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MnWE News
Back to School Issue
July-August
2021
Next Conference: Minnesota Humanities
Center in St. Paul and on Zoom, Thur.-Fri., Apr. 7-8, 2022
In this issue:
1.
CHRONICLE’S HELPFUL HINTS FOR WEEK ONE
2. FUTURE OF
ENGLISH
I:
NEW BEST PRACTICES
3. FUTURE OF
ENGLISH
II:
HIGHER ED “INDUSTRY” ANALYSIS
4.
BOOK REVIEW: David Treuer’s The Rez
5.
Free Teaching/Learning E-Newsletters
(listed in each issue)
6. About MnWE
(in each issue)
If you are new to our listserv, welcome! We never share your
address, and you may always unsubscribe at the bottom of any email.
If you are a long-term member of this listserv, thank you for your
continuing participation. If you did not receive this newsletter
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(L zero zero one). We suggest you send a permanent email address. Also
email us if you’d like information about joining our meetings five to
seven Fridays per year on Zoom.
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1.
CHRONICLE’S HELPFUL HINTS FOR WEEK ONE
The
Chronicle’s free Teaching e-newsletter recently offered
suggestions on “Assessing Students” in the first week of class in these
unusual times. Here is Teaching’s summary of what Kelly Hogan, a
professor of biology at UNC-Chapel Hill and associate dean of
instructional innovation, is doing:
“Send
out a survey before the first day of class. This is a good opportunity
to ask students about two things: what experience they have with the
content of your course and how they feel about returning to in-person
learning. ...[F]or example, Hogan asks students when they last took
biology. She already knows the answer: It was usually ninth grade. But
this gives students the chance to tell her that they haven’t studied
biology in a *really* long time, which helps reassure them that she now
knows this. She also asks what they’re nervous about.... Understanding
students’ concerns, Hogan says, can help instructors think about how to
adapt their teaching this fall.
“Give
a nongraded assessment. Sometimes, Hogan notes, if you give students
an assessment before the course starts they might Google the answers. But
if you do this during the first or second day of class, you’ll get a more
accurate view of what students know and remember. Then, use the results to
adjust your course goals as needed. Let students know that you’re not
testing them in a formal sense, but are simply trying to figure out where
they are....
“Provide
resources to review. Many instructors taped their lectures this past
year, so they could consider offering relevant ones to incoming students
looking for review material. Or if your department has a suite of
videos,...you could use those, or materials found on YouTube. Hogan is
also planning to give her students a first assignment that is something of
a how-to: how to use the technology, an introduction to the textbook, and
where to go to find other study resources.
“Set
clear expectations. Hogan ties this back to the student survey. Many
students have already expressed anxiety about a return to face-to-face
teaching. So on your syllabus, let them know what to expect in terms of
deadlines, assignments, and tests. Hogan plans to keep open-note tests in
the course she is co-teaching this fall. And she will continue to offer
flexibility with deadlines by giving students tokens that allow them to
turn things in late on occasion.”
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Full article in Teaching
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2.
FUTURE OF ENGLISH
I:
NEW BEST PRACTICES
In 1998, the Boyer Commission, an influential research group, provided a
report
on the future of undergraduate education. Its recommendations were cutting
edge but mostly have become incorporated as best practices by now. A new
Boyer Commission is about to be formed. According to a recent
Teaching
e-newsletter from the Chronicle, some of the issues this new group
will examine may include
- “Advances in learning science” (neuroscience and “effective ways
to teach”)
- “Advances in technology” (“Smartphones and social
media...omnipresent”)
- “Greater awareness of nontraditional students” as “lifelong
learners”
- “[I]ncreased concerns about equity” (vs. “weed[ing] out the
underprepared”)
Related to these issues, Teaching mentions six “free advice
guides” offered by the Chronicle that are written by teaching
experts and offer concrete advice and resources about many of the key
elements of good teaching”:
How
to Create a Syllabus,
by Kevin Gannon
How
to Teach a Good First Day of Class,
by James M. Lang
How to Make Your
Teaching More Engaging,
by Sarah Rose Cavanagh
How to Hold a
Better Class Discussion,
by Jay Howard
How to Make Your
Teaching More Inclusive,
by Viji Sathy & Kelly A. Hogan
How to Be
a
Better Online Teacher,
by Flower Darby
Would you like to comment on these future trends relating, especially, to
research universities? Teaching invites you to email your thoughts
to its editor:
beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
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3.
FUTURE OF ENGLISH
II:
HIGHER ED “INDUSTRY” ANALYSIS
Is a significant shift in higher
education happening now?
Pundits such as
Thomas Friedman have argued this for years. Recent dramatic shifts in
teaching during the pandemic have increased such expectations.
Doug Lederman, editor of Inside Higher Ed, has summarized
likely changes using a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, and Threats) in his “Foreword” to A Guide for Leaders in
Higher Education by Ruben, De Lisi, and Gigliotti (Stylus, 2017). He
shows how higher administrators and businesses often perceive our
educational institutions.
Our strengths, says Lederman, lie in our “incredibly
diverse constellation...of institutions,” our “History of Excellence,”
“Democratization,” “Relative Independence,” “Tradition of Liberal
Education,” and our “Colleges as Community Anchors.” In addition, we are
“a destination for many of the world’s best students and scholars.”
Our weaknesses, he says, include perceptions in the U.S.
that we are “underperforming.” One reason is that we are perceived as too
expensive: “as much as three fourths of the operating expenditures...are
in employee costs,” causing unfortunate high prices for an education,
which “is blamed on the professoriate,” even though “recent growth in
employee numbers has come on the administrative side.”
