In this chapter, McCorkle uses the analogy of a heist movie and the disparate characters, with their respective skills, who comprise a team to pull off their heist. His point was that each team member has a skill or expertise that the others don't and, similarly, each member of a writing group has their own unique perspective. McCorkle said, "when you find yourself part of a writing group, recognize what each member brings to the table, including yourself" (p. 129). 

Each person in the group will read your writing in a different way and all the views of the group members need to be listened to and altogether comprise complete feedback on your writing. 

However, McCorkle suggests that you don't just give the group your writing and wait to see what they say. Part of receiving helpful feedback from people is asking questions of them about your writing so that you are playing to their strengths as members of your group. 

The bulk of the work takes place in the second piece of the pipeline. In that second phase you are fleshing out the ideas, getting feedback, maybe presenting pitching those ideas. Ideas have become articles. 

The third and final phase involves the query, receiving reviewer comments, and working through the actual publication process. 

People tend to not be good at all three sections of the pipeline. Putting projects into a pipeline is for the purpose of helping them move on from ideas to product or not spend too much time presenting ideas and not moving on to the final publication phase. Also, a pipeline helps you have numerous projects in process at the same time, although the projects are in different phases, rather than just working on one project at a time from start to finish before starting on the idea phase of another project. 

Gallagher and DeVoss point out that using a pipeline helps coordinate your writing with your career so that the timing (the when) works in your favor. They wrote, 

"This advice is useful for at least three phases of a career: going on the academic job market, ensuring productivity in the first year of a tenure-­ track position, and creating a sustainable publication record for securing tenure" (p. 153). Their point was that it helps you time the publication of your writing to coincide with your entry into the job market or your process of achieving tenure. 

Additionally, using a pipeline helps you regularly produce writing for publication, rather than having long gaps in between publication.

 

Mills emphasizes the connection of life with work. Rather than separate the two, a writer’s work is enhanced by connecting life with work because “as a scholar you have the exceptional opportunity of designing a way of living which will encourage the habits of good workmanship” (p. 196). Mills says, “learn to use your life experience in your intellectual work” (p. 196). That is what I’m attempting to do in my project for this class and I’m guessing that is what my classmates are doing, too. We each have different life experiences and we are using those to inform our writing projects for this class. When I looked at my classmates’ outlines they shared before spring break and thought back to their introductory microautoethnographies, I could see some connection between their experiences and the topics they’ve chosen to write about. Although I didn’t mention it in my autoethnography, I became intrigued by MOOCs more than ten years ago and immersed myself in that educational movement simply out of curiosity. Now, I’m attempting to use that life experience to inform and direct my writing project for this class. 

Mills recommends journals and files as methods of keeping track of life experiences and ideas for our craft of writing. Fortunately for me, MOOCs are online so I can easily go back and see what I’ve done in the past. However, I was struck by Mills’ exhortation to both trust and be skeptical of our own experience (p. 197). So, I am attempting to trust my experience by having a section about the history of MOOCs, but I’m trying to be skeptical of my experience by not drawing on that as my evidence. That’s why I decided to enroll in new MOOCs to gain a fresh experience and see how things are now, rather than relying on how things were in the past. 

Writing an article about MOOCs has been an idea in my mental file for a while and I need to move on beyond the idea stage. Mills’ advice to sort out project ideas into subdivision (p. 198) reminds me that my MOOC idea can result in many writing projects because all of the aspects of MOOCs can’t be covered in one article. 

Mill’s advice about surrounding one’s self with others in order to discuss topics (p. 201) was encouraging to me because I’m currently part of a Slack group with people I met while taking MOOCs. I think I need to bounce my ideas off of them. Most importantly, though, being in Prof. Cole’s class is allowing me to be surrounded by great writers who can help me improve. 

The section in Mills about relying on reason more than empirical evidence caught my attention because I have collected data to use in my project. According to Mills, I need to work out my argument through reasoning first, then I know what empirical evidence is needed (p. 207). Related to reasoning is Mill’s advice to consider other points of view (p. 214) in order to see my topic from different angles. 

Lastly, I want to take to heart Mill’s advice about my prose to use “clear and simple language” (p. 217) that is a “readable prose” (p. 221). 

So, I’m torn by the issue of using students by name in one’s writing. Do student writers want their teachers to write about what they did as students and share their names? On the other hand, it’s important to cite who you are quoting or referring to in your writing. I hadn’t considered it until reading Robillard’s article that “composition studies . . . has relied upon student writing as the subject of so much of its research” (p. 255). Additionally, teachers who write about their students tend to do so in a way that highlights what the teacher has accomplished in teaching the students (p. 257). Robillard says that composition teachers who write should acknowledge their indebtedness to their students (p. 258). Related to that is the idea of citation as “debt and ownership” (p. 261). 

