Writing can be Multimodal

Since completing my investigation into arts-based forms of inquiry for my term paper, I have been thinking about what it means to write and who defines writing and how. I’ve also been wondering about to what degree we embrace multimodality and multiliteracies in our lives. Are they simply “nice” things to talk about in theory and pronounce that it is needed in the 21^st century? Are they just something to be used in classroom activities for students? Are they embraced at all levels of the academy why and why not?

For me, multimodal thinking and doing are something greater. They are ways of positioning one’s self in the world and ways of constructing meaning in, with, and from that world. One of the promises I made myself after investigating arts-based education research was that I will no longer tiptoe around my artist-self. So, in the spirit of arts-based modes of experiencing the world, I am going to use this blog space for a piece of creative writing. I organized this piece from letters my mother wrote me when I was about 3. Each time I reread these letters I am given the honor to glimpse not just my childhood but also my semiotic construction of the world through words. The letters illustrate how in just a few simple words I began to sort, define, and construct my expeirence of the world.

A Mother’s Notes to Her Daught

At times the things that you come up with surprise me.

About 3 weeks ago you learned that your name was Jenny. (Before this you called yourself, Baby)

You pointed to Daddy and said Daddy.

You pointed to Mommy and said Mommy.
You pointed to Yourself and said Jenny.

You come to me and ask me for a pencil so you can write and you can say “write.”

You like Mommy and Daddy to write with you.

You ask us to draw things like cats for you.

You still like cats really well all the animals, really.

You know what mailboxes are sometimes when we drive by them
You say “Bye Bye Mailboxes.”

I really think we are communicating now.

Texts as a Happening

All day today, I kept trying to think about what to write about for this week’s “dumbass” blog entry. It feels like the entire week my fingers have been glued to a computer’s keyboard or to a pen or pencil. Writing has been non-stop; I’ve written checks, in-class notes, sent text messages, responded to countless emails, finished one term paper, and the writing keeps coming even when I dream I’m writing! Even now, I am writing this blog while simultaneously working on finishing up parts of my inquiry paper and presentation for our course. Needless to say, I feel a little drained to think of an interesting topic or some deep connection or profound statement about writing. Nevertheless, I would like to use the space in this entry to share with you a fascinating book about writing that I encountered while researching and reading for my inquiry paper in our class.

“I suppose the reason none of us burn incense in our writing classes any more is because of the dick drives. Smoke’s not supposed to be good for them, right? But what about the sounds, the candlelight, the students on the floor, the dark? What about that other scene of writing instruction? Where has that gone, the idea of the writing classroom as black canvas, ready to be inscribed as a singular compositional space?”

Catchy opening for a book about writing and the composition classroom, huh? I thought so! The book’s author is Geoffery Sirc and the title is English Composition as a Happening. Sirc uses the space of the book to raises some very simple yet powerful questions about the writing classroom such as: How shall writing be defined?; How shall we teach what we put into theory?; How can composition studies look to other disciplines to see how they view the processes of composition and what can English learn from them? To situate what Sirc is referring to when he say “Happening” he is referring to a very specific movement in the visual arts that took place in the 1960s. The term Happening was coined by Allan Kaprow and they were rather avant-garde “performances” that took place only once. I put quotations around the work performance because this work might provoke certain image in people that involve a very formal performance on Broadway for example. Performances typically imply a group of trained people who’ve practiced, memorized scripts, and act out something for an audience. However, the 1960’s Happenings could be described as were roughly (sometimes very roughly) scripted events performed in a public space and often –but not always- relied on volunteers to be part of the performance. Happenings were often intended to be a form of social commentary and raised questions about things such as the status of art and its relationship to life. Sadly, almost as quickly as the movement game to a head it died out. I have been fascinated with the book thus far because of Sirc attempts to draw parallels between the development of Happenings in the visual art field and the developments of the process movements in composition, which took place in the 1960s as well.

I’m very interested to see where Sirc takes these ideas with respect to using them in a 21^st century writing classroom. I will leave you with another thought-provoking quote from the author and maybe it will spark some thoughts about writing, knowledge, and us as professional in whatever discipline.

“My sense of composition is now a field that all reads the same books, shares the same notion of what counts as professional knowledge; this auto-replicating homogeneity of the professional becomes the material discriminator…reading selections based on ‘the sorts of readings we talk about when we talk with our colleagues’”.

** The first quote used in the blog entry comes from page 1 and the second comes from page 265 of Sirc, G. (2002). English composition as a happening. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.

Hearing Diverse Voices

“We need to know more about how writing can be used to strengthen students’ identities of who they currently are and who they have the potential of becoming.”

“We need to be acting on the knowledge that we already have by ensuring that all students receive engaging instruction that requires extended, reflective, critical writing and supports their developing identities as successful writers.”

