Reading/Listening Post Schedule Finalize (5-10 minutes)

The distribution is interesting! Let’s figure out how we can get at least two people writing for each date on the schedule. Part of this may be filled in by people who choose to do two extra posts in order to increase their grade. Let’s work that out now.

Here is a link to the sign-up schedule.

 

Review Changes to Grading Contract (2 minutes)

Let’s briefly go over the changes to the Grading Contract. The finalized Grading Contract can be found on Blackboard in “Syllabus and Grading Contract.”

There are really just two changes based on your feedback and both are on page 6:

-lesson/activity/handout will count for two grade units

-the “something else” option could be up to two grade units, but that will be a judgment call on a case by case basis.

 

Labor Assignments (10 minutes)

Labor Logs:

• fill them out right before you start working and right after you get done (the appropriate columns for each of these)
• split up assignments even if they occur during same block of time (e.g., if you work 10-12pm where you read annotation handout and watch linguistic facts video, you would still split this up into two separate entries)
• don’t forget to add duration. This can be easy to forget because it is something you do at end and can be easily overlooked. Duration is really important, as is engagement, because when we get a lot of labor data from filling in these logs we can compare averages for different tasks.
• Label work based on primary activity. For instance, even if some writing is involved in a task, it might be primarily writing (e.g., reading poem where you send me a brief message is more reading than writing).
• Make sure you record EVERYTHING. Having as much data as possible will make writing Midterm Reflection and Final Reflection much easier, as well as giving you more options for things to write about in your weekly Labor Journal entries.

Labor Posts

• As long as you are posting in the *middle* of your work session want you are having a pause or you deliberately stop for a break, you are good to go here. Do the minimum 25 words, talk about what you did + how are you are feeling about it. Do you see the difference here between the Labor Post and the Labor Journal Entry? Essentially: you want to stop in the *middle* of doing work when you notice a natural pause to comment on what is happening in moment and what you feel about it to get practice coping with stressors/distractions/focus/etc.
• Z’s Labor Post from Week 2 I think comes closest to the kind of thing I’m looking for here.

 

 

Labor Journal Entries

• Focus more on *how* you did work, environment you did work in, how you felt at various moments rather than *what* content of work was. Tell me what you did for context, but the real value is how it went for you, how you felt, where you worked, what you learned from doing work during that moment for future work you might do.
• Here again is the example of a good Labor Journal entry that I mentioned last week:
  • This week’s labor session consisted of completing the August 30 assignment, particularly annotating the “Immigrant Can’t Write Poetry” piece, composing a response on Discord and watching a Linguistics Facts of Life Habitus video. This session made me feel quite anxious as I did not expect the assignment to be so long. Yes, the tasks were simple, however it felt like it was difficult not to miss the details. The part of this assignment I was most curious about was annotating the poem. I had many unique thoughts about “Immigrant Can’t Write Poetry” which I am excited to express during our class discussion next week. Overall, the intensity of this labor session was a 3, it was somewhat challenging to focus on a list of tasks. Working in a library was definitely the key to making the session as productive as it was. For the next time and beyond, I would advise myself not to do work right after class, as I believe that was the main factor that contributed to poor concentration. Overtime I wish to learn how to make labor sessions for this class more productive and how to manage the various types of tasks that are assigned. This week, I realized that it is not as simple for me to manage different kinds of work in one session. It is more familiar to me to do one kind of work at a time, for example just focusing on reading and annotating or just watching a video.
  • Remember to read over questions to answer in Labor Journal instructions for the week. Thing will change, probably starting September 18. I will start to ask slightly different questions.

 

 

 

Some things I noticed in the second round of labor assignments:

-From Safwa, using peer writing to help think through you own work (e.g., reading through Labor Posts).

 

-From Kavya, Having some time in between labor sessions can be beneficial. Science behind this! Our brains store memory much better after a night’s sleep. Things will often make more sense to us the next day.

 

-A few this week (as well as last week) mentioned dealing with distractions. Abigail mentioned putting a “Do Not Disturb” setting on her phone. Someone else mentioned (maybe Ryan?) to put phone across room so they’d have to physically get up to get it.

 

-V-distracted by hunger. Definitely! Happens to me a lot. Best to just eat so you can focus, if possible. Good idea to plan out snacks and have them ready.

 

-Some people are being too hard on themselves! It is totally okay if things don’t always go exactly right. That is part of reason for Labor Log, so you can start to see how sometimes things go well and sometimes they don’t. We can’t be perfect all the time and that is okay. We can only make the best of things as best we can in any moment.

 

-Nicholas used his recorded moods in the Labor Log to dictate what he chose to write about. That is a cool thing to try if anyone wants to try it out. And you can choose positive emotion session one week and a more negative one another week, for instance. Could be interesting to see what you make of that.

 

-Alison mentioned how breaks are helpful. Definitely! Sometimes best to just walk away and come back. Also can be good to plan breaks in. Pomodoro method mentions that. We will talk more about distraction management techniques I think next week (maybe week after), which Pomodoro is one.

 

-Many also mentioned environment or time that may or may not work best for them. Definitely something to pay attention to (e.g., do you prefer quiet or noise? do you work better at morning or night?)

 

 

Abbreviated Language Activity from 9/2  (20-30 minutes)

**We might do this on September 23! Lots to navigate, schedule-wise.**

In the video I had you watch for Tuesday, August 31, I mentioned different “stances” people could take. There is:

• Rhetorical Stance: knowing/communicating subject matter, making choices based on what audience finds pleasing or interesting, and making choices about how you present yourself in ways that the audience would find pleasing or desirable.
• Pedant’s Stance: Putting more emphasis on the content you want to communicate and less attention on.
• Entertainer’s Stance: Putting more emphasis on how you are presenting yourself.
• Advertiser’s Stance: Putting more emphasis on doing things that would please the audience.