I have always considered citations as a way to substantiate what I’m saying, but never considered it as a way to bolster the reputation of someone else. I was surprised by Robillard’s example of the group of friends who purposely cite each other in their writing (p. 260). I don’t think I’ve ever cited someone who I knew personally. 

Robillard also discusses how writing courses have generally been about the “how” of writing, rather than the “what” and suggests that the focus should not just be on writing as a verb, but writing as a noun (p. 255). That was something else I hadn’t considered either until reading Robillard’s piece.  
The bottom line in Robillard’s piece is that “credit is due whenever we use the words or ideas of another writer. Simple as that” (p. 261). 

In regard to one of the suggested writing prompts, I think that Robillard does continuously make gestures that remind readers of the main argument and focus. I think the section about teaching the "what" and "how" of writing went a little astray from the main point of citing, but that section was so short and Robillard then went back to discussing citing.

This week I read an article about Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom in which the author of the article (Stephen Heiner) wrote, “We would do well not to trust in princes, or their assistants the multinationals, who would have us build new Towers of Babel.” Heiner used two phrases similar to two phrases in the Bible (“trust in princes” and “Tower of Babel”) that were used in contexts similar to what he was referring to. I think he did so intentionally, but he didn’t cite where those phrases came from because his purpose was not to quote a source, but to use phrases that he thought readers would know enough about their source to give what he was saying a deeper meaning. I think that goes along with Bazerman’s definition of intertextuality: “the explicit and implicit relations that a text or utterance has to prior, contemporary and potential future texts” (p. 3). Heiner’s use of those two phrases tells readers more than what he explicitly wrote in his article. It tells readers something about Heiner and helps readers identify his ideas (p. 1). 

As I write my project for this class, I’m now going to be paying attention to the phrases and words I use and think about where I might have picked those up or how they could be used to say something implicitly. Intertextuality, in that sense, can help writers be more efficient in their writing because they can use phrases that carry meaning without having to explain what those phrases mean. 

Bazerman’s levels of intertextuality was interesting and something I hadn’t considered until reading his article. Bazerman’s section about techniques relates to Robillard’s article about citations. However, that makes me think that it might sometimes be difficult to know when to use a citation or not for a phrase. When it comes to copyright standards, if the phrase is well-known or -used, then you don’t need to cite it, such as the following: fly in the ointment or weak link. But, it’s not always easy to know which category a phrase might fall into. If someone is well-read in a particular subject, there will be phrases that they think are common enough to not cite, but maybe should have their source cited. 

Bazerman’s article gave me a lot to consider, not only in the texts that I read, but also in what and how I write. 

 

The project I am working on for this class is also connected to my own work as a teacher. Initially, I was thinking about doing some sort of literature review to learn more about competency-based learning. However, as I was reading the literature, I realized a couple of things. For one, there isn’t much out there when it comes to competency-based learning in high schools. Additionally, questions remain on how exactly to implement and assess on competency-based learning. I am on my second year of implementing this method in my own particular way. As I was reading, I did feel like I may have something to contribute. I have nearly two years’ worth of student data, so I decided that I would write a journal article instead. I’m going to start with reviewing the literature and identifying the gaps, explain my methodology, analyze the data I’ve collected, and then see what I can conclude based on what I’ve found. All of that to say, that my writing for this class is deeply connected to my own life. I agree with Mills’s observation that the most admirable thinkers use their work and their lives to enrich each other (195). 

 

Furthermore, I really like what Mills said about your past affecting your present (196). This makes me think about how it seems like I see everything through the lens of teaching in England. It has had a profound effect on me, and I wish that I would have kept a journal, like Mills recommends, while I was there. When Mills said that a mature workman is able to both trust and be skeptical of their own experiences, this made me think about when I first started teaching in England (197). I very much had “the grass is greener on the other side” mentality. However, upon returning, the U.S. system was not exactly what I had seemed to put on a pedestal in my head. Some of what I thought was still true, but other things were not. It actually makes me want to go back and teach in England again because I can see if what I currently remember about teaching in England holds up. 

 

Finally, I just want to conclude by saying that Mills is completely right about the importance of surrounding yourself with a circle of people who will listen and talk. I have the best co-workers. They have made me a better teacher, a better parent, and a better person. I am going to take Mills’s advice and start keeping a journal. I know for a fact that much of what I write will come from the people I work the closest with.  

 

Over the last eighteen years, my students have taught me more than I ever could have imagined. I am a better reader because of them. I am a better writer because of them. I am a better speaker because of them. They challenge me, and I get better. They model for me, and I get better. It makes me think of one of the students I taught in England. If she hasn’t already published something, she will. She is incredibly gifted, and she went on to study at Oxford. I would absolutely cite her by her last name because she deserves the utmost respect even if she is young. A person’s age or position should not define how we see them or diminish their contributions. 

