We be fly

Mary Ann Hogan is a recovering journalist and writing coach whose first job was the Oakland Tribune under Bob and Nancy Maynard. Her husband, Eric Newton, who is vice president of the journalism program at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, worked with Bob Maynard as he developed the Fault Lines, the diversity framework the Maynard Institute uses to this day.

As many of our readers know, Fault Line's helps us understand how our race, class, gender, generation and geography shape the way we see things. As a result, two people can look at the same thing and see something completely different. In some instances, what seems matter of fact to one person can be offensive to another. In those cases, Fault Lines teaches us that it's important to begin the conversation with the belief that both people are of equal good will and then listen to each other with the goal of understanding how it is we are seeing things from such different perspectives.

Hogan, who is a white middle aged woman, recently started teaching English at Florida Atlantic University, where most of her students are from diverse backgrounds. Below is an account of her experience written from her Fault Lines perspective. There are those who may be startled by some of the language and images in this piece. For those of you, we ask that you use the comments section to engage in constructive dialogue with Hogan as she explores ways to write about race, one of the most charged subjects in this country.

We be fly

By Mary Ann Hogan

Ms. Mansoor, are you a terrorist?

Ms. Mansoor is quiet in class.

Ms. Mansoor comes from an Arab country.

She is technically an “ESL Student” at our University. That means, she is not yet 100 percent fluid in her ability to write the English required of a university-level student of Freshman Rhetoric & Composition.

“No,” she says -- quietly.

But Ms. Mansoor – you’re a Muslim – right?

“Yes,” she says.

“But, when I asked the class, ‘Was the bombing of the Twin Towers done in the name of religion’ – you heard Jeffrey say, “Muslims do everything in the name of religion, didn’t you?”

Yes.

Then … Can you please explain to us why you are not a terrorist?

Ms. Mansoor pauses. Then she says:

“The people who blew up the Twin Towers were not Muslims, not in the true sense of my religion. They were sick extremists who appropriated the name ‘Muslim’ for their own twisted, extremist ends.

“Ms. Mansoor, can you tell us what the word Islam means – the name of the Muslim Religion, your religion?”

“Islam means ‘Peace.’”

It was the fourth week of class, their very first time in college, my very first time teaching Freshman English. We were reading Madeleine Albright’s “Faith and Diplomacy.” They were to write essays on what role religion plays, or should play, in the discussion of “Global Issues.” Class discussion topic, for brainstorming purposes: 9-11-01.

The subject of “Muslims” came up, especially after I asked them if 9-11 was done “in the name of religion.” My Freshman university students did not seem to know, or at least, to be able to articulate, what the difference between a “Muslim” and a “terrorist” was. They did not seem to know that after the attacks of Sept. 11, throughout our great country, the only country on Earth that has written into its Constitution that you, I, Ms. Mansoor, the guy next door, as well as the Seminoles, the Native Floridians 25 miles down the road from us, are all free to practice whatever religion they choose, without fear of prosecution, persecution, or violence done against their person. My students did not appear to know, until I told them, that throughout this land, after 9-11, American citizens pulled Sikh men wearing turbans out of their cars on American streets and beat them silly. They did not know that Arab shop owners (who knows if they were “Muslim”?) were spit on, punched, their windows broken, their businesses forced to shut down, their children ridiculed in school. Among those Arab shop owners who had to close down and had to go into semi-hiding for fear of his children’s safety was Ms. Mansoor’s father.

Ms. Mansoor was, back then, in the fifth grade.

Ms. Mansoor told us this story in class. That day was the beginning of my education, and, I think theirs, about what it means to be a student of university-level Rhetoric & Composition in the 21st Century.

It was the beginning of an Immense Journey. The journey would last 14 weeks. At the end, we would have a story to tell to the world. Because of what I learned from my students. learned through them, I now know exactly how I will start out the next term, beginning Jan 10, 2010. Ms. Mansoor will be in my class again. Mr. Jackson will be in my class again as well.

Mr. Jackson is tall. Mr. Jackson is African American. Mr. Jackson is at our University thanks to a football scholarship. At our University, we value our football players, are advised by the Administration to let them miss more classes than normally allowed, because, you know, Go Team, so last fall, Mr. Jackson was in my English class, at least some of the time, like when he wasn’t on the road in New Orleans or downstate at a UM game.

