SelfAssessErickson

Todd Erickson

Completed May 17, 2015
I. "MY SYNTHESIS PRODUCT SHOWS THAT..."

A. I can convey who I want to influence/affect concerning what (Subject, Audience, Purpose).
I don’t think it silly to say, “anyone who wants to read my paper!” The purpose of challenging some of the conventional boundaries of poetry and who a poet is was something I was skeptical about for some time, but my paper aims to do so; and as such the subject seems fairly clear. My lack of confidence, though, was made evident by the fact that I wasn’t too comfortable saying such a thing until I was able to bring together concepts about multimodality, the current state of poetry, and the concept of all art being multimodal. I am not a published poet, nor a famous sculptor, or a famous anything, so having some research to support my ideas was important for my confidence. That said, I also might declare “bologna”—that was just my own insecurity—because poetry has a sort of self-sustaining “exit” button that allows for exploration and experiment, and this is in constant tension with the dominant voices of the field who want to maintain relevance and so on. So, continuing to share my ideas and work with people who might be less than agreeable to them is something I will continue to have to get used to.
Hopefully, a few people will come across my work and find it interesting enough to give this form a shot, or to email me saying that they themselves or someone else is doing something similar. I don’t own the form, which would be quite the opposite of the part of the project that aims to bring poetry and the writing of it to a broader audience. In a somewhat different way, I find my paper might be helpful to someone who is where I was when all of this began—with a few chances to experiment, a long period of time to reflect and synthesize experiences, and a chance to let my own work plus my own thinking about it to guide where I go next.

B. I know what others have done before, either in the form of writing or action, that informs and connects with my project, and I know what others are doing now.
To a certain extent this is true (maybe that can be said for everything “true”!), as could be shown through my consideration of a few artists’ work as well as a couple interviews with artists who I came to appreciate and admire quite a bit. What is less clear to me is what artists may be doing “now”—I continue to come across examples of work that might be multimodal but sometimes the degree to which the work could be considered what I deemed a “space poem” is unclear. In addition, I am curious about the extent to which my own definition can be stretched and challenged—what’s the space poem to a space poem, in other words (who is Einstein’s Einstein, da Vinci’s da Vinci, Duct tape’s duct tape, etc.). Perhaps something CCT has allowed me to discover and believe is that I can be my own Todd Erickson, and can call upon myself when I need to, and I can work to be my own best me (not that help isn’t needed at times). This moves away from the question here, but Todd’s Todd says that’s alright. Anyways, I continue to seek out examples of work that somehow connects with the ideas I’ve had, and to think about what I discover might challenge and change my own thinking.
It might be interesting to attend and perform a space poem at an open mic / poetry slam.

C. I have teased out my vision, so as to expand my view of issues associated with the project, expose possible new directions, clarify direction/scope within the larger set of issues, and decide the most important direction.
I have certainly worked to expand my vision. I stuck with the topic even when I had doubts about my ability to make it viable or to communicate my ideas. This is shown through the fact that the project has lasted throughout the duration of the last year (explicitly) and also echoed back to what I had done previously, more implicitly. (A space poem about my space poem idea might be due.)
There was a moment in the fall when I didn’t know what I was doing, was quite concerned about getting to where I am, and anxiety regarding closure was causing some difficult feelings. I stuck with it, though, so can add the experience to the pile of reasons to be okay with not knowing the future. I have no choice about whether I know it or not, but I have a choice about how I think and feel about it.
I have doubts about having chosen the most important direction. There were times while I was making “Sintering” when I thought about the degree to which my work was actually benefitting the world (probably after reading the news some day, or after a challenging day at work), so I have to think more about that. The chance to bring the concept to a wider audience may be of benefit to the world in the sense of art itself being important. And the concepts that a “space poem” relies upon could touch upon larger concerns of our common humanity, maintaining symbiotic relationships with others and our environment, working towards integration of thought, moving towards a new understanding of older ideas, and so on.

D. I have identified the premises and propositions that my project depends on, and can state counter-propositions. I have taken stock of the thinking and research I need to do to counter those counter-propositions or to revise my own propositions.
One premise of my paper is that poetry has some very powerful conventions and that the genre is, as one source stated, “stagnant.” In response, though, this stagnation isn’t a necessity. It isn’t necessary for there to be stagnation in the genre in order for space poems to exist, but it did provide a point from which I could start and a perceived boundary that I might put pressure on to discover something new to me. An analogy might my current thinking that all omelettes need eggs.
A counter-proposition is that poetry doesn’t actually need space poems—all art is already multimodal, and poems are therefore already multimodal. The response to this, however, is that a “space poem” is indicative of a process just as much as it is the final product (based solely upon which its “space poem” qualifications may not always be readily evident). Perhaps another counter-argument, as such, is that the final product (a space poem) ought not to rely on the audience’s awareness of its process in order to be what it is. On the other hand, perhaps what it is is less important once the audience has experienced it. But that might be an issue of marketing it seems.

