I just want to start out by saying that the following is not my position, but rather is a response to the following prompt provided by my Argumentative Writing teacher (I just don’t want you to think I am eternally confused and have completely changed my mind, especially if you compare this blog to prior entries).
"Figure out what the opposite claim would be to the paper you are working to write during class. For your blog readers, write a well‐supported, reasonable, and fair articulation of the OPPOSITE argument using the standard 5 paragraph essay format you used in high school or some variation of that format (4‐7 paragraphs, primary claim in the first paragraph, topic sentences articulating criteria/ reasons for support, etc..)"
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Currently, the education system finds it necessary to focus on the needs of the students. We are constantly performing research to determine how different teaching techniques affect students, what the importance of student-teacher connection is for the student, and how it would be best to integrate more information into the curriculum to prepare students for their future in our fast paced society. If we don’t focus on the current students, the future will be grim. Therefore, we shouldn’t dedicate any funds to the professional development of teachers beyond learning new material to present to students. These teachers will either take the incentive to reach out to their students, or they won’t, and no amount of “emotion training” will help in this arena. Therefore, education reform needs to continue focusing on student’s learning needs and let teachers learn about emotions from experience.
One of the first reasons to not divert funds to teacher “emotion training” is that by doing so, you are taking funds away from students. After all, the education system is constantly being compromised as it is. Schools are constantly closing, students are getting bused further from home, and children often don’t even have the resources they need such as books. The system needs to find ways to generate more funds, but until then, we need to focus all efforts on our students.
Also, teacher emotion work is not something that we can train. There are way too many experiences that our teachers may experience in the field for us to truly be able to understand or determine which ones we should teach about. In some districts, teachers discuss how their 7th graders already have infants. In other situations, some kids are dealing with the difficulties of raising their siblings while their parents are at work. These are home situations that the students may discuss with their teachers, but there is no way for us to address all the different emotional stresses these students could bring to the class. Also, we could try to simulate experiences like these, but as we all know, simulations and role playing are never as helpful as real practice.
Additionally, by spending time on teacher emotion work, we would keep more teachers from getting out into the field because they would be spending more time in the class. As standards are currently set, teachers often need bachelor’s degrees, and if their degree isn’t in education, they need to take courses and/or exams to become certified. Currently, there is no way for us to increase the pay of teachers. Therefore, our prized members of society who may have been likely to enter the educational arena will avoid it if they think they are going to have to spend an excessive amount of time learning about how to teach. People like a profession that is quick to get into and pays well. Since we can’t change the latter, we definitely don’t want to make the former even worse. By adding more “emotion training” to the curriculum, we would make the teacher preparation process too long. This is not to mention the fact that we need teachers! There is a dire shortage in many states for teachers, and if we add more time to the programs, that means we won’t be able to get more teachers in the field for even more time.
Finally, we can develop learning practices that truly help students, and teacher training isn’t that necessary for. We can teach students many skills by having them work in small groups more often. This would encourage participation, and active engagement in their learning, and wouldn’t require any additional training of teachers. Also, we could dedicate more money to student counseling programs, something that would reduce the need of teachers to learn how to address students’ emotional needs because if we had an adequate system, teachers could just refer their students to the counselor. After all, we don’t have doctors who do the billing, appointment scheduling, and diagnosing; doctors decide what is worth their time and expertise, and teachers need to do the same.
In conclusion, there is not enough of a demand to start focusing on the emotional needs of our teachers. Currently, there is not enough funds to even think about how we can spend more money on teacher training. Also, although we agree that teachers need to be emotionally stable, skills of emotion work are something that are learned in the field, not something that we should be teaching in a classroom. Also, we have a shortage of teacher, and adding “emotion training” programs aren’t going to solve that need. Finally, emotion work is the job of the counselor, instruction is the job of teacher. Teachers need to do what they are good at: teaching; not counseling.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
James's development of arguments on teacher identity: from arguing to inquire to arguing to convince
My first idea of the Hochschild concept was the limited one provided by Holstein & Gubrium. In this presentation of Hochschild’s theory, the authors explained that Hochschild believes that there are two components to identity: the true self and the false self. The true self is the self that would be revealed if not under any external pressures. Alternatively, a person can have many false selves and these are the identities that they present in multiple social situations would be those false selves. Hochschild claims that the false self performs emotion work, the act of presenting emotions that are completely opposite of what the person is truly feeling. Again, she claimed that these false emotions would have no effect on, or influence from, the true self. Hochschild’s theory was thought by Holstein and Gubrium (authors of The Self We Live By) to be important in preventing the true self from being inundated and overly influenced by the social. Other theories of the self, like Riesman’s conforming self, are more grim in that they see peoples’ identities as being completely shaped by the social, and that they don’t really have an identity beyond that which society creates for them. In contrast, Hochschild’s theory was seen as grim, but more positive than Riesman’s theory of the self because Hochschild’s theory said that there was a portion of identity that wasn’t subject to the pressures of the social. However, at least from my initial understanding of Hochschild’s theory, I felt that there was no interaction between the true and false selves.
Additionally, my initial concepts of teacher identity was that it was a direct representation of this concept of identity: that a teacher’s identity in the classroom had no influence on who they really were. However, as I have continued to contemplate these concepts, my opinion has changed. This has been influenced not only by my research for my Argumentative writing class, but also by my application/interview process for Teach for America. As I have learned more about the Hochschild type identity, I have found that there are conflicting views on the subject. Some people feel that the identity they present in the classroom is completely false and not representative of their true feelings. From sources other than the assigned text in our class, The Self We Live By, I found that Hochschild would call this surface acting. Other teachers profess that they also do “emotion work” . However, there are others that feel that they perform is more influenced by their true personality, and that they actively shape their current emotions by trying to change the emotions they are feeling, not just faking them. This is what Hochschild called deep acting.
Then, there are others who say that Hochschild’s emotion work and false selves at no level can truly apply to their profession. In the UK, they praise what they call philanthropic emotion work, an emotion work that is not exploitative at all, but truly loves what they do and don’t feel obliged to do their work. They feel that the only time they do Hochschild type work is when they are forced by the education system to follow a prescribed lesson plan and force all their class time into instruction, never being able to truly relate to their students. From this point, I started to see that when teachers do Hochschild work, they feel an emotional conflict, and often leave the profession or just feel overwhelmingly stressed. This made me think of the concept of teacher burnout, the idea that many teachers leave the profession shortly after starting, and as I believe some sources have cited, can occur at rates of 40% or higher in educators’ first 5 years in the profession. Other sources have actually determine that in large school districts, like in Chicago, the turnover of one teacher can cost about $18,000.
In my developmental psychology class, I have been reading about the importance of a safe learning environment, one in which the student feels comfortable, on the child’s development. The appropriateness of the material to their developmental stage (grade-level/age for instance) or personal traits (gender, culture, local community) is important in developing lesson plans. In my Teach for America application process, I read numerous article about how students are suffering from the short comings of the school system and how teachers need to stress improvement and do “assessment for learning,” a technique in which teachers show at-risk children with poor grades that their grades don’t show that the kids’ efforts are futile, but that they are just making minor mistakes or have minor shortcomings in their understanding, and then giving them the chance to improve. Therefore, I am constantly being inundated by the importance of the student. But, what about the teacher? Don’t they have needs to? And, if we want to teach students more properly, shouldn’t we first make sure that our educators are well adapted and prepared?
This is the point where I have transitioned to my “arguing to convince paper.” I always thought that it was important to worry about the needs of the students; however, if the teachers aren’t prepared for the situations they will encounter (not just the academic ones, but the emotional and psychological situations), how can they reach out to their students. Although some teachers don’t need what I would call “emotion training,” some do. And, this training is more important that some situations in contrast to others. For instance, in Teach for America, these corps members are placed in low-income communities. Some of these kids come from families where there parents work multiple jobs, and then the children must take the role of “parent” for their siblings. Others become parents extremely early. In blogs on teachfor.us, a site of Teach for America corps members’ blogs, one teacher mentioned how when she asked her 7th grade student about a picture of a baby boy he was holding, that the student told her that the picture was of his son! That’s right, a 7th grader with a son! How about the corps member who had to react to a student who talked about how good the popcorn was at the prison he had to visit where his brother is. Some of these kids don’t have any positive male role models because they have single moms, or their dad, uncles, etc. are in prison. Therefore, teachers need to be able to know how to properly respond to these kids emotional needs. But, if the teachers aren’t taught how to do this, they will shy away. Therefore, education reform needs to start focusing solely on the needs of the students, and instead focus on developing positive teacher emotions and identity.
