Recently Read - Mothering For Schooling

Griffith, Alison I. and Dorothy E. Smith. Mothering For School. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2005.

This was more of a skim than a read. The authors focus on the relationship between mothers and their children's schooling. The results are in some ways obvious, but studies like this are needed to show that intuition about this issue can be quantified.

What they found, is that middle-class mothers, particularly those who don't work outside of the home, contribute unpaid work towards their children's schooling and school that allows teachers more time to focus on curricular issues during class time. This unpaid labor creates inequities between schools/education. Teachers don't need to spend time (or as much time) working with children on non-curricular tasks(behavior, how to be a student, etc.) in these schools. There is more time for focused academic work.

On the other hand, working class mothers (who, for the most part, worked full time) weren't able to participate in their children's education/school in this same way. Their children's teachers had to perform the work the middle-class women performed in the other schools. As a result, they spend less time of curriculum and academics were watered down b/c of these extra duties.

Again, it all makes sense. I really don't have more to say than this was one more depressing book contributing to my academic knowledge.

Congratulations!

Dorothea's coming back to UW to work with the UW (state-wide) system's institutional repository. I've already warned her that I will probably try to get her to the English Department for a talk. UW is very lucky!

The End of Week One

Wow! It has been a busy week. Not only is it the first week of classes, but we also have job candidates here for the comp/rhet position.

My class was very vocal today, which is somewhat rare the first week of the semester. They had been fairly quiet Wednesday, so this was somewhat shocking. Granted, they went a little off topic, but I decided that I would let them since they were so engaged with what they were talking about. I can keep them more on track later (and they really weren't that far off - they were in the same state). Getting them to talk this much, this emphatically, this early in the semester was worth it!

I think that the silence on Wednesday came about b/c I gave them a somewhat difficult reading. They read the first chapter of Morris Young's Re/Visions, which covers the nature of the genre of literacy narratives, and the political/cultural/social spaces and locations they inhabit. When I reread it before class, I realized that it was more difficult than I had remembered. Having said that, we did work through the framework of his argument (well, I did a lot of the talking during that session) and some students applied some of Young's analysis to the literacy narratives that we read for class today. It worked out. But I wonder what would have happened if I gave it to them after they read the literacy narratives.

First Day of Class

I met with my Intermediate Composition course for the first time today. I radically changed my syllabus this semester, so I'm a little nervous. In the past I focused on rhetorical methods of inquiry and writing in different genres from research. Students seem to love this course, but I was getting a little bored.

This semester, my course is titled: Textual Production & Consumption: Exploring the Cultural Locations of Writing and Reading. As I've designed it, the course is a cross between comp-rhet and print cultures. Well, maybe not a cross - maybe it meets at the place where these areas intersect. We start with a critical look at literacy narratives, reading the first chapter of Morris Young's Minor Re/Visions, a chapter from Rose's Lives on the Boundary, and Linda Brodkey's "Writing on the Bias". We then move on to a look at politics and power, reading a chapter from Manguel's The History of Reading, the first chapter of Glenn's Unspoken, and a chapter from Mignolo's The Darker Side of the Renaissance. We then move to a section on authorship and audience, reading some Howard, Ong, Woodmansee, and Ede & Lunsford. From there we move to a discussion of the places and spaces of writing and reading, with texts from Manguel, Van Slyck (one of my favorite articles - "The Lady and the Library Loafer"), and Reynolds. We conclude with technologies of reading and writing.

Really, none of this is comprehensive - it is really a survey, of sorts.

We are writing a literacy narrative, a rhetorical analysis, a collaborative ethnographic study of places/spaces of writing & reading, and finally the good 'ol argumentative research paper (they can write about anything related to writing, reading, rhetoric, etc.) .

I'm not sure if this is what they were expecting out of an intermediate composition course, but it seemed like studying something about writing, print, and reading would be a good way to make this a comp/rhet course rather than a generic, non-comp topic-driven writing course that so many of these sorts of courses can become. I feel the same way about FYC courses, for that matter.

Go Colts!!!

Seriously...I was pacing during the game. Very very nervous was I!

And how awesome is it that we have a Midwestern Super Bowl!

Need Money?

As I perused the student jobs site looking for library positions on or off campus, I noticed an advt. for egg donors (in the non-UW part of the list). First time donors can make at least $5500 and return donors earn at least $7000. The advt lists these at the starting pay rate, so I assume if you have desirable genetic whatevers that the rate increases.

No, I'm not considering this. Although I find it a little troubling that in about one year I will be outside of the desired age range. But wow! I can see why (financially) this would be a tempting option.

Credit Card Offers

My latest irrelevent project involves tracking how many credit card offers I receive each month this year. Like everyone else, I get a ridiculous number of these in the mail. Why anyone would want to offer credit to someone making TA wages is beyond me. So far, January's count is 6.

