Tupac Shakur: a Revolutionary and a Hybrid of a Black Panther and a Street Hustler

Reverend Herbert Daughtery asked Tupac Shakur at age 10 what he wanted to be when he grew up, he answered, “I’m gonna be a revolutionary” (Linda Tucker 66). Years later when he was asked to describe himself, he answered, “a hybrid cross of a black panther and a street hustler” (Linda Tucker 66). Shakur was nothing short of this description. Linda Tucker, author of “Holler if Ya Hear Me: Black Men, (Bad) Raps, and Resistance,” tells us that Shakur used hip-hop as an avenue to establish himself as a revolutionary. Inspired by the Black Panther Party and his upbringing, Shakur defied the norms—that he was going to live and die a black man. He did not want to become a burden to the African American community; rather he wanted to inspire change within the community. Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, author of Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap, writes:

Although early 1990s-era rappers such as De La Soul, KRS-One, Tupac, and Digital Planets eloquently explored in their lyrics such difficult topics as drug abuse, rape, child abuse, abortion, and even animal cruelty, many other rappers instead consistently affirmed some of the most pernicious stereotypes of hip-hop. (111)

In “Keep Ya Head Up” written by Shakur, he gives a shout out to his African American sisters on welfare. He tells them that he cares whereas his brothers may not. He discusses how his sisters need to stay strong in the advent of this cycle of mistreatment. His brothers make babies and leave their African American sisters with the product. Why do Shakur’s brothers rape their women? Why do they take from their women? Shakur calls on his brothers to be real to their women. Wait, he tells his African American brothers that they owe their lives to their African American sisters. They give them life. This is an ongoing cycle as Shakur examines and if African American men do not put an end to it, they will continue down this spiral of violence and anger. Although he recreated his history, which hip-hop critics like Bill Cosby may assume he embraces the thug lifestyle, he knew that in order to discuss the social, political, and economic ills facing the African American community, he, like revolutionary Malcolm X, would die in violence. He referred to Malcolm X and himself as “good niggers” (Tucker 67). “Good niggers” who sought to change the world would be killed in violence; “motherfuckers,” as Shakur described them, would take the “good niggers” lives.

“Changes” written by Shakur was originally recorded during his tenure at Interscope Records. Released on Shakur’s Greatest Hits album, “Changes” addressed the realities of his world—the African-American community—black-on-black crime, violence, gunplay, and drugs. Described by Walter Edwards, author of “From Poetry to Rap: The Lyrics of Tupac Shakur,” real is “being shot four times with four real bullets. Real induces paralysis to stop you from ripping your guts out. Real is having a promising life cut short at 25 years of age by someone you might call your ‘brother’” (Edwards 68). In hip-hop, the very persons involved define realness; it is their life experiences, as we will examine in “Changes.” Shakur is not embracing aspects of this kind of lifestyle, rather he, we speculate, is using it as a rhetorical device to encourage these in his community to act as an advocate of change for the advancement of African Americans. In analyzing “Changes,” the rhetoric of race allows us an opportunity to view it separately in how we may view others. How we are identified affects how we view others. The lens through which we view the world may handicap us in some ways. I identify as white, privileged womyn (see footnote). Although I consider myself to have an open mind—what I see in his lyrics, how I examine his lyrics and why I examine his lyrics is different than Shakur may have wanted me to understand, but maybe not. As a womyn, I can identify with the oppression that he has experienced, but I did not experience it. Womyn have [1]been victimized and oppressed as long as African American men have. I’m not an African American man. I was not raised with the ideals of the Black Panther Party. I was not raised in poverty and I was not shot four times. I am aware of the systems of oppression, but I have not experienced the political, social, and economic ills facing the African American community. I am choosing to examine and analyze “Changes” according to the rhetoric of race. Shakur described himself as a “revolutionary” and “a hybrid cross of a black panther and a street hustler” (Tucker 66). Although he was raised around the Black Panther Party’s ideals, many hip-hop critics would suggest that he embraces aspects of the thug lifestyle; however, he actually recreates his history for African American listeners. His mother, Afeni Shakur, was raised with “A Black Child’s Pledge” (Shirley Williams). Afeni, in turn, raised her son with these ideals as well which is evidenced in his lyrics. Shirley Williams, author of “A Black Child’s Pledge,” writes:

I pledge allegiance to my Black People.

I pledge to develop my mind and body to the greatest extent possible.

I will learn all that I can in order to give my best to my People in their struggle for liberation.

I will keep myself physically fit, building a strong body free from drugs and other substances which weaken me and make me less capable of protecting myself, my family and my Black brothers and sisters.

I will unselfishly share my knowledge and understanding with them in order to bring about change more quickly.

I will discipline myself to direct my energies thoughtfully and constructively rather than wasting them in idle hatred.

I will train myself never to hurt or allow others to harm my Black brothers and sisters for I recognize that we need every Black Man, Woman, and Child to be physically, mentally and psychologically strong.

These principles I pledge to practice daily and to teach them to others in order to unite my People. (Williams)

Written in 1968 and published in The Black Panther, "A Black Child's Pledge" called for members of the Black Panther Party to act as advocates of change for the African American community. African Americans may not inflict violence among the Black race. As an African American man, Shakur will not succumb to a life of violence. Shakur will not wreck havoc among his people. Shakur will not turn against his sisters. He is an advocate for his people. The rhetoric instilled in Shakur articulates an ability to communicate political, economic, social, and racial oppression (Edwards). Shakur who grew up in poverty experienced this oppression. The oppression is a collective agent for change for his people. So we have Shakur—the son of a Black Panther and Shakur who recreated his history as a rhetorical device to encourage these in his community to come together because they “need every Black Man, Woman, and Child” (Williams). The Black Panther Party's rhetoric was instilled in Shakur as a child, which affects who he is and what he experienced. He used his experiences to be an active member for change for the African American community.

Born Tupac Amaru Shakur on June 16, 1971, he was named after the Peruvian revolutionary, Tupac Amaru II, who led an uprising against Spain and was later, executed (John Potash). In the 1960s and 1970s, Afeni, Shakur’s mother, and his father, Billy Garland, were active members of the Black Panther Party. His mother gave birth to Shakur just one month after her acquittal stemming from her alleged involvement in the bombing of public places in New York City (Potash). As a child of a former Black Panther, we see the party’s ideals represented in his lyrics. Shakur writes, “I see no changes all I see is racist faces/Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races” (“Changes”). Shakur was not speaking of racism among neighboring communities, but literally racism within the African American community. During his mother’s time in the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 1970s, instead of working against the African American community, this community worked with one another. The Black Panther Party was advocates for the African American community. During Shakur’s time, African Americans worked against one another in avenues of drug dealing, black-on-black violence, and gunplay. The “racist faces” that Shakur writes are the very faces of his African American brothers and sisters. His community has become oppressors of themselves by killing one another. Instead of advocating on behalf of their community, Shakur writes that this is a disgrace to his community. Once a community united and working against the white community—once, the oppressors—African Americans have now turned against one another.

Shakur, an African American man in his early twenties living in the projects of East Harlem section of Manhattan in New York City, New York, narrates his own story. We may speculate that in “Changes,” he wakes up each morning and asks himself, “It this it?” Is this all that he will ever be? He is poor, he is hungry, and he is black—what the hell is wrong with him? The dominant population doesn’t identify him as a first class American citizen, but as a Black man. When will the time come when race is not an issue? The penitentiary is packed with his brothers. They come out worse then when they went in. They don’t care about Shakur, about his people. If a law enforcement officer happens to take the life of a Black man, then it is one less Black man, one more Black man in prison, and one less Black man on welfare. Shakur explains that it is not enough to blame the law enforcement; Shakur’s brothers are killing one another, inflicting violence in their own community. To his brothers, he is just another Black man—now out of the way. He encourages African Americans to come together, to unite as Huey P. Newton did, a founder of the Black Panther Party. Newton, a “good nigger” as Shakur would describe him, was killed by two real bullets. Shakur has love for his African American brothers, but until they begin to see each other as such, violence continues. Instead of the love he would like to see, he sees misplaced hatred, which can be expressed elsewhere and not at African American men. What does it take to create such a place among his people—to rid the African American community of hate? Who created this hate? It was the white power structure, as Shakur explains.