If we can successfully help teachers prepare emotionally to connect with, and respond to their students in difficult situations, burnout rates may decrease. This not only helps the emotional state of the teacher, it would save the districts money by decreasing turnover rates! Also, when teachers don’t feel as stressed, they are less likely to miss work, and therefore don’t have to spend money on substitute teachers, who probably compromise students’ educational opportunities anyway in most cases. If people are worried about diverting money away from students needs, it seems from my arguments, at least, that by helping teachers, we will not only save the districts more money to spend on students, but it will help students connect with their material more and really learn, whether that means increased comprehension (what really matters) or just higher test scores (what the educational system emphasizes). In the end, I believe this is the direction that work on teacher identity research needs to take.
Additionally, my initial concepts of teacher identity was that it was a direct representation of this concept of identity: that a teacher’s identity in the classroom had no influence on who they really were. However, as I have continued to contemplate these concepts, my opinion has changed. This has been influenced not only by my research for my Argumentative writing class, but also by my application/interview process for Teach for America. As I have learned more about the Hochschild type identity, I have found that there are conflicting views on the subject. Some people feel that the identity they present in the classroom is completely false and not representative of their true feelings. From sources other than the assigned text in our class, The Self We Live By, I found that Hochschild would call this surface acting. Other teachers profess that they also do “emotion work” . However, there are others that feel that they perform is more influenced by their true personality, and that they actively shape their current emotions by trying to change the emotions they are feeling, not just faking them. This is what Hochschild called deep acting.
Then, there are others who say that Hochschild’s emotion work and false selves at no level can truly apply to their profession. In the UK, they praise what they call philanthropic emotion work, an emotion work that is not exploitative at all, but truly loves what they do and don’t feel obliged to do their work. They feel that the only time they do Hochschild type work is when they are forced by the education system to follow a prescribed lesson plan and force all their class time into instruction, never being able to truly relate to their students. From this point, I started to see that when teachers do Hochschild work, they feel an emotional conflict, and often leave the profession or just feel overwhelmingly stressed. This made me think of the concept of teacher burnout, the idea that many teachers leave the profession shortly after starting, and as I believe some sources have cited, can occur at rates of 40% or higher in educators’ first 5 years in the profession. Other sources have actually determine that in large school districts, like in Chicago, the turnover of one teacher can cost about $18,000.
In my developmental psychology class, I have been reading about the importance of a safe learning environment, one in which the student feels comfortable, on the child’s development. The appropriateness of the material to their developmental stage (grade-level/age for instance) or personal traits (gender, culture, local community) is important in developing lesson plans. In my Teach for America application process, I read numerous article about how students are suffering from the short comings of the school system and how teachers need to stress improvement and do “assessment for learning,” a technique in which teachers show at-risk children with poor grades that their grades don’t show that the kids’ efforts are futile, but that they are just making minor mistakes or have minor shortcomings in their understanding, and then giving them the chance to improve. Therefore, I am constantly being inundated by the importance of the student. But, what about the teacher? Don’t they have needs to? And, if we want to teach students more properly, shouldn’t we first make sure that our educators are well adapted and prepared?
This is the point where I have transitioned to my “arguing to convince paper.” I always thought that it was important to worry about the needs of the students; however, if the teachers aren’t prepared for the situations they will encounter (not just the academic ones, but the emotional and psychological situations), how can they reach out to their students. Although some teachers don’t need what I would call “emotion training,” some do. And, this training is more important that some situations in contrast to others. For instance, in Teach for America, these corps members are placed in low-income communities. Some of these kids come from families where there parents work multiple jobs, and then the children must take the role of “parent” for their siblings. Others become parents extremely early. In blogs on teachfor.us, a site of Teach for America corps members’ blogs, one teacher mentioned how when she asked her 7th grade student about a picture of a baby boy he was holding, that the student told her that the picture was of his son! That’s right, a 7th grader with a son! How about the corps member who had to react to a student who talked about how good the popcorn was at the prison he had to visit where his brother is. Some of these kids don’t have any positive male role models because they have single moms, or their dad, uncles, etc. are in prison. Therefore, teachers need to be able to know how to properly respond to these kids emotional needs. But, if the teachers aren’t taught how to do this, they will shy away. Therefore, education reform needs to start focusing solely on the needs of the students, and instead focus on developing positive teacher emotions and identity.
If we can successfully help teachers prepare emotionally to connect with, and respond to their students in difficult situations, burnout rates may decrease. This not only helps the emotional state of the teacher, it would save the districts money by decreasing turnover rates! Also, when teachers don’t feel as stressed, they are less likely to miss work, and therefore don’t have to spend money on substitute teachers, who probably compromise students’ educational opportunities anyway in most cases. If people are worried about diverting money away from students needs, it seems from my arguments, at least, that by helping teachers, we will not only save the districts more money to spend on students, but it will help students connect with their material more and really learn, whether that means increased comprehension (what really matters) or just higher test scores (what the educational system emphasizes). In the end, I believe this is the direction that work on teacher identity research needs to take.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Interviewing: Are you who you say you are?
So, this Monday, I did my final interview for Teach for America, also known as TFA (Brett, does an acronym count as nominalization?). Although I can’t actually disclose any of the questions that were asked or any of the details beyond those that TFA presents on its website, I must say that the overall format of interviews made me think about the identities of the interviewer and the interviewee.
Honestly, as I think most people who meet me already know, I am a quiet person, overall. However, there are some instances in which my persona changes and I try to be loud and outgoing, perhaps even authoritative at times. One of these instances would be when I lead study group. As a study group leader, I have to command attention and bring motivation to my members. When I do these things, it makes me wonder, is this outgoing nature just a different aspect of my personality? Or am I just completely faking who I am because the situation demands it? The more complications I see with theories of the self, the more I am confused about who I am. Because of Hochschild's theory of the self, I thought what I presented was a false self, but I'm not completely sure. But, getting to the point in time where I can actually say I'm a teacher, first requires that I interview to be offered a position as a teacher, as is the case with any other job.
During an interview, you would to repress some emotions and present false ones. One of the parts of my TFA interview was that I had to present a 5-minute teaching lesson for your fellow interviewees. When I did my 5-minute teacher lesson, I kind of thought that I had failed. The college students in the room seemed like they didn’t understand what I had just taught them, and they already had taken chemistry as high school students! How could I be an effective chemistry teacher to students who had never seen this material before if I couldn’t even reach college students. In this case, I felt a lot of emotional stress. But, was the emotional stress that I felt because I was repressing my emotions of nervousness so that the interviewers and other interviewees wouldn’t pick up on it, or was it just because of the fact that I was stressed. Am I perhaps reading too far into the emotions? Maybe it’s not the repression of emotions that’s painful, maybe it’s just the act of experiencing those emotions.
Not even discussing emotion work, Hochschild says that flight attendants and others in the service community present multiple false identities. But, after this interview, it made me think that maybe it’s not just the service industries or teaching that involves false identities, it’s almost every aspect of everyone’s life that involves these false presentations. When you interview, are you really yourself? I think the best answer to this is most often, “not if you want to get the job.” I often hear that the whole point of interviewing is so that the company can learn who you are. The same is true of the medical school application process. But, most people don’t really present who they are. I know many people who volunteer because they have to if they want to get into the medical profession, not because they want to. Then, they come up with scripted reasons of how volunteering touched them and why it is so important to help the community. Interviews don’t tell the interviewer who the person they are interviewing is; interviews tell these people how good you are at faking who you should be. Can you present a domineering self that can succeed in the classroom? Can you pretend like you really care about a patient, even though you may not?