“We must also ensure that all students receive instruction that values the cultural identities and linguistic resources they bring into the classroom so they can develop powerful discourses that allow them to become contributors of knowledge in their own communities and in the larger society.”**

The three quotations above were pulled from the conclusion section of chapter 31 in the Handbook of Research on Writing. The authors, Ball and Ellis ended their piece with these calls for scholars to take up researching in greater depth the connection between writing and identity with respects to culturally and linguistically diverse students. A little over a week ago, I went to presentation at Ohio State University The Politics of Writing, Place, and Youth Digital Discourses, which was a snapshot from Dr. Valarie Kinloch’s newly released book Harlem on Our Minds: Place, Race, and Literacies of Urban Youth. Both her book and presentation represent a researcher’s journey into the complexities of youth literacy, community, and identity. Moreover, Kinloch’s research I believe truly embodies one scholar’s answer to the authors’ call for research about the relationships between identity and writing.

Her research not only investigated the lives of young people from Harlem and the relationships among place, writing practices, and social interactions, but it also touched on a number of additional issues including community, gentrification, power, knowledge, struggle, and multiple conflicting narratives. One of the most fascinating aspects about her work through both her research and writing she challenges traditional stances of writing being bound on the page, and instead she represents the literacy practices of urban youth multimodally by means of collaborative interviews, photos, and writing samples. The multimodal nature of writing is found in her book as well. A side note about the book: it is particularly insightful how she managed to weave together multiple voices (students/teachers/graduate students/community activist) from the Harlem community. As a readers it gave me a rich sense of the place and some of the individuals who reside there.

Even though I also ended last week’s blog with a quotation from Maxine Greene’s book Releasing the Imagination, I find it fitting to end this entry by quoting her yet again. While Chapter 31 by Ball and Ellis is a review of literature about identity, writing, and diverse students, the chapter's message for me goes beyond those points and reaches into larger ontological, ideological ideas about what it means to live in a democratic society. In thinking about the chapter and Kinloch’s scholarship, I can think of no better way to end than with Maxine’s words:

How are we to comprehend the kind of community that offers the opportunity to be otherwise? Democracy, we realize, means a community that is always in the making. Marked by an emerging solidarity, a sharing of certain beliefs, and a dialogue about others, it must remain open to newcomers, those too long thrust aside. This can happen even in the local spaces of classrooms, particularly when students are encouraged to find their voices and their images (p. 39).

** The quotes at the beginning of this entry come from page 511 of: Brazerman, C. (2008). Handbook of Research on Writing: History, society, school, individual, text. New York, NY: Routledge.

More Questions than Answers

I have a feeling that this blog entry is probably going to read somewhat like an abstract painters work. You know something is going on in the composition on the canvas but sometimes nothing comes out clearly. In fact, this entry is probably very reflective of my current frame of mind about writing because at this point in the semester I'm full of more question than answers and one idea after another. I’ve also been doing some serious introspection with respect to community, writing/text, change, identity, power, semiotics, aesthetics, and artfulness. What is writing? How do we define it, pin it down, put a rock on it? How do our perspective on writing illuminate certain ideological underpinnings? So, my apologize in advance if this is more like ideas bouncing on, off, between, around, and into, each other rather than neat-and-tidy, fully fleshed out ideas.

For this entry I’d like to spend time briefly on my impressions from Chapter 26 in the Handbook of Research in Writing about adolescent and adult writing development. I found the chapter’s contents to be informative especially with respect to learning about the various pedagogies and policies surrounding writing, but I would agree with the authors’ statements that for adolescents and low-literate adults writers pedagogy, federal education, and labor policy have not always been learner centered and the models of writing development are not conducive for learners, especially from a sociocultural perspective. I would also say that such perspectives on writing don’t position writing as an endeavor embodying the spirit of democracy, imagination, creativity, artfulness, experience, process, and/or community. In addition, I was left with an unexpected bitter taste in my mouth form of the kind of language sometimes used to discuss writing. I’m by no means attempting to place fault on the authors of the chapter because they’re simply synthesizing research studies for the purpose of the handbook, but what I’m left questioning is the kind of vocabulary used in discussion around writing. Some of the examples from the text included: skills-based, writing skills development, competency-based, on-demand assessment, skills acquisition, writing as task, etc. Doesn’t all this vocabulary seem somewhat counter productive to what we are learning about writing?

Some of the question I was left asking myself after reading this chapter. 1). With all these research about adolescents and adults, where are the voices from the adults and youngsters? What do they have to say about literacy, teaching, policy, etc, and how much influence does their perspectives on literacy have, if any? 2). Another thing I’ve been questioning has to do with the ideas expressed in the adolescence in literacy section of the chapter about in and out of school literacy as well as a “third space” to witness youths’ writing practices. This idea of the third space left me wondering about how much teachers should bring out-side school literacies into the classroom and what are the ramifications of doing that? How are we affecting/changing those literacies when we attempt to bring them into the context of schools?

All this said, I can't help but wonder how are we teaching writing and what for? I'd like to end with a passage from Maxine Greene (1995) Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change, which for me speaks to some of the issues raised in this chapter on adolescent and adult writing development. Maxine wrote the following:

Those are are labeled as deficient, fixed in that category as firmly as flies in amber, have little chance to feel they can be yet otherwise than what they have become. Marginalized, they are left to the experience of powerlessness unless (usually with support) they are enabled to explain their "shocks" and reach beyond (p. 39).