The EEO program at Kean wants to prepare them in the following ways.
1. Gaps in knowledge- content and Discourse/ Familiarity in study habits
2. How to be a student
The program is directed towards catching them up in content and how to be a student. It is both in knowing how you are to represent yourself, behave in class, related to your printed text and there are social conventions to how to relate to text.
This is why they need this interpersonal apprenticeship that Gee referred to in the article.
What is Discourse?
Discourse is language in use. This talks about their identities. This is a huge important word for us in the programs. However, the mentors need to know what it means. They must be able to do all the things you need to do in order to work with Discourse (identity).
What are some of the things that are associated with Discourse in school? What are the tones that will be particularly critical with students?
Capital D Discourse characteristics:
A. Different dialects of English
B. Mannerisms (how to behave in a classroom)
What kinds of behaviors are valued?
Example: If students come from a family in which being tough leads to value, they may be perceived differently.
The opportunities in these small groups are to model the discourse and talk that will give them the advantage in their classes.
Somewhere in training, the students and mentors will have to reflect on their beliefs and ideas about knowledge. However on a liberal arts education, what is the value of knowledge? Knowledge is intrinsically valued.
Students must be aware of the values and expectations at the university and at some points they are in conflict with their own. They are required to think about how they will behave and how this fits in their plan with what they want to do in college. Will they have to do things that they aren’t interested in at college?
C. Authority Issues
D. Ethics
List of what particular students might need to work on
- Time management
- How to research
- Available resources
- Understanding the language in their assignments
- Identity as a student
o Taking their courses seriously
o Some students have told me they never wrote a paper in their lives and they can just pay someone to do it
- Prioritizing- Finding a balance between school work and their social life here at Kean.
- Using the right language in their papers
- Note taking skills
o Writing to learn issue
o Emphasize the importance of writing to learn
- Comfortable enough to ask for help
- Balancing stress
- Attitude interactions
- Criticisms- feedback
Gee: Literacy, Discourse and Linguistics
He makes a point about ways of being, assumptions we make about how people perceive us, it includes our dress, posture, what we eat, and our posture.
What is the point of distinguishing the difference between “discourse” and “Discourse”?
*Power dynamics
ü You can’t address an audience unless you know the discourse that they are in.
ü It is also about marking yourself as an insider.
How does Gee define literacy?
He talks about mastering a secondary discourse on top of page 529.
“…literacy is the mastery of or fluent control over a secondary Discourse..”
- You can’t master a Discourse unless you are a part of that community.
- He was talking about the difference between acquisition and learning. It’s about learning about identity.
First Theorem
- “Discourses are not like languages in one very important regard. Someone can speak English but not fluently. Someone can’t engage in a discourse in a less than fully fluent manner. You are either in or you’re not. “ (529)
o He’s saying you don’t get it until you get it.
o Lack of fluency will mark you as a pretender.
o You have to be able to grasp the entirety of the dominant discourse. In order to do that you have to sacrifice yourself a little bit. You lose a bit of what you were.
o Secondary Discourses open up choices. It’s a whole new world.
What are the implications of that in our programs?
-We want to provide many opportunities for our students where it will be perceived and modeled back in the form they can use it.
- Facilitators must model. We have to train coaches to appropriately model for the students how to become more aware of and begin to enter college as freshman students.
What are the other implications for our program?
- We are going to have students that have never stepped outside of their home discourse in order to find out if there are other ways to act, behave.
Gee asks “What is literacy?” page 538
“Discourses are inherently ideological” What does that mean?
- They are never neutral. All identities are value base. You prefer one thing over another, there you are.
What do we have to do within a group to allow that to happen?
-We must be respectful and receptive of all Discourses.
In order to have groups reflected on these different types of Discourses?
- Mentor must have to open up too. It’s going to be just enough interpersonal conversations in our training sessions. I have to reveal some things about myself to seem vulnerable in order to talk about my difficulties and sharing of common struggles. People have to be people to each other in order for this to work.
o Support writing coaches enough
o You can’t make them open up
o Just set yourself as an example and show it doesn’t hurt that much
- Discourses change relative to the opposing discourses that exist.
o They are constantly evolving.
o In a group dynamic, the way I present myself will set the tone of the group.
Setting myself as open and exploratory invites the students to be open and exploratory as well.
The way you talk is a marker of how you will be received.
- It’s about a rhetorical relationship.
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