Dear Dr. Taylor,                                                                        July7, 2010

I was lucky to be a part of the Chippewa River Writing Project this summer and thank you for your support of the program.  Over the five weeks of the summer institute I made dramatic leaps in my understanding of teaching writing, have tweaked my teaching philosophy, and have grown as an individual and professional.  This project is beneficial in so many ways.  I hope it continues to be part of CMU and hope more Graduate Teaching Assistants can earn a position in the institute.  It would benefit them, and in many ways I think it would benefit CMU’s composition program.

One resource participants received was the book Because Writing Matters, written through National Writing Project consultants and Carl Nagin.  This book helped me to understand some fundamental approaches instructors take toward k-16 writing instruction.  Although I remember what my teachers did that worked for me or my peers, I have little to go on in the negotiation between one way of teaching versus another.  This book gave me the history of writing instruction from teacher perspective and brought up some valid points.  My research project also put current teaching philosophies in the spotlight, and I would like to bring to your attention today my research and new understanding of critical inquiry using multimodal approaches and assignments.

CMU’s English Department instructors have done well to try to incorporate more manageable technological systems into their classrooms, a difficult feat at times when labs and resources are scarce.  This is a positive approach to teaching writing because as new generations of students approach the university to get basics, they are bringing a greater understanding of many technologies their instructors have not even been exposed to yet.  From the book, Teaching the New Writing, my fear of these new technologies was squelched.  The authors of this book describe how this increase in technological reliance is bringing critical inquiry into more classrooms than ever before.  New technologies force teachers to become students as well, and this is something we should embrace, not fear.

Students are able to show us they are literate in more ways than just reading and writing, and this is very beneficial, because in the world we live in, they must be literate regarding propaganda coming at them in multiple directions through media. In my research for the CRWP, I explored why critical inquiry is so important in the classroom, beyond helping students to think academically.  In Because Writing Matters, Nagin makes the statement that “writing is a ‘threshold skill’ for both employment and promotion” (17).  This means that writing is important even for the students going straight into the work force, and prompted me to question my established theory that students needed to critically question subjects in order to be prepared to approach specific college subject academically.  I even considered writing to my hometown high school administrative board and suggesting options for college preparatory courses.  What I realize through my research from extremely helpful book titled Literacy Tools in the Classroom, is that critical inquiry is the way students find identities, make their personal spaces secure, and where they find agency to make any sort of change in the status quo.  All students, both college bound and not, college graduates and college dropouts, as well as all teachers, those freshly stepping into a position and those who have been practicing for 30 years, need to be critical questioners.

I have come to believe that “We would do well to view all students as global intellectuals” (Lit Tools 8). Originally, I assumed it would be college students, in their  personal disciplines, who made those kinds of changes in the status quo discussed, but the more I think about democracy, how it is supposed to function, and what happens as a result of citizens not taking their job as citizens seriously, the more I realize it is every educated individual who will make these differences.  This may sound naïve, and I admit I am a bit naïve.  I have little teaching experience and no formal teaching education.  These naïve ideas, however, have changed through my participation in the NWP and my exposure to intense discovery through writing.  Every student has access to (and is bombarded with) technology.  Thus, technology is one area we can reach perhaps all students in an effort to get them critically questioning.

One way I plan to try to reach students is through the English 101 assignment of the literacy autobiography.  You already know the assignment well.  Sometimes students struggle in describing how they have become literate because they feel it is confined to only understanding canonical texts, or texts alone.  Even though they broaden their understanding of what literacy means, students still struggle getting at the heart of it.  Gerald Graff describes in “Hidden Intellectualism” how students should be allowed to write on topics which personally affect them.  Adding onto his ideas, my research for NWP has convinced me that students more clearly articulate how they have learned if they are allowed to approach subject which are important to them through multimodal facets.  These could be digital stories, digital diaries, podcasts, or just about anything technologically advanced.  I hope to add an option for students to do a digital literacy autobiography in place of their traditional literacy autobiography if they choose.  Here is my rationale.

Students will still be required to do all the steps of the writing process including brainstorming, researching, drafting, revising, and editing.  These steps, however, go above and beyond what we are asking of students when they incorporate audio, actually hearing what they’ve written, or video, where they actively engage in rhetorical choices to convince their audience.  They must choose an audience, have a purpose, and keep focused as well.  It is clear through my research that students are more engaged and bring more effort with them to multimodal projects.  This sounds easy, but  there are three problems I face and other instructors may face which my research has helped me get around.

One problem I have already addressed and that is when the instructor does not have the full range of comprehension regarding the technology.  This often makes instructors uncomfortable.  I know I felt uncomfortable trying them on for size at CRWP, but in a problem-posing environment, the students have the opportunity to step up and show the instructor a thing or two.  We may do well to learn from our students.  Another problem is that I did not schedule any of my classes in a computer laboratory.  This means that I cannot guarantee all students have access to the technology I would be asking them to use if I required the digital story instead of offered it.  I would not be able to teach them how to use the technology.  On the other hand, it is clear that students have access to these technologies in dorm rooms, and every student I have had in my courses at CMU has had access.  Therefore, this is not necessarily a problem at all.  It may be good that they are asked to use the technology they have available because then they are looking to something they may realistically use to critically assess.  The last problem is regarding assessment.  It may sound difficult to judge on multimodal digital story over another, when both are creative products.  As I stated earlier, however, students must go through the actual writing process as they create these digital literacy autobiographies as well.  Therefore, I would only grade their work based on the same standards I would ask from traditional assignments. The creative ones will just be easier and more fun to watch.

This is the only major technological change I intend to make to my classes this year, but there are many other tweaks I will be making along the way thanks to my participation in the National Writing Project.  From eliminating on-the-spot “cold reading” to asking students to think more about how they can make a real difference with their bibliographic essay topics, I am going to approach my next semester as a composition instructor at CMU as an instructor who cares about both the academic writing and the lives and futures of her students.  I think it would benefit every instructor on the staff of the CMU English Department to have a copy of texts I was exposed to through NWP.  I also hope that CMU continues to support CRWP and that others have the opportunity for similar experiences, growth, and clarity as I did.

Thank you again for all of your support.

Sincerely,

Jodi Lea Mata, CMU GTA and NWP Consultant