I told Mr. Jackson that I wanted him to teach me a few phrases in Black English, so I could speak them on the first day of class next term. Our first text to study and write about is by the journalist Leslie Savan, on Black English. It might be useful to mention here that I am Caucasian, pleasantly middle- aged, a recovering journalist who saw the writing on the wall two years ago after 25 years in newsrooms, and who decided to do something else, so went back to school to get an MFA in creative writing so I could teach creative writing, my lifelong dream, my pre-journalism dream, start date: August 24, 2009. It might be useful to mention as well that “Black English” is something which the journal of the Linguistic Society of America described, in a cover story by a Stanford University Scholar, as “Ebonics (African American Vernacular English.”) One more thing: Mr. Jackson doesn’t speak “Black” in his everyday life. He is quite standard in his English, but can “speak Black,” because he comes from the culture that brings you up Black, etc. As well as being a football player who goes to LSU games in New Orleans, Mr. Jackson is an “A” student.

So Mr. Jackson taught me how to say:

“Yo, wassap mah ni--ah! -- you be all dat an’ baby you be fly!”

Mr. Jackson and I practiced the so-called Black Handshake, pound down, pound up, front bump, slap side, slap other side, smoo-o-o-o-ooth on the palms, then quick -- jerk back and practiced our first-day send-up (obvious to those students who were with us last fall, but not so much to the newbies), which we will do in class on Jan 10:

Me: Asking Mr. Jackson if, as an African- American male, he has ever been called a N-----.

Mr Jackson saying:

Saaaayyyy, Mama, why you be throwin’ shade at me, B----

And me saying:

you be all dat

which in Black, means, you’re cool, man, no worries, we be fly.

Race. Ethnicity. Name-calling, labels, you are this, you were that, the “N-word, Sikhs with bloody noses… Everyone talks about it, but no one wants to hear it, to listen to it. When we say it (race, ethnicity, class, etc.), people cringe, agree, disagree, or wish we could talk about the weather, even though we are Good Communicators who want to talk about real things. But we don’t.

Because it is tough.

So we don’t do it (well enough) in journalism.

And we don’t do it (well enough) in the Academy.

And places like the Maynard Institute exist to remind us that we should be trying, every day, if we are to survive, not only as a people, but as a country, a world, a Global family, but – Gee, it’s hard, and if it were not hard, we would do it with same habitual ease with which we brush our teeth.

In our Rhetoric and Composition class at Florida Atlantic University, we are trying to do it.

As well as working on our commas and dependent clauses and MLA style, we are watching videos, reading, arguing. We are talking about just why the number of hate groups in the U.S. (and in Florida alone) has ballooned since President Obama’s election to the highest office in the land, the first African- American president in U.S. History. We watch Chris Rock, a genius performer, who talks about real things in real language, not as a “comedian,” as he is sometimes called, but a true rhetorical performer who tells the truth in the world.

We call our open-group Face Book page “Rhet-Comp Stomp,” for several reasons. First, we wanted to stomp out the thread-bare notion that Freshman Rhetoric & Composition is an English class, meaning, what we did in high school, sort of, you turn in five-paragraph essays, and the English Teacher hands it back to you with blood-letting scrawls that say

“awk.”, “redun.,” “sp!,” “don’t use ‘thus!’ “insert comma here,” “too colloq!”
“semi- colon??!”

It is, rather, a class where you learn to engage with the world, not just the text authors we study (Savan, Albright, the Dalai Lama, among them), but through Face Book and YouTube, through the Homepages of important people who shape things (We invited The President of the United States, as well as former Secretary Albright, but they haven’t yet responded.) It is a class where we learn that when you engage in the World, your ideas get richer, more informed, and thus, your words, your writing, stronger, more correct, and thus, more truly Audience-friendly, more audience-worthy. Sounds kind of like journalism to me. But as I say, I have left journalism behind to pursue this new thing, this learning together in a classroom, with a computer and a large screen, and a middle-aged Caucasian (female) orchestra conductor keeping time, so a bunch Freshmen, varied races, ethnicities, classes, genders, geographies (Los Angeles, Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, New Jersey, and Guam, to name a few) can all figure out what it really means to be Citizens of the Globe in the 21st Century.

Toward the end of the semester Ms. Mansoor asks if I will write her a letter of recommendation to the Honors College at the University.

I say to this “A” student: I cannot think of anything that would give me greater honor.