The Black Panther Party advocated for the self-defense for the Black community. Shakur references the Black Panther Party Founders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in “Changes.” It sought to alleviate poverty and enforced social programs among the Black community to do so. The party’s efforts are evidenced in Shakur’s “Changes.” In his lyrics, he examines issues that dealt specifically with African American men and the African American community such as poverty, social injustice and inequality. Shakur writes, “First ship ‘em dope deal the brothers/Give ‘em guns step back, watch ‘em kill each other” (“Changes”). Shakur is not advocating violence, nor is he embracing the thug lifestyle that promotes the use of drugs, encourages drug dealing, and gunplay. Rather, he is recreating his history. He speaks to his African American listeners about the distribution of drugs and how the white power structure is wholly aware of the situation and nothing is being done to prevent it. African Americans are falling into this trap instituted by the white power structure. “The Black Child’s Pledge” advocate African Americans not to use any harmful substances. Although he admittedly smoked marijuana, he encouraged his community to stop the use and distribution of drugs, because what is happening is they are also partaking in gunplay against one another. So Shakur’s brothers have become oppressors, eliminating one African American person at a time, which will eventually result in the destruction of the African American community.

According to Brian Baggins, author of History of the Black Panther Party, “The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S. government and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based programs.” Focused on a 10-point program, the Panthers advocated to: employment; an end to robbery of the Black community; adequate housing; education that included Black history and their role during this time; exempt Black men from military service; an end to police brutality; free all incarcerated Black men because they did not receive a fair trial; establish a jury of their peers; receive justice, peace, land, clothing, and housing (Baggins). The Black Panther party also instituted several social programs that affected African American communities such as the First Free Breakfast for School Children at the St. Augustine’s Church in 1969. The Black Panther Party in Chicago, Ill., instituted five different breakfast programs, a medical center, and a door-to-door program health service that tested for sickle cell anemia (Baggins). The party also reached out to local gangs and encouraged them to join the party’s efforts and turn away from a life of crime. Shakur writes, “Let’s change the way we eat, Let’s change the way we live/And let’s change the way we treat each other” (“Changes”). As the Black Panther Party sought to institute programs that would strengthen the African American community, Shakur witnessed firsthand what his community was subjected too. Change begins within the community he advocated for. He encourages his African American listeners to create change within themselves to make a create unit.

His white listeners may have been shocked with how Shakur describes the white community, but that is what he wanted. He wanted America to recognize our thoughts about racism for what it is. In order to overcome something, we must first agree that it does exist. I assume this is what he intended. He wanted to make his white listeners feel uncomfortable. He was proud to be an African American man, but he was upset about the conditions of the African American community as he explains in “Changes.” “You see the old way wasn’t working so it’s on us to do/What we gotta do, to survive” (“Changes"). He wants the African American community to be aware of what is occurring, so this cycle of violence can end. It was in his lyrics where he fused the rhetoric of the Black Panther Party and where he recreated his history. His lyrics reflect concerns and issues that are relevant to the era of Black Power. Before Shakur’s time, the African American community was oppressed by the white community with slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow laws—all means that were used to oppress this community. The Black Panther Party advocated on behalf of African Americans. In fact it was Malcolm X who said that if the white community is going to attack us with police dogs, which oppress us—then expect the African American community to retaliate, to reinforce the oppression that his community was subjected to. During Shakur’s time, there is oppression within the African American community. Shakur calls on his brothers in “Changes” to stop, to examine what they are recreating. This is what the white community did to us, as Shakur explains. He describes his people as those who were oppressed—the oppressors were the white community—and now African Americans have essentially adopted the role of oppressors. African Americans are oppressing their own community. This goes against what Shakur was raised, how he was raised to not bring any harm to his brothers and sisters. Shakur is an advocate for his brothers and sisters, encouraging them to stop this oppression and channel it to reform for his brothers and sisters because he needs African American to create change

Where hip-hop critics raise concern about the thug lifestyle that many hip-hop artists embrace, Shakur states, “Yes, I am going to say that I am a thug cause I came from the gutter and I’m still here” (Timothy Brown 567). He asserts that this is who he is while recreating his history. Timothy Brown, the author of Reaffirming African American Cultural Values: Tupac Shakur’s Greatest Hits as a Musical Autobiography,” includes a 17-year-old high school senior’s account about Shakur:

The mothafucka was me. He lived what I live. Even when he got paid, he still had to worry about the bullshit—you know what I’m sayin’. He wasn’t no fake nigga talkin’ about he was from the ‘hood—that nigga lived what I live…that nigga got shot livin’ what I live. So, hell yeah, Tupac meant a lot to me. (Brown 567)

He is authentic to his listeners primarily as he reconstructs his life experiences in his music. Although some suggest that Shakur embraces the thug lifestyle that is discussed in his hip-hop lyrics, he reconstructs it in a way that is authentic to his listeners. This is what he actually experienced and underwent as Tupac, the person who we forget at times, because we are so entrenched in Tupac, the artist. He is not embracing the thug lifestyle. A thug may be defined as a two-bit, hustler, a poor and dishonest Black man who degrades African American women. This is not the image that he embraces for his African American listeners. Instead of embracing the thug lifestyle, he is recreating his past. He grew up in poverty, raised in the East Harlem in Manhattan section of New York City, New York. He recreates his history for his African American listeners, so that they may find a comparison in Shakur. The 17-year-old high school senior connects with Shakur through his lyrics. Shakur recreates his history to show his African American listeners that there is possibility and opportunity as a Black man. By recreating his history, he tells his African American listeners that this could be them one day, but in order to get here, they have to be an advocate for change for their community. Shakur writes in “Changes,” “We gotta start makin’ changes/Learn to see me as a brother instead of two distant strangers” (“Changes). The 17-year-old high school senior states, “…that nigga got shot livin’ what I live” (Brown 567). On November 30, 1994, Shakur was shot five times in the lobby of the Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan, New York (Potash). Although those affiliated with the shooting were never found, Shakur speculated that Sean Combs and Biggie Smalls were involved in the shooting (Potash). These were African American men like Shakur, which was exactly what he advocated against—black-on-black violence. He called on the African American community to stop the violence. As the 17-year-old high school senior states, “…that nigga got shot livin’ what I live” indicates that there is a comparison to be made between Shakur and African American men (Brown 567). He grew up in poverty and witnessed black-on-black violence. Instead of reinforcing oppression, Shakur advocated for change within his community.

Although the primary audience of Shakur’s music was white listeners, he wanted to talk to his African American brothers. This was not how Shakur wanted his brothers to react. As hip-hop critics find fault in Shakur’s lyrics, others such as this 17-year-old high school senior go to the other extreme. He doesn’t want to emulate the thug lifestyle. He is utilizing aspects of the thug lifestyle to prove his point. He grew up in poverty and encountered realities many of us cannot begin to fathom; he witnessed the destruction of his people. He wanted them to come together as a people and to channel this aggression elsewhere—not toward one another.

Shakur’s godfather, a prominent Black Panther, and his stepfather, Mutulu Shakur, were subjected to various run-ins with law enforcement. Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, Shakur’s godfather, was convicted of the murder of a 27-year-old elementary school teacher; however, his conviction was overturned (Potash). Mutulu, Shakur’s stepfather, helped his sister, Assata Shakur, escape from prison in New Jersey who allegedly shot and killed a state trooper in 1973 (Potash). He was later convicted in 1986 for the robbery of a Brinks armored truck (Potash). Two law enforcement officers and guard was killed in the robbery (Potash). Recreating Shakur’s family history allows us, as outsiders, to see where he came from, where we may understand Shakur, the rhetoric of the Black Panther Party’s ideals instilled in him as a child. Shakur writes, “Cops give a damn about a negro/Pull the trigger kill the nigga he’s a hero” (“Changes”). Many members of the Black Panther Party were framed for a crime they did not commit during the 1960s and 1970s. Shakur’s own mother, Afeni, was acquitted of charges to blow up public spaces in New York City, New York. The white power structure of the 1960s and 1970s attempted to ignite fear in African Americans specifically those affiliated with the Black Panther Party, so that they would not defy societal norms. This encouraged the party to retaliate beginning with the efforts of Malcolm X. Shakur recreates a similar comparison to the timeframe of his life. If we examine the case of Rodney King, he was brutally beaten in the mid-90s by white law enforcement officers who did not receive any prison time for the beating. The media indicates that King is the bad guy, that he asked for a brutal beating—that law enforcement officers are trained to protect themselves, but at what expense to private citizens like King who did nothing wrong? King did not ask to be beaten. This is what Shakur wanted his African American listeners to understand. This is where the problem lies—these are the oppressors. Instead of oppressing the African American community, channel this aggression toward the very community who created this problem. Shakur, although he does not outline Malcolm X as an example, he follows his claim that if the white community will hunt African Americans down like dogs, than they shall retaliate.

