Book Review / Gods of Howl Mountain

Taylor Brown
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN 978-1250111777
p304

When it comes to protagonists, Taylor Brown has changed that paradigm in his novel Gods of Howl Mountain. Rory Docherty is a wounded Korean veteran, back home to bootleg liquor, clash with local factions, evade the law, and appease all his family. He is a gritty car guy who knows the long history of the mountain and the mill town at the bottom of the valley. While Rory is a cut-throat stock car racer and bootlegger, he also knows the mountain and people. A novel as much about place and time as it is story and conflict. 

Rory has returned with a missing leg. Living with his grandmother, in the mountains, they live among the herbal remedies and folklore that haunts the misty mountains. When Rory falls in love with the daughter of a snake-handling preacher, their world is pulled apart by violence, rivalries, love, and ghosts from the past.

Thinking that some evil has invaded Rory's heart, Granny May keeps her shotgun close and her distrust closer. She is mystical in her mountain herbal remedies and her shotgun judgments of the world. Her life as a matriarch and medicine woman draws people to her who want different cures for what ails their lives in town. She also is the link between Rory and the mother he never knew. 

Taylor Brown's prose is as mystical and lyrical as the ghosts high in the mountains. It is not always a beautiful place, but the mountain, the people, and the hard lives all resonant with a profound beauty that shifts from grace and wisdom to deceit and violence. Brown has masterfully crafted this world, grounding in the reader a sense of place and time in America, now long gone. 

Writing Feedback and the Art of Wonder

by Ron Samul 
The power of information, understanding, and thinking is one of the most important skills I want students to understand in academics. Sure, they will have to write papers and do some grunt work for me, but in the end, I want diverse thinking based on thoughtful research. 

When I saw this article that suggests that feedback shouldn't be a directive, but an exploration, I realized that I wasn't fostering diverse thinking if I was telling them what I wanted them to change (make the teacher happy = good grade). But I realize now that perhaps this is not helping. Bill Ferriter posted this idea by Dylan Wiliam and it struck me that perhaps I needed to change the way I spoke to them between the lines. 

"It turns out that it isn't the giving of the feedback that causes learning gains, it is the acting on feedback that determines how much students learn"(1)

If feedback is given to college writers in terms of questions, places to look, or just leads... then students are given permission to explore and find their own learning moments. In the world of creative writing, I think there is more of an exploration of ideas rather than concrete direction and focus. 

The difference is the creative element. The choices writers make with creative writing is based on experience, not form or rhetoric. That being said, feedback does come in the way of questions and connections. Drawing in connections allows the writer to go back and consider relationships, allows them to see another writer moving around the same ideas. It is theirs to comprehend. My point is, when you look to a method of investigative feedback, we should look into the creative writing models and see how feedback is delivered. The biggest insult to a creative writer would be to tell them that their creative expression is wrong. But we do it constantly in academic writing because we are looking for specific benchmarks and rubric goals. In novel writing, sometimes we don't even realize what is happening in the novel to evaluate right and wrong. Recently, I've asked students to pre-read their novel before I commit to working with them on it. Not because they are not good writers, but perhaps I am not the writer to help you with the type of book you want to write? It is a big endeavor and not one to be taken lightly. 

Academic writing could take a few lessons from understanding the value of open-ended feedback. If the grade was secondary to the goal of better writing, we could change the thinking, the writing, and the vision of the paper. Maybe the equation is "challenge teacher = good grade" or "find a sense of voice = good grade" rather than the idea doing what the student is told. 

The last few semesters, I have taken the high-stakes research project for freshman and positioned it in the middle of the semester. The reason behind it was to spend time after the initial writing to explore, deconstruct, and revalue what they added to their paper. Most of the papers that come in are cleaned up rough drafts, and I think spending some time thinking about their paper is valuable. 

The next step is to make them feel like they know something they didn't know before. I want to them to feel like they are knowledgeable about the content of their research. If they are not, then what did they gain? It isn't enough to read the research paper back to me, it must be something you understand. That is what makes good writing. A good creative writer understands what they are writing and knows the depth of their words. So should academics, and be leading them by way of discoverable feedback, the depth of their thinking increases. 

http://blog.williamferriter.com/2016/02/20/new-slide-turn-feedback-into-detective-work/?utm_content=bufferb5c39&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Ron Samul is a writer and educator. For more information or to contact him, go to www.RonSamul.org 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

QR Codes and Your Syllabus

Syllabus 
Ever feel like your syllabus becomes a major work of contractual obligation, spelling out expectations, clauses for different areas of the college, purpose, and intent? Do you feel like much of your syllabus is based on issues that have come up in the past and need amending? My syllabus feels like a complex governmental document that doesn't always outline the creativity and importance of the course - but just a lot of boilerplate things that the students don't read anyway.

There is a lot of different ways to reinvent a syllabus, but I would like to add a few QR Codes to my syllabus. By adding Quick Response Codes in my syllabus, students have some quick access to me. Here are some ideas.