(emerging)

I came to the Academy three months ago thinking I knew how to teach. I had taught journalism for years -- news writing, reporting; alternative story forms, narrative, best-practices, both in the Academy and in newsrooms and writers conferences.

But here, at Florida Atlantic University, I encountered Rhet-Comp, a university freshman- learning construct that is taught, in some form or another, with some name or another (College Writing; English 100, Introduction to Rhetoric & Writing, etc) at just about every college and university on the Planet. Rhet-Comp is its own field of study. Rhet-Comp has its own annual conventions and symposiums, in places like Cincinnati, St. Louis and Atlanta. Rhet-Comp has its own august collection of experts. They have names like Berlin, Bartholomae, Bitzer, Bizzell, Brodkey, etc.

For some reason, the names of many of these experts all begin with the letter “B.”

While all I’d done over my years and years as a journalism educator and newsroom story coach didn’t exactly go out the window, it was clear it had to be rethought. Even the most turgid-prosed reporters came to me with a basic sense of structure, of news, with basic command of language. With a sound grounding in the goings-on of the world, of their beats, government to lifestyle to sports.

In Rhet-Comp, I encountered students who’d never read a book.

Who didn’t know Christ was a Jew.

Who were hard pressed to name two “global issues.” Who thought that “Muslims” (all 1.2 billion of them) blew up the Twin Towers. And who, when it came to religion, wrote things like:

Some people believe that Christian Scientologists are killers. People from other religions have conflicts with this one because it is based solely on the healings of God. If a person practicing this religion becomes sick, they cannot accept any medical help. This is an example of how we should not use the genetic technologies talked about by the Dalai Lama.[1]

We were not only not in journalism any more, not in Kansas anymore, but we were beyond flummoxed, and in need of a new way of seeing.

Then came Rhet-Comp Theory, new to me, alien to me, tough, a thing that more times I can count, almost sent me over the already-tenuous edge. In order to teach Rhet-Comp as a new graduate student at the university, you have to take a class called (typical name): “Studies in Composition Theory and Methodology.” This name alone makes my teeth itch. They can’t just call it, “How to Teach Rhet-Comp: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly” -- which is (in my experience, at least), what a journalist would call it, what a clear-thinking person would call it, what any person who saw writing as a tool for communication with others in the human race would call it, but which Rhet-comp Theorists gussy up with polysyllabics and other semantical-semiotic-social-epistemic utterances that render it – well, theoretical. (Disclosure: My Theory professor, Prof. Julia M. Mason, is 29. She is nine years older than my oldest son, who is a sophomore at University of Florida, Gainesville. She is probably one of the 10 smartest people I have ever met. We have become friends. She has become my Guide through the swamp of Rhet-Comp. Thank you, Dr. Mason. )

(struggling)

So, I continued to teach (Mr. Jackson – you’re a rapper?!? Please plan to rap your next essay, for the class).

And the theorists continued to drive me nuts. Dr. Mason kindly passed the Kleenex as I sat in her office weeping over my inability to digest the theorists’ tortuous monographs. For example (this just three weeks ago): Theorist James A. Berlin’s What Exists + What is Good" + What Can Be Possible/Accomplished construct, which, according to Dr. Berlin (one of the Obi Wan Kenobis of the Rhet-Comp World), can only truly exist in terms of historicity & ever-evolving ideologies, something both Teacher and Student must experience, simultaneously, but in their own contextual ever-evolving ideologies, all of it “imbricated” (a word I had never heard, let alone used) in the meaning of the Writing. And, finally, all this if, and only if, you are ever to become a worthy teacher of Rhet-Comp and your Students will ever have a snowball’s chance in Florida of writing a coherent sentence.)

They drove me nuts not only because they wrote polysyllabics, many of which are not listed in a real dictionary (thank God for the Internet).

But because all they seemed to want to do (this from Berlin, Mr. Obi Wan himself) was “cavil.” They huffily opined that “Bitzer’s central positioning of ‘exigence’ is, on its face, historically flawed.” They wrote articles disparaging each others’ take on just how it was flawed. (I actually found Bitzer kind of cool.)

I thought: What a waste.

Further: What does this, any of it, in fact, have to do with the kids?

Then I read Donald M. Murray, whom I had known (and whom the journalism world knows), as a writing teacher, a coach, the guy who was the official Writing Guru of the Providence Journal, and who is described on ProJo’s writing site, one of the best places around, bar none, for good ideas on good journalism, like this:

They brought in a writing coach named Donald M. Murray, a kind and insightful teacher with a Pulitzer in his portfolio.