The struggle of the African American community is a recurring theme in Black protest music. Black protest music was born out of two movements: the civil rights movement and the growth of Black Nationalism. During the 1950s and 1960s, then rose two prominent African-American men: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Where King led a nonviolent, peaceful civil rights movement, Malcolm X took action through words and behavior. King wanted to assimilate, to essentially live among the white community and to accept one another. He had a dream that his children and their children would one day go to school with white children. Malcolm X, on the other hand, did not want to integrate. He saw how the white community acted toward African Americans and said enough is enough. He wanted to create a separate community for African Americans. Fueled by the growing frustration of African Americans, the Black Panther Movement was born. Shakur’s lyrics are an important and essential outlet to begin to understand the pain inflicted upon the African American community. Brown writes:

The new Black youth culture is defined by its defiant attitudes and dispositions,

through “hood” films, hip-hop magazines, and youth-oriented television

programming such as MTV, and activism that is in opposition to both mainstream

politics and the older-generation African American activists. (559)

Shakur is of this generation. His lyrics, influenced by the Black Panther Party, examine the social injustice of his community. “Changes” is a protest song for the African American men. Shakur, a social critic, examines the pain of the African American men. Like many of the new Black youth, Shakur resents the pain inflicted on his community by the white power structure in place during his grandmother’s, his mother’s and his time. Like the Black Arts Movement pushed to express their pain into words that the white community could not begin to fathom, Shakur does the same in “Changes.” In “Changes” he speaks to his African American audience. He writes, “We under I wonder what it takes to this/One better place, let’s erase the wasted” (“Changes”). “We” refers to the African American community. He questions what it is the African American community is undergoing. What sort of systems of oppression is his community undergoing? His mother, Afeni, a former member of the Black Panther Party, underwent oppression instituted by the white power structure. Shakur writes that this oppression is an underlying theme in his community meaning this was ignited by his brothers and sisters. Recreating his history and the Black Panther Party ideals that he was raised with, he encourages his community to erase this role as oppressors. By wasting away in idle hatred, Shakur initially outlines that if his community continues on this path of violence and hatred, they will one day cease to exist. As an advocate for change, Shakur questions the depths to which the African American community needs to reclaim. Although he does not pose the question outright, he, as I speculate, asks his community how they can create a better environment for their community which the Black Panther Party did in the 1960s and 1970s.

Shakur, like Malcolm X, spent time in prison. Malcolm X spent anywhere from 15 to 20 hours a day reading and writing. He educated himself. He began his education by copying pages out of the dictionary. He copied pages word for word including the punctuation marks. As he continued on his quest of self-education, he picked up a book and was able to internalize what it said. He read the teachings of Mr. Muhammad, about how the white man was created and Carter G. Woodson’s Negro History. Woodson’s Negro History examined the African American empire before slavery was instituted in the United States and “the early Negro struggles for freedom” (Malcolm X 213). Shakur, who had more of a formal education than Malcolm X, read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Niccolo Machiavelli, a political philosopher, and other texts, which involved political philosophy and strategy while he was incarcerated. Tzu’s The Art of History, a Chinese military treatise, examines military strategies and tactics during the sixth century BC, Spring and Autumn period. Although Shakur was raised with the Black Panther Party’s ideals, he was taught to excel in two very different worlds. Edwards writes:

Thus, from early on Tupac was taught to succeed in two different worlds: in the ethos of formal schooling in the creative arts where standard English, formal education, recitation, declamation, and print poetry are the norms; and in the palpably real vernacular world of the urban “hood” with its distinctive oral traditions of religiosity, and its culture of survival, struggle, and celebration. (62)

Tupac’s mother, Afeni, wanted her son to explore all opportunities that life would bring, opportunities that were not available to her as a child. She instilled in her son, a sense of the Black Panther Party ideals that she was subjected to as a member of the party. She wanted him to attain a wealth of knowledge that he could share with the world. He did just that with his lyrics. Shakur writes, “I’d love to go back to when we played as kids/But things changed, and that’s the way it is” (“Changes”). Shakur revisits the simplicity of childhood. However, we may speculate which childhood he is speaking about: his or his mother’s. He grew up in poverty and witnessed the horrors of living in the projects. For us, as outsiders, we speculate what sort of simplicity he shares. He may be speaking from a childhood vision. Through the eyes of an African American child, he does not realize the systems of oppression that may surround him or how it affects his race. An African American child may not witness black-on-black violence or hate that others express. Through the eyes of an African American child, the world may not be simply black and white, but rather it may be a world of color, full of possibilities, of acceptance, of tolerance, of devotion, and of love. This may be the simplicity that Shakur writes about. This is what his mother, Afeni, dreamed for her son; however, Shakur was more realistic in thought and mind. The oppressions of his mother’s day were still present during his day, but now his community became the oppressors of one another.

Shakur compiled an anthology of the poems he wrote at 19 in The Rose That Grew From Concrete. These poems reveal the two worlds that his mother, Afeni, instilled in her son: a formal education and life in the projects. Shakur speaks about the very oppression’s existence in the African American community. At 19, Shakur writes:

“The Power of a Smile”

The power of a gun can kill

And the power of fire can burn

The power of wind can chill

And the power of the mind can learn

The power of anger can rage

Inside until it tears apart

But the Power of a Smile

Especially yours can heal a frozen Heart (Edwards 62)

When Shakur writes, “The Power of a Smile,” he speaks of the very importance and beauty of an African American smile, which we may speculate is his mother’s. He writes, “But the Power of a Smile/Especially yours can heal a frozen Heart” (Edwards 62). The frozen “Heart” that he speaks of may represent his own. He recreates the history of black-on-black violence with the placement of a gun. Shakur writes, “The power of a mind can learn” (Edwards 62). Reinforcing the Black Panther Party ideals he was raised with, he discusses his opportunities of a formal education and the self-education of Malcolm X. Although he does not particularly outline these examples, we examine the importance of outlining such knowledge and how it may be used for the betterment of his community. Edwards writes, “these love poems display a sensitivity and vulnerability that contrasts sharply with the harsh ‘thug’ persona that characterizes the Tupac we experience in his rap songs” (62). There are many similarities between this early poem that can be made with his song “Changes.” “The power of a gun can kill” might imply the gun is used to depict black-on-black violence. Shakur writes in “Changes,” “And only time we chill is when we kill each other.” The hate that Shakur examines must be fueled into another avenue. Instead of killing his brothers, Shakur states that they need to examine what got them into this mess in the first place. He writes, “Learn to see me as a brother instead of two distant strangers” may mirror the reality of the East Coast and West Coast rivalry. We don’t know who killed Shakur, but the alleged person involved was said to be driving a white-four-door, late model Cadillac—we may speculate that it was an African American brother. Shakur once wrote, “I’m going to die in violence. All good niggers, all the niggers who change the world, die in violence. They don’t die in regular ways. Motherfuckers come take their lives” (Tucker 67). Shakur would agree that it was a “motherfucker” who killed his rival, Biggie Smalls, also known as Chris Wallace. On March 9, 1997, Wallace was struck by four bullets in the chest after leaving the Soul Train Music Awards (Potash). The alleged shooter was an African American male dressed in a blue suit and bow tie (Potash).

