This is a quick post (more to come soon), that points you to a new resource page for teachers that I put together. It focuses on teaching with artificial intelligence (AI), such as ChatGPT. It offers articles about the technologies, several of the tools available online, and other resources. I'll offer more in the coming week or two. The link is in the left-hand navigation window, or use the link ..read more

Entry 42Too often in our lives, we don’t encounter arguments in the meaningful and ethical ways that schools, colleges, and academic disciplines often understand or assume them to be, nor do we encounter finding common ground, forming agreement, or making ethical decisions collaboratively. We don’t usually find people engaging in any of the habits I listed at the end of the last blogbook post 41 ..read more

Entry 41 I’ve spent the last blogbook post (post 40) making a case against argument (sort of), but I also agree that much college writing does ask for argument and not persuasion in the way that the CCSS, and most other writing standards and outcomes such as the WPA OS, articulate it. There is a lot to be gained by understanding and learning about argument and its textual focus on evidence ..read more

Entry 40In my last post (post 39), I discussed the ways white male authors and their historically cultivated habits of language deeply inform the CCSS and its appendix essay, which explains the focus on “argument” over “persuasion” when teaching language and writing to high school students in the U.S.  But I was just getting started in explaining the problems with the appendix essay and the focus ..read more

Entry 39Let’s look deeper into the CCSS’ appendix to understand the fullness of the problem of whiteness, which is a bigger problem in the academy than just the CCSS. This problem comes from the historical and material conditions we live in. The anonymous authors of the appendix draw on only white male university professors and writing researchers to make their point about the outcomes of writing ..read more

Entry 38If what I’m saying about learning outcomes and standards for language seem counterintuitive or wrong, it’s because the systems we live in are built on whiteness (see post 28 on HOWL), and that whiteness is hard to recognize as politicized or positional (that is, biased). Whiteness is a deep part of the structures that make us as teachers, our languaging, the CCSS, and the OS. The CCSS ..read more

I woke up the other night unable to sleep, so I thought about why a student, or teacher, should keep a labor log in a writing course. I know, that's probably not what you think about when you lie awake at night, but I feel there are some not-so-obvious benefits that are worth explaining to students and teachers, but really, this post is for students. Now, if you are new to labor-based grading or ..read more

Recently, I got this email from my dear friend Eli Goldblatt (at Temple U). He put me in contact with a committed and engaged pair of teachers who are concerned about the changes to admissions for magnet schools in the Philadelphia area, and more specifically they were concerned about a 90-minute, timed writing exam that students would now have to take for several of the magnet schools admissions ..read more

Entry 37From one angle, the focus on logocentric arguments in the CCSS for high school students and the OS for college students seems reasonable. Note the value-heavy adjective, “reasonable,” in my statement. Why is “reason” and “logical-ness” so highly valued in determining a standard for most writing in schools and colleges? We could say, as Davis does for the CCSS (see post 36), that this is ..read more

Entry 36Over the last five posts, we’ve been looking at the CCSS language standards, but what about the CCSS’s writing standards? In the writing standard group (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.9-10.1), the first anchor standard is broken up into five standards for ninth and tenth graders (standards A-E). The first broad anchor standard states: “Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.” It ..read more