That Murray.

You see, apart from the journalism world that we all know and love, Murray has another identity, Clark Kent-to-Superman kind of thing, as the author of a short piece published in 1972 in a journal so obscure that you can’t even find it on the Internet. The piece was called:

Teach Writing as Process, Not Product

It caused a stir in the Rhet-Comp world. (Important to note: Things go in cycles and get stirred up in the Rhet-Comp world, oh, about every 10 years or so). It inspired an entire movement. It shored up an emerging theory known as expressivism, which basically holds that the student of writing should just be to told to just feel it, to go with the flow, forget about the commas, it’s in you, baby, just find, write it in a poem, a journal, or something, and then you can learn to write college-level essays, at least sometime down the line, it all works out.

Our Murray, the Journalism Murray, became the Patron Saint of the Expressivist Theory movement. That is, before Rhet-Comp decided, oh, about the mid-90s, to rethink the whole expressivist thing, but that’s a whole other story.

To me -- a recovering journalist, a Rhet-Comp teacher who is still a journalist at heart, and who has zero tolerance for caviling theorists whose silo-burrowing keeps them busy writing Important Monographs on Their Theories rather than figuring out how to reach the Vietnamese-American girl in class who just can’t get what a run-on sentence is -- Murray made true sense.

He said: “Instead of teaching finished writing, we should teach unfinished writing, and glory in its unfinishedness.” He said other wise things. Reading “Process, Not Product,” I saw that I’d lived my entire writing and teaching life, a quarter of a Century, as an unrepentant Murrayite. His true message (Writing = True Discovery, not “Correctness”) felt not only right, sound, wise, but in line with my own long-held beliefs as teacher, writer, and learner: You have to begin with yourself; to own the idea that you are, in fact, able/ allowed to think; and then, to have Voice, and then, to use it. And once that happens -- and only then -- can you begin to engage the bigger things, like religion (or “Christian Scientologists”), the World, and maybe then, the sometimes baffling mating habits of the dependent clause, of whether you use, or do not use, a comma after “thus.” (Trust me, this is what the “cavil” over.)

(evolving)

After that, things changed.

A veil lifted. I saw my task:

To not tell these young people that

“Analogically speaking, when it comes to cloning we might be playing with the wrong deck of cards”

is “awk.,” “unclear,” “meaningless!” “huh??!” or “clumsy.”
But rather, to tell them: “Nice job at trying out analogy! More of this! ” The rest would take care of itself.

Why? Because that is the nature of Evolution.

Evolution (see Eiesely’s “The Snout;” easier than Darwin) teaches us that the progress of a creature, a thing or a skill, depends on cumulative selective growth. That is, the creature/ thing/ skill progressing -- evolving -- takes the best of what was there, sheds the worst , and after so doing, moves a small step closer toward its destination: wholeness; having discovered, and thus, having become:

It takes a swamp-and-tide-flat zoologist to tell you about life; it is in this domain that the living suffer great extremes, it is here that the water-failures, driven to desperation, make starts in a new element. It is here that strange compromises are made and new senses are born. The Snout was no exception. Though he breathed and walked primarily in order to stay in the water, he was coming ashore.

(Eiesely,“The Snout”)

I told them on the first day that I would not correct grammar, spelling or punctuation (an Expressivist -Theory view.) I kept my word. Instead, I told them what they did right: “nice job!” “good example!” “strong word here!”-- even when there was not much more than that to praise. When they got their essays back, they saw not a page of red- penned “huhs?! , but a string of
comments that said:

You have value.

What you think has value.

Use your Voice. Say it. As a result (see appendix), the Snout grew stumpy leg-like things. It glomphed its way, haltingly, one step closer to Land.

As they evolved as writers, I evolved as a teacher. I borrowed Janice Lauer’s Heuristics -- "The art of discovering 'what to say,' of making original judgments on experience …” Gave them models to copy, new ways to engage text (dialogue between authors). I devoured (tough) Berlin’s social-epistemicism. We began using YouTube to witness history (Berlin, I am sure, would approve): The Holocaust; Rodney King; Little Rock. We studied, via YouTube, rhetorical performance (Obama; Rush Limbaugh; Chris Rock), and visual argument (Flo bots: “No Handlebars.”)

