Creative Writing Student Association Proposal

Here's a draft from Shannon of our Creative Writing Student Association Proposal

The proposed Creative Writing Student Association (CWSA) will enhance the creative, academic, and social experience of our bachelor and graduate students. By enabling students to organize events and programs, the CWSA will support the extra-curricular and mentorship work of Creative Writing faculty and staff. Fundraising and volunteering will be the primary source of support for the association and its endeavors, but we also ask for a small sum from the department to subsidize events and pay one chair person. The chair person will mange funds and activities. He or she will also attend a portion of faculty meetings to enhance communication between faculty, administration and students.

Here is an example of some of the activities the Creative Writing Student Association would organize:

Orientation : We would expand the faculty’s orientation to include a social aspect facilitating information exchange between incoming and established students. The orientation would extend into the first semester and include

MENTORSHIPS: Partnering new and experienced students throughout the first semester to help familiarize them with the program, the school, and some aspects of the Vancouver writing community. Mentors could also help faculty and staff field questions from incoming students.

The WORKSHOP WORKSHOP: A discussion in workshop protocol and exploration alternative models of workshopping 


Seminars and resources: The association will adapt campus-wide resources on academic skills to suit the needs of Creative Writers. (For example, the Grad Studies department holds Time Management Seminars, which the CWSA could expand to apply to creative projects: “How much time should I allot to get a good idea?” ) It would allow our students to reap the benefit of university-wide programs; as UBC is not a Fine Arts school, it is important that we build these stratagem and resources internally.

Town Hall Meetings or Brown Bags: Regular open-house meetings to address creative and administrative interests/concerns of students in the department.

Representative to Faculty Meetings: The Association would nominate a communications officer to liaise between faculty, admin and the student body

Readers: The association would have funding available to students who would like to invite readers and host writing-related events

Creative Collaborations: The association would help enhance the networking opportunities of the program by initiating in-house writing festivals or showcases which encourage writers to explore inter-genre, inter-disciplinary and multi-authored forms of publication.

BUDGET

We are asking for $3 000 dollars in total. This will cover the Chair Person’s 5 hours per week, the honorarium for the undergraduate co-chair, and the pool of funds for readers and volunteer stipends.

1 Grad chair Person Salary @ 5 hours/week: $ 1 000

1 Undergraduate Co-chair Stipend: $ 500

Events/honorariums/materials: $ 1 500

Total: $ 3 000

Happy 2010 Creative Writers!

Hey Guys,

Let's resurrect this blog baybee! This is a space for UBC Creative Writing students to talk about anything. It is a sorta virtual community where we can talk about what matters to us.

Tons of incredible things came out of today's Brown Bag meeting. Couldn't make it? Shannon will be posting the audio recording soon. We are going to try to synthesize all your great ideas and present them at a faculty meeting in the near future.

If anybody is into being a part of a sort of Creative Writing Student Union, please let Shannon or I know and we will amalgamate our brains to put all this awesomeness into action.

Thanks for your participation today. I'm so excited by all the amazing potential of all the ideas brainstormed today. You guys rock.

MFA Questions/Feedback Brown Bag

To all MFA students:

Bryan Wade, Graduate Advisor, has called for a Thesis Information Session on Thursday Feb. 26th from 12:00 - 1:00 in Buch. Room E476. Please come meet the faculty and find out how to get a thesis supervisor, which genres the faculty supervise and the process and guidelines for each instructor when working with the student.

After the session there will be a short question and answer period on thesis and other topics.

Pizza will be served!

Pretty visual art on the scale of our problems...

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2009/01/chris_jordan_ted_talk_visualizing_excess_through_large_compositions.html#extended

So you think your a genius?

Join us for an informal meeting of the minds on January 22nd at noon in Buchanan E476. The Teaching Brown Bag is an opportunity for faculty, staff and students to come together to eat, talk, and meet other members of the UBC Creative Writing community. This week we will discuss the topic of the romantic artist-genius mythos, and how it finds its way into creative writing programs. Does the mythos of the writer as a divinely inspired being hinder the budding writer? Can creative writing be taught? If we think we're not "geniuses", should we throw in the towel? How can we nurture the process of writing as a craft, without being daunted by the notion of the unattainable masterpiece?