Questions on Stance:

1. What stances does the speaker(s) in the poem “Immigrant Can’t Write Poetry” use? What makes you think that?–have at least 1 specific example from the poem
2. What stances does Anzaldúa use in “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”? What makes you think that?–have at least 1 specific example from the essay

I asked you to think about these questions last week. Let’s spend some time talking about it.

Take 2 minutes and go back through annotations you made on both readings, skim through the readings themselves. Start to note what stands out to you as useful for answering the above questions. For 5 minutes, write in response to the two above questions.

Let’s share some responses in pairs and groups for 5-10 minutes.

 

So what?

I think these two readings display how many (all?) of us carry around with us several languages, but we might feel embarrassed or shamed into only using some of them in certain situations. What do we do with that shame? How do we balance that with goals we want to achieve with our words?

How do we get the most joy we can out of using the languages that we want to use?

How do we deal with stigma?

How much is up to us and how much should be up to readers/listeners?

What do we do with all of this in regard to writing we do?

 

 

Reading/Listening Post 2, Nice White Parents, and Rhetorical Situations (25 minutes)

The prompt that Tai Sea, Maria, Michelle, and Alison will respond to (the rest of you will comment on their posts), also focuses on language but on specific situations that happen in the first episode of Nice White Parents that speak to worrying about judgment in language use. I pointed out three tense moments where there are tensions that seem to influence rhetorical moves and linguistic attitudes, but I think there are more than that in the episode:

• Around 40 minutes, when Maya and Constance are rehearsing the French play.
• Around 45 minutes, when the PTA and the Fundraising Committee are trying to make changes to the original invitation draft for the gala.
• Around 55 minutes, when Imee is speaking with Barbara at the gala.

I’m interested to see what you all come up with in your posts and comments, but I thought we’d make some time to talk big picture a bit about the podcast:

First: What are the central concerns and questions for this podcast so far? What are the topics it covers?

Second: Why does the PTA and the Fundraising Committee have so many problems working together? Why are there issues between them?

 

Pick one optional question from below or bring up anything else that we haven’t had time to talk about yet, if we have time:

The narrators mentions that in the 2010s and 2020s, the preferred policy of NYC Department of Education is “integration without talking about race”. What did the at look like in the episode’s description of enrollment at SIS?

The narrator mentions the use of “diversity” instead of “gentrification” from both the new white students/parents and the Black, Latino, and other students at SIS–what do those terms, rhetorically, do similarly and differently?

What does Imee mean by rather having something where everyone makes a dish and bring it in rather than having the event catered (around 19 minutes)? What does that statement have to do with the overall tensions about the gala and access to the gala for the SIS community?

What does “being saved against our will” mean in terms of the Fundraising Committee’s efforts to raise money and establish the French language program?

Why is there a narrative of “bad school before” and “now it is being turned around” that is building as there is an increase of wealthier and whiter students, the establishment of the French language program, more fundraising dollars, etc.? What does that have to do with what the one kid calls “The Book of Statuses”?

Toward the end of the episode, the narrator says that SIS went so far as to get lots of different people in one school together, they “got that far.” But, it wasn’t equitable. Why not?

 

Rhetorical Analysis Activity (20 minutes)

Doing a rhetorical analysis may sound complicated, but is really just thinking about any text (a speech, an advertisement, a film, an essay, an email, an annual sales report, a TikTok video) as a series of choices and what is meaningful about those choices compared to other choices.

You want to look at the parts of a text to help you make a larger claim about the whole of the text.

The first thing to do is to observe. Let’s do that together with this advertisement from Moms Demand Action:

Image to analyze:

Might be hard to see text on this image, so here it is:

Text says at top: One child is holding something that’s been banned in America to protect them. Guess which one (in red)

At bottom it reads: “We ban the game dodgeball because it’s viewed as being too violent? Why not assault weapons?

Then there is the website listed, Momsdemandaction.org, and then the Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America logo to right bottom.

Question 1: What do you notice? What is here?

Question 2: Of all the things you notice, what is potentially significant about each choice in image or word? How does it contribute to some meaning or argument? (Let’s do as many as you can)

Question 3: Based on what we know here in what we see and some brief research we can do, what is important context to consider when thinking about the answers to Question 2?

This is the kind of stuff you do in any rhetorical analysis. A more specific version might be something more guided from a certain perspective, which is what the Rhetorical Analysis assignment will ask of you. Let’s move on to go over that. Tuesday’s (September 14) assignments will delve into rhetorical analysis a bit more.

 

Rhetorical Analysis Prompt (5-10 minutes)

Let’s go over this assignment. It is in the Labor Instructions folder for today (September 9).

 

Survey (1 minute)

**Postponed until September 23**

Prof. Blankenship was going to be today here for the first of two surveys you will complete if you decided to participate in the study Prof. Blankenship told you about last week. We have to postpone that, though. We will do this first 8-10 minute survey when we meet next on September 23.

 

Close out (2-5 minutes)

-We did some administrative things with Reading/Listening Post schedule, Grading Contract finalization, a brief check in on Labor Assignments. We also re-visited some questions about language difference and what to make of how we use all or some of our languages in different contexts. We then started to think about the podcast as well as rhetorical analysis as something we are going to try out with the podcast.

-On September 14, there will be more on rhetorical analysis and more general using evidence in analysis. There will also be the next podcast episode to listen to, which will include a Reading/Listening Post and comments in response. Finally, you will write a very brief, informal proposal about your initial thoughts for what you might do for your Rhetorical Analysis draft 1.

-There will be no class on September 16 because of the holiday. There will be more asynchronous work due on September 21 and then I will see you on September 23.