I’m not saying that we are all heartless, don’t really care about other people, or that some of the things we say in interviews aren’t true, but they definitely don’t evaluate who we really are. The interview should be just another factor in the process. It seems that our personal recommendations should bear more weight, since they are written by people who supposedly actually know who we are. But then again, we choose who we want to write our letters. Have you ever gone to office hours to get help, and instead had to wait while some annoying person asked 80 ridiculously detailed questions, not because they really wanted to know the answers, but because they want the professor to think that they want to know the answers? Then, after we fake who we are to get the letters, and we fake who we are in the interview, if we get the job, we fake some more. Teachers do it, flight attendants, doctors, you name it. It seems like a kind of depressing concept to me the more I think about it; is there even such a thing as the true self, or are we always trying to fulfill roles? Perhaps there is a true self, but are the emotions we feel even from the true self, or are from another false self that society has made that we are trying to present? How can we ever know that the feelings that we feel are really ours? After all, what we define as our morals or our beliefs are often imposed by other people and other social constructs. Perhaps these complications are the reason why Hochschild said that at some point we present so many false selves that we lose the real self. When I first wrote my inquiry paper, I thought that the emotions I felt inside were from my true self, but now I’m starting to wonder if they really are mine, or are just what I think are mine.
I am also thinking more about the dramaturgic self. It seems that this whole concept of presenting a false self is really just acting and presenting false characters. Hochschild tried to look at the bright side of things and say that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that there is a true self though we have trouble finding it sometimes, yet she was in “The Dark Side” chapter. In The Self We Live By (TSWLB), Goffman (who described the self as dramaturgic and socially situated) is quoted as saying that the “self itself does not derive from its possessor, but from the whole scene of his action.” I have trouble seeing the difference between the self Goffman describes and the one Hochschild describes. Both theories say that we all have many selves, and that they all depend on the situation at hand. Is Goffman’s self in the “Formulating a Social Self” chapter while Hochschild’s self is in the “The Dark Side” chapter because Goffman thinks that each socially presented self is a reflection of an aspect of the self, while Hochschild’s false selves are completely fake? In TSWLB, the authors say that “Time and again, Goffman reveals that each and every one of us has many selves, pertinent to the purposes of daily living, always part of, yet also reflexively separate from, the moral orders we share with others.” So Goffman says that we have many selves, but they are not false? But, if they are meeting up to the expectations of the situation, and we are molding them to meet the demands of that situation, how is that not fake? Perhaps it is because I am now brainwashed by the ideas of Hochschild that I don’t understand how the selves we can present can be real selves. Alas, I am lost again in TSWLB. Tell me your thoughts :-D
Honestly, as I think most people who meet me already know, I am a quiet person, overall. However, there are some instances in which my persona changes and I try to be loud and outgoing, perhaps even authoritative at times. One of these instances would be when I lead study group. As a study group leader, I have to command attention and bring motivation to my members. When I do these things, it makes me wonder, is this outgoing nature just a different aspect of my personality? Or am I just completely faking who I am because the situation demands it? The more complications I see with theories of the self, the more I am confused about who I am. Because of Hochschild's theory of the self, I thought what I presented was a false self, but I'm not completely sure. But, getting to the point in time where I can actually say I'm a teacher, first requires that I interview to be offered a position as a teacher, as is the case with any other job.
During an interview, you would to repress some emotions and present false ones. One of the parts of my TFA interview was that I had to present a 5-minute teaching lesson for your fellow interviewees. When I did my 5-minute teacher lesson, I kind of thought that I had failed. The college students in the room seemed like they didn’t understand what I had just taught them, and they already had taken chemistry as high school students! How could I be an effective chemistry teacher to students who had never seen this material before if I couldn’t even reach college students. In this case, I felt a lot of emotional stress. But, was the emotional stress that I felt because I was repressing my emotions of nervousness so that the interviewers and other interviewees wouldn’t pick up on it, or was it just because of the fact that I was stressed. Am I perhaps reading too far into the emotions? Maybe it’s not the repression of emotions that’s painful, maybe it’s just the act of experiencing those emotions.
Not even discussing emotion work, Hochschild says that flight attendants and others in the service community present multiple false identities. But, after this interview, it made me think that maybe it’s not just the service industries or teaching that involves false identities, it’s almost every aspect of everyone’s life that involves these false presentations. When you interview, are you really yourself? I think the best answer to this is most often, “not if you want to get the job.” I often hear that the whole point of interviewing is so that the company can learn who you are. The same is true of the medical school application process. But, most people don’t really present who they are. I know many people who volunteer because they have to if they want to get into the medical profession, not because they want to. Then, they come up with scripted reasons of how volunteering touched them and why it is so important to help the community. Interviews don’t tell the interviewer who the person they are interviewing is; interviews tell these people how good you are at faking who you should be. Can you present a domineering self that can succeed in the classroom? Can you pretend like you really care about a patient, even though you may not?
I’m not saying that we are all heartless, don’t really care about other people, or that some of the things we say in interviews aren’t true, but they definitely don’t evaluate who we really are. The interview should be just another factor in the process. It seems that our personal recommendations should bear more weight, since they are written by people who supposedly actually know who we are. But then again, we choose who we want to write our letters. Have you ever gone to office hours to get help, and instead had to wait while some annoying person asked 80 ridiculously detailed questions, not because they really wanted to know the answers, but because they want the professor to think that they want to know the answers? Then, after we fake who we are to get the letters, and we fake who we are in the interview, if we get the job, we fake some more. Teachers do it, flight attendants, doctors, you name it. It seems like a kind of depressing concept to me the more I think about it; is there even such a thing as the true self, or are we always trying to fulfill roles? Perhaps there is a true self, but are the emotions we feel even from the true self, or are from another false self that society has made that we are trying to present? How can we ever know that the feelings that we feel are really ours? After all, what we define as our morals or our beliefs are often imposed by other people and other social constructs. Perhaps these complications are the reason why Hochschild said that at some point we present so many false selves that we lose the real self. When I first wrote my inquiry paper, I thought that the emotions I felt inside were from my true self, but now I’m starting to wonder if they really are mine, or are just what I think are mine.
I am also thinking more about the dramaturgic self. It seems that this whole concept of presenting a false self is really just acting and presenting false characters. Hochschild tried to look at the bright side of things and say that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that there is a true self though we have trouble finding it sometimes, yet she was in “The Dark Side” chapter. In The Self We Live By (TSWLB), Goffman (who described the self as dramaturgic and socially situated) is quoted as saying that the “self itself does not derive from its possessor, but from the whole scene of his action.” I have trouble seeing the difference between the self Goffman describes and the one Hochschild describes. Both theories say that we all have many selves, and that they all depend on the situation at hand. Is Goffman’s self in the “Formulating a Social Self” chapter while Hochschild’s self is in the “The Dark Side” chapter because Goffman thinks that each socially presented self is a reflection of an aspect of the self, while Hochschild’s false selves are completely fake? In TSWLB, the authors say that “Time and again, Goffman reveals that each and every one of us has many selves, pertinent to the purposes of daily living, always part of, yet also reflexively separate from, the moral orders we share with others.” So Goffman says that we have many selves, but they are not false? But, if they are meeting up to the expectations of the situation, and we are molding them to meet the demands of that situation, how is that not fake? Perhaps it is because I am now brainwashed by the ideas of Hochschild that I don’t understand how the selves we can present can be real selves. Alas, I am lost again in TSWLB. Tell me your thoughts :-D
Thursday, October 15, 2009
If I have to convince, what should I argue? And to who? With what reasons?
