Instructor: Brandy Nālani McDougall
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ItemInstructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in American Studies, clip 11 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: I hope that by giving them regular writing opportunities (or writing assignments) allows them to get into a regular practice of writing that could create an opportunity for [students to subconsciously deal with place], that kind of fruitful, unexpected thinking to happen.
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ItemInstructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in American Studies, clip 10 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: Even though there is this thing that we have called a Writing Intensive focus, it's not necessarily rigid in terms of the kinds of assignments and kinds of writing you can have students do. And I think that's important for a lot of instructors to consider - you don't have to assign four 5-page critical essays or two 10-page [essays] for students to write to fulfill that 20-page writing requirement... There are so many other ways that you can incorporate writing into your classroom, make it Writing Intensive, and get students into a regular practice, which I think is especially important. That's the only way that you see progress and improvement in writing over time, if they are writing regularly and seeing other writing regularly. My students are learning how to write as American Studies scholars... just by virtue of the kinds of place-based issues we are looking at and the fact that the place(s) we are discussing are within an American colonial context.
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ItemInstructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in American Studies, clip 9 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: In my own experience as a poet and as a critical scholar, I think that writing has the capacity to alert you to things you didn't even realize you were thinking sometimes. Writing can be helpful at getting at certain subconscious ways in which you are grappling with particular issues. Writing can be helpful for students to organize their ideas, and it teaches them to think deeply about something before they respond in certain ways. So writing can be a great mediating practice between thought and dialogue. I think it also allows them to think of how they can better and more clearly communicate their own ideas, their own emotions, and also listen to others. So even though it's not apparent that writing can do that, in asking them to write in response to readings or class discussions makes them have to be better listeners and then to organize that listening, what they have retained through that listening, in order to write about it.
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ItemInstructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in American Studies, clip 8 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: When I was applying for the Writing Intensive focus and then when I was speaking about it with my colleagues in American Studies, we had to think about what our resources were for the class. They were interested or they liked the idea of it being a larger, lecture discussion class, but they were wondering if it would actually fill... Within a couple semesters, it's been pretty steady at 40-50 students each time. That has made it easier to make sure we have at least two sections of 20 students each. Because I was trained in English and now I am in American Studies, I think my approach is somewhat different from some of my colleagues... I learned little tricks to make sure they are taking ownership of their own writing and taking ownership of their mistakes. There are ways that I can alert them without doing line-by-line editing, alert them of their grammar issues or their organizational issues without marking up their paper that much. For example, I use a lot of rubrics and I have worked with my GA's to help construct the rubrics... Grammar should be a very small thing to look at.
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ItemInstructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in American Studies, clip 7 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: Whenever I have had to do a Writing Intensive course... I turned it into a place-based writing course largely because of my interests in focusing on Hawaiian and Pacific literature. Because of where we are at, I felt that was important for students to know.
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ItemInstructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in American Studies, clip 6 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: I wanted to update some of the reading material because there are always new things coming out in indigenous studies and I wanted us to be able to talk about things that are happening around us... A text that I adopted for the class was Value of Hawaiʻi 2... It's a great way for students to see writing that is a lot more accessible and also to see really good models of what you do as a person in a particular place.
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ItemInstructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in American Studies, clip 5 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: I think there are a lot more local students, students that grew up in Hawaiʻi, or students that have some experience with Hawaii who are part of the class, more than students who are from the continental U.S., for example... I'm sure some students would like to learn more and they feel a responsibility to learn more about the place they are studying in... Because they know I am Hawaiian from the beginning, I think there are certain ways in which they have to think about how they respond to certain things.
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ItemInstructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in American Studies, clip 4 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: [Students] are disturbed by how much of their film viewing and cartoon viewing and TV show viewing has been founded upon a lot of the issues we have been discussing in class - on these two-dimensional stereotypical images of indigenous peoples... I really wanted to make those images available to them.
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ItemInstructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in American Studies, clip 3 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: [The student's] writing improves because they are able to see other's writing styles and to be influenced by each other's work. Because they know that their own writing will be read by others there's a conscientiousness with the way they write.
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ItemInstructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in American Studies, clip 2 of 11( 2015)Brief excerpt from interview: Even though the class is focused on indigenous issues... I wanted students who weren't indigenous to connect to the material as well. It can be a little harder for non-indigenous students to think about how they would like to participate or what kinds of issues they would like to focus on... Allowing students to connect through place is a good way to have them connect first because we all share a place together. There's a dehumanizing process in the way Hawaiian lands are used. Here on this island we also have issues related to the intense militarization... All of these issues are relevant to indigenous people, but they are also extremely relevant to anyone who lives on this island. As a responsible citizen of this island, we need to strive to interrogate these issues.