• By scanning a QR Code - students will be able to load my contact information into their phones with one quick scan, including my phone number, email, and office location. 
• By scanning a QR Code - students will be able to find my office on Google Maps and get there without excuses. 
• By scanning a QR Code - students can link to the course website or upload a copy of the syllabus to their phones or tablets. 

Students are coming into the classroom phones and tablets. These once basic things are now very powerful. Using CR Codes in developing a quick connect to elements in the syllabus might allow students to quickly access information that would take time to enter into their phones. 

This does not mean that we will discard traditional syllabus information and institutional goals and templates. But it does give students Quick Response Codes that will allow them to gather information quickly and have it in their devices. 

For students who are not interested in scanning codes - they still have access to the printed material and information. While it might seem like a novelty - it also can guide them to places like the course website, the login space for a LMS, or even take them to the library homepage for help with subject guides and other resources. 

Assignment Sheets

This concept applies to assignment sheets. When I present an assignment to my class, the first thing I do is pass it out on paper. If there is a QR Code on the top of the assignment sheet - students can then use their phones or devices to access the URL where they can find the electronic versions of the assignment. On that sheet, students might also find QR Codes for library resources and other elements. While I would provide links and other pathways to discovery for non-scanners, this would be an easy why for students to find this information. 

Tutoring centers could develop their own QR Code - a key to signing up for tutoring appointments or schedule. 

Asethetics

I should mention - I really admire the practicality of QR Code boxes, however, I think they look oppressive. I've seen some graphic designed boxes that look cool. I wonder where the line can be draw between funcationaly and looks when it comes to these codes. I annotated a poem using QR Codes and it looked so odd. 

In searching for cool QR Codes I found these and -- they work! Try it! 

Like all technology, we run the risk of putting too much focus on a particular element of technology. In looking at different ways to use these boxes, it has allowed me to study a peice of imprintable media that can be used in a variety of ways. It isn't all very functional. In fact, sometimes, it doesn't work at all. But it is a way for us to help students input, access, and share information on the devices in their hands right now. It has also allowed me to develop and think about how these odd electronic keys might open different opportunities for me and the students in an academic setting. 

Any feedback, ideas, or collaboration on these ideas are always welcome.

Ron Samul is a writer and educator. For more information or to contact him, go to www.RonSamul.org 


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

#Rhizo15 / Where Did My Artifact Go? / Week 6

The metaphor has been a powerful tool for this experience. We search for metaphors when we have trouble understanding that intangible part of our experience. In this case, some of the metaphor is built into this experience. The metaphor is a very powerful resources for people searching for the intangible. Poetry is about the intangible: love, freedom, fear, and the spiritual. Those things are only brought to beauty by way of the function of figurative language.

In thinking about creating an artifact, I thought about poetry because of the impact that the metaphor can play in explaining this process: a whimsical poem about Dave, a serious poem about being lost, a passionate poem about the power of finding your own learning path. I thought about my novella about a student who attends class that isn't happening and finds out she is in the rhizome (a bit Black Orphan inspired I'm afraid. Those two came about together. Sorry.) But I thought about all the blog posts and how they might connect and how important his space has been to me. I thought about all the other blogs out there where people challenged my thinking, my way of teaching, and even made me ask those tough questions like what are we really doing? 

What artifact would show people what happened at Rhizo15? What would give people the insight? Something concrete?  I was drifting for awhile. Then, it hit me. 

Ron looking for his Rhizo15 artifact.

It wasn't what I wrote or said - it is what I did. Two students were cut loose from my class on the last two weeks. They were sent out to do something - learn something, and come back. Those two students took the risk and the challenge - which was far more work than writing my last paper, and they defined themselves. My artifacts are the two potentially new members of the rhizome community. They went out and defined their own path, they went out, sought answers that weren't for a grade but for themselves. They were driven, passionate, and they got it. We have always been in the rhizome. We have always been thinking this way. The best way to foster a community: sustain it, and these two students went beyond my hope and they went from students to scholars. They are my artifacts, not as something left behind to pick up and referenced, that is what the blog is for, but people actively walking around looking for answers, asking questions, and getting lost so they can be found. I will leave you with this comment from one of the students, "I do plan to be a professor someday and have been analyzing teaching styles and class participation throughout my college experience. I will definitely be taking what I have learned from your posts and teaching, into my whole life, my learning, my leading, my parenting, and my teaching." 

_________________________________________________

P.S. Thank you all for your support and vision. It was amazing. I am up for any collaboration or projects. Please keep me in the loop. 

#Rhizo15 / Week 3 / Content - Morning Coffee

This is a fascinating topic and I think it begins the root of one of my difficulties as a writing teacher. But before I ramble about that -- it is important to remember that we are the content, and what we say and what we think are diverse and complicated packets of thought. If we are the curriculum, we are also the content. We've been filling this space with content, but how it connects and how it all moves us through our learning paths and root systems, is not content but the result of the content and the curriculum moving in orchestra.