In my arguing to inquire paper, I tried to understand teacher identity. As a model, I tried to use Hochschild’s concept of the true and false selves, to see if her model really could relate to teachers. Some say no, not at all; others say yes, but with qualifiers. In the end, I came to conclude that, by and large, Hochschild’s ideas of true/false selves and emotion work do apply to teachers, just in different ways and to a different extent than it does in some of the service professions. Then, in the inquiry paper I also tried to look at how conflicts between the true and false selves, and the stress of performing emotion work/labor can be detrimental to a teacher’s true emotions and true self, and who this could contribute to teacher burnout rates, which in the U.S. are extraordinarily high, and in some districts where student drop out rates are high, teachers still “drop out” more often than students do. Perhaps we are not completely blind to this fact: after all, I have always wanted to teach, but knew that it would be emotionally challenging. This is one of the reasons that Teach for America appealed to me: I could leave after my two year commitment without having to look down at the ground and feel like a failure who succumbed to the stress of being a high school teacher, but instead could say I made a difference, and I didn’t leave because I couldn’t handle it, but because my time was up and it was time to move on.
So, that’s my background info. Hope you enjoyed it. I will probably first have to re-prove that teachers emotionally manage their emotions…can knock off a few of the required sources right there ;). Now onto the main point of this blog. What do I want to argue in my Arguing to Convince paper?
I think that I would like to argue that teacher education needs to perhaps stop focusing solely on the emotional management of students, but start working on building teacher identity so that new teachers don’t go into the profession and get burned out so quickly. I believe that if teacher training programs focus on emotions at all, it is probably about how to address a student’s emotional needs. Teachers are expected to be these amazing, philanthropic, hard-working people who are strong and don’t need emotional support: but if they are getting burned out, obviously they do!
If I made this argument, I believe my audience would be teacher educators or prospective teachers who don’t want to take even more time in the classroom and need to get out in the classroom. These people may argue that becoming a teacher already requires 4 years of education and that teachers can’t learn how to manage their emotions in the classroom, that they need to practice in the real world.
Or, perhaps I could argue that schools need to start focusing less on memorization and test scores and instead start focusing on real learning. With the No Child Left Behind act, schools now have to perform assessment tests much more often, and when schools don’t perform up to standards, they actually have to inform parents that they have the right to find a better school, or the school can even be closed down. This only adds to the stress of teachers, and as studies have shown, this blatant memorization of facts for performance exams actually jeopardizes the learning environment because kids aren’t learning critical thinking skills, they are learning how to memorize and pass tests (I would use my developmental psychology book and online articles I have for sources). I fear that this may be hard to tie into teacher identity, but maybe not (I do have some sources that link it it…read below about UK system).
In this case, I believe my audience would be those who develop laws and testing schedules and believe that the only way to assess student performance is by analyzing test scores. I would argue to them that these tests are not only bad for students’ learning since it inhibits them and makes those who are at the bottom of the scale feel inadequate and hopeless, but also that it makes teachers standardize classroom instruction, use fake emotion, become emotionally mismanaged, and hurts the teacher-student relationship.
Now, I don’t know much about the teacher education system, so I may find that programs in fact do work with emotion management and not letting the classroom psychologically injure the teacher’s self-concept. Therefore, this weekend for Fall Break, one of my objectives is to ask my cousin who has a Master’s degree in elementary school education what her training experiences have been. Has she been taught to emotionally manage the self, or just to manage the student? Does she think that such programs would be helpful? I believe she would be able to provide great insight into this topic.
Also, I think I would make the argument that if we want teachers to manage their students and make a lasting impact on the lives of their students that the teachers have to first be confident in their selves. After all, a teacher who is overwhelmed by their emotional conflicts will become disconnected from their class and not have much of a lasting impact on the students. For this argument, I have a source that states that when teachers in the UK switched from more philanthropic work to surface acting like Hochschild type work that they became disconnected, burnt out, and I believe it said that many ended up leaving the profession. This would be evidence that emotion management not only comes in many forms, but when teachers aren’t trained to properly manage their emotions in a changing classroom that teachers become disconnected, which means their students feel it too. Additionally, if I decided to argue that we need to stop stressing tests and start emphasizing learning, this article would definitely tie into that argument as well. This would be anecdotal evidence.
For one of my reasons that this argument is relevant, I would not only quote the statistics that say that teacher turnover is high, but cite the resources that show how expensive it is to keep replacing teachers when they leave (which kind of makes me question Teach for America (TFA), but since their turnover rates in low-income communities are similar to non-TFA teachers in the same regions, maybe they aren’t really hurting the system, although they may). In fact, I think it costs somewhere around $20,000 more for a teacher to be replaced than it is to keep the old teacher on staff. Why this is true, I’m not sure, but I think it’s worth exploring further. This would be expert opinion and hard evidence.
I do see some problems with my argument, like how can this be done? After all, is emotional management in the class something that can really be taught? For flight attendants, I think one of my articles explained that indeed it can be done. People in this profession are taught how to manage their emotions when others share anecdotes and ideas for emotional management. For instance, one of the research articles I read shared that in one flight attendant training program, a story of a flight attendant with an unruly, rude, irate customer kept their calm, but let that person “get to them.” They weren’t emotionally managing their self! However, that person found out at the end of the flight that the person’s son had just died and he was flying to his son’s funeral. Now that flight attendant always emotionally manages their self and doesn’t allow their true self to emotionally react to the situation because the person who is being rude to them may just be having a bad day. In low income communities, teachers may be able to do something similar, allowing themselves to say that maybe the student acts out in class because their parents don’t give them enough attention, not because the teacher is boring or ineffective. Through training programs where teacher would have to suppress their emotions and learn how harmful it can be, and learning to understand that everyone comes from a different background and may come from a stressed out family that isn’t supportive, warm, and loving that they shouldn’t take the comments or actions of their students personal, because they are not really directed at them per se, but more are inner directed feelings that the student can’t control anymore and must direct them at someone else to relieve their internal stress. Perhaps for my arguing paper I should just argue that teachers need to be taught emotion management though, and not how the system should teach them this. Perhaps the “how” should be left for the persuasive paper. What do you (YES, YOU, THE PERSON WHO IS READING THIS BLOGBrett will give you an imaginary smiley face sticker if you comment, I’m pretty sure… you should do it!) think?
So, that’s my background info. Hope you enjoyed it. I will probably first have to re-prove that teachers emotionally manage their emotions…can knock off a few of the required sources right there ;). Now onto the main point of this blog. What do I want to argue in my Arguing to Convince paper?
I think that I would like to argue that teacher education needs to perhaps stop focusing solely on the emotional management of students, but start working on building teacher identity so that new teachers don’t go into the profession and get burned out so quickly. I believe that if teacher training programs focus on emotions at all, it is probably about how to address a student’s emotional needs. Teachers are expected to be these amazing, philanthropic, hard-working people who are strong and don’t need emotional support: but if they are getting burned out, obviously they do!
If I made this argument, I believe my audience would be teacher educators or prospective teachers who don’t want to take even more time in the classroom and need to get out in the classroom. These people may argue that becoming a teacher already requires 4 years of education and that teachers can’t learn how to manage their emotions in the classroom, that they need to practice in the real world.
Or, perhaps I could argue that schools need to start focusing less on memorization and test scores and instead start focusing on real learning. With the No Child Left Behind act, schools now have to perform assessment tests much more often, and when schools don’t perform up to standards, they actually have to inform parents that they have the right to find a better school, or the school can even be closed down. This only adds to the stress of teachers, and as studies have shown, this blatant memorization of facts for performance exams actually jeopardizes the learning environment because kids aren’t learning critical thinking skills, they are learning how to memorize and pass tests (I would use my developmental psychology book and online articles I have for sources). I fear that this may be hard to tie into teacher identity, but maybe not (I do have some sources that link it it…read below about UK system).
In this case, I believe my audience would be those who develop laws and testing schedules and believe that the only way to assess student performance is by analyzing test scores. I would argue to them that these tests are not only bad for students’ learning since it inhibits them and makes those who are at the bottom of the scale feel inadequate and hopeless, but also that it makes teachers standardize classroom instruction, use fake emotion, become emotionally mismanaged, and hurts the teacher-student relationship.
Now, I don’t know much about the teacher education system, so I may find that programs in fact do work with emotion management and not letting the classroom psychologically injure the teacher’s self-concept. Therefore, this weekend for Fall Break, one of my objectives is to ask my cousin who has a Master’s degree in elementary school education what her training experiences have been. Has she been taught to emotionally manage the self, or just to manage the student? Does she think that such programs would be helpful? I believe she would be able to provide great insight into this topic.