Teaching Brown Bag Lunches meet once a month from noon until 1 pm in Buchanan E476. We look forward to seeing you there! Contact Ray Hsu at ray.hsu@ubc.ca for more information.

Paulo Freire...

...is worth reading.

"It was while in exile that I realized I was truly interested in learning.  What I learned in exile is what I would recommend to all readers of this book: each day be open to the world, be ready to think; each day be ready not to accept what is said just because it is said, be predisposed to reread what is read; each day investigate, question, doubt.  I think it is most necessary to doubt.  I feel it is always necessary not to be sure, that is, to be overly sure of 'certainties'.  My exile was a long time of continuous learning."

pg 181, The Politics of Education: Culture, Power and Liberation

"Whether it be a raindrop...be it a bird that sings, a bus that runs, a violent person in the street, be it a sentence in the newspaper, a political speech, a lover's rejection, be it anything, we must adopt a critical view, that of the person who questions, who doubts, who investigates, and who wants to illuminate the very life we live.  My suggestion is that we capture our daily alienation, the alienation of our routine, of repeating things bureaucratically, of doing the same thing every day at ten o'clock, for example, because 'it has to be done' and we never question why.  We should take our own lives into our hands and begin to exercise control.  We should try to stand up to, and out from under time."

pg 198, The Politics of Education: Culture, Power and Liberation

"Let's take our own alienation into our hands and ask, 'Why?' 'Does it have to be this way?'  I do not think so...As active participants and real subjects, we can make history only when we are continually critical of our very lives."

199, The Politics of Education: Culture, Power and Liberation

"...empowerment should never be limited to what Arnowitz describes as 'the process of appreciating and loving oneself.'  In addition to this process, empowerment should also be a means that enables students to interrogate and selectively appropriate those aspects of the dominant culture that will provide them with the basis for defining and transforming, rather than merely serving, the wider social order."

152, Literacy and Critical Pedagogy (also Freire)

stuff to think about (for working with adolescents)

From Social Problems and Social Contexts in Adolescence: Perspectives Across Boundaries, edited by Klaus Hurrelmann and Stephen Hamilton, 1996

"Adolescents are acutely aware of the societal forces surrounding them. They are stamped indelibly with the marks of the period in which they come of age. Thus, adolescence is something of a barometer for society. Adolescents register impending changes that may not be fully established until they become adults. Extreme differences in access to resources and in future prospects found in modern capitalist economies result in dramatic differences among adolescents. Gender, income, race, class, urban/rural/suburban location, region, physical and mental impairment, and other developmental characteristics distinguish the experiences and developmental trajectories of adolescents across societies...The most consistent thing about adolescents across cultures is adults' view of them, seen in their complaints of their indiscipline, moodiness and self-indulgence. 'The problems of youth' is a perennial topic of researchers, practitioners and policy makers."

A couple pages later, on adolescent risk-taking or dangerous behaviour (what, apparently, the professionals among us call "experimental problem behaviour") :

"Although adults may condemn these choices, adolescents may not believe other choices are available or preferable."

The last part I find particularly thought-provoking, especially with kids who have dropped out. That other options are perhaps desired but not available.

Summary of November 2008 Brown Bag on Grading Creative Writing

November Teaching Creative Writing Brown Bag Summary:

In November, 2008, approximately 20 students (mostly graduate students) in the UBC creative writing program (and one instructor) participated in a lunchtime “brown bag” discussion about grading in creative writing. Most of the discussion centered around grading in the UBC creative writing program, though there was some reference to how students might grade their students should they become teachers one day. There was a broad range of opinion offered, and no consensus, though the discussion leaned against the idea of grading creative writing. The following summary has been developed from a list of comments recorded during the meeting.
Comments critical of grading creative writing tended to reflect the following concerns: (1) Grading is not relevant to art; it is not legitimate to grade art. (2) Grading creative writing might deter people from taking risks and experimenting, and instead tailor their work to the instructors’ wishes. (3) Feedback on writing is what is important, not grades.
Comments typical of those defending grading: (1) Students need to see how they are progressing. (2) Grading is necessary for the purpose of awarding scholarships. (3) Non-grading might not be seen as legitimate within a university system.
A major portion of the discussion pertained to the usefulness of grading for the world of publishing and the workforce. The following concerns were typical: (1) Being prepared for publishing/the workforce is what is important, not grading. (2) Grading should be useful to the end of publishing or being in the workforce.
Some of the discussion centered around how to grade. Some ideas (which had mixed levels of agreement) included grading based on publishability, effort, and use of tools of craft.
The departments’ current policy of deferring grades and then awarding high grades was also discussed. Opinions ranged from preference for grade deferral (allowing students to focus on art rather than grades) to questioning the purpose of grading at all if grades are de-emphasized or if everyone gets A’s anyway.

