Closing Session

Closing session: Open mic: Bring your writings from
conference sessions to share with the group.

“Where is The Love?,” Molly Swick

In our attempts to make this a more peaceful planet, with more love than fear, more justice than injustice, more healing than harm... hope and love, as ontological needs for transforming society, are crucial elements in effective classrooms. A loving educational philosophy is imperative, yet insufficient without practical applications for creating a safe learning environment. Examining the teacher/student relationship, moving from banking to problemposing education, dialoguing as a pedagogical tool, respecting lived experiences, striving for oneness in difference, and embracing love, hope and humility will be included in the discussion. I will use, as a background for the workshop, my dissertation topic: “The Social Justice Theories of Paulo Freire as a Pedagogical Language of Hope.” Come help me change the world!!!

“Poetry, Inner Work, and Holistic Writing Groups,” Stan Scott

In this session we will look at poetry as a form of inner work that leads to greater self-awareness, emotional engagement, and movement toward maturity on the part of students. We will do some writing and other activities that demonstrate what I call holistic practices in writing groups—with the instructor present in every group—that have led to truly amazing results in my own teaching as well as students’ lives.

“Because I Said So: Negotiating Power/lessness and the Politics of Silence in a Writing Program,” Stella Apostolidis, Roseanne Gatto, Tom Philipose, T

“Because I Said So: Negotiating Power/lessness and the Politics of Silence in a Writing Program,” Stella Apostolidis, Roseanne Gatto, Tom Philipose, Tara Roeder

As professors who must negotiate multiple roles in the academy (graduate students, full-time contract faculty, administrators), we are invested in exploring the way our emotions can be mobilized to empower us (and our students), and the ways in which they are often repressed by institutional ideology. The questions we seek to address are: How can we negotiate our “double roles” in order to overcome the anxiety, pressure, and selfconsciousness we feel when dealing with the academic institution and its representatives, and how/why do we “mask” these anxieties in the classroom? How do we deal with the “silencing” tactics of a Catholic, conservative
administration, and the widespread pressure to abandon expressivist classroom practice? How do we use our anger, and the anger of our students, in constructive ways in the writing classroom?

Plenary Session with Sheridan Blau

SHERIDAN BLAU teaches in the Education and English departments at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also directs the South Coast Writing Project. A past President of the National Council of Teachers of English, he has served as the senior consultant for the development of California's statewide language arts assessment, and on the panel that developed the assessment instruments and scoring procedures for certifying teachers applying for National Board Certification in the English Language Arts. He is the author of The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and their Readers.

“She’s Telling the Truth: What We Might Learn from Miss Ferenczi and Other Teachers in Stories,” Jo Anne Katzmarek

The conversation in this session will begin with a look at teachers as they are portrayed in Charles Baxter’s short story “Gryphon.” In that story, Miss Ferenczi, an unusual substitute teacher stirs some fourth graders to think in new and exciting ways and other fourth graders to hang on fervently to the facts they learned from their “regular” teacher.

Using Miss Ferenczi as a starting point, we will explore the portrayal of teachers in stories and poems as a means to clarify professional dispositions for teacher education. Some points we may ponder: To what extent is our own identity as teacher shaped by the image of teachers we have read in stories and poems? What are some powerful metaphors for teachers and teaching suggested by these literary creations? How do these literary creations measure up the teacher dispositions being advocated by the teacher education professional community and especially by the teacher education accreditation policies? On the other hand, what might the role be for stories about teachers in the preparation of teachers?

“The Heart and Soul of Curriculum: Emotional Challenges in the Student-Centered Classroom,” Kristin Prevallet

Several years ago, I had a class that fundamentally shattered me emotionally, and since then I have changed my persona and my pedagogy to adjust to emotional situations in my classrooms. I am no longer the same teacher that I was five years ago—of course this has to do with growing wiser. But it also has to do with adjusting my pedagogy and overall approach to shield myself from the emotional trauma of that one class—a class that probably was an anomaly, but one that bruised me nevertheless. This interactive workshop will engage questions of authority and boundaries that we must often deal with in our classes.

"The Visceral Power of Playing: A Workshop Exploring the Provocative Contemporary Relevance of Shakespeare's MERCHANT OF VENICE." Lorelle Browning

Saturday morning session.

“‘Oh please, not him!’ and Other Reflections on Disliking, and Maybe Liking, Students,” E.A. Miller Mlcak

Evening Session
Featuring readings—Kristin Prevallet, Laurence Musgrove and followed by an open mic.

"Teaching After Hurricane Katrina," Alicia Blair "The 'Not-Trying' of Writing," Rachel Forrester

Rachel will engage participants in a reflective exercise, and share her thoughts about how a very spiritual "not trying," or non-work, is what's at the heart of the mysterious event when composition occurs.

Alicia will share her practical experiences during the Post-Katrina period with her sixth grade students. She will explain how allowing emotions into the classroom, and following specific strategies and activities, made her year productive and successful.

“Picturing Reading Relationships,” Laurence Musgrove

In this 75-minute interactive workshop, participants will graphically explore their attitudes toward and relationships with reading and teaching. I will ask teachers to represent their reading and teaching visually in three ways, first a drawing of what happens when they read, second a drawing of how they would depict reading for their students, and third a drawing of what happens when they teach reading. We will then review these drawings as a way to examine their emotional or attitudinal dimensions, and consider methods for promoting other kinds of relationships with reading and teaching. I will also share examples of students' drawings from my research that reveal a range of reading emotions.