Also, I think I would make the argument that if we want teachers to manage their students and make a lasting impact on the lives of their students that the teachers have to first be confident in their selves. After all, a teacher who is overwhelmed by their emotional conflicts will become disconnected from their class and not have much of a lasting impact on the students. For this argument, I have a source that states that when teachers in the UK switched from more philanthropic work to surface acting like Hochschild type work that they became disconnected, burnt out, and I believe it said that many ended up leaving the profession. This would be evidence that emotion management not only comes in many forms, but when teachers aren’t trained to properly manage their emotions in a changing classroom that teachers become disconnected, which means their students feel it too. Additionally, if I decided to argue that we need to stop stressing tests and start emphasizing learning, this article would definitely tie into that argument as well. This would be anecdotal evidence.
For one of my reasons that this argument is relevant, I would not only quote the statistics that say that teacher turnover is high, but cite the resources that show how expensive it is to keep replacing teachers when they leave (which kind of makes me question Teach for America (TFA), but since their turnover rates in low-income communities are similar to non-TFA teachers in the same regions, maybe they aren’t really hurting the system, although they may). In fact, I think it costs somewhere around $20,000 more for a teacher to be replaced than it is to keep the old teacher on staff. Why this is true, I’m not sure, but I think it’s worth exploring further. This would be expert opinion and hard evidence.
I do see some problems with my argument, like how can this be done? After all, is emotional management in the class something that can really be taught? For flight attendants, I think one of my articles explained that indeed it can be done. People in this profession are taught how to manage their emotions when others share anecdotes and ideas for emotional management. For instance, one of the research articles I read shared that in one flight attendant training program, a story of a flight attendant with an unruly, rude, irate customer kept their calm, but let that person “get to them.” They weren’t emotionally managing their self! However, that person found out at the end of the flight that the person’s son had just died and he was flying to his son’s funeral. Now that flight attendant always emotionally manages their self and doesn’t allow their true self to emotionally react to the situation because the person who is being rude to them may just be having a bad day. In low income communities, teachers may be able to do something similar, allowing themselves to say that maybe the student acts out in class because their parents don’t give them enough attention, not because the teacher is boring or ineffective. Through training programs where teacher would have to suppress their emotions and learn how harmful it can be, and learning to understand that everyone comes from a different background and may come from a stressed out family that isn’t supportive, warm, and loving that they shouldn’t take the comments or actions of their students personal, because they are not really directed at them per se, but more are inner directed feelings that the student can’t control anymore and must direct them at someone else to relieve their internal stress. Perhaps for my arguing paper I should just argue that teachers need to be taught emotion management though, and not how the system should teach them this. Perhaps the “how” should be left for the persuasive paper. What do you (YES, YOU, THE PERSON WHO IS READING THIS BLOGBrett will give you an imaginary smiley face sticker if you comment, I’m pretty sure… you should do it!) think?
First blog...yeah, not so good; but, it did have narrative slippage and narrative editing :D
For my English class, I was prompted to look back at my first blog, and then analyze it in terms of narrative slippage and narrative editing.
For those of you who don’t read The Selves We Live By, narrative slippage is when you relate to a broader context or group, but your individual story starts to “slip” from the group as a whole and has more influence on the writer’s individual experiences. For me, I could look at myself in terms of a student, but the way that I describe myself may not always seem particularly similar to that of most students; my particular context may vary from the norm. We stress different aspects of our live that have gotten us to a point, and even though we may reach the same goal or conclusion, we may significantly differ in the way that we view how and why we got there.
For narrative editing, we often step back, and reflect on what we have written or said, and then reexplain our thoughts or qualify what we were saying in order to elicit a particular reaction from the reader/listener. Our feelings, our reflections, and our ideas of who were are before, during, and after a conversation change and are often influenced by the listener, so we edit our story, and in turn, may edit who we are. Well, at least that’s my take on narrative slippage and editing.
So, now to look back at my blog. Wow, was it ever awful! I can now understand why if you read that blog, you would have stopped reading my posts. Upon reflection, it was a dry autobiography. I wanted my readers to respect me, so I gave my life history of all my accomplishments and the characteristics that I thought were most important. I believe that the nature of the blog was determined by my trying to accommodate to my audience, as well as due to the self reflection I was doing at that time while trying to write my letter of intent for Teach for America, which I believe was due the Friday of that week. I believed that anyone could be reading my blog, and although I wanted to relate to my fellow students, I knew that it was more likely that only the professor was going to regularly be reading my blogs, so I wanted to impress her. Therefore, I kept listing all my accomplishments, past jobs, and leadership roles from high school (which although I have been told before to stop dwelling on those high school attributes, I didn’t realize until now how pathetic it actually sounds to list off things from high school…that was four years ago, James; move on). Therefore, my story was a “constructed story” of the self more than a self in a story, I think.
So, Brett asked how did I “slip from the broader construction of the larger discursive practice of your group, be that defined by age, class, ethnicity, activity, dialect, etc.[?]” Um, I’m first of all going to admit that I never really fully understood this whole discursive practice vs. discourses in practice concept, but I’ll take a shot at answering the question anyway. In reference to my group as a college student, I think I slip a lot from that group. Most people emphasize the things that they have done in college, and not the things that go on a resume, but the things that actually make them who they are: their life experiences, their friendships, their engagements in activities, their self reflections. But, I slip from my group a lot. I focus on the things that I think my parents or my teachers or employers would want to see. I don’t feel that I have ever fully fit into my age group, always feeling able to better relate to those older than me, but impeded at the same time by my lack of life experiences.
I do often step out of my story and try to attend to perspectives and the way I want them to be heard, but I think I do this more in my conversation than I do in my writing. For some reason, I seem to think that I don’t need to explain my perspectives to the greater group at hand while I am writing; it’s like I know I am writing for others, but I feel like I don’t need to clarify things because I believe that what I say needs no clarification. Of course, that’s not really true. But, when I write I feel like I get into a different mindset than when I speak, and I think more about the things that I write than that I say, so that when I put them down on paper my ideas are clear and don’t need to be qualified for anyone else. However, in reflecting on my blog, I do step out of the story and attend to the way I expect people to take me. I said things like “Though long winded much of the time, I will try to be more concise in the future,” which you can obviously tell from my blogs turned out to not be true. I believe the second to last paragraph involved a lot of this narrative editing; it seems that I was finally speaking to the reader, and not listing my accomplishments for myself and my teacher. I also made comments like “I have volunteered at a soup kitchen and a food distribution plant for the poor in the ghettos of Detroit, volunteered last semester (and continue to do so again this semester) once a week from 10PM - 2AM at Arbor Hospice with patients during their last stages of life, and have volunteered in many other spheres…” Here, after listing my job and extracurricular accomplishments, I think I wanted to essentially show that I am not just a snob who brags about their job accomplishments, but wanted to show that I like to help people and serve the community, trying to make my listener look at me as a philanthropic person, not just an overachiever.
Anyway, analyzing the first blog is probably one of the first times that I have felt like I could actually understand what Holstein & Gubrium were saying in TSLWB in relation to my own life. I often feel like I analyze myself, but never in such a constructive view. So, with that, I say thanks, Brett!
Finally, I would like to note: Brett, the name that I go by is not David, despite you typing that in your comment. I know that you now know this, but I just wanted to point it out because it reminded me of how Lauren keeps harassing me about how I have 3 first names. Nevertheless, I always appreciate your feedback-->indeed, this comment may seem out of place and random, but that’s me, so deal with it :-P
For those of you who don’t read The Selves We Live By, narrative slippage is when you relate to a broader context or group, but your individual story starts to “slip” from the group as a whole and has more influence on the writer’s individual experiences. For me, I could look at myself in terms of a student, but the way that I describe myself may not always seem particularly similar to that of most students; my particular context may vary from the norm. We stress different aspects of our live that have gotten us to a point, and even though we may reach the same goal or conclusion, we may significantly differ in the way that we view how and why we got there.