Winter Finally Arrives...

...and it really isn't a good time. I stayed at my parents' later than I should have, but I thought I should be around for my mom's birthday (first time in about 5 years). I planned to drive back on Monday, but now my route is expected to be encased in snow and ice. Hopefully, I can drive back Tuesday so that I can attend a meeting on Wednesday, but I'm a little concerned after seeing the weather forecast. This probably is not a good way to start the semester.

Oh well, I guess I'll spend tomorrow reading and occassionally staring out the window at the expected snow. Actually, now that I've written it, this sounds pretty good! Maybe better if I add some hot chocolate.

Why? What's up with ESPN

The IU-Purdue game [major rivalry for those of you who don't know] is happening right now. Unfortunately, very few people in Indiana can watch it. ESPN is only broadcasting it on ESPNU, a station that most people, even those with cable and/or satellite service don't get unless they subscribe to it. At the beginning of the radio broadcast, the situation was announced at Assembly Hall and the crowd booed ESPN. Really, preventing the majority of the state from watching two rivals play an important game is absolutely ridiculous.

NOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

I'm still at my parents' house, which is fine since the semester doesn't start until the 22nd. I bring work with me, and I can access enough resources over the Internet to keep me busy.

BUT...

My parents' modem died today. I am currently at my dad's office accessing email, blogger, and other essentials. The new modem won't arrive for two days! (and no, the kind of modem they wanted wasn't available within a 100 mile radius).

This might just kill me. I need access, and not just for work. I'm a news junkie and their three newspapers a day and satellite TV aren't going to be sufficient, I'm afraid. And yes, I am whining.

Movie Time - The Pursuit of Happyness

It was a banner day - this afternoon I went to the movie theater for the first time since May 2002. Seriously! My mom, sister, and I went to see The Pursuit of Happyness. Not bad, definitely not as schmaltzy as the movies my mom typically chooses (she's a social worker who sees enough of the down sides of life at work, so all movies must ultimately have an uplifting moment or happy ending). I'm normally pretty cynical, but I was ok with this movie. The film wasn't afraid to show the main characters struggle to get into homeless shelters at night, the long lines of homeless people in the city, and the thin line between struggling to make it and complete collapse.

I'm not going to talk more about the movie itself, rather, I'm more interested in what happened at dinner afterwards. My sister asked our mom why someone in the position of the lead character wouldn't have gone to social services for some assistance. Our mom told her (and I'm not sure why she didn't know this) that people need to have a stable address - if not permanent address - to receive most forms of federal and state aid.

When I think about this, I think about how many people live outside of our so-called social 'safety net'. And, about how many people out there don't realize the limits of available aid, the definitive vicious circle. I don't know where I'm going with all of this. Maybe I'll stop babbling now and come back to this if I have anything more coherent to say.

Dewey Decimal System and Beauty/ies

I'll begin this post by admitting that I am watching Beauty and the Geek. The first challenge for the Beauties involved finding three books in a library using Dewey Decimal Classification. One of the Beauties was in tears, unable to find her books. I wonder if she wasn't exposed to libraries as a child or if any lessons passed right through her brain. I really don't have much of a point yet - I might later. For right now, I just find it curious and sad.

Accountability

I procrastinate. I always have and probably always will. Part of it is my add - I'm very easily distracted and I have trouble sitting still, even with the benefits of pharmaceutical aids. As you might imagine, this makes grad school and the dissertation process difficult for me. So, I've decided that I need to find a way to be more accountable to myself and my work.

Here's the plan: I'm keeping a work log, just like the one I kept for my practicum last spring. The spread sheet is set up. Starting today, I am tracking what I do, how much time I spend doing it, how much time I work each day, as well as the total number of hours I spend working on the diss. I wish I had done this from the beginning - It would have been fascinating to see the total number of hours working on the dissertation. Oh well, at least the writing stage (and a good chunk of the research stage) will be accounted for.

Tasks completed today:

1. I organized the mass of scanned documents that I emailed to myself before I left for Indiana. This actually took about an hour since I had 35 documents, each with the name that the machine assigned to it.
   
2. I started to map out the database I am constructing for my research. I'm using Access, primarily because I already have it and I don't want to buy more software. If it hadn't come with my software bundle, I would have purchased FileMaker Pro, a much better and user-friendly program. Because my research is mostly historical, I don't think I need to use something like Atlas.ti or other qualitative analysis software. At the same time, I need to be able to keep track of a lot of people, libraries, library programs, journals, organization information, etc. So, I'm making my own database. The only hard part is trying to think of as many values/categories that I need or might use at this early stage. It is much more difficult to make changes later.
   

Back to work!