Shakur died on September 13, 1996, six days after he was shot four times in his right hand and thigh, his chest and pelvis (Potash). A ventilator and respirator supported Shakur’s breathing. After repeated attempts to get out of bed, he was put into a coma. Six days after he was shot, he died of internal bleeding. Although the physicians tried to revive him, they could not stop the hemorrhaging. The official cause of death was respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest associated with the four gunshot wounds. Shakur, like Malcolm X, assumed he would die by violence at the hands of African Americans. Shakur writes, “And as long as I stay black I gotta stay strapped/And I never get to lay back/ ‘Cause I always get to worry about the paybacks” (“Changes”). Shakur did not rest; although, he was an advocate for the African American community, even still there were some within this community who did not agree with Shakur’s philosophies. He was more realistic in thought and mind, because he assumed one day, someone within his very community would take his life. Although Shakur’s murderer has not been captured, nearly 14 years later after his death, we may speculate that an African American did take his life. He was consistently on guard because of the so-called “paybacks” he talked about in “Changes.” He always carried a gun and had bodyguards with him (Potash). Before his death, he was shot five times roughly two years before he was killed.

Shakur writes, “You gotta operate the easy way/ “I made a G today.” But you made it in a sleazy way/Sellin crack to the kid/I gotta get paid/Well, hey, well that’s the way it is” (“Changes”). Hip-hop critics would say that Shakur promotes drug dealing to kids. Yet he describes it as “sleazy.” He tells us that this is the way it is. This is life, but he tells us that yes, this is life, but it is it not right. It is not acceptable. What we need to do is to do something about this. We need to rise above our so-called station in life that white society has set for us. The Black Panther in him commands him to be an example for his people. Yes, this is life, but here is what they can do about it. To create social change, African Americans need to be knowledgeable and share it with their community.

Shakur reconstructs his history for his African American listeners. He tells us about what he has endured and the obstacles that he has faced. In “Changes,” he explains what should be done to improve the African American community. As listeners, we examine his identity. What he has endured informs his perspective on life and begins to form his understanding of the world. Shakur writes, “It’s a war on the streets and the war in the Middle East/Instead of war on poverty they got a war on drugs/So the police can bother me” (“Changes”). Shakur questions the importance of war. During the late 1980s and mid-1990s, the United States was engaged with the Gulf War. Shakur admits that there is a war that exists in this country, in his backyard. For those who criticize some hip-hop artists like Shakur and who initially misunderstand the connotations of his lyrics, Shakur said, “If these people actually cared about protecting our children like they say they do, they’d spend more time trying to improve the conditions of the ghettos where the kids are coming up” (Ogbar 121). We speculate that he knew that the white power structure knew about this war on poverty. Although there is poverty, there is also a war on drugs. Shakur questions which is the most important: drugs or poverty? For him, the expansion of his community is what he is concerned about. He wants to see his African American brothers and sisters to come to together once again, to unite for a common cause as the Black Panther Party did. For Shakur, the solution to poverty is one step. If he can eliminate poverty, then he is one step closer to change. He is criticized by law enforcement officers because of drugs though, if he is arrested, than he may not be an advocate of change as he states. He becomes another statistic for the African American men who are locked up in this country.

According to Brown, one in five African American men, by the age of twenty, is in prison, on parole or on probation. Shakur writes, “And it ain’t a secret, though concealed as fact/the penitentiary is packed and it is filled with Blacks” (“Changes”). While he does not outline Malcolm X and Newton, these are ideal examples of African American men who have been to jail and/or prison. He is speaking to his African American listeners. Malcolm X educated himself during his time in prison. Ogbar writes:

Numerous imprisoned black radicals generally considered political prisoners, experienced celebrity status during the Black Panther era. Huey P. Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, was the first to enjoy celebrity as a prisoner in the United States after he was charged with the murder of a police officer. “Free Willy” buttons, posters, and T-shirts and rallies on college campuses and at courthouses across the country revealed a sharp desperation from traditional methods of protest over the imprisonment of black leaders. (143)

Those who misunderstood hip-hop do not take into consideration the violent past of the United States including the Indian Wars, the Civil War, the treatment of African Americans, slavery, the Revolutionary War, the mistreatment of Japanese Americans, and let’s not forget, the Ku Klux Klan (Ogbar). Shakur examines how the prison structure affects the African American community. More and more African Americans are imprisoned at record rates than any other racial community in the United States (Ogbar). As blindsided consumers, we may ask why, but we know the answer to that question. For years and years and years, the African American community has been subjected to horrendous treatment: slavery, daily beatings, lynchings, and segregation. It is not a good image of our country and how it treated African Americans. The Black Panther Party was created to inspire the African American community, to advocate African Americans toward a common goal of uniting one another to create a separate community from the white community who continually subjected them to discrimination and violence. Shakur addresses how African Americans are now the oppressors of their own race. When his brothers and sisters should act as advocates of change, they are working against their race by engaging in a war of violence and in a war of drugs. It is literally every African American for one’s self. Shakur says that this is not the way to go back. He calls on his brothers and sisters to remember the Black Panther Party’s ideals while he does not outline them in “Changes” he employs various threads in the lyrics itself.

Examining the rhetoric of race allows us to examine African American ideas, concepts and issues that are centrally African American. Brown writes, “African Americans’ diunital orientations is based upon an African worldview that survived the middle passage, the slave experience, and other oppression African Americans overcame in America” (562). Shakur, for his listeners, constructs the internal battles and contradictions that are taking place not just for him, but for his community. In order to examine the overall message that Shakur constructs in “Changes,” we must examine what he is saying. How is he saying it? Who is Shakur addressing? In order to overcome the African American circumstances, Shakur encourages his community to come together. They must accept new ways to live by instead of embracing gunplay and violence. As he constructs his own life experiences for them, he suggests that we can overcome adversity. They need to ignore the negative influences that encompass the African American community. The ideals of the Black Panther Party propel him to move forward, not just for himself, but for his community. Shakur leaves us with facts, he writes, “But now I’m back with the facts givin’ back to you” (“Changes”). The facts include the horrors he has witnessed for himself and his community. He doesn’t want to leave the African American listeners with just facts, but in order for them to be advocates for change like Shakur is. Shakur, the son of a Black Panther, utilizes Black Panther rhetoric to create meaning from his own life experiences to command his brothers and sisters to “Change” and to “Change,” we must first look to ourselves.

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[1] I am referring to myself as “womyn” to separate myself from the systems of oppression that my sisters have undergone.

Teaching Philosophy

Teaching has been my passion for a long while now as I have entered the halls of this institution—Missouri Western State University. I have grown immensely over my tenure as an undergraduate and graduate and as a first-year teaching assistant. My eyes have been opened before me as I have encountered the love of their passion who has both challenged me as a student, as an individual and finally, that of a humanist.

I have learned that a letter grade means nothing—even as a teaching assistant. Who cares if an individual receives an A or a C—what real growth is founded? How one critically thinks and analyzes a situation, an experience, is where the real knowledge lies. Though it is not enough to be knowledgeable in one area, we must be willing to explore all areas, all avenues of life. We must challenge the societal norm—even that in which we live within—before we conceive our own finding, our own rationale. It is with that that I invite criticism and controversy within the walls of my classroom where I too may be challenged and pushed to my limits.

It is my goal as a teaching assistant to push students to their limits. With that in mind, they have to be willing to venture forth and embark on a journey of questioning. That is one thing I ask of all of my students—don’t rest until we find absolute truth. Be open-minded in this society where it encourages mindless pawns to go about their business, not to question authority. It is exactly what our country does not want—for us to become our own subjects of truth and of knowledge. Question authority. Conduct our own research. Go after what we want, but do so rightfully. Educate ourselves in the riches of education and literature and in the texts that seek to challenge our cultural myths. For if we are not willing to do so, we become sequestered in the very vacuum our society imposes. Welcome this controversy. Invite it into our lives. Do not rely on our first-held assumptions, but challenge ourselves, our belief systems, our very core values and morals.

