Dancing communication theory 11/17/2009
 S-M-C-R, with Noise in the middle How do you dance communication models? Apparently it came so easy for my Intro to Comm Theories students. After showing them a sample communication model, I asked them to either draw or perform the communication process using the communication acts they observed. Of course almost all of them chose to perform their "models" or "abstractions," trying to outdo each other in portraying the different elements in the communication transmission process. While all used variations of Berlo's or Osgood and Schramm's communication models as they applied it to particular situations, they became creative in personifying the mechanical elements of Message, Channel, Noise, and Feedback. I don't think next session's lecture will be boring at all. Is creative writing research? 11/15/2009
 Because some would say it's not. And so they require something more from creative writers. This is the question I ask myself while preparing for the first consultation sessions in CW 200b Creative Writing Thesis. On one hand some would say that creative writing is research. One of the advocates is the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) in UK. In their Creative Writing Subject/Research Benchmark Statement, published in September 2008, they make the following arguments:
And so in our Creative Writing Thesis class, we require our senior students to submit a collection of creative works accompanied with a critical preface. The critical preface functions as a supplementary discourse that allows students to articulate their creative writing process and practice. It serves to document students' technical and critical acumen. As one Creative Writing teacher puts it, in the final report of the University of London's English Subject Center's Mini Project on "Supplementary Discourses in Creative Writing Teaching at Higher Education Level," published in March 2003: "The supplementary discourses give students ways of discussing and understanding contemporary poetry and art -- and ways of developing their own practice as a result." (8) This is as close as Creative Writing can go -- without crossing over into Literary Studies -- in terms of the demands of "measurable" scholarly work. As another Creative Writing teacher says, as quoted in the English Subject Center's report: "supplementary discourses are the only way of persuading colleagues hostile to creative writing that it has some 'academic probity.'" (10) So is creative writing research? What do you think? The Villa-Lopez controversy 11/13/2009
 Villa with American and British writers What better way, I thought, to make Creative Writing students locate themselves in Philippine literature than to choose a side in the Villa-Lopez controversy. The exercise was basically to make the students recall what they had read and discussed in CL 150 (The Literature of the Philippines in English I) last semester. By asking students to take a side in the Villa-Lopez debate, perhaps the students would also recall the developments in Philippine writing from the pre-Spanish to the Spanish eras and up to the 1940s. So before the class would engage itself this semester in discussions on Philippine literature in English from the 1940s to the present, I thought it would be enlightening to see how students saw themselves in either the tradition of Villa's aesthetic formulation or in the tradition of Lopez and other socially-committed writers. And what a discussion it turned out to be, with more questions being asked than answered. Implicated in the exchange were such issues as:
Classes again 11/12/2009
 It's back to the classroom now. I'm teaching two sections of an Intro to Communication Theories class, a Media: History, Development and Theories class, and a Contemporary Philippine Literature in English class this semester. I also have six Communication Arts Thesis advisees and one Creative Writing Thesis advisee. Looks like this will be a busy semester for me. Learning 11/04/2009
 Winslow Homer's 'The Country School' We got to talking about the business of learning that C (now on the student side of the classroom, after getting a study grant) and I are into, our online chat veering into this subject as she recounted an incident when a friend asked her a simple question, "But how do you understand (place your favorite critical theory here)?" And she was tongue-tied for an answer. And she found herself laughing for this sudden inadequacy to explain in equally simple terms, terms that would indicate how she owned her knowledge of a theory that she has read and written about or used in a scholarly work and perhaps taught in the classroom. Which led us to a shared observation of how we have been taught ourselves, and how that education -- speaking now about the Philippine education system -- has molded us into "parrots," to some degree or other, of what we study in school. Because it's true. We have inherited a system from our colonial masters (now I understand why the UP seal has a parrot in it) that drills us in concepts and theories that we have to regurgitate during oral and written examinations. We learn the skill of footnoting our ideas to showcase the scholarly aptitude and bibliographic fortitude we went through in our research. But we come to a point, when we're asked or we ask ourselves, in simple terms: How do you understand so-and-so? This is something that John Dewey, in Democracy and Education (1916), himself pointed