E. I have clear objectives with respect to product, both written and practice, and process, including personal development as a reflective practitioner. I have arranged my work in a sequence (with realistic deadlines) to realize these objectives.
These are stated to some extent at the close of my paper. Since having finished the draft, my aim has become to create three more space poems this summer. I also, however, want to put a show of my work together. My wife thinks this ought to mean I sell some of it, but my counter-argument is that I might just sell the chance to see it. An experience can also be a product, and people actually pay quite a bit for some experiences that seem pretty horrible out of context! (Then again, the context in such situations might be an example of multimodality’s importance.)
I’m not too concerned about the realism suggested by my deadlines, though I suppose I have become a bit more realistic in thinking about what I can accomplish in a certain amount of time. That said, my decision to continue with a stop-motion film was ridiculous in some ways, so there’s a balance between risk-taking and awareness of my abilities. If I don’t see things as failures, deadlines ought to be named something else. What’s important is that I am resilient enough to move forward and think my time really is just that.
In all honesty, I need some time to clean and organize, and to decenter and decompress, so these too are a few objectives after May 28th. Listening to myself will help me know the best time to plan, but my awareness of my motivation will keep me on task.

F. I have gained direct information, models, and experience not readily available from other sources.
I feel I’ve become more aware of when I am a consumer and when I am a creator (not to imply that one is inherently worse, but reminding myself to invest in the latter has resulted in works that I couldn’t get anywhere else. In addition, the couple of interviews were authentic experiences.
That said, I have yet to interview some currently published poets, to share these ideas with them, and that might be an important source of information moving forward.

G. I have clarified the overall progression or argument underlying my research and the written reports.
Perhaps I am not the best to judge this! I do know that the use of a basic series of steps in my presentation enabled a few in the audience to grasp and take a shot at the concept, and that one of these was a person who had yet to be familiar with my work. In this sense, I feel that the concept is clear and clearly given in the paper, and that I can quite easily discuss it and respond to questions about it. Something I am most proud of, though, is that I can trace not only how the idea came to be for me, but also how it was the result of having read from a variety of sources and considering how they could work together.
Despite this, I would not want to suggest that the concept of a space poem has been set in stone, and would first say that perhaps this is simply because it would be antithetical of the genre if it was to be so.

H. My writing and other products Grab the attention of the readers/audience, Orient them, move them along in Steps, so they appreciate the Position I've led them to.
I feel that this is generally true. I recall Jeremy making a comment on my 692 work about providing transitions to guide my reader through the different parts of the paper, and I think that despite revisions there are ample transitions to accomplish the goal of moving my reader along. Though I can imagine there may be sections that are less “grabbing’ than others, such as those that deal with some of the more traditional research, I think that my honesty and consideration of counterpoints provides a good degree of interesting material. It may also be considered effective to have that research material more focused in the middle of the paper, with more personal, anecdotal, narrative, and experimental work in the first and last third of the paper.

I. I have facilitated new avenues of classroom, workplace, and public participation.
I did have my presentation, and I have posted “Sintering” on Youtube, Vimeo, and even Facebook. The latter was important in the sense that many of my friends and family who had no idea what I was working on finally got to see my work, and actually many of my coworkers as well. The positive responses I’ve gotten have been important. So far I only have 15 views on Youtube and 37 on Vimeo, so we’ll see what happens.
On the other hand, I would like to broaden my audience even more, ideally through a more public show of my work. I look with adventurous eyes towards my next piece, too.
I may try a lesson with my students about the work, or if time is short I may just share it with them.

J. To feed into my future learning and other work, I have taken stock of what has been working well and what needs changing.
Something that has worked well for me has been to be more compassionate with myself. At many points, I had not only self-doubt but also felt bad about not reaching a deadline I had set for myself. Sometimes this was actually due to technical issues, such as the difficulties with materials in constructing the “set” for the film. I decided this was essentially not benefitting me at all, so began to accept what I could do. Even though I sometimes had ideas of what could be improved, I had to calculate how feasible they were with the time, energy, and materials available to me. For instance, I wanted to film words moving around in the air, and constructed a means for doing so that ended up not working. The result was my resorting to having them taped to the background, which worked well enough. Fighting that critical and negative voice in myself is sometimes difficult, especially when I am tired, but it’s a muscle I’ve built up pretty well.