It is my duty as a teaching assistant, as an educator, to impose such challenging remarks to my students to push themselves personally and within their writing. Rhetoric is power. There is power in the written word. So many of our students think they are incapable of possessing such power, the art of persuasion, the very act of critical consciousness. Make the best out of our situation and seek to rise above it out of the depths of our inner hell. To my students, we reference Malcolm X who did so while he was in prison. Malcolm X spent nearly 15 hours a day educating himself of the social injustices of his people. “No university would ask any student to devour literature as I did when this world opened to me, of being able to read and understand” (Malcolm X 212). He sought change through all available avenues to him at this time. Although he did not seek to achieve a college degree, he became angry over the “sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the back race in America” (Malcolm X 217). Our students can do this as well by taking advantage of the situation they are in with our help. We need to encourage writing as an avenue of sparking criticism and controversy. We too can make a change. We too can make a difference. There is freedom within the very confines of literacy—of being able to read and write. We need to spark the critical consciousness within each and every one of our students.

I require the readings of very diverse texts such as Malcolm X’s Learning to Read, Maysan Haydar’s Veiled Intentions: Don’t Judge a Muslim Girl by Her Covering, Judith Ortiz Cofer’s The Story of My Body, and Jonathan Kozol’s Still Separate, Still Unequal. I believe that in order to spark criticism and controversy is to first acknowledge ourselves and our connections with the text. What approach do we make? What assumptions do we make? What rise do we give to these assumptions? How can we not become enablers, but facilitators? How may we facilitate change? How may we do so through our own voices and our own connections? What knowledge can be drawn?

These are the same questions we must ask ourselves as we too ask our students? How may we encourage criticism and controversy among our students? This is the very definition of my classroom. It is something that I still continue to question and seek to answer each semester before the onset of each class. Each set of students are different. It is in my own interests to encourage each and every one of my students to critically think and analyze how they can become the best that they can be. That it is up to me to invite criticism and controversy by establishing such an environment.

Imbued With the Temper of Their Writer

What initially got me interested in technology was my curiosity about how teachers might implement it into their own composition classrooms, especially at the college level. Since I am teaching college composition—I want to know how technology will be beneficial for my students. First, how may I implement it into my own college composition classroom? Would it be beneficial for my college composition students? If so, how may I connect it with writing? What technology would I like to implement? What role will it play in the writing process and how will it affect my students overall product—writing? I began my research open-ended. It wasn’t until I initially began conducting research did I find the area that I wanted to focus on—blogs.

By definition of “Collaborative Literacy: Blogs and Internet Projects” written by Erica Boling, Jill Castek, Lisa Zawilinksi, Karen Barton, and Theresa Nierlich, "blogs are websites that allow individuals to create personal webpages of text, pictures, graphics, videos, and other multimedia with the same ease as creating a word processing document" (504). Blogs are an online community of writers. We cannot deny the fact that the way we communicate is changing. The way in which we read and write is also changing—with the advent of the internet. Online media offers new portals to our students that traditional academic settings do not. The way in which to engage our students is to understand them; to learn what they already know. We must learn how they approach different ideas and perspectives. What challenges them? What allows them new portals to debate and explore further insight on challenging issues? How might they connect these with the composing process and how might they discuss it with their peers who are also questioning these new ideals? Blogs are one way our students can accomplish this with ease.

Blogs can be implemented into any discourse community, into any classroom setting. For a college composition classroom, blogs may serve as journals, peer review and response, collaborative learning, and/or prewriting strategies. For my college composition classroom, I plan on implementing BlogSpot, a service offered through Google, which students will utilize for class discussion, probe new questions among their peers, and establish an online community of writers. The texts that will be required in my college composition classroom include Branded by Alissa Quart, Hip-Hop Revolution by Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, and Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy. These are not simple texts, rather they are quite complicated and for first-year college composition students, class discussion can be a great tool in understanding new and exciting information. My students might find themselves challenged with new perspectives or encounter subjects they are not at all familiar with in which I plan to implement blogs to facilitate class discussion. But first, we, as college composition teachers, must establish what benefits blogs provide our students, the possible interference that a new medium might have on our students’ ability to compose and interact, and finally, how they are currently being used in composition classrooms.

We cannot begin to ignore the popularity and increased use of blogs. We, at the college level of composition, should look for new avenues to implement blogs into our own classroom instruction because blogs invite controversy and criticism in ways in which the traditional classroom setting does not. Traditional classroom discussion goes only so far in understanding complicated issues especially within a limited timeframe such as a 50 minute college composition class.

What I have found in my own personal experiences with traditional classroom discussion is that our students are hesitant to discuss controversial issues or are afraid of offending one of his/her fellow peers. On some occasions, I find that my students do not want to recognize controversy such as misogyny, racism, or different lifestyle choices. In reality, what is crippling our students is that if we do not recognize and discuss such controversy then we are, thus, enabling it. According to “Technologies for Transcending a Focus on Error: Blogs and Democratic Aspirations in First-Year Composition” written by Cheryl C. Smith, “by giving participants equal access to a public voice in a forum that is familiar to many young people, blogs create a safe place for risk-taking and error, making it less likely that students will disengage in the face of the challenging transition into college expectations” (38). Blogs are new progressing technologies that offer valuable and worthwhile conversations among our students and their peers. I will exercise this next semester as I implement blogs into my classroom instruction. I intend to pose questions that my students will respond to on BlogSpot and will respond to their peers’ comments as well. For instance, one question that might be posed in regard to Hip-Hop Revolution is, “How does Eminem establish his ethos among the African-American community and the hip-hop community considering he is one of the very few white males in the industry?”

My students will also have the opportunity to privatize any blog posts they wish to remain anonymous. This will be kept private to just me and the select student. According to Carolyn R. Miller and Dawn Shepherd, co-authors of “Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog,” “Blogs can be both public and intensely personal in possibly contradictory ways” (1451). Although opponents within and outside the parameters of the composition field argue that blogging has no intended purpose, an increasing number of our students blog each day. Technology has made it easier to access and write via the web—through the format of blogs. As it is a composition class, my students will have the opportunity to explore further insight on any major projects they will complete for the class. For instance, my students will select an issue that is highlighted in Hip-Hop Revolution and research a specific perspective about the issue they have chosen. If a student chooses to research Eminem’s ethos in the hip-hop industry, he/she will be able to revisit the blog where students posted their responses to the question and to their peers for further insight.

Blogging is one of the most important facets to its users. According to Miller and Shepherd, “Content is important to bloggers because it represents their freedom of selection and presentation. Blogs, as Andrew Sullivan emphasizes, ‘are personal, … imbued with the temper of their writer’ (1459). One of the driving forces of blogs is the personality it places on the emphasis of the writer. It is a place—an online writing community—that calls for self-expression and community development. It is a place where users are their own audience; they are the recipients for the blog’s content. Although the writing is published, it is very much private to its user. Our students can choose to privatize their blogs or make them public. If our students select to privatize a blog post, then it will be between the teacher and the student. The audience of blogs for our students includes their fellow peers and the teacher unless our students select to privatize a blog. It is essentially writing that is to be viewed by its user only, so “writing that allows the writer to value (her) own words and thoughts and not worry about the reactions to them by others” (Miller and Shepherd 1461). As it is a new medium in which our students can compose, it is also a new medium in which our students can collaborate and interact. Our students can easily respond to questions outside of class and pose further probing questions to their fellow peers.

Using blogs in the composition classroom encourages real-life application and helps students express themselves. How we read and write today is dramatically different from only five years ago to just a year ago. Online media is also changing dramatically. Online media has brought forth easier ways that we can read and write. With the evolution of the internet, Jason Ohler asserts in “New-Media Literacies”:

But because of responsive, easy-to-use, and widely available new tools, literacy now requires being conversant with new forms of media as well as text, including sounds, graphics, and moving images. In addition, it demands the ability to integrate these new media forms into a single narrative, or media collage such as a Web page, blog, or digital story. (32)

Myspace, Facebook, BlogSpot, and Twitter are within everyone’s grasp. Although these are considered social networking sites, many of our students are actually utilizing these sites several times a day and our role as teachers is to determine a way to implement them into our classrooms in order to engage our students. Many, though not all, of our students write outside of school using online technology whether it is updating their Twitter status, posting a comment on a friend’s wall on Facebook, or writing via blog like BlogSpot through Google. Ohler asserts that in order to interact and communicate in the world—the objective of literacy—we have to utilize online media for our classrooms.