 

I often ask students if I can keep their work and use it as exemplars in future years. One piece of advice that I got from Robillard is to ask students if they want to have their real names on their work. Robillard said, “Students, like anyone else, are generally pleased to see that their work has had an impact on someone else’s thinking. They, like anyone else, like the idea of seeing their names in print” (264). I will remember that. 

 

I found the lists of what citations do based on who is being cited to be very helpful and something I will refer back to. I also found the concept of thinking about writing as a noun instead of a verb to be helpful in my practice as both a teacher and a student. 

 

I enjoy the concept of intertextuality. I like thinking about how a text relates to the texts around it, which is one of the perks of being an English teacher: I get to do that a lot. The different levels of intertextuality that Bazerman identifies really helped me to understand, and I want to use those with my students. For example, when a news story quotes opposing views, they are portraying intertextual social drama (4). I also want to use Bazerman’s list of techniques of intertextual representation in the classroom (5). Bazerman concludes by saying, “Intertextuality is not just a matter of which other texts you refer to, but how you use them, what you use them for, and ultimately how you position yourself as a writer to them to make your own statement” (9-10). This is exactly what I am trying to do in the literature review portion of the article I will write for this class. 

 

I realize this isn’t exactly the point of the piece, but the part where Bazerman was talking about middle schools stood out to me. One of the things I did not like initially about teaching in England was that students went straight from elementary school to high school. I very much thought there needed to be some sort of middle school because 11-year-olds were too young for high school. They looked like (they were) children). One staff member I worked with disagreed. She said the American model of middle schools doesn’t work, and there were studies to prove it. I dismissed her and never looked into it. However, it hit me hard when Bazerman wrote, “Yet both proponents of the middle school model and critics of the approach recognize that too many such schools have failed to find their academic way…So far, middle schools don’t have much to boast about when it comes to student achievement” (2). The more I thought about this statement, the more I realized there is truth in it. The middle school in our district does not have good results when it comes to student achievement. Two years ago, our high school decided to implement the middle school model in 9^th and 10^th grades. It has made no difference on student achievement. Admin thought it would fix the fail rates, and it did not. Bazerman quotes Schmidt in saying, “The middle school is the crux of the whole problem and really the point where we begin to lose it” (2). I sort of agree. When I see what my daughter is being asked to do in elementary school and what we are asking students to do in 11^th and 12^th grade English language arts, the academic rigor is high, and, on the whole, students rise and meet the expectations. From what I’ve heard, this is not true at our middle school. It raises some questions: Would middle school students perform better if they had the older students as models? Would the expectations be higher if the teachers had 7^th grade classes and 12^th grade classes, for example, on their schedules? Are middle schools worth the extra costs for districts? 

Finally, I do have to comment on this line from Bazerman’s text: The study faulted the American curriculum for being ‘a middle wide and an inch deep.’” I actually thought that in the first interview I had when I was moving back to the United States. The coverage was insane. I am thankful that I am in a position where I have the freedom to adjust the curriculum. We look at fewer texts and go more in depth. I genuinely believe it makes a huge difference. 

 

The timing of this week’s reading was perfect. I have been involved in writing rubrics for the district for the last two and a half years. The rubrics at the high school level are very much my babies. Before we had our final rubric writing meeting, one of the district employees talked to me about this very thing: separating myself from the rubrics I’ve written. She wanted to make sure that I could take a k-12 approach and see the vision the school has. The next day I read this chapter, and two days after that, I successfully applied the ideas in our eight-hour rubric writing meeting. 

 

When I was in high school and getting my undergraduate degree, I never read any feedback that teachers gave because I was too embarrassed to do so. That is the opposite of how I feel as a teacher. I want students to read and use the feedback, and it makes me mad at myself that I never did. I could’ve been so much better, and I am assuming that there were some nice compliments in there that I never read. As an adult, I definitely value feedback even when it can be difficult to hear. I like what Cools said here: “I tell myself that if students can do it, then I too can be brave enough not only solicit feedback but to receive criticism” (139). 

 

Furthermore, I like how Inoue looked at feedback from the Buddhist perspective in that “this is a small way the writer might practice suffering with the other, with the reader” (140). I have experienced this as a teacher when I conference with a student about their work, and I read their work aloud. I am not trying to make them feel bad, but sometimes it is helpful for them to see that the reader doesn’t understand what they are trying to say. The student wouldn’t have the same understanding if they just read my notes. I do think it’s important to try not to be judgmental in the feedback we give and to try to receive it without getting defensive. 

 

I thought it was wise for Inoue to ask someone who she knew would resist to read her draft. He showed her how a reader like him would experience her book (143). This is really valuable. It’s hard to give your work to someone who you know is going to oppose it, but I think having a good relationship with the person, like Inoue had with Dr. Z, is important.