II. DEVELOPING AS A REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONER, INCLUDING TAKING INITIATIVE IN AND THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS

1. I have integrated knowledge and perspectives from CCT and other courses into my own inquiry and engagement in social and/or educational change.
A particular example of this would be my participation in the school’s restructuring committee. Several times since I joined I have been able to contribute what I thought were unique and meaningful ideas in response to the school’s problems or the focus of a particular meeting. These have sometimes been the result of my applying thinking and strategies learned in CCT during said meetings. Oftentimes, I use heuristics to generate ideas.
On the other hand, I would like to apply some CCT thinking a bit more in my day-to-day life. For instance, now that I am finishing up these classes, I would like to focus on our current living situation (in an apartment). However, I have yet to consider this particular problem in ways similar to that of some CCT. This is small change, though, and would be specific to change in my and my wife’s lives, as well as anyone who visits…and neighbors. Anyways, suffice to say there are some smaller parts of my day that will benefit from my thinking.

2. I have also integrated into my own inquiry and engagement the processes, experiences, and struggles of previous courses.
This has been true all along, even for the courses that I took as electives (in the English dept), though those were somewhat less so immediately applicable, strangely enough. One example of my having integrated something I learned was my development of a writing and reading journal, in which students choose their own focuses based on my responses and their own ideas, investigate and practice in those areas of their writing, and reflect on what they’ve learned. It is almost completely student-derived and has worked very well! I have had several students this year proactively learn more about using commas, to such an extent that this has become noticeably less of an issue in their writing than it was before. This is a reflection of my own understandings and my own work with space poems—I determined that I didn’t know something and went out to seek knowledge and develop understanding.
I can’t think of an example of shortcoming, but might suggest that it could involve my beign a bit more comfortable with taking a risk regarding my employment and profession. This year has been pretty difficult and, at several times, disappointing. I often think about other possibilities but the degree to which I’ve genuinely worked towards realizing any is small. So, that may be a problem for me to shift some focus towards and to consider how my learning can provide me with the support system that I’ve otherwise had through courses in the past few years.

3. I have developed efficient ways to organize my time, research materials, computer access, bibliographies, etc.
I’ve become pretty adept at using Microsoft Word in terms of keeping organized lists of my sources and readings, and developed several lists based on likelihood of use in my writing. I’ve also become pretty acquainted with the library resources and databases.
I signed up for a few different accounts, such as Evernote, but this is something I have to use with any frequency. In short, I can organize a bit more and continue to develop systems through exploring new means of doing so.

4. I have experimented with new tools and experiences, even if not every one became part of my toolkit as a learner, teacher/facilitator of others, and reflective practitioner.
Freewriting is something I have used often outside of class on my own to help me clarify my thinking, and I’ve also used it in my own teaching as part of the dialogue process. It has had some great results.
Some of the other processes from these last few classes could also be helpful, though, and I’ve yet to use them with frequency on my own, such as the mapping activity that was done in the last class.

5. I have paid attention to the emotional dimensions of undertaking my own project but have found ways to clear away distractions from other sources (present & past) and not get blocked, turning apparent obstacles into opportunities to move into unfamiliar or uncomfortable territory.
An example of this would actually be my going to Seattle. I was initially very hesitant about going simply due to the timing of it. I was concerned about not knowing exactly how long the filming, having to edit the film, add music, and also needing to continue writing my paper as well. I considered for a long time just not going so I could stay home. But then I took a bit of a risk and gave myself the deadline of completing the filming of stop-motion sequences alone before I left for Seattle. This was a real test for me, as I often prefer to have things in some way finished before moving on, and here I was leaving behind a series of sequences in a very rough format. However, I also knew I was exceptionally tired and stressed about completing “Sintering” with enough time to write about it. Normally, I would respond by deciding not to go on the trip, but this time I decided to listen to myself and to get a brief break from school and school. I think this was very beneficial ultimately because it helped to regain some of the energy that had been lost.
There were still moments when it took me longer to think through my doubts and concerns, or when I needed to talk them out with a group member or my partner, all aiming to adjust how I was seeing whatever problem arose, so there are some reflexes in my thinking that could be a little faster. Most of these have to do with my thinking somewhat negatively about my progress.

6. I have developed peer and other horizontal relationships. I have sought support and advice from peers, and have given support and advice to them when asked for.
Several moments in the semester my group and I emailed each other to request support amidst confusion, doubt, or some basic questions. Although my group for some reason had less meetings closer to the end, we came to rely on each other in significant ways. I feel that I have developed some meaningful relationships and am very thankful for that.
One thing that came up in the semester was when a classmate expressed some exasperation with another group member’s work in a side conversation. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do in that case, besides to just respond to the work in what I deemed would be most helpful.