For Ohler’s students, the objective was a portfolio. Ohler defines blogs as “a basic Web-page template for nonprogrammers that can serve multiple purposes” (32). Essentially, how are we implementing blogs into our composition classroom? What is our primary objective? Ohler’s students were faced with how they would present themselves as professionals to their audience. In determining what to post, his students’ thought carefully about what they wanted to post and what kind and how much interaction they wanted from their audience. Blogging is different for everyone. Teachers may be the primary audience for a traditional academic essay; however, the public reads blogs. The public can be anyone such as a potential employer to a distant relative. The objective for Ohler’s students “is to be brief, clear, and concise” (32). In a traditional academic essay, we write long arguments whereas blogging is a type of a journal. It is synthetic. According to Ohler, blogging is visual rhetoric. It is comprised of the four B’s: bullets, boldface type, breaks, and beginnings. Unlike a traditional academic essay, blogging is much more condensed. It is brief and to the point. As visual rhetoric, we can select images that speak for what we are composing or in addition to it.

The internet has broadened opportunities for others to network and exchange information. The internet, such as blogging, calls for open participation, interaction, and expression. Although Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter have become popular among our students and utilized as social networking sites, we can include them into our classroom instruction. According to Smith, “Students today write more, but in less conventionally academic ways, than students only a decade ago, and they arrive on our campuses with entirely different new skill sets and a new relationship to composition and expression” (38). Online media is changing how we communicate with one another in no regard to age. Although it is easier for nontraditional students to access and utilize digital rhetoric, it is in due part because they have grown up with this technology. Non-traditional students, too, utilize digital rhetoric, but at a slower pace. If we examine e-mail and social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, a network community where over 50 million working professionals exchange opportunities, ideas, and information, they are becoming ever more popular among non-traditional students as they learn how to access and utilize these online sites.

Our students share with others their fluency with technology. As students adapt to college campuses, they represent a population of mixed ideals and emotions. They encounter new academic challenges as college students in each discourse community. In their composition classroom, they may feel insecure about the writing task at hand or their writing process. Smith asserts that first-year composition classrooms are built around revision and drafting. Blogs may serve as a beneficial tool in regards to learning and its role in the writing process. Smith asserts that:

They add a new platform for writing that increases opportunities for student-driven expression, facilitate, and energize the processes of collective brainstorming and peer review, stimulate creativity and class community and supplement more traditional platforms for writing without supplanting or detracting from them. (37)

Blogs are one way in which we may engage our students, to challenge them. We want students to step out of their comfort zone and to begin questioning the environment they are now in. We want them to brainstorm new ideas, ask questions, share their opinions and interact with their peers. Although this can be done in a traditional class setting, we are looking for ways to engage our students more fully, more cognitively. How do we ease students into the transition between making them feel more confident and comfortable in college and at the same time, challenge them mentally? We want them to test out new ideas and to take risks with their writing and to do so, they have to begin questioning the world around them. According to Smith, “Blogs provide a timely answer to these questions” (38). Somehow, students feel freer with the writing they do online. They don’t feel like they are being judged or evaluated. Smith asserts that blogs can empower our students who may not feel as confident or comfortable to take risks with their writing because blogging represents a public forum for our students that are all too familiar with young people. It is a perfect opportunity for our students to free their voice and to experience the world around them.

How blogging is weaved into a composition classroom is entirely up to the teacher. It should be woven into the composition classroom, so that students may reflect about what they have learned. Blogging should stimulate thought and foster creativity in students. It should ignite motivation within the individual student. In order to do so, it rests entirely on the teacher as he/she decides how to implement it into his/her composition classroom. Although it should not be placed above instruction, it should be woven into the instruction somehow as it has proven to be a beneficial writing tool. By implementing blogs into the composition classroom, it establishes a writing community among students and teachers. Blogs are viewed among our students and their peers. The response students receive is from one of two audiences—their peers or the teacher.

Blogs offer students an incentive to write for various audiences. Instead of writing a traditional academic essay where we may have only one audience—the teacher and maybe our peers—we write for a number of audiences. According to Rama Ramaswami, author of “The Prose of Blogging (And a Few Cons. Too),” the Coordinator of Elementary Education at Washington College in Chesterfield, Maryland Deb Maricano states, “Writing should be for others to read. Blog writing for schools can become a real-life experience in the writing process—draft, edit, revise, publish—with the capabilities of getting the responses from others beyond the teacher” (Ramaswami 24). Writers claim ownership over what they have written especially when others will read it. There is both purpose in blog writing and inquiry.

Our students are already familiar with this technology; what they do not know is how it can change them as students or, as writers. It is important to first question what value blogs contain before we may incorporate them into our own classroom instruction. In order to implement blogs, we must question what possible interference blogs as a new medium may have on our students ability to compose and interact. Like any conversation we have with our students in regard to an e-mail, a letter, a conference, or even a text message, we must remind our students to be aware of their audience. For instance, the way in which a student engages in a friendly banter with a fellow peer is not the same as a conversation he/she may have with a composition teacher. Although proper punctuation and grammar are vital to composition and the composing process, the content is the primary focus, especially in regard to blog writing. According to Ramaswami, “Can this often belligerent wasteland of poor punctuation and indiscernible structure actually help develop better student writers” (22)? In a world all familiar with technology such as instant messaging and text messaging, will this too enable students to use tech-speak? Moreover, we have to remind our students that while content is the primary focus in blog writing, they are also writing for an audience, which in turn, is published. Blog writing should be correlated with any discussion we have with our peers. It prompts them to move beyond their first assumptions and encourages them to make connections to the text and to their selves to the real world.

I don’t mean to suggest that blogging is for everyone or that it should be incorporated into every student’s writing process. It is, however, one way students can construct papers or any other form of writing they engage in. Writing produces thought or perhaps, thought produces writing. Ramaswami introduces Barry Bachenheimer, director of instructional services for Caldwell-West Caldwell Public Schools in New Jersey, who worked with five area high school teachers to observe if students’ achievement would be affected by incorporating blogs into the classroom. Bachenheimer’s blog “A Plethora of Technology” states “that blogging could improve students’ writing skills by making them write more frequently and comment on one another’s work” (23). One teacher who worked with Bachenheimer wanted to see if blogging would help students construct research papers. He/she wanted to see if blogs would help improve the quality of the students’ final drafts. He/she chose to implement the blog as a journal. “There was interaction among students and there was writing all day long, before school, during school, and after school” (23). The study revealed that students who blogged felt better about their writing. Of the 25 students who were included in this study in one high school English classroom, Bachenheimer found that: 68 percent felt that blogs helped them with what they wanted to say; 74 percent said it helped them explain their ideas; and 60 percent said it helped them construct their papers. Eighty-four percent of students said the most difficult part of writing a research paper was starting it. The statistics reveal that a number of students who blogged felt that blogs helped them construct their papers.

The first and second study found that in a consensus of students’ writing it improved their writing skills as the blog was introduced as a journal. Bachenheimer also conducted a similar study in an AP Spanish class. There were nine students total. They focused on the same question: Can blogging improve student achievement through the implementation of a blog? Similar results were found: 55 percent of students felt that blogging helped improve their Spanish writing skills; 89 percent felt that the response they received from their peers helped improve their writing. According to Elizabeth Coogan-Russell, the AP Spanish teacher, “Most of the students in my class demonstrated greater overall ease of expression, which became apparent in

(Footnote) ** In Bachenheimer’s study, it did not reveal if the teacher involved in the study was a male or a female which is why I chose to use he/she.

in-class, timed writing assignments” (24). Russell found that there continued to be errors in student writing, but they were fewer. Many students used new and advanced vocabulary.