Food Schedule

FOOD SCHEDULE

Anyone who has signed up for food twice this term only goes once next term, while anyone who has signed up once (including me) will go twice next term. Once y'all have a chance to sign up, then I'll sign up my second slot.

- Sept 15: Ray
- Sept 22: Liz
- Sept 29: Brie
- Oct 6: Krissy

Oct 13: Thanksgiving

- Oct 20: Roger
- Oct 27: Shannon
- Nov 3: Shannon
- Nov 10: Rachel
- Nov 17: Rachel
- Nov 24: Brie

Nov 28: Last day of classes for the term

---

- Jan 5: Brie
- Jan 12?
- Jan 19: Roger
- Jan 26: Krissy

- Feb 2:Rachel
- Feb 9: Liz
- Feb 16-20: Midterm break
- Feb 23: shannon

- Mar 2: Roger
- Mar 9: Krissy
- Mar 16:Rachel
- Mar 23:Shannon
- Mar 30:

- Apr 6: Ray

burning quotes

"Enlightenment is emergence from self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!"

Immanuel Kant, 1784


“Something different evolves when we stop talking about teaching as bounded by the skin, the class, the home, the neighborhood and begin talking about teaching as the confluence of places and people mutually constituted. Literacy would then be predicated on the health of the entire complement of elements. Such a stance commits us to situations, to partiality, to networks, to reciprocal actions. Such is the gift and the burden of a poetics of teaching.”

Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Embodied Literacies : Imageword and a Poetics of Teaching


“None But Our Words” describes a ‘pedagogy against the grain’ occurring within classrooms, and the kind of learning that can go on under such conditions. At the same time it describes what can happen to people, to learning, to schools and to entire communities, when those whose interests lie ‘with the grain’ have their comfort unsettled, disrupted. This is an unsettling book. It challenges us at every point to own up to where we stand, to decide what we believe about and want for education, and how far we are prepared to struggle for our ideals. How much of the world are we prepared to admit into our classrooms? How far are we prepared to extend our classroom learning out into the world beyond, and to allow the learners in our charge to locate and name the issues that properly concern active citizens in search of a just and peaceful world, citizens who understand that one is a precondition of the other?”

None But Our Words: Critical Literacy in Classroom and Community, by Chris Searle


"The refusal of understanding, then, is also a fundamentally creative act. It is precisely in this struggle to make sense of this refusal that the possibility of a truly pedagogical encounter emerges."

Cathy Caruth


"Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so."

Doris Lessing


“Art is not a luxury. It’s a mind altering possibility.”

Jeanette Winterson

Tipsters for Hipsters

Hey Gang,

Here's a place we can share our lesson plans, teaching ideas, brown bag feedback and anything else that might be useful to us.

Here's some stuff I just learned. It is probably redundant to y' all but thought I'd include it just in case you were new to the blogsphere like moi.

Labels are your friend! If you label your post (in the bottom right corner) it will automatically categorize it. Unfortunately it doesn't look like you can do categories within one another. To solve this we can label posts with two titles separated by a comma. For example, Krissy's BB notes are labeled Brown Bag, Grading . That way if you are interested in just Grading you can go to any posts related to that if you want info on more general BB stuff it will send you to all the BB posts.