I borrowed from Linda Flower, a leader of the Cognitive Theory of Rhet-Comp, to show why factual evidence counts (kinda journalistic, no?), showed them what happens when a Panda walks into a bar, eats, shoots and leaves. (The Cognitivists would smile).

But here is where the Theorists, bless their monographs, and my Rhet-Comp Students part ways:

While the theorists were busy caviling, in print journals and printed monographs (to pass out at Conferences), we were watching YouTube.

We were creating multimedia versions of how we learned.

We were finding examples of Visual Rhetoric to illustrate the essays they were writing. While the Theorists were presenting Papers at Conferences (trying to publish or perish, and hoping that someone from a Competing Theory Camp wouldn’t bulldoze their polysyllabic prose in the next issue of This Important Journal, Vol. vi), we were creating a Face Book page with links to other countries, to other people in the world.

It is a page that now counts among its members:

- A former journalist in Beijing, who blogs to us from the Great Wall via email, because FaceBook in China is now closed down due to violence in the Provinces

- A science teacher who writes to us (and posts pictures) each week from a volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii

- A journalist in Kenya, who sent us images to post that he couldn’t print in his own newspaper, because they were too racy – the wife of a government official and her lover being paraded through the streets, naked, flogged bloody by townspeople as they were marched in shame.

- The founder of LinkTV, which connects media from the Arab World to a Global audience.

- Family members of students in Bangladesh, Egypt, Russia, Israel, England, Guam and many parts of South America

- A guy who runs a penguin-cam in Antarctica

We have also invited (have not yet heard back): The President of the United States; His Holiness, the Dalai Lama (one of our text authors), now living in India; former Secretary State Madeleine Albright (also a text author); and Joel Salatin, creator of Polyface Farm, the eco-agricultural experiment in Virginia.

As all this progressed, slow, in fits and starts -- 14 long weeks where my family ate a lot of Publix roast chicken and hamburgers instead of the regular Mom Fare of spicy lamb curry and homemade black beans -- I thought of a quote from Matthew Arnold (“On Translating Homer,” 1861), on the meaning of the Translator:

“He is eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words."

Arnold’s equating “syntax” and “evolution of thought” is profound, a cause for reflection, both here, and for the sake of writing, the teaching of writing, in Rhet-Comp, in journalism, in fact, anywhere. As thought evolves, so does syntax. As syntax gels, so does clearer thought, and then knowledge. As knowledge of history/ community/ social constructs (racism, ignorance, cell-phone company monopoly) grows, the meaning of writing, what it means for me to write, evolves.

And you can’t Evolve like that unless you are involved in, engaged with, the world.
You get involved with, you engage in, the world through technology -- through Face Book and YouTube, through the Homepages of important people who shape things -- through being a Global Citizen, a journalistic citizen, a person who knows how to communicate with his fellows on this planet.

That is, or to my mind, should be, the meaning of Rhet-Comp in the 21st Century.
And maybe even the meaning of journalism, a thing that is struggling mightily to survive, which might, at this sad date, take a page out of our Rhet-Comp classroom, at Florida Atlantic University, use this address:

Facebook: “Rhet-Comp Stomp,” The World.

They get an “A,” my guinea-pig students.

This has indeed been an Immense Journey.

It has been slow.

Evolution always is.

(Note: Please join our open-group Face Book page, Rhet-Comp Stomp.
We perform in the World. Tell us where you live. We will write about it, if you post pictures.)

Appendix: Examples of Student Writing

(Student writing samples from my 1101.123 and 1101.074 classes, Fall 2009.)

Serena, August 2009 (Dalai Lama)

Sometimes changes are good and everybody should be open mind but also use common sense. We should doubt to accept changes when they are affecting others in any way. If we focus in positive aspects of Genetic Experimentation: First, the number of untreatable diseases would decrease and many other could be treated, for example diabetes, Parkinson’s diseases, etc … I’m somehow agree about genes experimentation because my sister has a genetic disorder.

Serena, November 2009 (Revision Project II)

People want the convenience of a car, cell phone, computer, and a store nearby. “Once people get a test for whatever you want to call it,” Michael Dell says, “ – economic independence, a better lifestyle, and a better life for their children – they grab on to that and don’t want to give it up” (Friedman, 63). Many of us have a computer, a car, a house, and phone, but we don’t know that somewhere, people are dying because they don’t have the same benefits. Others like the way they live: “We’re a farming community. We want to stay a farming community … about 100 percent of what we do is agriculture-based” (Florin). If all you know is farming, then you cannot suddenly change your way of life. Often, the motivation for people is their children. For example, my great-grandfather was a farmer, but he used to tell my grandmother that she had to go to the city to have a better life. Back then, they were really poor; they used to have one meal at day (if they could). So, the basis for success comes from home too.