out: "There is the standing danger that the material of formal instruction will be merely the subject matter of the schools, isolated from the subject matter of life-experience. The permanent social interests are likely to be lost from view. Those which have not been carried over into the structure of social life, but which remain largely matters of technical information expressed in symbols, are made conspicuous in schools. Thus we reach the ordinary notion of education: the notion which ignores its social necessity and its identity with all human association that affects conscious life, and which identifies it with imparting information about remote matters and the conveying of learning through verbal signs: the acquisition of literacy." And we ask ourselves, do we contribute to this kind of communication that has become separate from how we actually constitute our lives? Education for the sake of literacy? Or do we participate in the dynamic production of new knowledge? This requires us to question what we learn, and to own what we learn in the process of questioning knowledge. (This entry was posted last 30 August 2009 in my previous blog.) Reflecting on writing 11/02/2009
Why is there a need to reflect on one's creative process, one's creative pieces? That was the question I asked myself while preparing the Intro to my CW 200b class this second term. I know this is also the question foremost in my students' minds as they try to reflect on their writing.  Descartes' Mind and Body Because I know they will be thinking, aren't the stories or poems or essays we've written not enough? We struggled over those, sweated through the Workshop and the panelists' comments, and labored over the revisions we had to do on our works. Aren't those enough for a thesis? Why do we have to write about how we wrote those pieces? The way my college professors explained it to me was: you'll be a better writer if you're aware of what you do -- the effect you achieve by writing your piece this way or that, choosing this word or phrase over another, shaping the narrative this way rather than another, and so on. Of course some of my professors also argued about how too much self-awareness about one's writing kind of deadens one's enjoyment in the process of creating something, and makes the writing of a creative piece almost mechanical. But in the business of teaching creative writing, we really cannot help but demand such critical knowledge among our students. Perhaps the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) says it best in their "Creative Writing Research Benchmark Statement" (2008), when they reviewed and proposed standards for the teaching of creative writing in higher education institutions in the UK. NAWE points out that this critical awareness will help develop among student writers the confidence to depend on their talent and knowledge as they graduate and become professional writers.As someone who went through the same process myself, I know how important this self-awareness can be. For while having a community of other writers as one's readers will help enhance one's writing, it is finally one's self and not a teacher or a workshop panelist who decides that this piece of writing is ready to see print. Walk the talk 10/26/2009
I have to practice what I preach. And because I teach media arts and communication arts courses, aside from Literature and Creative Writing subjects, my website should serve as an example of what I continuously harp on inside the classroom -- that learning is not what you just read because it's assigned, and it is not just writing an essay or accomplishing an exercise for a grade. Learning is really a neverending quest to find out how and why stuff happens, how and why things work, why this and not that. Etcetera. Learning doesn't stop just because now I am a licensed professional and people pay me lots of money to fix things for them. And it doesn't stop just because now I'm a teacher, and here's the syllabus for the class I'll teach. Learning from where I stand is also finding out how best to transmit knowledge (and perhaps wisdom) to students. It is finding out what tools would work to facilitate the exchange of ideas. And I should emphasize the word "exchange" because learning is not just a one-way street (leading from teacher to student, sometimes ending up in cul-de-sacs). Learning is really a conversation among the students and the teacher. The teacher usually sets the tone and facilitates the flow of ideas. And one way for the teacher to do this is to provide examples, sometimes drawing from his/her own experiences and work.  And when a teacher like me draws from my own work, then I had better show something I would also "demand" from my students. I have to walk my talk. And so this "renovation" of my website. Yes, that's what's this post is really about -- a rationale for my most recent redesign. :-) But is marking students' creative writing pieces just as easy as that? The quote comes from Dr. Maggie Butt's daughter, who she cites in her "Marking: A Healthy Warning" (Appendix A of Siobhan Holland Creative Writing: A Good Practice Guide published by the LTSN English Subject Centre, Feb 2003). After all, the tedious task of marking papers should be an enjoyable task when reading creative pieces. Right? Right? Apparently not.  Photo from WikiMedia I agree with Dr. Butt, marking creative pieces can be a tricky task because:
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