For narrative editing, we often step back, and reflect on what we have written or said, and then reexplain our thoughts or qualify what we were saying in order to elicit a particular reaction from the reader/listener. Our feelings, our reflections, and our ideas of who were are before, during, and after a conversation change and are often influenced by the listener, so we edit our story, and in turn, may edit who we are. Well, at least that’s my take on narrative slippage and editing.
So, now to look back at my blog. Wow, was it ever awful! I can now understand why if you read that blog, you would have stopped reading my posts. Upon reflection, it was a dry autobiography. I wanted my readers to respect me, so I gave my life history of all my accomplishments and the characteristics that I thought were most important. I believe that the nature of the blog was determined by my trying to accommodate to my audience, as well as due to the self reflection I was doing at that time while trying to write my letter of intent for Teach for America, which I believe was due the Friday of that week. I believed that anyone could be reading my blog, and although I wanted to relate to my fellow students, I knew that it was more likely that only the professor was going to regularly be reading my blogs, so I wanted to impress her. Therefore, I kept listing all my accomplishments, past jobs, and leadership roles from high school (which although I have been told before to stop dwelling on those high school attributes, I didn’t realize until now how pathetic it actually sounds to list off things from high school…that was four years ago, James; move on). Therefore, my story was a “constructed story” of the self more than a self in a story, I think.
So, Brett asked how did I “slip from the broader construction of the larger discursive practice of your group, be that defined by age, class, ethnicity, activity, dialect, etc.[?]” Um, I’m first of all going to admit that I never really fully understood this whole discursive practice vs. discourses in practice concept, but I’ll take a shot at answering the question anyway. In reference to my group as a college student, I think I slip a lot from that group. Most people emphasize the things that they have done in college, and not the things that go on a resume, but the things that actually make them who they are: their life experiences, their friendships, their engagements in activities, their self reflections. But, I slip from my group a lot. I focus on the things that I think my parents or my teachers or employers would want to see. I don’t feel that I have ever fully fit into my age group, always feeling able to better relate to those older than me, but impeded at the same time by my lack of life experiences.
I do often step out of my story and try to attend to perspectives and the way I want them to be heard, but I think I do this more in my conversation than I do in my writing. For some reason, I seem to think that I don’t need to explain my perspectives to the greater group at hand while I am writing; it’s like I know I am writing for others, but I feel like I don’t need to clarify things because I believe that what I say needs no clarification. Of course, that’s not really true. But, when I write I feel like I get into a different mindset than when I speak, and I think more about the things that I write than that I say, so that when I put them down on paper my ideas are clear and don’t need to be qualified for anyone else. However, in reflecting on my blog, I do step out of the story and attend to the way I expect people to take me. I said things like “Though long winded much of the time, I will try to be more concise in the future,” which you can obviously tell from my blogs turned out to not be true. I believe the second to last paragraph involved a lot of this narrative editing; it seems that I was finally speaking to the reader, and not listing my accomplishments for myself and my teacher. I also made comments like “I have volunteered at a soup kitchen and a food distribution plant for the poor in the ghettos of Detroit, volunteered last semester (and continue to do so again this semester) once a week from 10PM - 2AM at Arbor Hospice with patients during their last stages of life, and have volunteered in many other spheres…” Here, after listing my job and extracurricular accomplishments, I think I wanted to essentially show that I am not just a snob who brags about their job accomplishments, but wanted to show that I like to help people and serve the community, trying to make my listener look at me as a philanthropic person, not just an overachiever.
Anyway, analyzing the first blog is probably one of the first times that I have felt like I could actually understand what Holstein & Gubrium were saying in TSLWB in relation to my own life. I often feel like I analyze myself, but never in such a constructive view. So, with that, I say thanks, Brett!
Finally, I would like to note: Brett, the name that I go by is not David, despite you typing that in your comment. I know that you now know this, but I just wanted to point it out because it reminded me of how Lauren keeps harassing me about how I have 3 first names. Nevertheless, I always appreciate your feedback-->indeed, this comment may seem out of place and random, but that’s me, so deal with it :-P
Thursday, October 8, 2009
The importance of knowledge of audience
I met with Brett yesterday to discuss my arguing to inquire paper. When I first walked in the room, Brett gave me my rhetorical analysis back, and we discussed what it’s flaws were and how I could improve it. I think the most important concept that I took away from our discussion was the importance of understanding who the audience is in a particular argument.
For my rhetorical analysis, I wanted to analyze an argument about the use of the word schizophrenia in literature and how it affects individual’s identities. However, if you read my earlier blogs, you would know that I felt that the speaker at the conference didn’t realize that her blog wasn’t just scholars in rhetoric, but also everyday run-of-the-mill college students whose studies were not the mirror image of hers. If I would have wrote about her speech, I would have analyzed how important it was to know who your audience is. But, I didn’t understand her comments and I thought that writing a paper that said “ I didn’t understand anything from this conference” was going to fulfill the 3-5 page requirement.
Therefore, I decided to write about Obama’s speech on healthcare, because it was the first relatively recent speech that came to mind. However, when I wrote my rhetorical analysis, I just wrote about how Obama was speaking to the American people. But, is that really who his audience was. Brett and I discussed how important it was to analyze who it was that Obama was speaking to, and a generic audience like “Americans” was a bit too vague. Was Obama speaking to Congress? Was he speaking to middle class Americans? How about to low-income communities? To those with insurance? Or those without? Sure, he adressed all of these audiences in his speech, but who was it really directed toward? In my opinion, I believe it would be those Americans who have fallen on hard times, or have always been in the negative. The audience would be those Americans who would most significantly gain something from healthcare reform, even though the President tried to make sure that all Americans were semi-satisfied with his proposal. Sure, Obama was speaking in front of Congress, but he wasn’t speaking to them, at least not for most of the speech. He was trying to elicit emotions in the un- and under-insured to make them agree with him, to fight with him, and to make sure that the issue didn’t fall to the wayside. To Congress, would healthcare reform have been at the top of their agenda if the President had given the speech just to them? I think the obvious answer is no. Congress already knew that there were people who have inadequate healthcare, not because they choose not to have it, but because they can’t afford to have it. But yet they didn’t make any significant advances on the issue. The president’s speech was needed because he needs the support of the American people. After all, this is a country that is supposed to be led by the people, not just by the people that we elect into office.
My argument here is not whether healthcare reform is good for everyone, because obviously it isn’t. Insurance companies would no longer to reap the same benefits and those who have affordable insurance now may see their premiums go up when the underinsured and the terminally ill who have been rejected in the past would now be given the right to have health insurance for a price similar to what everyone else pays. When costs go up, the insurance company isn’t going to eat the costs; they are going to pass them on to you to the best of their ability.
My argument instead is that whenever analyzing an argument, make sure you know who the argument is directed towards. And, when you are making an argument, make sure you know who your audience is. Otherwise, you won’t get the point and reasons for another person’s argument, and you won’t address the needs of your audience if you have a mindset that you are speaking to a different audience than you actually are.
I have never put any emphasis on audience before; that is something I definitely wish to change.
For my rhetorical analysis, I wanted to analyze an argument about the use of the word schizophrenia in literature and how it affects individual’s identities. However, if you read my earlier blogs, you would know that I felt that the speaker at the conference didn’t realize that her blog wasn’t just scholars in rhetoric, but also everyday run-of-the-mill college students whose studies were not the mirror image of hers. If I would have wrote about her speech, I would have analyzed how important it was to know who your audience is. But, I didn’t understand her comments and I thought that writing a paper that said “ I didn’t understand anything from this conference” was going to fulfill the 3-5 page requirement.