Many scholars have written about ways in which to implement blogs into the composition classroom. Although not all have been in a college composition environment, these can be reworked and implemented for a college environment. I am aware though that I may encounter problems. As a first-year college composition teacher, I know first-hand that there will be instances where I need to step back and think about how I may rework and/or reformat an assignment. I am aware of the challenges that face me as a college composition teacher, one of which includes how to engage my students. Because I am a first-year college composition teacher, I must understand the technology I plan on implementing and how my students may utilize it. Secondly, I need to assess the value of the technology and outline the objectives my students will align with blogging since it is a new medium of composing composition and interaction. Another obstacle I face is how I may decide to implement blogs into my composition classroom. What also led me to decide on blogs was my fascination with technology and online media.

In examining how we may implement blogs into our composition classrooms, we must determine what we want our students to get out of blogging. What are the objectives? What sort of information or perspective will our students retain? What will our students learn? How will blogging improve their writing process? What role will it play in our students’ lives after they leave our composition classrooms? The Pew Internet and American Life Project released “Writing, Technology, and Teens,” a study that reveals similar results as Bachenheimer’s project. The studies show that students who blogged write more and better. “Writing, Technology, and Teens” reported that 47 percent of teen bloggers write outside of school for non-school related material as compared to 33 percent who don’t. Of those surveyed, 65 percent of teen bloggers say that “writing (is) essential to later success in life” (24). So how may our students use blogging as a real-world application?

Attitudes about writing improved as did the quality of their writing. The University of Florida preservice teachers published findings that are compared with ones conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project and Bachenheimer’s project. Published last year in the Electronic Journal for Integration of Technology in Education, “Collaborative Blogging as a Means to Develop Elementary Expository Writing Skills” observed preservice teachers and third grade students at a west central Florida school. The study examined the effects of collaboration through the implementation of blogs. As students maintained contact with preservice teachers, 18 third grade students wrote a five-paragraph essay about a Native American tribe and created an entire online presentation. Preservice teachers replied to the third grade students as they blogged about their ideas, questions, and comments. Third graders posted one paragraph at a time as preservice teachers would reply with continuous feedback. Before this project, 39 percent of third graders said that they liked writing at school. This number rose steadily after the project at 67 percent. Overall, third graders were excited as preservice teachers commented on their blogs.

How I plan to implement blogs into my college composition classroom are as further basis for classroom discussion and additional help with major writing assignments with students may seek from their fellow peers. For instance as students are drafting their papers, they may blog about what issue they have selected for a major writing assignment outlined in Hip-Hop Revolution. In order to decipher what they want their audience to do and why, they may pose these questions on their fellow peers. In addition, they can also post their working bibliography, so that their peers may see if they would like to include that in their research for their papers as well.

I intend to walk them through how to open up an account with BlogSpot and why it is fun and interactive specifically for them. Unfortunately, there will not be computers in the classroom that I will be teaching in because I learned too late that if I wanted a classroom with computers, I had to let the faculty know as soon as possible. It is with my understanding that the rooms have all been assigned for specific courses for next semester. Either way, it will be a homework assignment. In order to facilitate further classroom discussion, I don’t think that it will be a dramatic concern of mine. If I did have computers in my college composition classroom and they used the technology in class, I’m afraid that it would take away from class time. Having my students continue classroom lecture outside of class will be beneficial for us and will encourage them to interact and debate about controversial subjects.

BlogSpot, offered through Google, is a really fun tool. It offers multiple author support, which in turn also provides group blogs. We have the option of customizing our blogging template via a template-editing feature. We can share photos and our thoughts with friends and comment on each other’s blog posts. It is very similar to a Facebook page, which allows exciting features such as: an opportunity to upload a picture, an “about me” section, interests, favorite movies and music, and books. Incorporating text, photos, and videos are also an added feature on BlogSpot. This can all be completed even through our cellular phone devices! What I love about BlogSpot is that it is easy for us to utilize while communicating with one another. We can personalize our blogs—coming up with our own title and choosing our own background.

In addition, we may also choose to privatize our blogs. What I will require my students to do in the first week of classes is to open an account with BlogSpot. When my students have set up their BlogSpot accounts, they will email their links to me and I will post the links on my BlogSpot account, so that students will be able to access them at any time. On the right hand side of BlogSpot, our blogs are outlined in the month in which we write them. We also can comment on one another’s post, which I intend to require of my students. For instance in my first week of classes, I will require students to respond to a format of questions one of which is, “What does research mean to you?” Since this is a research-based class, I would like to keep it as user friendly in association with our class. Essentially, what I am trying to avoid is a bunch of ramblings from my students. I want to keep the conversation as focused as possible. My students will also compose a letter of introduction during the first week of class to me and their fellow peers to which they may discuss in their blog posts what they would like for us to know about them.

Many students describe academic writing as boring. Others write for personal reasons like Cassandra who is featured in “That’s Online Writing, Not Boring School Writing: Writing With Blogs and the Talkback Project” written by Shelbie Witte. Cassandra, an eighth-grade language arts student, described academic writing as boring. She was not engaged in classroom writing activities and assignments. Witte scheduled a parent-teacher conference to discuss Cassandra’s situation. Cassandra’s parents’ reaction surprised Witte. According to her parents, “But she writes all the time! She’s on the computer writing essays and poems for hours each night” (Witte 92). Cassandra didn’t consider the writing she did at home in correlation with the writing she did in her writing classroom. Witte took it personally as a teacher. Here was a student who was reluctant to write when it came to writing in the composition classroom, but would go home and write “pages and pages of creative words, unassigned poetry and prose, each night on her blog” (Witte 92). Yet as hurt as Witte was, she was that much more interested in the revelation of technology. Like many others in Witte’s profession, she asked herself, “What was it about posting personal writing on an online blog that was so different from the writing in my classroom” (92)?

Witte brainstormed ways that she could implement technology into her composition classroom. She thought of Cassandra as she wondered if she could use journals as blogs as a means of translating it into the revelation of technology. As Witte examined various case studies, she found that “the convergence of literary instruction with internet technologies is fundamentally reshaping the nature of literary instruction as teachers seek to prepare children for the futures they deserve” (93). She concluded that in order to introduce new technology into the composition classroom, it takes careful planning. In the case studies Witte examined, specifically teachers who had implemented blogs into the composition classroom, she found that students were “hungry for writing on their classroom blog” (93). In response, Witte created the Talkback Project where she implemented two-way journal activities via blogs among middle school students and preservice teachers. Conversations among middle school students and preservice teachers centered on novels they read in literature circles. At first, preservice teachers used blog space as a live internet chat; they posted comments that were not related to the conversations they were intended to have with middle school students. Middle school students felt like preservice teachers were talking down to them. So, Witte decided to revamp classroom instruction via blog. She moved conversations via blog toward collaboration. Middle school students and preservice teachers continued to discuss novels, but they also made text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections. Witte discovered that thoughtful discussions and connections made with the texts they read sprung from the blog.

However we decide to implement blogs into our classroom instruction, we need to be certain that it is done so in an engaging way. As I work to incorporate it into my college composition classroom, I may find along the way that I need to rework and/or reformat how I choose to use blogging. Anytime we incorporate a new lesson or a new technology, it is imperative to outline the objectives and goals. My objectives for incorporating blogs into my composition classroom instruction is that they will walk away from this class with a new approach to compose and interact with others as they encounter new subjects and different perspectives. I ask my students to keep an open mind and remain observant of the different perspectives we discuss in class and on our classroom blog. This is a medium in which we may interact and compose even outside of the parameters of this classroom. I anticipate that it will help them begin composing their drafts and that it will continue as they revise their papers throughout the semester. As for the goals set aside for my students, I anticipate for them to see how blogging may play a beneficial role in their writing process or at least come to appreciate it as yet another piece in the puzzle of the composing process. As a first-year college composition teacher, I invite debate that is both chilling and controversial which blogs anticipate.

Preparation, Experience and Reflection in the Classroom

What kind of teacher will I be?

