Behind the Scenes

         Behind the Scenes        Head to Head        Postmodern Riff         

Looking back on this dichotomy – teaching technology versus teaching writing technology – I realize that I am not the first to be bewildered. Geoffrey Sirc states the problem boldly: "Let me confess: it has been a frustrating last several years for me in my writing courses. The rapid advance of technology has meant a pedagogical dilemma for me: just what do I do in the classroom, what do I teach? [. . .] Is the essay still our central genre? Do our students do Web sites? Do we teach html? Email as a genre? Where do we go?" (111). My inclination is to quickly wander from this snarl into a different dichotomy that filling out our IRB form brought to the surface – teacher/participant/observer (what I believe myself to be everyday I am in the classroom) versus teacher/participant/observer/AUTHOROFTHEOCCICIALVERSIONOFWHATWENTONINTHECLASS.

The moral weight of orchestrating the story thus induces a neurotic reaction to call my efforts an interesting failure rather than a smarmy heroic success story because I prefer the interesting failure plotline to the heroic success story. I encouraged my students to see me as incompetent because I needed an incompetent protagonist to tell the story I wanted to tell. This line of reasoning can circle around for ever – an infinite loop – an oeroboros.