English 101 at Ashland

This is the Booker T. Washington quotation which I gave you for the midterm in-class: The highest education is that which fits an individual to live successfully in the community where his life is thrown. The object of all education, no matter by what name it is called, should be to fit the individual to articulate what he has learned in the school room into the active, everyday life of the community in which he lives. I would say that the really important part is the last, the idea that true education fits a person to give back to the community—not simply to make money for one’s own benefit.

Beginning this week, we will do a brief computer tutorial at the start of every Wednesday class. I am doing this for several reasons. The first is that about three or four students per section really do not know what they are doing, and they blunder along, struggling to do even the most basic tasks. Second, many of you never had any real computer teaching, partly because your high school teachers didn’t know this stuff either, and partly because of the myth that any kid who could work Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok had learned it all. (And, to be honest, many high schools function under the delusion that in the future nobody will write anything anyhow.) And third, there is always something new to learn, even for experts. I recently showed a colleague who was writing a PhD dissertation a quick, easy formatting trick for his References page. He had years of experience, but had never seen that one. Personal note here: I have been around the computer worl...

Back during Covid, I used the Blogger software to keep people rolling and to give a sense of community to the classroom. Over the last couple of days, I’ve been working on my fall courses, and that led me to rethink how this thing can help us, so I’ve decided to make a few changes in our course. The main change is that the blog will now contain a lot more of the lecture material. This should open up some time for in-class writing and should also help those who cannot be with us for a class session. I am trying to move away from the classroom model which says, “You sit there and listen to me talking.” A second change is that you will see links in Blackboard to specific blog items (similar to the link which led you here today). One more bonus point is that all these blog items have a way to post a comment, so you have a direct path to asking questions or starting a conversation.

We will have two more times this semester when an in-class event counts for points and you lose out if you are absent: Midterm and Final. Both of these present problems because athletic teams have a habit of hitting the road several days before midterm and being out of town during Finals Week. As I have previously said, we will deal with these problems by scheduling the writing events through the University Testing Service for people who must be away on University business. Dealing with SOAR The official way to deal with those missed writing assignments is for you to make an appointment with the Ashland University Testing Service , after which they would request a copy of the assignment from me, so that when you show up it is waiting there for you. The problem is that all of this communication goes through the SOAR network, which I almost never touch. About the only use for the thing is for students to schedule office visits, and it is much more natural and convenient for a student t...

Now that (I hope) the majority of the severe winter weather is behind us, it is time to tighten up on attendance—to get more professional. Here is a reminder of the basics from our syllabus: The class actually begins at 10:00 AM. I expect to start doing things then and I expect you to be ready to start then too. If you show up between 10:05 and 10:10, I will count you as present but late. You get 50% credit for attendance. If you show up after 10:10, you do not get credit for attending, but you are welcome to stay. If you spend the time sleeping, staring out the window, doing homework for other classes, or playing on your phone, you get 25% credit for attendance. If you are in the habit of ducking out to use the toilet, etc., I will apply the “late” penalty—50% attendance credit for that day. I have been leaving the door unlocked during the class period, but if we begin having security issues on campus, the door will be locked at 10:10 AM. Reading...

After reading about fifty of your responses to the M.L. King quotation, I have to admit that my eyes got a bit glazed over, but I began asking myself what I would have written in response to that quote. What follows is more like my notes for a full paper, not a polished essay. First, here is the original prompt: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Dr. King was a pacifist and believed that hatred and prejudice could be fought with love. Do you agree with him? Do you think that in all situations a peaceful response is the correct one? As a teacher, I want to deal with two things that seemed to cause a lot of fuzzy thinking in some of those papers I read. The first is a definition problem; the second is a misreading of the prompt (which I must confess I did as well). Definition problem There is a big difference between “hatred” and using necessary force. Police officers ...

I began this blog when the heavy winter storm of January 24–27 closed the college and kept most of us indoors. As I write this on January 29, I realize that we probably still need it. Winter is not over yet, and a lot of us cannot get to campus every day. I currently have 57 students on my rosters for my three sections. Yesterday’s incoming emails included five requests for excused absences due to sickness, and I know that a couple of teams are on the road and will miss the Friday class. That means something like ten percent of you will not be able to attend. The Wednesday session of 101-B had only 10 of the 18 students present. Winter will continue to fight us. What to do about it One of the great problems of college courses—and everyone has the same problem—is that the schedule is very tight. We only have fifteen weeks and a ton of material we must get through, so we simply cannot take a day off. You cannot take a day off either. Even if your c...

As I write this on Tuesday morning, we are officially back to normal operations. Things are not quite “normal” yet for many of us: Very extreme cold (plus wind chill) is our future for several days, so protect yourself. If you are a commuter, I expect you to make your own decision about whether you can safely drive to campus, and if you don’t think it’s a good idea, please email me. Between the cold weather and the possibility that country roads still aren’t clear, driving might be a challenge. I am not 100% sure I will be able to make it to campus. I haven’t been outside my apartment since Friday, and I live on a dead-end street at the very edge of the City of Mansfield. (I can see the line from my bedroom window, about fifteen feet from my bed.) It is a street with many apartments, home to hundreds of people, but we really are the edge of the world. No snow plowing yet. I will do my best, but my car is not made for pushing through deep snow. Watch your email to see whe...

As I think about the Artificial Intelligence (AI) problem, I am convinced of two things: First that relatively few of you sat down in your senior year of high school and said “I think I will just cheat my way through college,” and second that AI is a desperation move for many students. Nobody taught them how to write (perhaps because nobody in their high school knew either), and now in college they need to actually produce something to pass their courses, keep their scholarship, and stay on the team. I put this semester together with the idea that if we start back at the very beginning and work on the root problem—how to actually write things—that will be the best way to help you. The “Poison Fish” reading (From Ken Macrorie’s Telling Writing ) came across my desk a dozen years ago, and it was a breath of fresh air. So many of my students struggled with writing in a natural voice—often they did sort of an imitation of legal language (“hereinunder” and “heretofore”) or...

The university just canceled classes for Monday, January 26, so we can all hide out, drink hot chocolate, and try to figure out the rest of our lives. I have no idea how much longer the snow emergency will last (and some news outlets think we might be looking at several days), so I am using this somewhat more human way to communicate. Better than email. Academic stuff As I said Friday, college class schedules are tight enough that we cannot simply take a day off. (I have been grading your in-class papers this weekend, so I know what it’s like to do a working vacation.) You have two main tasks for our course: Begin drafting your “Memorable Teacher” paper. Keep up with your daily Blackboard reading. You would be really wise to pace yourself—and keep up with all your reading for your other courses as well. Perhaps you could simply follow your usual daily schedule of classes, but do it in your bedroom with your computer. Non-academic stuff I just looked out the back door (4 PM...