Interconnectness

Dawn's humorous quote from The Elegance of the Hedgehog spurs me to think about my changing pedagogy. A few years ago, I taught my middle school students (in isolation) about subordinate clauses, participial and prepositional phrases, adverbial clauses, and other grammatical functions that only grammar divas like me appreciate. A few students asked me why they needed to know that information, and I probably responded "It's on the test." I hope I did not cause any permanent damage to those students.

I no longer teach grammar in isolation. Although I constantly refine my pedagogy, it has never changed as rapidly as it has in the past few months. Reading about the history and theories of writing has seriously altered my thinking about teaching writing. For this knowledge, I am eternally grateful. I am especially grateful to people such as Mina Shaughnessy who taught us so much about basic writing. I am also grateful for Dr. Hugh Burns. My students are creating multimodal compositions - something that might not have happened had we not had Dr. Burns visit CSU Pueblo. Thank you to Dr. Souder, and thank you, too, for your insights, your mentorship, and your teaching.

The presentations by our classmates have been a wonderful way to get to know the big names in our rhetorical tradition. But I'm not simply grateful for the knowledge imparted; we've enjoyed great presentations. I am a true-blue teacher. I will borrow and steal from others, and I've learned from my classmates how to make my own presentations better.

Reading the articles and essays in our comp books has been informative and entertaining. I've been entertained because the rhetoric of differing schools of thought is often so quarrelsome. Discovering connections among our authors has also been informative, but not especially surprising. It seems only natural that Aristotle should be our antecedent.

Researching Dr. Eskew's history has been fascinating. A striking number of professors, who through other professors eventually influenced Dr. Eskew, taught at Yale, and many have concentrations in Renaissance literature and rhetoric. A large number have backgrounds (or created) comparative literature. I'm curious to know if others of us have found those kinds of similarities. I have been delighted to find that some of the connections go back to Shakespeare, because any time Shakespeare is involved, I'm happy. Researching has allowed me to get reacquainted with Marxist and Cartesian philosophies.

We truly are all connected in an ancient and contemporary global rhetorical family. The ancients and those more modern influence me, my teaching, and my students.