B4 Senior Citizens Writing

• This was mildly interesting, but not terribly useful.  The presenters were all involved in a Senior Citizen’s Writing Workshop in the Los Angeles area.
• One interesting concept raised by Michelle Barany was that writing is a foreign language.  Barany’s first language is French, I think, and she noted how spoken language is really our first language.  There’s not much difference between translating into written language and into another foreign language.

C36 Composing Engagement:  Constructing Civic Identities

• Gresham, Conner, and McCracken were all from the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg.  What was interesting was that it’s a very new, small campus, and they were hired specifically to develop a civically engaged composition program from the ground up.  They each described some of their projects.
• Conner’s was most interesting to me.  He had groups formed around issues.  Students used wikis to create sites focused on their issues.  I got to bring home a printed zine focused on Darfur.  It’s impressive.

D14 What Kind of Indian Are You – Mascot, Disney Character, Hiawatha?:  Changing Realities of Indian Representations

• Anderson, Roger Williams University; Bizzaro, East Carolina University
• I went to this session because of my history of interest in Native issues dating back to Shiprock and my activism in the UND Sioux nickname debate.
• Sadly, the attendance was pretty sparse.  I was even hoping that I might know someone (perhaps Scott Lyons), but I didn’t.  It wasn’t too compelling, but I did learn about Mardi Gras Indians, of whom I was ignorant before.
• Mardi Gras Indians are black men who dress in elaborate pseudo Indian costumes and dance in Mardi Gras and Second Line parades.  The idea is that they’re honoring Indian groups that aided run away slaves back in the old south.  The reality is that they don’t resemble any historical tribes and their portrayals are pretty inaccurate caricatures.  There was some discussion about this toward the end of the session, and most were ambivalent as to how Natives and others should respond to this phenomenon, comparing it to the team mascot issue. 

E42 From Soap Boxing to MySpacing:  Critical Pedagogy and Multimodal Composition

• Scott, University of North Carolina; Welch, University of Vermont
• I went to this because MySpace was in the title, and it turned out that the MySpace presented cancelled.  Bummer.
• Nevertheless, Scott’s presentation was very Freirian, and I liked what he does.  His students focused on the critical differences between their academic lives and their working lives.  He invites them to look at their workplaces with a critical lens.  The course culminates in a multi-modal reflection of the entire semester.  He had lots of examples from one case study.
• Welch’s presentation was also interesting.  In a moment of frustration over the fact that her students had not done an assigned reading on the Flint strikes of the 1930s, she grabbed a milk crate and had them give soapbox speeches with surprising results.  She continues to use the soapbox.  I might try it.

SIG Service Learning

• My head was spinning from all of that, and I decided to wrap up my day by joining the Service Learning Special Interest Group.  I did some good networking.  One important resource for me is Melody Bowden from the University of Central Florida.
• Melody raised the issue of how SL has gone from an edgy, grass-roots movement to an institutional PR machine, and asked how this affects students.  Interesting question, but no answers.  I attended her Friday session (see below).
• I also learned that Thomas Deans is a great resource, so I’m glad I’ve got Writing Partnerships.  Apparently he has a student text out.
• Linda Flowers is also another good resource.  I have too look her up.
• CCC 2009 in SF is going to hold a pre-conference best practices workshop (which I’m sure I won’t be able to attend).

Humor night

• There was some mild humor here, bur frankly, I’d had enough after an hour.  I was looking forward to the Composition Blues Band, but basically they just reworded popular songs into lame comp related lyrics.  Clever for one verse, perhaps, but a four verse song with choruses?  Sung badly?  Played w/o imagination?  Ouch!