G&H and Bean

The two chapters highlight the magnitude of our responsibilities as professors. Informal writing may serve as an invaluable tool for identifying the ever so slight flaws in one’s thinking, reasoning, and communication skills. As the semesters progress, there seems to be this notion of the 24-hr professor.  Today, students have the ability to develop informal one-on-one relationships with their professors through email, online journaling and discussion boards.  I’ve even set up a discussion board thread entitled “clear the air” which basically serves as an open forum for students to communicate with each without the intimidating shadow of the professor eyeing every move the student(s) chooses to make.

Shockingly enough, these virtual opportunities also seem to serve as a good tool in surveying the student population. Just over the last two weeks I’ve received emails that really struck a nerve.  One email, the student used the word “da” instead of “the”.  I wrote back to him and told him that I would be doing him a disservice if I didn’t correct the inappropriate use of language.  In another class, I have students use informal writing to describe their progress in a 14-week behavior change project.  One student actually used … “…its sucks…”, when referencing his desire to eat fast food again.

The two readings talk about using informal writing as a means of additional training. The rational of practicing for the championship game that Gottschalk and Hjortshoj used, serves as an appropriate background to the problem of professor false sense of reality.   Both Gottschalk & Hjortshoj and Bean provide sample in-class activities, and Bean goes further in addressing the foreseeable dilemmas that professors may have.  As of current, I used many of these informal writing modalities in my classroom, but I am also guilty of not putting as much effort into providing writing structure feedback as is probably necessary (unless, it is a eye opening as the above two examples).