Two Feet In | Writing and the Institution

Bruce J. Martin Dr. M. Backus ENGL 7390 29 November 2011 Time Line and Dream Liner Essay Time Line 1993-2016 1993-2003 Worked as a technical analyst for a data warehousing company. I had already received a BA degree in literature and my employer figured out that I could write complete paragraphs, more so than most of the programmers. I was eventually assigned to write press notices, white papers, technical instructions for customers, and marketing products for horrible-feeling massive conventions in Las Vegas. By that time, I realized that, though the money was great, the industry made me feel like I had been living in some scum-covered pond and I never felt clean, so I opted to get out and go into teaching. Finished a second BA in Psychology and an MA in Education along the way. 2003-2007 Began teaching (with alternative certification) middle school English Language Arts in a Title I school in the Klein ISD. I should have realized that with a curriculum with a Newspe...

http://pedagogy.dwrl.utexas.edu/content/case-digital-submission One of the scenes I hate most at the end of the semester is not the stack of papers I need to grade, but the hundreds of unclaimed portfolio notebooks abandoned in the graduate lounge. They'll wait there over the break, sometimes over the entire next semester, never to be retrieved by the student-authors. I think this is really, really telling. If a portfolio is meant to be a reflection instrument, to show changes, progress, regression, or insight, if the notebook isn't retrieved, there's little reflection going on. And, though I'm not certain if this is the larger or lesser crime, think about all those thousands of pieces of paper just wasted. Eventually the notebooks will be thrown into the recycling bin, but so many unused pages will go to waste. This waste is indicative of the wasteful attitude we have in our country, and in the academy, where teachers too often will photocopy reams of paper that st...