On the very day I walked into Murphy 216, my first classroom, I took it all in in one breath. That was a long LONG long breath, because here is where a new identity began to form, where I began to see myself as a teacher. On this first day, I stood at the front of the classroom—a clean, unused chalkboard behind me, bright, white lights gleaning ahead of me beaming life into my chestnut-colored eyes, and in front of me sits eight long tables—four to the left and four to the right of me where 20 seats remain, 20 empty seats. This is where my destiny awaits. Certainly I am oblivious to all of the imperfections of teaching at this very moment, but eventually the thought of this new identity and destiny will subside to constant and consistent worries.

And the truth is, the questions I have can only be answered as we begin in this profession. There are some things that are in our control and others that are not. It begins with belief. I was a nervous wreck the morning of the first day of class and although this overwhelming feeling of nervousness eventually subsided, it surfaced similarly again on the morning classes began that spring. As I am now preparing agenda for my classes for the fall semester, I can say with certainty that this feeling will surface once again.

Over the course of the last year, I have had many instances where I allow myself to explore further, analyze situations and ask myself what more I could have done. For myself as a graduate teaching assistant, it is an opportunity and a time reserved for self-critique. I ask myself, “Did I handle this in the most appropriate manner?”

I will be the first to admit that I am not perfect. Teaching is not a perfect profession; it is a profession where we may alter a student’s life, where we may provide he or she with the necessary skills to succeed in whatever faction we decide for ourselves. For me, my area of interest is composition. It is my duty to help entry-level college students learn the necessary skills of reading and writing where the basis of communication begins for many of us. Now, this is a very base definition of my duty.

Personally, I also wish to will my students toward a common goal—to question and to forego inquiries in this wide world. I wish to challenge them and the inner walls of their own world where they reside….comfortably. For we may not determine that our students receive a liberal arts education if they are not pushed and challenged and challenged and pushed. It is not my wish for my students to change necessarily; although, I wish unto to soles of my feet that they do because without change, we may never mature into our real selves. We are never critically aware of what surrounds us and that for me is what I seek to do in addition to the written standards the State of Missouri has demanded of me in clear and written discourse.

So nothing prepared me more for an email I received from a student of mine in April after I had emailed grade updates to my students in that late evening. Before I divulge the string of emails between this student and me, it is only appropriate if I provide some background knowledge as I assume any teacher might. Dan, as I will refer to the said student here, enrolled in English 104: College Writing and Rhetoric in the fall, the first course that I taught in my position as a graduate teaching assistant.

Dan began his undergraduate years at Missouri Western State University in the spring of 2009. He was enrolled in English 100: Introduction to College Writing, where he received an A. For those students placed in English 100, these students receive very low scores on the ACT of which deems them unable to effectively communicate in writing also using the appropriate rules of grammar and punctuation. He was also placed in a developmental reading course, which he did pass. Until now, we, as teachers, might assume that he may struggle in English 104 only in moderation. However, in truth, he struggled immensely. As I came to learn, Dan had been passed on his entire life. In one encounter he explained to me, a high school teacher had fallen asleep during school hours.

I first learned about his struggles with writing the first week of class after I had assigned a letter of introduction. This was an opportunity for me to get to know my students, but to also see where each student was at in his or her writing and what help he or she might need. When I read Dan’s letter of introduction, I did not know how to respond. Dan wrote:

When you meet someone I know that you would like to know something about that person. Things that has to do with school, life outside of school and just people in their life altogether.

Not knowing what was going on for real but she seen when we got out of school things was getting bad over on Ashland and my friends and I was getting shot at and every time the police came that way I always ended up in handcuffs because they was reading the information the wrong way.

Although this was not completely terrible, I was dumbfounded because I did not know how to respond to this. I assumed that my students would be able to construct clear and concise sentences. What I found was that while Dan had original ideas, these ideas were overshadowed by major grammatical and punctuation errors. I did not know what to do.

Luckily, a mentor of mine is the director of developmental writing and placement. I showed the letter of introduction to Dawn Terrick, the director, who, like me, was surprised that he was in English 104. Through Dawn’s research, I found that he had been through English 100 and received an A…which again, Dawn and I found alarming. She encouraged me to set up a meeting with Dan to discuss my concerns and the possibility that he may not pass. She also encouraged me to work with him at least once a week and encourage him to visit the Center of Academic Support, a center where students may seek academic help.

I did just that.

Dan and I met once a week on Friday afternoons for an hour. I encouraged him to bring in something that we were working on in class and together, we worked on matters pertaining to grammar and punctuation. I encouraged him to visit the CAS, but he did not.

Over the course of the semester, Dan continued to work with me outside of class and although I saw some improvements, I was afraid that if he passed, I would fall in line among those who simply passed him over. It was not enough for him just to meet with me, but I felt he needed additional help. Unfortunately, he could not get all of the help he needed through me. However, when the end of the semester came and I calculated grades, he passed with a mere decimal point…I was scared. I did not want to be seen as one of those teachers, but at the same time, I could not simply fail him on that accord because that would violate the ethics of the matter. I didn’t lie to him though, I told him that he would struggle in English 108: College Writing and Research.

He enrolled in my course for the spring.

Just had been my guess, Dan struggled and he fought with me all the way through English 108. I did my best to encourage him to work with me like he had the semester before, but he did not nor did he visit the CAS. His writing was a mess. He also blatantly told the class that he stopped reading the texts because he wasn’t interested in them and because they were not appropriate. Again, I dumbfounded stood at the front of the class thinking….

Did you really just say that?

What happened to the student last semester that so graciously worked with me side by side?

Who are you?

I was honest with Dan about his lack of progress in the class. He insisted that he wanted to work on his own and not with others including myself. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I talked with other colleagues and mentors who informed me that I had done all that I could. He was in charge of his own fate.

In April, Dan and I corresponded via email. This is where it all began … and ended.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

From: Amy Chastain

To:

Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 11:04 PM

Subject: English 108

552/988

55%

--

Amy Chastain

B.A. English, Journalism and Public Relations

MA Student, Written Communication, Writing Studies

amichelechastain@gmail.com

Dan wrote back, in short, these words:

From:

To: Amy Chastain

Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 11:20 PM

Subject: English 108

Is it me? Is it something about me? I have worked my ass off this semester. I have completed all of the writing assignments you have required. What is it that I have to do? What do I have to say? Don’t you understand where I am coming from? I have never worked this hard before. I attend nearly every class period. Why is it that I am failing? How in the hell do I have a 55 percent? There are others in this class who have a passing grade and they don’t attend as often as I do. I have a disability. Doesn’t that matter? Doesn’t that count for something? I told you this on the first day of class. Now I don’t expect you to pass me just because I complete the writing assignments and because of my attendance. I want you to know that when I write, I am not worried about grammar and punctuation, but about the content. This is what I want you to see. Isn’t that the most important thing? Isn’t that what you teach us?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Although, I have rewritten Dan’s words, what I have constructed stands as a mere ounce of what he felt in the emails he sent to me. What he did have to say, honestly, is between Dan and me, but he represents such a large percentage of our students today—he is an image of those who are passed along daily.

This was the first instance that I had heard of a disability. In my syllabus and on the first day of class, I review the disability policy, which states below:

Any student who has a special need or disability that may affect his or her performance in this class should let me know before the end of the first week of classes. Disabilities include, but are not limited to impaired hearing, vision, and/or reading disorders. You should also contact the Disability Services Coordinator Michael Ritter for further assistance.

Phone: (816) 271-4430

E-Mail: mritter@missouriwestern.edu

Even if Dan had informed me that he had a disability (and I assume so), I need proper documentation that states as such. Such documentation might have helped Dan and me. It might not have ensured his passage of English 108, but it might have helped.

It is disheartening to witness students like these passed along and while they are not to blame wholly, they are set up to fail. We set them up to fail just as his teachers did. He is angry and he has every right to be. Although, he did not take every advantage possible to improve his writing, we can see why he doesn’t want to try. Dan recognizes where his faults are. He is angry that he has been passed by. He knows it. And I know it. I wish there was more I could have done. I wish this story had a happy ending, but it did not. I don’t need to tell you what happened. All I can say is that I did not fall among the ranks of those who passed him by.

This is what kind of teacher I am.