THE GROUP PRESENTATION

Dr. Shannon Carter * English 100 * Fall 2006

The Group Presentation

In order to better understand what we mean by occupational communities of practice and—eventually—what this exploration may have to do with writing for college, I would like for us to spend some time unpacking these literacies via the various occupations examined in Rose’s study, The Mind at Work. Each group will be assigned a chapter from Rose’s book to review. Some will analyze plumbing, some the work of hair stylists, some the work of the electrician. Rose’s study focused on manual and service work, so this exploration may or may not bring up things you will discover yourself as you generate plans for WA4. It will, however, offer a productive analysis of Rose’s major claims, which we can then work from in your fourth writing assignment.

Again, please consider the following passage:

The work that my uncle [a “railroad man”] and mother [a waitress] did affected their sense of who they were, and, though limiting in so many ways, it provided a means of doing something in the world.
Doing something in the world. I couldn’t have expressed it this way when I was growing up, but the work I saw connected in my mind with agency and competence—that’s what being an adult meant to me and it was intimately tied to physical work. And, as does any child, I craved competence. Special terminology caught my ear; the idiom of freight trains or food orders, because not everyone could speak it, especially in the right way and it made things happen. Particular movements of the body made things happen, too, in the restaurant and the stockyard. And there was knowledge of tools and services, wrenches and hacksaws and measures and the whirring blender. Tied to this knowledge were tricks of the trade. And what a kick it was when one of my uncles or a cook or a waitress showed me how to do something with a little more efficiently, with a little less effort and a little more finesse. Hold it this way. Move it in, like this. See? I became the work’s insider, if just for a moment. (xviii)

You and the other members of your group should read the assigned chapter carefully, generating a handout (one-page) that offers the following information:

· A brief summary of the chapter (in no more than three sentences).

· What did you learn about the “special terminology” used in this occupational community of practice? Offer a word or two only those literate in this occupation know. The “terminology” that “gets things done” (see Rose passage above).

· What particular body movement is necessary for this kind of work? What do you need to be able to do (not just with your mind, but with your body—physically)?

· What tools do you need to know (note: even if you are not dealing with manual or service labor, tools will still be involved. as a teacher, I have to know how to use tools like the overhead, the chalkboard, chalk, a word-processing program, and so on).

· What “tricks of the trade” do members know that makes things “more efficient”—enables users to do the work “with a little less effort and a little more finesse”? Those in the community of “college writing teachers” often share tricks of the trade with incoming members—like how to respond to papers more efficiently and more effectively, how to keep track of attendance and paperwork (etc). What are the “tricks of the trade” in the occupational community you are examining?

You will develop enough copies of this handout to share with the rest of us. We will use these handouts to generate our summaries of Rose and our analysis of an occupational discourse community with which we have much familiarity ourselves.

* * *

(1) Choose a chapter (see list below). (2) Read it. (3) Discuss it with your group. (4) Develop a handout. (5) Meet with me to discuss it. (6) Revise the handout. (7) Make 20 copies. (8) Present the handout during your scheduled presentation day.

From Mike Rose’s The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker (Viking P, 2004):

Group 1: Chapter 1

“The Working Life of a Waitress”