Therefore, I decided to write about Obama’s speech on healthcare, because it was the first relatively recent speech that came to mind. However, when I wrote my rhetorical analysis, I just wrote about how Obama was speaking to the American people. But, is that really who his audience was. Brett and I discussed how important it was to analyze who it was that Obama was speaking to, and a generic audience like “Americans” was a bit too vague. Was Obama speaking to Congress? Was he speaking to middle class Americans? How about to low-income communities? To those with insurance? Or those without? Sure, he adressed all of these audiences in his speech, but who was it really directed toward? In my opinion, I believe it would be those Americans who have fallen on hard times, or have always been in the negative. The audience would be those Americans who would most significantly gain something from healthcare reform, even though the President tried to make sure that all Americans were semi-satisfied with his proposal. Sure, Obama was speaking in front of Congress, but he wasn’t speaking to them, at least not for most of the speech. He was trying to elicit emotions in the un- and under-insured to make them agree with him, to fight with him, and to make sure that the issue didn’t fall to the wayside. To Congress, would healthcare reform have been at the top of their agenda if the President had given the speech just to them? I think the obvious answer is no. Congress already knew that there were people who have inadequate healthcare, not because they choose not to have it, but because they can’t afford to have it. But yet they didn’t make any significant advances on the issue. The president’s speech was needed because he needs the support of the American people. After all, this is a country that is supposed to be led by the people, not just by the people that we elect into office.
My argument here is not whether healthcare reform is good for everyone, because obviously it isn’t. Insurance companies would no longer to reap the same benefits and those who have affordable insurance now may see their premiums go up when the underinsured and the terminally ill who have been rejected in the past would now be given the right to have health insurance for a price similar to what everyone else pays. When costs go up, the insurance company isn’t going to eat the costs; they are going to pass them on to you to the best of their ability.
My argument instead is that whenever analyzing an argument, make sure you know who the argument is directed towards. And, when you are making an argument, make sure you know who your audience is. Otherwise, you won’t get the point and reasons for another person’s argument, and you won’t address the needs of your audience if you have a mindset that you are speaking to a different audience than you actually are.
I have never put any emphasis on audience before; that is something I definitely wish to change.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Research papers...not as easy as I once thought
For those of you who are interested, I made it to the next stage in the Teach for America process! As I nervously logged into the system (which let me tell you, it felt like an eternity!), I knew that my fate was relying largely on the phone interview that I had done a week ago, and in my honest opinion, it was wishy-washy. But, then the page loaded, and “CONGRATULATIONS! You have been invited to participate in an in-person interview” popped up. My project this semester of writing about teachers and identity still seems that it is applicable to my future, and I feel more of a passion about writing it and figuring out what makes a teacher successful and what causes burnout in so many teachers; after all, I don’t want to burnout in my two years in the program, and with this paper, maybe I will be able to figure some of that out (still assuming I do well in the final interview, still keep your fingers crossed, please).
Anyway, onto my real blog topic.
Before this class, a research paper seemed so simple: you would think of a general topic, find a plethora of resources that surrounded your topic, and then essentially write a summary of those articles with a little bit of your own opinion. Of course, you wouldn’t JUST use the opinions of those sources, and you would throw in a little of your own personal flair. Of course, you would have the responsibility of making the paper flow, avoid grammatical errors, and it would be best to develop a dialogue between the articles. However, beyond some basal level of understanding, you could succeed with fairly little effort.
Now, in my current argumentative writing class, the research paper seems so much more difficult. Whereas before I always would use newspaper articles and a text book, now each resource is a journal article that is 20 to 40 pages long, and even after filtering through numerous abstracts on my topic, half of these papers that I read end up not being relevant. Additionally, I have come to find that what used to only require regurgitation of the main idea of resources isn’t really the point of a research paper, especially an inquiry paper.
When I started researching my topic, all I knew was that I wanted to research teachers and Arlie Hochschild’s idea of identity which includes the true and false selves. For any reader who may stumble on this blog and isn’t in English 225.021 this semester (or for those students in our class who haven’t read The Self We Live By), a true self is the identity that you would be able to reveal in a completely uninhibited situation, whereas the false selves are those identities that we present in social situations that are appropriate to the situation at hand. False selves do what Hochschild calls “emotion work,” which is the act of intentionally suppressing what you truly feel and instead expressing those emotions that are appropriate to the situation at hand or would be more likely to produce a positive effect (such as a teacher who suppresses their feelings of despair and angst and instead smiles and speaks in an upbeat tone, or for professors it could be the act of being polite and reserved to the student who fervently argues with them and tells them that even though the professor has a Ph.D. on the subject and has spent 30 years in a lab laying the foundation for the concept, the student’s choice of answer B is correct even though the professor knows the correct answer is obviously A).
However, despite knowing that I wanted to explore this issue, I had few questions about the topic beyond how teachers fit into this identity scheme. Instead, I should have tried to think of a spin on the topic, like “does presenting false selves and suppressing the true self contribute to low self-esteem and high burnout rates for teachers in low-income communities.” Or, I should have at least looked into other’s view of teacher identity, and how their concepts differed from Hochschild’s ideas. Additionally, I thought that since I was not the authority on the subject, that the only arguments I should put forth would be those that other professionals had made. Instead, I should be looking for sources that fit with my ideas, although perhaps not always perfectly. Also, I should be looking for more conflicting views, because without giving the opposing view an adequate opportunity to change your mind, a mountain of research on one side of the issue doesn’t establish your claim no matter how mind-blowing their reasoning and research may be. What seemed so simple and easy before can in fact be very difficult. It’s not that I don’t know how to think in depth when writing a paper, it’s just that often deep comprehension and contemplation isn’t necessary, so I feel a little rusty.
Finally, I would like to say that although textbooks are often boring, I have learned something particularly helpful from Aims of Argument. Before, I often did a lot of research and a week later would realize that a source I passed up and thought was irrelevant, was now in fact relevant to my paper, but I wouldn’t be able to find the source at that later time. In Aims of Argument, they present the importance of a “research log” in which you write down every possibly relevant source and how you got there, a record that could serve particularly helpful at a later time. After all, what I am arguing now in my paper differs significantly from what I was originally arguing (or rather, regurgitating), and it may significantly change by the time I turn in my final draft. Wasting time looking for a resource you already found is completely counterproductive, and now I don’t have that problem.
I could say more in this blog, but doing so may bore you silly, so with that I will say please continue to cross your fingers for me for Teach for America, and more importantly, have a good week :D
Anyway, onto my real blog topic.
Before this class, a research paper seemed so simple: you would think of a general topic, find a plethora of resources that surrounded your topic, and then essentially write a summary of those articles with a little bit of your own opinion. Of course, you wouldn’t JUST use the opinions of those sources, and you would throw in a little of your own personal flair. Of course, you would have the responsibility of making the paper flow, avoid grammatical errors, and it would be best to develop a dialogue between the articles. However, beyond some basal level of understanding, you could succeed with fairly little effort.
Now, in my current argumentative writing class, the research paper seems so much more difficult. Whereas before I always would use newspaper articles and a text book, now each resource is a journal article that is 20 to 40 pages long, and even after filtering through numerous abstracts on my topic, half of these papers that I read end up not being relevant. Additionally, I have come to find that what used to only require regurgitation of the main idea of resources isn’t really the point of a research paper, especially an inquiry paper.
When I started researching my topic, all I knew was that I wanted to research teachers and Arlie Hochschild’s idea of identity which includes the true and false selves. For any reader who may stumble on this blog and isn’t in English 225.021 this semester (or for those students in our class who haven’t read The Self We Live By), a true self is the identity that you would be able to reveal in a completely uninhibited situation, whereas the false selves are those identities that we present in social situations that are appropriate to the situation at hand. False selves do what Hochschild calls “emotion work,” which is the act of intentionally suppressing what you truly feel and instead expressing those emotions that are appropriate to the situation at hand or would be more likely to produce a positive effect (such as a teacher who suppresses their feelings of despair and angst and instead smiles and speaks in an upbeat tone, or for professors it could be the act of being polite and reserved to the student who fervently argues with them and tells them that even though the professor has a Ph.D. on the subject and has spent 30 years in a lab laying the foundation for the concept, the student’s choice of answer B is correct even though the professor knows the correct answer is obviously A).