Krissy's notes from our first Brown Bag

Teaching Brown Bag 1 : Grading in Creative Writing Departments

What the people had to say

- Grading should be banned.
- At the same time, having no marks, I.e., no marks written on our assignments, is frustrating. Like we're getting high fives, but how do you measure that? Will high fives help with scholarships?
- When you get only positive feedback and no criticism, you get a surge of confidence, but when you hear that everyone else got glowing reviews as well, it makes that feedback seem suspect. It's like that here with everyone getting A's. How do you know how you're actually doing?
- Grades are given to allow for scholarships- a basis for selection. Without them you don't have a sense of where you are in the scheme of things. That wasn't the case in undergrad.
- I appreciated the no grades thing because I'm not thinking about it. In Creative Writing, it's not about the grades, but about the quality of the feedback.
- In the world you get published- that's your "A". There's an incongruity between what we're doing here and the world
- The unspoken idea here is that our thesis will pass if it's publishable and fail if it's not. Our goal here is to bring a manuscript to a publishable quality.
- But isn't "publishability" also suspect?
- I heard that the reason everyone gets an "A" is that the work that got us here is what gives us an "A". The program is really hard to get into and the grades reflect that.
- I'm more concerned about how I'm going to work on the skills to make sure I'm productive when I leave as I am while I'm here.
- Are we working for the teacher now, if we're working for grades?
- But if we de-emphasize the grades do they serve any purpose at all?
- We have to work within the system.
- The idea is that we leave the program prepared to carry our writing careers forward. Is grading helpful with that?
- The question, when we graduate, should be are we ready to be a writer to make a living or not? Like when you graduate from law school, are you ready to be a lawyer for a living or not? Some are and some aren't.
- The "flattening out" of grades says more bout grad schools than it does about the program.
- Imagine if you're the only person who gets the "B"
- We all have the feeling that an MFA isn't worth very much anyway.
- Okay so, how does grading, even the illusion o fit, reflect on or prepare us for going out into the world?
- There are some schools who go tell you to live instead of write.
- Not that many programs are available to teach Creative Writing.
- But how can we change the program?
- An MFA gets you into the higher salary range. You need an education degree afterwards- one year.
- Let's assume we do get teaching jobs. How do we grade? How do we teach?
- The idea of learning and teaching craft is like learning the shape of a house I might fill with interesting things.
- And we can grade based on how well the students are using the tools of the craft.
- A big part of teaching is encouraging.
- Last year, for example, the grade could be based on the class just handing in fiction- anything they wanted, as opposed to assignments being given based on certain elements of fiction.
- But a story has no easily delineable outcomes.
- Exercises are useful in honing a skill, that you will later find yourself using. It's like giving the students pick axes and hammers.
- What about a pass/fail grade based on the "publishable manuscript" goal?
- That would discourage risk and experimentation. The program is about exploring craft.
- What are the chances that grading will stop people form taking chances?
- So should we have a pass/fail based on effort? ANd how do you measure that?
- Universities mark on a bell curve. I'm sorry that's just the way it is. It becomes and exercise in relativity. Ultimately, subjectively, you've got an A pile, a B pile, and a C pile. The system forces you to.
- How can we say what's more important- effort or publishability? If we grade based on craft, how can we say what's more important, plot or imagery? Sometimes teachers can be wrong.
- Does there have to be a "fail pile". Why does failing students give you credibility? Why do you fail students at all?
- F is for no effort- for the ones who didn't care.
- But sometimes students don't care because they see how faulty the whole thing is. They might be really smart and just disengaged.
- If grading were shifted from a craft/publishability basis to an effort basis, effort would shift as well.
- It's hard not to feel like the grades are reflective of who you are as a person. It's hard when you're trying hard, and making steps that you can see, but then the grades don't reflect that.
- In the end, you're doing I for yourself, not for the teacher.
- Does grading make us change our writing to get the grade? Sets up writing for the grade or for the gut binary.
- What can we ask for? What can we expect?
- The department is feeling the pressure from the broader administration of the university because of all the A's and B's. There is a pressure to bell curve it.
- Would be more lucrative for university to do large lectures instead of workshops.
- How do you do creative writing as a large lecture?
- We should make it gradeless and limit the amount of courses non-majors take as electives.
- How do we legitimize gradelessness?
- And don't easy A's provide money? Enrollment goes up, and high enrollment courses bring in money.
- You can't grade based on quality.
- The whole thing is arbitrary. It's not based on art- it's just based on working within a system.
- Are we talking about fitting in to a system or changing it from within? Are we talking about a different vision for another way that creative writing could be going if we could be doing something about it?
- It's not so unchangeable.
- Maybe we should have a complete, fundamental change in the way we do things.
- Maybe we shouldn't even be part of this institution.
- But then we wouldn't have any legitimacy.

Lesson Plans

Got any to share?

:o)