Guest Speaker

Rick Hanson's lecture was very interesting. talked about the three pedagogies of the rules of writing. The first was the Current Traditional Paradigm which is more concerned with the study of writing and its rules rather than focusing on improving the students' writing by actually make them write.
The second pedagogy is Expressivist which is focused on the writing process more than what the product ends up being. There is a lot of concern for finding one's "true" voice and being "true" as a writer and that is very problematic because everyone's truth is different so there are no real guidelines. There was one extreme that was far too rigid and too focused on the rules but this pedagogy is too free and lacks structure. There needs to be some kind of guidance in the writing world or it will be utter chaos.
The third and most thought-driven pedagogy is the Social Constructivism. Here, there is an emphasis on how social forces affect writing and gets students to recognize that each piece of writing needs to be looked at through a certain socially contextual lens. With this pedagogy, there is a focus on both the process and the product of students' writing within a particular context.
When looking at the three pedagogies, it becomes clear that one lacks concern for content of writing and has too much rigid focus on rules, the next lacks the rules almost entirely, and the third is the correct balance of the two that allows for free expression of ideas and opinions while keeping a structure so that something meaningful is actually said. It is not rigid or fluid, it is flexible.
I like to look at the three pedagogies as the three states of matter. The Traditional is rigid like a solid. Expressivist is free and chaotic in every direction like a gas. And Social Constructivism is free-flowing but can still be contained by some general guidelines which makes it like a liquid.

Presentations

One of the more interesting presenatations to me was the one that was done during Tuesday's class where the speaker talked about the very high expectations that have been placed on teachers not only to be educators of book knowledge but also emotional and social educators. I thought it was interesting that the speaker believed that that was not part of the job. Of course, teachers are not nearly paid enough for the work that they do, but I personally believe that the emotional and social education of students is a large part of what educators are teaching. All of those things flow and work together to create this larger chunk of knowledge that will carry students through their life. Teachers are not just supposed to teach facts but general life lessons. With that being said, I believe one of the other points that the presenter touched on was the need for a concern for the teachers' emotional health if they are going to be held responsible for their students' emotional well-being. This is totally right. Some teachers spend more time in a day with their students than those same students spend with their parents at home and as a result, teachers get to experience a lot of the students' transitions, etc. and need to know how to cope with and help a child that has a bad home life or just when students have a bad day to have the skill and knowledge to play counselor for long enough so that they can be effective in their primary task of teaching. I thought this was a really important and interesting subject to explore and I was very glad to see it brought to light.