Other weaknesses, perhaps especially perceived by business people,
are our “Complacency and Resistance to Change,” “Lack of Measurement and
Evidence of Performance,” excessive “Decentralization,” and too many
“missions” that sometimes conflict.
Our opportunities, Lederman tells us, include our new (for
over a decade, now) “Completion Agenda” to convince students they should
finish a degree. Another important opportunity is the “Global
Democratization of Higher Education” that the U.S. has triggered. A third
opportunity is our “Innovation Technology.”
Our threats, he states, are many. One is especially
important, our “Changing Demographics.” This means not only a “decadelong
decline...of traditional college-age residents” but also, just as
important, our difficulty in serving a newer–and growing–population:
students who are “academically underprepared, financially struggling,
[and] culturally unaccustomed to going to college.”
Two other threats harrying colleges and universities are
“political trends” of “lower taxes and smaller government” that
significantly diminish government payment for higher ed, and the public’s
increasing doubt about the value of having a degree. In addition,
politically, “some government officials” increasingly are legislating
“performance measures” for “affordability and value” and even, sometimes,
teaching content (an increasing trend, already, in secondary schools).
A significant internal threat, Lederman indicates, is the
changing faculty workforce. “25 years ago,” most “instruction was...by
professors [with] tenure or reasonable hopes of earning it.” Now, though,
“the proportion of instructors working on the tenure track has eroded from
about three quarters to roughly a fourth, a trend...unlikely to be
reversed....”
What does Lederman conclude? Combining all of this, “you end up, I
believe, with an industry that is under significant pressure from many
angles, but that is not nearly...as vulnerable...as many commentators and
futurists would suggest.”
However, he argues, “The strain...is significant.... And I do
believe we will see more colleges and universities–particularly the
undifferentiated, less wealthy private and public institutions without a
clear niche–struggle and close or be merged.”
---
“Foreword” available at
https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1873
---
4.
BOOK REVIEW: David Treuer’s The Rez
Nonfiction, Grove Press, 2013. Reviewed by Steve Wiley
David Treuer's
2013 Rez Life–his first nonfiction book
after establishing a successful career in fiction–arranges profiles,
history, memories, and events into a gripping account of growing up on
Minnesota's Leech Lake Indian Reservation. Treuer, a recent National Book
Award and Carnegie Medal finalist and USC Professor, brings to life a
series of remarkable people in Rez Life, and amplifies their
contexts between stories. His Leech Lake family and friends have
endured–in courage, inventiveness, and humor–as individuals and as a
deeply-rooted community.
For
example, Chapter Three on Indian justice opens with David and his mother,
Margaret Seelye, entering her courtroom. Having grown up dirt poor and
becoming a tribal judge, she sizes up each accused and pronounces
sentences that give them second chances. She recalls a long-ago day when a
state warden stole her family's just-harvested wild rice, a mainstay then
of the Ojibwe economy. David's father, Robert, also has been a strong
influence. Robert fled the Holocaust as a youth and settled at Leech
Lake.
Its destitution
prompted him to write a letter to the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs;
as a result, he began working for the BIA. He adapted union-organizing
tactics that empowered Ojibwe reservations to press their demands
effectively. But poverty and desperation led to drug dealers profiting on
Ojibwe reservations, a problem that Margaret must adjudicate.
Each chapter in
Rez Life is a conversation between Treuer and his readers. He
talks; we listen–as we are able. His people who frame the chapters have
strong connections with their families and communities, as do dozens of
others whose briefer appearances add texture and nuance. The book itself
is framed by David's grandfather Seelye, a World War II combat veteran. In
the Introduction, Seelye commits suicide, and his grandmother puts David
in charge of cleanup. In the epilogue, Seelye is buried.
Chapters move
more or less chronologically, but each is more thematic than narrative. In
addition to his chapter on Indian justice, Treuer highlights themes of
fishing and its legal complications regarding sovereignty, the long
struggle to restore treaty fishing rights, and the great range in size and
success of Indian casinos and their consequences for reservation life. He
also showcases the recent tribal-identity revival: Indian communities
practicing their historical culture and traditional languages, which now
are passed down in families and schools.
Treuer makes it clear
that the centuries-long U.S. racism project to exterminate Indigenous
people and, more recently, their cultures has been over-matched by tribes’
tenacity and insistence on living on their own terms. His descriptions of
treaties (371 broken by the U.S.), boarding-school horrors, science
manipulated to depress tribal enrollments, and resulting substance abuse
and violence are all familiar and intense on reservations. Rez Life's
great strength is its detail of how Ojibwe people nurture and encourage
each other in community as they work every day to be realistic yet true to
themselves.
In the
epilogue, “Eulogies,” David honors his grandfather and other people and
places he carries deep within himself. His meditations–on family, friends,
and ancestors who have shaped him and his Leech Lake Reservation–still
breathe optimism and love.
The long-term
Indigenous issues in Rez Life could be assigned as a chapter per
week to develop lively student discussion. The book, though emotionally
and intellectually challenging, is easy to read. Treuer’s evocative
testimony leads anyone inexperienced with rez life to a new understanding
of the world of Native Americans through his vivid portraits and themes.
---
Publisher's Weekly Review
Grove Atlantic Review and Rez
Life
Excerpt
Native American/Indigenous Literature:
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5.
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Past
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6.
About
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Richard Jewell, Editor
MnWE News
Minnesota Writing and English
www.MnWE.org
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Docs Coordinator
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Format updated 13 May 2021
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