However, despite knowing that I wanted to explore this issue, I had few questions about the topic beyond how teachers fit into this identity scheme. Instead, I should have tried to think of a spin on the topic, like “does presenting false selves and suppressing the true self contribute to low self-esteem and high burnout rates for teachers in low-income communities.” Or, I should have at least looked into other’s view of teacher identity, and how their concepts differed from Hochschild’s ideas. Additionally, I thought that since I was not the authority on the subject, that the only arguments I should put forth would be those that other professionals had made. Instead, I should be looking for sources that fit with my ideas, although perhaps not always perfectly. Also, I should be looking for more conflicting views, because without giving the opposing view an adequate opportunity to change your mind, a mountain of research on one side of the issue doesn’t establish your claim no matter how mind-blowing their reasoning and research may be. What seemed so simple and easy before can in fact be very difficult. It’s not that I don’t know how to think in depth when writing a paper, it’s just that often deep comprehension and contemplation isn’t necessary, so I feel a little rusty.
Finally, I would like to say that although textbooks are often boring, I have learned something particularly helpful from Aims of Argument. Before, I often did a lot of research and a week later would realize that a source I passed up and thought was irrelevant, was now in fact relevant to my paper, but I wouldn’t be able to find the source at that later time. In Aims of Argument, they present the importance of a “research log” in which you write down every possibly relevant source and how you got there, a record that could serve particularly helpful at a later time. After all, what I am arguing now in my paper differs significantly from what I was originally arguing (or rather, regurgitating), and it may significantly change by the time I turn in my final draft. Wasting time looking for a resource you already found is completely counterproductive, and now I don’t have that problem.
I could say more in this blog, but doing so may bore you silly, so with that I will say please continue to cross your fingers for me for Teach for America, and more importantly, have a good week :D
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Language Games and Nodal Points
In “The Self We Live By,” many different theories of what the self has been in the past, and what it currently is now are presented. There are those that question whether the “self” is a created by the mind by what we think others think we are (Cooley) or what others label us as (Berger), and there are those that selves can be other-directed (developed as one conforms to the wants and needs of others) or inner-directed (whose conformity is only defined by an underlying framework set by the community with much room to grow), such as Riesman suggests.
Then, while examining the postmodern self, there are theorists like Baudrillard (termed skeptical postmodernists) who believe that nothing is more real than the image which represents it. Therefore, the “me” or the self that we may refer to in regular conversation does not really exist because it is just a compilation of the images that others see us as or the images that we compile to say what we are, and there is no division between what is a represention of something and what is actually real. According to Baudrillard, at least to my understanding, the self has no reality; it is “hyperreal.”
In contrast to the radical view of the skeptical postmodernists, Holstein and Gubrium turn to Lyotard’s definition of the self comes from “’nodal points’ of specific communication circuits.” Each person can lie somewhere along the line of two extremes in many different possible communities, being white or black, rich or poor, man or woman, and although we are powerless at times, we can modify the result to some extent, and shape who the self is. Also, the self involves more active involvement in its development, acutally interacting with and describing itself within the communities; just labelling itself as something is not enough for it to exist.
In relation to Lyotard’s self in “The Self We Live By,” the authors write, “Where does such a self [discursive / fractured] stand in relation to truth and authenticity? Certainly, postmodern narratives of self cannot be evaluated in terms of their universal truth value; they can only be truths in relation to ‘interpretive communities,’ as Stanley Fish (1980) might put it.” (70)
Here, I believe the point being made is that you must talk about yourself (using personal pronouns) in relation to the community to which you belong and must interact with that community, and in doing so, you give yourself substance and a reality in that community. From Baudrillaud’s argument, there is no separation between something’s representation and what it is, therefore it may not exist beyond its representation. In a culture where we can look at images and say “that’s me,” makes defining one’s self too easy and representational, rather than real. However, if the self lies within an actual community and is recognized by the community, not just defined by the person who thinks their self belongs there, then the self actually has substance. The act of using “language games” to discuss who we are in relation to these nodal points is what allows us to make the self a reality, not just a fake “hyperreal” self that has no substance. Then, it the combinations and intersections of these identities that help us define who we are, as no one explanation of the identity can lie alone.
Therefore, within my own field, if I wish to define who myself is, I can’t just adopt the image of another scientist or student and believe that that is who I am. I must think about and discuss where I am within multiple different communities which may interact to produce who I am. This definition of myself cannot just be formulated in the mind, but must also interact and discuss with the communities to which it ascribes, or it will not truly exist and will be nothing more than a representation of what I would like to think that it is. I must perform experiments and come to conclusions and then discuss my actions and self with others within the scientific community to be a part of that community, and must do the same with every other community to which I believe I exist. At the same time, this definition of my self is not stagnant, but is dynamic and ever changing, and must continually contribute to different communities to keep its reality alive. The self that exists within the scientific community and U of M student body today, need not exist tomorrow.
This is my understanding of what is meant by the question, “Where does such a self [discursive / fractured] stand in relation to truth and authenticity?” Although I have tried to analyze it and myself in relation to this question, I am not terribly sure that I have gotten the idea right. If you believe that I am off base, please tell me! Like I have said in previous blogs, the concepts of the self are confusing to me, and I’d like to know if I need to redefine my understanding of these concepts.
Then, while examining the postmodern self, there are theorists like Baudrillard (termed skeptical postmodernists) who believe that nothing is more real than the image which represents it. Therefore, the “me” or the self that we may refer to in regular conversation does not really exist because it is just a compilation of the images that others see us as or the images that we compile to say what we are, and there is no division between what is a represention of something and what is actually real. According to Baudrillard, at least to my understanding, the self has no reality; it is “hyperreal.”
In contrast to the radical view of the skeptical postmodernists, Holstein and Gubrium turn to Lyotard’s definition of the self comes from “’nodal points’ of specific communication circuits.” Each person can lie somewhere along the line of two extremes in many different possible communities, being white or black, rich or poor, man or woman, and although we are powerless at times, we can modify the result to some extent, and shape who the self is. Also, the self involves more active involvement in its development, acutally interacting with and describing itself within the communities; just labelling itself as something is not enough for it to exist.
In relation to Lyotard’s self in “The Self We Live By,” the authors write, “Where does such a self [discursive / fractured] stand in relation to truth and authenticity? Certainly, postmodern narratives of self cannot be evaluated in terms of their universal truth value; they can only be truths in relation to ‘interpretive communities,’ as Stanley Fish (1980) might put it.” (70)
Here, I believe the point being made is that you must talk about yourself (using personal pronouns) in relation to the community to which you belong and must interact with that community, and in doing so, you give yourself substance and a reality in that community. From Baudrillaud’s argument, there is no separation between something’s representation and what it is, therefore it may not exist beyond its representation. In a culture where we can look at images and say “that’s me,” makes defining one’s self too easy and representational, rather than real. However, if the self lies within an actual community and is recognized by the community, not just defined by the person who thinks their self belongs there, then the self actually has substance. The act of using “language games” to discuss who we are in relation to these nodal points is what allows us to make the self a reality, not just a fake “hyperreal” self that has no substance. Then, it the combinations and intersections of these identities that help us define who we are, as no one explanation of the identity can lie alone.
Therefore, within my own field, if I wish to define who myself is, I can’t just adopt the image of another scientist or student and believe that that is who I am. I must think about and discuss where I am within multiple different communities which may interact to produce who I am. This definition of myself cannot just be formulated in the mind, but must also interact and discuss with the communities to which it ascribes, or it will not truly exist and will be nothing more than a representation of what I would like to think that it is. I must perform experiments and come to conclusions and then discuss my actions and self with others within the scientific community to be a part of that community, and must do the same with every other community to which I believe I exist. At the same time, this definition of my self is not stagnant, but is dynamic and ever changing, and must continually contribute to different communities to keep its reality alive. The self that exists within the scientific community and U of M student body today, need not exist tomorrow.
This is my understanding of what is meant by the question, “Where does such a self [discursive / fractured] stand in relation to truth and authenticity?” Although I have tried to analyze it and myself in relation to this question, I am not terribly sure that I have gotten the idea right. If you believe that I am off base, please tell me! Like I have said in previous blogs, the concepts of the self are confusing to me, and I’d like to know if I need to redefine my understanding of these concepts.
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