My IUP Experience

The IUP Experience: IUP is one of those lovely, old-fashioned campuses where brick buildings surround a shady oak grove. It is located in a sleepy little town (Indiana, PA) where people at grocery stores and on campus are startlingly friendly, unlike people in urban areas. The town's greatest claim to fame is that it is the birthplace of Jimmy Stewart, the actor, and who doesn't adore Jimmy! Above the town library the Jimmy Stewart Museum archives a large collection of J.S. memorabilia and plays his films.

I chose IUP (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) for doctoral study because it offers a degree in Composition that can be gotten by aattending classes during a succession of summers on campus. My first summer (2007) was like being hit by a tidal wave, with overwhelming requirements for reading and writing. I had promised myself that I wouldn't compromise sleep, but as the end of classes neared, I edged into sleep hours in order to do the reading. The real crunch came at the end of the second session when I worked all night several nights on my final copy of a paper.

Although the quantity of work makes for excessive stress and loss of sleep, the professors are great, and the topics are mind-expanding. Perhaps a year-round doctoral program would be just as rigorous, and I really am glad that I am in this program because it has informed my teaching and opened my mind to a host of new ideas.

The Dissertation: I envy those people who already know the topic of their dissertation. I've thought about a couple of ideas--one is realted to composition and technology. Students in my writing classes in San Diego are far more literate in the use of technological devices: I-pods, phones, Blackberries, video games-than they are in the mileu of paper and print. What kind of research looks at writing compositions electronically so as to use animation, graphics, sound, etc.?
Another topic I have considered is how to empower Hispanic women to succeed in composition classes. I've observed that often these women are silent in class, and when the first analytical paper is assigned, they drop out. I would like to look at the factors that predispose them to muteness and invisibility in the college classroom and research what might empower them to transcend their cultural constriction. How exciting to be able to help these women succeed in reaching their educational and career goals.

Avatars, Web Pages, and Blogs: Wow! New tools and landscapes. Would love to become proficient enough in Second Life that I could use it in my composition classes. Then, I really would be talking the students' language(s). We could communicate through my character, Marlan Magic, and theirs.

Literacy: My understanding of the definition of literacy has changed substantially since taking this class (Literacy and Technology) and Dr. Hurlbert's class (Theories of Composition). The various texts I've read for both classes have made it clear that literacy encompasses more than just reading and writing, e.g., the ability to read labels or directions on a food package or can, or the knowledge that makes it possible to read street signs or the names of medications and the instructions posted on their containers. Instead, literacy has to do with discourse, and every person has a primary discourse--the one provided by the family into which he or she is born. How is language used in the home? Is it valued? If so, for what purposes? This primary literacy is closely aligned with the culture of the primary discourse and the values, traditions and perspectives of that culture. However, literacy goes beyond one's primary culture.


In the reading "What is Literacy?" James Paul Gee introduces a higher level of literacy, one that is linked to secondary discourse. Gee posits that secondary discourse employs the language and concepts of the workplace, the school, the church, the business, etc. Then, an individual's literacy may be comprised by his/her primary discourse as well as a number of secondary discourses depending on the extent of a person's involvement in various communities outside of the home.


Because these various discourses form the shape of a person's literacy, it is easy to see "literacy as an interactive, interpretive, social phenomenon rather than a static skill possessed or deployed by an individual" (Gee). Literacy, according to Vgotsky, is developed as a socio-cultural phenomenon which arises from interaction and engagement rather than in isolation. Even if one gains increased literacy from books, the reader is engaging with the thoughts and experiences of the writer, who in turn has engaged with the thoughts and experiences of other.

Abstraction/critical thinking: The ability to reflect on a topic, to ask myself what I truly believe about it, and to do the rigorous analysis that informs my own thinking has not come easily. Last summer Nicole pointed me to the book Women's Ways of Knowing, which helped me to understand why reflection, self-knowledge, is so difficult for those of us who grew up in silent worlds. Without that interaction with peers, siblings, or parents that develops reflective ability, the brain becomes more focused on modes of survival--coping measures which employ concrete measures over the reflective. Back in those days, reflection/critical thought was less practical than denial.

Often, when I hear my five grown children converse with one another, I marvel at their analytical skills and insights, so easily gained through many years of free-for-all conversations around the dinner table, which often moved into the living room and into the night. Today, they are confident analysts of political and economic scenes and anything else they feel strongly about.

My redemption in has come somewhat late in life, beginning with work for a Masters degree at San Diego State University and continuing through the spirited and sometimes (verbally) combative discussions in the classes I teach. These students have become the flesh-and-blood siblings I lacked and the single parent so often absent because of the need to provide for me. Through them I have learned to examine an idea, to look at previously-(and often dearly-) held assumptions and revise or discard them when needed. My students have helped me exchange the mantle of the wise-knower for the burlap garment of the seeker of truth, traveling the same road.

Twelve years ago I lived in Huehuetenango, Guatemala where I taught English, grades two through eleven in Colegio Liceo Dieguez Olaverri. The school was four kilometers outside the town, and often after school I rode the local bus (along with live chickens and once a caged raccoon) to market or meanderings around Huehue. The road to town was dirt --lake-like puddles in rainy season and dry, bone-jarring ruts in drier weather.

I sometimes think the road to self-knowledge and critical thought has been like those roads for me.