*

Maris, August 2009 (Albright)

The diverse world is growing. Faith and religion has brought us with some kind of unity. But it could also tear us apart due to this very reason. Starvation, education, and war are just a few global issues that religion could not find a common ground with. As people with different faith collide so does our society.

Maris, November 2009, Self-grading Argument (Pollan)

The objective in a well-written essay is to produce clear and appropriate sentences that show specific rhetorical tasks of analytic discourse. When we write, it’s to communicate to readers, it’s how we present our own ideas and arguments. An essay has to incorporate and cite external sources to strengthen our thesis. If an author lacks any of these details, the essay is ineffective to the reader, and thus, a misunderstanding to what the author is trying to say. After hours of rereading and rethinking my Pollan paper, I agree this is the strongest essay I have written … Overall, my (Pollan) essay demonstrated integration of text support, images, and real-world examples. With these few errors, compared side by side with my critical thinking, I believe I should earn an “A-“. According to the grading criteria, an A- paper demonstrates strong critical thinking. The student is able to respond to the readings and to the assignment with originality and authority. To further my point, the annotated version of my Pollan essay, MA comments: “One of the most original and affecting Enc 1101 essays I have seen.” MA explains: “Excellent integration of Pollan into your intellectual construct/ argument.”

*

Bethany, August 2009 (Dalai Lama)

Analogically speaking, when it comes to cloning
we may be playing with the wrong deck of cards.

Bethany, November 2009, Response: “I Witnessed (You Tube) History”

Witnessing this event has changed the way I look at things. Why is it that people can be so racist?
It is cruel to beat someone to a pulp just because they are black. I felt so much sympathy for Rodney King when I saw him down on the ground. He looked so sad; he looked like he was in so much pain. He looked like he had lost faith in people. He looked like he would have done just about anything to get away. The cops should have been the ones to go to jail.

*

Mr Jackson, August, 2009:

Teacher mental note to self: I am quite sure that this pleasant, obviously bright young man will not be able to pass the class-- unless he finds an outside tutor and works his butt off. There are simply too many underlying issues at work, which in the rhet-comp world, are known as “cultural deficits.”

Mr Jackson, November 2009

(Final Response: Reflect Back on First Day of Class – Two pages)
Pop quizzes used to be my teachers’ way of “helping us understand” what we read in class.

Did this approach work?

I wouldn’t be writing this essay if it did.

For as long as I have been in school, I have known for a fact that I am a visual learner. This is precisely why I get so much understanding from the visuals that Ms. Hogan provided for me, like the creatively helpful YouYube videos (Chris Rock: “How Not to Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police.”) These visuals helped us see how one main subject, like Pollan’s “Animals,” can be broken down, which helps us write a well-structured essay. Or like the “Lion King: Circle of Life,” to help us see how an essay is supposed to flow and come together nicely.

I wish that some teachers would recognize that putting huge and confusing red marks all over a student’s paper doesn’t help the student learn at all. All it does is make life harder on us, by having to decode the teacher’s foreign-looking handwriting, which doesn’t make sense to us. Some of the reasons why I like English class now: I get a lot of handouts, guidelines that lead me down a path to writing a successful, well-structured, and comprehensible paper.

All it took was a few changes in teaching style; reading interesting/up-to-date text instead of old English literature that is boring and difficult to comprehend; cutting out the pop quizzes, and replacing them with funny/simple videos that are more informative, and actually getting guidance on how to write an essay instead of just being told to “do it,” and getting a horribly written essay, with a grade you are not satisfied with.

Teacher comment on Mr. Jackson essay: Yeah, but she couldn’t have done it without inspiration from her beautiful students.

[1] From Enc 1101 essay on Madeleine Albright’s “Faith and Diplomacy”

Editor’s Note: Mary Ann Hogan was, for many years, a journalist, journalism educator and newsroom story coach. She now teaches Freshman Rhetoric & Composition at Florida Atlantic University. She is a longtime friend of the Maynard Institute. Her first newspaper job was in Bob and Nancy Maynard’s Oakland Tribune. Now, when people ask what she does, she proudly says:

“I am a Teacher.”