Course content to me is a dream. During my writing courses and working with graduate students, there is the content - which I always discuss in terms of coffee (content), and the cup which is everything else (form, ethos, pathos, logos, audience, time, place). I've been asked to teach courses with no coffee and all cup - and all coffee and just the mention of a cup. So, what is more important and why?

In the end, I need to give the students a cup of coffee. An empty cup doesn't serve them because they need the coffee, the caffeine, and something warm to ingest. On the flip side coffee can't happen without putting it into something or it will be a complete mess. And so the connection of these ideas have to come together. Form and content together. And let's face it - it is not all that exciting discussing comparative essays with no content. And writing about gun control without understanding how an argument works is mentally exhausting as well.

And if I might complicate matters a bit more, what if the coffee is the form and the cup is the content? What if I am the coffee and the writing is the cup? Sorry, I just get caught up in Rhizo fits of thinking.

Do I need content to talk about writing? No. But the difficulty is to explain "form" in a vacuum without content. And then explaining that it doesn't matter what goes into the cup or what the content is, as long as you understand the form and what it can do. It gets more complex when we get into creative writing.

Creative writing is about telling stories and creating emotions. Story is content developed through the writer. I don't feel like my role is to change content in creative writing unless I have a reason based in form and function. To say, I just don't like this has to be based in reason, not just my own subjective taste. My job is to ground my comments in the function of form - and sometimes that is difficult to do. That is where I need to be a better teacher and mentor. I need to study narratology, I need to study form and rhetoric in fiction and linguistic. Their content is subjective which speaks to their story and ideas. And frankly, it bothers me when people judged my creative work without a functional purpose for change. How do I make creative writers produce better writing - I talk to them about everything but their content. I even make them write journals about why they are doing what they are doing and mapping out how they work. Shaping their form and aesthetic well-being will give the best fertile ground for growing something brilliant.

Having said that - isn't it ironic that I've been hired to teach "subjects" - content and not teach in an area where I can be effective in all modes of written expression. Perhaps that is a place in our academic world that we should subvert. We are all so much bigger than the content we teach. Perhaps that would go on our subjective portfolios and resumes - the place where all the really important things are listed and never realized. 

Week #2 Rhizo15 - Assessment Principles

Looking back at how a mentor relationship works, particularly in writing, it really does depend on how much effort is put in by both sides of the equation. The more invested the mentor is - the more the writer (student) will engage, learn, and push to have continued interactions. Part of it is motivation by both sides, but it also has to be measured in - does this kind of effort (on both sides) produce some writing that is fruitful? Otherwise, why would you foster a relationship that doesn't equate to a goal or success?

This brings about the next idea. If we can evaluate and try to find defined ways to measure effort rather than outcome, don't we also have to measure the effort of the guide (educator, teacher, ect) to see if that effort is equally engaged in the investment of learning? That isn't to say the volume or hours of work put in - but that the effort of the teacher is accountable to the effort of the student. Am I suggesting that this doesn't work unless both sides shows equal or grater effort than the other? Perhaps it is like a math equation:  if student effort is less than the teacher than effort values will return as failing. If student effort equals or is greater than the teacher's effort to facilitate learning, then the student will return a grade of passing or satisfactory.

But what the hell am I counting or grading. Effort? Did they do enough? How do I know? How can I measure if the path they took was valid or worth the journey?

In Tom Bourner's article Assessing Reflective Learning, he describes creating a self assessing learning. Someone who can measure the planned learning and the unplanned learning. The process or skill developed in some courses - are not foundation skills, but the ability to refine how and why they are learning and reflect on that value.

If reflective learning is not assessed it is most likely to be neglected. Assessment has been described as ‘the tail that wags the dog’. Attention follows assessment and behaviour follows attention. Most students pay most attention to what is assessed. That which is not assessed is most likely to be most neglected (Bourner).

Furthermore, in this section, he goes on to discuss how there will never be validity or legitimacy in reflective learning "until the assessment of reflective learning is secure." This is evident in some of the online courses and MOOC certifications that are in the world. Understanding the subjective nature of learning has value that needs to be assessed and developed into credits or some objective assessment of skill or ability.

He goes on to point out that subjective learning is only valuable to the learner who goes through it and that it is too subjective to quantify. He also explains that reflective learning has no foundation in past objectives achieved by others, so when learning occurs, it is not only a new subjective, but it is also always changing in relevance and importance. "In the absence of planned learning outcomes there is nothing against which to assess the learning"(Bourner).

The last important element of this article that I think is a great resources in thinking about how to assess learning that is subjective is Table 2: Questions as tools for reflective thinking. These are really good entry points into thinking about the learning process and how to make it work.

While my intention was to discuss counting and evaluation - I also began thinking, with the help of this resources, how and why subjective learning needs to be valued, given legitimacy, and made to refine the process of education and work. It might solve some our most pressing issues in higher education, like critical thinking, perseverance, motivation, and valuing the learning process.

Online learning: Are subjective perceptions of instructional context related toacademic success?