being generous to other people and their ideas is crucial for learning, engaging and flourishing individually and collectively. I want to include generosity, along with capaciousness, curiosity and patience in my list of qualities of character that help foster transformative learning spaces and experiences.

My Holiday Notebooks

This morning I decided to review my notes in my green notebook. All 41 pages of them. I figured that it was time to assess my various musings and start working on more concrete plans for how to do this project. Because it seemed easier to write down my review notes somewhere else, I picked out another, smaller notebook for recording my review notes. This review notebook just happened to be red.

Playing with Format: a teaching portfolio?

In the midst of reading through the notes, I had a glimmer of an idea about how my current project, which is about my past, present, future life as a teacher, could serve as a companion to my first book project, which was about my past life as a student. In the project about my student life, I played with the idea of a student transcript. What if I played with the idea of a teaching portfolio in this second project about my teaching life? What would that look like?

Similar to my first project in which I didn’t “properly” mimic the format of a transcript, I’m not interested in strictly following the format of a standard teaching portfolio. Instead, I want to critically and creatively (and playfully) experiment with it. As I spend more time trying to figure out what that means, here are a few sources to consider:

• Sample Online Teaching Portfolio
• What is a Teaching Portfolio?
• The Teaching Portfolio, a handook

Teacher/Student/Parent…Person

Throughout this project, I’ve been struggling with my (sometimes competing) roles as a teacher, parent, student and person. How do these different roles/identities work together and/or against each other? Early this morning, I jotted down in my green notebook, “I can’t multi-task!” Far from seeing this statement as a declaration of failure, I see it as an opportunity to ruminate on my life as a parent who is a teacher who is a student who is always a person, but who has difficultly being all at once. How do I put these roles beside each other?  When I first wrote this paragraph, I only included teacher, student and parent, but I realized that I, and the others who see me inhabiting/performing these different roles, also struggle to remember that I am a person too.

Role Models

I’m continuing to think through the differences between role models, teachers, mentors and advisors. With that question in mind, I came across John Waters’ 2010 book, Role Models.  Will it be helpful? Does it matter…Waters is fun to read.

Since my last processing post on November 17th, I’ve been continuing to work on my new book project. I didn’t post here because I was stuck, trying to work through some anger I had with two online articles I was reading about professors and academic values. I filled up about 14 pages in my green notebook with my notes, but I devoted (wasted?) all of my energy on crafting a blog post for my Trouble blog, which I finally managed to complete yesterday: Beside/s: What’s the Point of a Professor?

Here’s one of my pages from the notebook. It includes my dissecting of a passage from one of the online articles, Keith M. Parsons’ Message to my Freshman Students:

I’m not done working with some of the questions that this article, and the others that I blogged about, raised for me and this writing project. Hopefully, my future processing/writing won’t get me as stuck as I was this past week.

Right before I got stuck thinking about what a professor is and attempting to move beyond the answer that I feared was the only one, an arrogant asshole, I found a book that I’m really excited to analyze for this project: Imaginary Syllabi.

As I began to skim through the book I got excited, especially after reading Jane Sprague’s description of the book’s purpose:

A book-length project of contributions by multiple authors that aims to collect writings which investigate, uncover, examine, complicate, question, provoke, and otherwise (essentially) challenge pedagogical strategies pursuant to the work of teaching writing and other disciplines. This book includes writings which dream up, concoct and explore utopian, fabulist, fantasy syllabi for potential imagined or real classroom endeavors. Educational projects undertaken and employed (deployed) in and outside of official as well as mongrel “schools.” Official spaces might harbor (or cultivate) the mongrel and vice versa (8).

Jane Sprague, ed.

Cool! Maybe I want to create some of my own un/imagined courses? Dream classes that I wouldn’t be able to teach within traditional academic spaces?

In addition to looking through Imaginary Syllabi, I also started reading Rebecca Solnit’s Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness. The varied (spacious) hodge-podge of non-fiction writing forms included in this book inspires me. I’m looking forward to reading/analyzing what Solnit has included and how/why.

After reading Lynda Barry’s Syllabus, I was inspired to be more creative in my writing notes. Here are two recent pages:

I’m working on a new book in which I attempt to take some of my academic research (on feminist/queer ethics) beyond the academy to a space beside and besides it. What does that look like? Not sure. I’m using my story blog to engage in the process of figuring out what to do and how to do it.

One thing that is haunting* (mostly productively) my process is how to resist the urge to make this book—which is loosely about character, virtue ethics, and troublemaking—a book of advice or a how-to manual, based on my research, writing and teaching. I’d like this book to be a helpful resource for others on “how to be,” but I’m trying to find a way to do that that isn’t about giving specific advice or prescriptions. I don’t want to tell anyone, especially my kids who are one of my primary audiences for this book, “This is how you should live.” I want to provide an example of one way that (mostly) works for me, and invite them to engage in the process of figuring out their own way. My constant refrain: “This is not a how-to manual, but an invitation to engage.” But, even as I deeply embrace this refrain, I wonder, is an invitation enough? If I’m not giving any advice, what am I offering?

*I use the word haunting deliberately here. My resistance to advice runs deep and requires more attention then I have time/space for in this post. I need to put digging deep into this resistance on my to-do list for this project. I know it relates to a stubborn refusal to be an expert and a reluctance to tell others, even my kids, what to do. I don’t see my resistance/refusal/reluctance as bad or wrong, just (sometimes) dangerous. 

Here’s one offering, a tentative draft of words that my best self (or selves?) lives by. These are ideals that I’ve created for myself and that I aim for, but never quite achieve.

Words That My Best Self Lives By

1. Don’t be an Asshole.
2. Avoid and Expose Bullshit.
3. Never Stop Giving a Fuck.
4. Don’t Be Too Afraid to Piss People Off.

I’ll have more to say about these ideals soon.