Amanda Henehan

The textbook that we wrote was based on the implementation of a different teaching style into the composition courses. This style of teaching is outlined in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, so before we began writing our book, we read Freire’s book. I came to understand that there are two different forms of teaching. One form oppresses the students; teachers cram information into their students’ heads and then test them. This method does not allow the students to have their own questions or thoughts on the matter, it teaches them to obey rather than to think. The second form of teaching makes it a point to make sure that the students do not just remember the information but that they also learn from it. This can be done by connecting the lesson to the present world. We then read Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks. This book describes how hooks implemented Freire’s pedagogy productively into her own courses. Once we had gathered a picture of what we wanted to implement into our own book, we then began the process of its development.

Unit I of our book involves an ethnographic interview. I gathered from James Spradley’s The Ethnographic Interview how an ethnographic interview is different from other interviews. Working through this book, I was able to write up instructions that covered the importance of a good subject to interview as well as how to select someone to interview. From there, Kindall and I were able to draft Unit I.

For my fieldwork, I chose to interview a man who works at a chemical plant in Freeport, TX. By doing the interview I was able to better understand why the interviewing process must be a major component to our book. It is from the information you gather firsthand that you select the topic for the research paper that constitutes the second unit of our book. In addition, because I am shy myself, I did some additional research into ways to overcome shyness both in interviews and in class. I wrote up a passage that provided helpful tips and information on ways to overcome shyness. Another topic I researched was how to take effective notes while you perform an interview. I believed this was important because the main point of the Unit is to capture your subject’s ‘language’ and if you summarize what they say then that ‘language’ could be lost in translation. I also wrote six individual papers for unit three of the textbook that contributed to the topic it is introducing my idea of a Utopia.