7. I have taken the lead, not dragged my feet, in dialogue with my advisor and other readers. I didn't wait for them to tell me how to solve an expository problem, what must be read and covered in a literature review, or what was meant by some comment I didn't understand. I didn't put off giving my writing to my advisor and other readers or avoid talking to them because I thought that they didn't see things the same way as I do.
I emailed work as I made progress, including posting a few PowerPoints to my groupmates as I made progress. The only time when this didn’t happen was during the production of “Sintering,” when that time was used up solely by my filming and working on the narratives and lessons from my prior pieces. It would have been neat to have been able to film my filming, but I didn’t have the resources to do so. The camera on my computer couldn’t have been used because of the limited memory on my laptop being used for the actual photography for the stop-motion, and at the time my phone was essentially ready to stop motion itself. Finding ways to display my process more easily, or in a way that might somehow be interactive, is interesting to me.

8. I have revised seriously, which involved responding to the comments of others. I came to see this not as bowing down to the views of others, but taking them in and working them into my own reflective inquiry until I could convey more powerfully to others what I'm about (which may have changed as a result of the reflective inquiry).
Although I did not directly address all of the comments of my groupmates in my writing and revising, I did think about them all and in that way they influenced some aspects. One that comes to mind was a comment about differences in how cultures might respond to different modes, something a group member brought up. This led me to go back into one of my sources and see how it responded to this concept. I suppose on some level there’s an assumption that a space poem would be a space poem in various cultures. However, the modes that might be chosen to use in a space poem in one culture might be significantly different than those in another. This is an area I might learn more about by considering how multimodality is discussed and used in different places and communities or other kinds of contexts.
There was a point at which I knew I wouldn’t have time to take into account some of the issues and recommendations that popped up, or rather to seek additional supportive research. At other times, my group seemed not to offer too much in the way of comments for revision but rather resources that might help me along.

9. I have inquired and negotiated about formal standards, but gone on to develop and internalize my own criteria for doing work—criteria other than jumping through hoops set by the professor so I get a good grade.
This was definitely true for me this semester, perhaps more than any other. In essence, the project itself took precedence over my grade—I haven’t thought about my grade for some time now, but I feel very proud of the work I have done. I realized a week before the presentations that I had actually stopped submitting weekly writing forms, which I had been pretty good about doing for the first part of the semester (and, I think, over the winter break). In prior semesters this might have bothered me quite a bit, but this time I decided I knew what I was doing, that I was meeting my goals, and that I was focused on what was most important for my synthesis. I allowed myself to see the daily writing in different forms and broke away from the original description (perhaps this is the nature of working with multimodality). Another instance might be that I stopped keeping track of when I responded to or critiqued my group members’ work, simply to have one less little thing to remember. I just didn’t feel it was important to keep a record of it when I could be using that time to actually respond and work on my project. Again, I felt okay with this decision once I thought it through, and I think it ended up benefitting my group and myself a bit more. A final point might be the fact that I missed two class sessions during the semester. I had never missed a single class in my whole CCT career before this semester (including our winter sessions!) and now I missed TWO! One was due to work, which was an important event for me, and the other due to being in Seattle. While I was initially disappointed to be missing class, I tried to get myself to decenter a little bit. A couple of my favorite moments in Seattle, however, were sitting in the amazing library there and working on my paper—perhaps because I felt so invested in the work and was happy I was happy doing it!
A couple of times, I did not meet a deadline I set for myself, but such is life, and I’m not in for a pass/fail grade.

10. I have approached the CCT synthesis course and the CCT program as works-in-progress, which means that, instead of harboring criticisms to submit after the fact, I have found opportunities to affirm what is working well and to suggest directions for further development.
I don’t consider my CCT work to be done at all, and in a rather literal sense. For me, CCT has been a means for developing awareness of my own thinking and therefore being in charge of some the habits of mind that I maintain. While I may be done with coursework for a bit, as a student anyways, I am certainly going to continue working on my own creative endeavors and plan to do so in a serious manner. I take pride in the fact that I did my best to make the program what I wanted it to be for me—I took time to carefully plan out my courses and to consider what was most important for me to take when I did. It was helpful to have the several years to finish that I did (which not everyone has), but nonetheless I maintained an awareness of what I needed and was able to plan it out. As such, I don’t seem to have the same complaint as a few others about not being able to take some courses. That said, I might argue that for many of my classmates, being able to get a full degree online is a rather remarkable thing in itself. I think with some wonder about the fact that I only took the last two classes online. A last point is that I aim to finish my RPP website, and to have it serve as a main part of my online gallery, which was something I altered slightly to provide a bit more motivation for myself. This is a summer project along with creating more space poems.
In terms of offering suggestions, I find that I have had ample opportunity to do so during courses in reflective activities and in mid-point check-ins and self-assessments such as these.