Click here for a handout from this session.

"Emotions at the Intersection of Realism and Idealism: When Student Emails Treat Teachers Like Flight Attendants," Richard Williams

My students' emails sometimes make me angry. In this presentation I will I explore the social roots of my emotions through Arlie Hochschild’s notion of "the commercialization of human feelings". Her idea ultimately allows me to understand the conflicting assumptions that students and teachers have about education—students tend to be realists, while teachers tend to be idealists. Exploring those assumptions, I conclude that the task faced by teachers today is more complex than that of merely helping students; we must also help ourselves. In discussing this, I will explore the interplay between realism and idealism and engage participants in a writing exercise about it.

And

“Beyond Rhetorical Conventions: Composing as Emotional Process in WAC/WID,” Wendy Ryden. Respondent, Beverly Wall

“The Emotional Life of BECOMING a Teacher: The Getting and Giving of Wisdom,” Bruce Novak

A major source of disturbance in teachers' emotions can be located in the general devaluation of our profession in contemporary culture. What in most cultures through time has been a very high personal and spiritual calling, a life-renewing ministry, is now mostly seen as an undesirable and servile job, at the beck and call of markets and administrators of various kinds. In this session you will experience in microcosm a course devised to help people tap both into their own INNER teacher—recollecting the transformative wisdom each one of us has acquired that allows us to be imaginative sources of transformative life to others—and into the enormous human power that can be discovered in the tradition of teaching, which is synonymous with the traditions of wisdom.

“Provoking Emotion for Growth in English Language Arts,” Steve Lafer

The session will engage participants in a discussion of emotion provoking topics and in writing exercises designed to move students from feeling to expression of feeling and the adjustment of text and speech to adequately convey the emotion behind the discourse. A discussion of the place of emotion in the classroom, the place of teacher emotions in the classroom, and means for encouraging the emotional involvement of students in reading, speaking, listening, and writing will be facilitated and include dramatic readings of literary works, consideration of the controversial and emotion raising aspects of stories appearing in newspapers, magazines, on television, radio, and in film. We will consider how regular exposure to such materials and activities aid in emotional growth and the development of critical language arts skills.

“The Spooky House": Emotions and Vulnerabilities in the Classroom, ” Patricia Sharpe, Anne O’Dwyer, and Philip Mabry

This workshop will invite participants to acknowledge vulnerability in the classroom, to consider the emotions it evokes, as well as its dangers and possibilities. The story of one teacher's inability to comprehend and validate her students' excitement will offer a metaphor for talking about emotions, vulnerability, and the relational "third space" we seek to create with our students. Finally, we will explore how "safe" the classroom can and should be.

“Wrath and Envy: The Leisure Class in My Class(room),” Robert Peltier, and “‘Elitist White Lady Who Tries too Hard’: Pedagogy, Emotion, and Race in Co

“Wrath and Envy: The Leisure Class in My Class(room),”
Robert Peltier, and “‘Elitist White Lady Who Tries too Hard’: Pedagogy,
Emotion, and Race in Contemporary College Classrooms," Allison Brimmer

How does emotion intersect with the complexities of socioeconomic class and racial/ethnic identities in (and beyond) the classroom? How do teachers and students enact their multiple identities in relation to these categories and with what successes and failures? This session will help participants to understand themselves and their pedagogies in more depth by sharing stories and writing about their experiences.

“Develop a Creative Practice to Help Connect to Emotions and Honor Them as a Teacher,” Laura Roberts

Teachers are members of a “high-touch” & high stress profession (Skovholt, 2001). Many leave the field after only five years (Ingersoll, 2001, 2003). How can we keep teachers in the field happy and help them avoid burnout? I believe that taking care of oneself (emotionally & mentally) is of the utmost importance particularly for teachers who are in an emotionally depleting profession. I will offer a manageable personal creative practice as a way to do this, versus the traditional offerings of professional development, higher pay, or a change in environment. Come reconnect, renew and rejuvenate through a creative practice that helps explore and pay attention to emotions in a safe personal way.

Hidden Depths: A Workshop,” Joonna Trapp and Barbara Turnwall

An interactive workshop drawing on elements of the teaching life that energize and drain us emotionally. Using memoir as genre, what stories can we tell that illustrate the effects of emotions in our teaching? Participants will read, write, and share in community during the workshop.

Opening Plenary Session: Peter Elbow

Biographical Information

PETER ELBOW's ideas about freewriting and responding to writing have shaped the way writing has been taught for the past few decades, both in the United States and in an increasing number of international settings. His perspectives on issues like academic discourse, evaluation, the nature of binaries, voice, dialect, and standard English have helped to define the theoretical concerns of the profession of Composition Studies. Elbow is the author of many books, including Writing Without Teachers, Writing With Power, Embracing Contraries: Essays in Learning and Teaching, Everyone Can Write: Essays Toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing, and others, and he is co-author of a textbook, A Community of Writers. He has also published many essays in composition and English journals, and given countless presentations and workshops all over the world. He has taught at various colleges and universities, and directed the writing programs at SUNY Stony Brook and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he is now a Professor Emeritus.

THE EMOTIONAL LIFE OF TEACHERS: Conference Schedule

The 2007 Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning (AEPL)Conference begins tomorrow.

Click Here for a printable schedule. This document is a PDF.
If you prefer a Word document, Click Here.


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