Reflections on TYCA-SE 2012

Hello out there, blogosphere!

Greg and I are back from this year’s conference of the Two-Year College English Association – Southeast (Click their logo to go to the TYCA-SE homepage). I really just can’t say enough about how important this organization is to me. Before I found TYCA, I had depended on the National Writing Project (NWP) for my professional development.  The NWP was so so great, and I will be forever in debt to the NWP as well as the Blackwater Writing Project in Valdosta, GA. But, as you may or may not know, NWP was federally funded professional development that was cut, along with Reading is Fundamental, in last year’s budget compromises. When NWP’s funding was cut last year, I was sitting in sessions at TYCA-SE 2011. Little did I know at that moment that I had already found a source of PD that would rival the NWP.I met so many awesome people then, and I hope those professional relationships continue to thrive.

This year’s meeting in Virginia Beach was another spectacular entry in the TYCA-SE history. The temperature on the beach hovered around 75 degrees all week which was awesome, even though I only got out there for a quick run on one afternoon. The conference also offered Greg and I an opportunity to meet more of our southeastern colleagues and share our work on our theory of communicative education.

We spoke in a pretty well attended, late Friday afternoon session about the work we’re doing with Habermas’s theory of communicative action and how it relates to the educational enterprise. We focused this session on establishing trust in the teacher-student relationship, which is at the heart of communicative education since without trust, mutual understanding is pretty much unachievable. I won’t repeat it all here, since you can dig into it all in the podcasts, but I will say that it was a really great conversation.

It was really nice meeting new and supportive voices in our field. I know some of you are following along with the blog now, and I’m sorry we’re dropping the ball on those special Virginia Beach podcasts. We’ve been working hard on drafting an article during our spring break, and I am definitely still playing catch-up (mostly on sleep). We will get all six (soon to be seven) podcasts uploaded soon.

And we’ll see you all next year in South Carolina!

-Shane

Episode 9: Are the Teacher-Student Relationship and the Educational System in Conflict?

As a result of the mandates and policies set forth by the educational system, it can sometimes seem that teachers and systems are working against each other.  That isn’t necessarily true, though, as systems have a life of their own.  The mandates and policies set forth by the system take on their own power from their impersonal quality.  So, how can we work toward a discourse oriented toward understanding?  And how can we make sure that we reach mutual understanding with our students before we begin talking about the goals that the systemic policy has mandated that we achieve?  How can communicative education function in a policy and mandate-heavy system?

Episode 8: Is There Life in the Educational System? (Part 2)

Pardon our audio for this episode–technical difficulties.

In this episode, Shane and Greg continue to discuss the Habermas’s theory of communicative action as it deal with the relationship of the life world with the system world. We need systems. The discussion this week focuses on the transactions, policies, and mandates that take place in the educational system. There are obviously transactions facilitated by the educational system (through business offices, primarily), but the point of the educational system is not financial transaction. How can we keep students from reducing their educations from communicative interactions to facilitated transactions?

Episode 7: Is there life in the educational system?

A major theme in Habermas’s theory of communicative action is the complex relation of “system” and “lifeworld.” The interactions whereby persons achieve mutual understanding are enabled by the participants’ collections of cognitive schemata, emotional attitudes, and socially constituted norms and values. Habermas terms this largely unconscious background to communication the lifeworld (Lebenswelt). Social systems, like government, education, and the economic system, being abstract and impersonal, bypass communication and function by policy and mandates. However, systems are necessary in large, complex societies, and it would be an error to imagine that because human communication is “good,” systems are therefore bad. The challenge for educators, therefore, is to “find the lifeworld in the system” and let the system support, rather than threaten, the teacher-student relationship.

Episode 6: Can people thrive in a system?

Communication takes place only among persons.  But systems (like the education system) are abstract and impersonal.  Is it true, therefore, that because education is organized systemically, people cannot communicate within it?  And what about disruptions to communication–like plagiarism–that take place within the teacher-student relationship?

Episode 5: How Can Communicative Ed Help Meet Standards? Pt 2

Shane and Greg examine the “expected educational outcomes” of a particular college course and discuss whether such an outcome-oriented document is inherently inimical to the fostering of mutual understanding. Does the goal orientation of the educational system require a goal orientation of its participants?

Listen in as Greg and Shane bounce the topic back and forth by clicking below.

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Episode 4: How Can Communicative Ed Help Meet Standards? Pt 1

This week, Shane and Greg discuss the differences between goal-oriented/ strategic action and communicative action.  Can the educational enterprise work with only communicative action?  At some point, should the switch be made to goal-oriented action?  Shane and Greg discuss how a communicative theory of education can fit into a world/ system dominated by standards and measurable success.

Listen in as Greg and Shane bounce the topic back and forth by clicking below.

To subscribe to the bi-weekly podcast, click below.

Episode 3: What More Is the Teacher-Student Relationship?

This week, Shane uses the podcast as therapy for a traumatic event from his time in the second grade. The guys discuss the role of power in the teacher-student relationship and wonder what its place is, or if it even has a place at all.  How is punishment used?  How can punishment be used?  Should punishment be used?
Listen in as Greg and Shane bounce the topic back and forth by clicking below.

To subscribe to the bi-weekly podcast, click below.

Student Strife

If you rode the Podcast wave last week all the way to the bitter shore, you heard Greg making trumpet sounds with his mouth.  But you also heard a short story about a student who was unhappy with her grade.  Now, this is no new thing.  If you have been teaching for more than, I don’t know, a day, then someone in your class has probably expressed a dissatisfaction with your grading.

I like to think that I am a good communicator (especially since communication is at the heart of Communicative Education).  I rarely have this issue.  A few weeks ago, though, I received an e-mail that, in short, expressed a real distaste for how I had graded an in-class writing assignment.  I admit that this course has been a struggle from day one (this is my first semester teaching it), and maybe I didn’t clearly articulate the expectations of this particular assignment.  Since we had been working on the same concepts–subject/verb agreement and complete sentences–for something like 12 weeks, I thought that the expectations were clear.

1. Make your subjects and verbs agree
2. Make complete sentences

However, I realized that maybe I hadn’t been as clear as I could have been.  I offered to meet with the student during office hours to explain the rationale behind the grade (which did come with a rubric).  She didn’t come by for a few days, so I decided I would address it with the whole class.  I began to expect that she wasn’t the only one confused.  I walked into class with the rubric and had a short town-hall meeting.  I explained my rationale and let the students ask questions.  At the end of it all, everyone seemed pleased.

The student who had initially confronted me improved significantly on the next assignment.  I believe this to be a great example of what we’re trying to do here.  Last week, I asked Greg, “What are teachers supposed to be learning from students?” Well, this is it!  They will teach us how to be better teachers, if nothing else.  We just have to be willing to reach toward mutual understanding.

-Shane

Episode 2: What is the Teacher-Student Relationship?

Virtually all of the available literature regards the concept of a teacher-student relationship as healthy and even indispensable for the educational enterprise. Anecdotally, however, many teachers resist the term “relationship” as excessively intimate and transgressive of personal boundaries. Similarly, popular culture harbors great concern about the potential for inappropriate, abusive behavior on the part of teachers. Freire’s “banking” model of pedagogy presents another critique of a teacher-student relationship. Nevertheless, analogy with other professional-to-non-professional relationships like those of doctor-patient and lawyer-client imply that even persons playing differing roles can reach mutual understanding. The public, professional context of education puts great stress on the subjective dimension of sincerity and the ethical dimension of non-coercion. We will pick up the story here next time.

Listen in as Greg and Shane bounce the topic back and forth by clicking below.

To subscribe to the bi-weekly podcast, click below.