The Importance of Finding Your Footing

Identity:
the actavating image of oneself; brings our circuit of cultural response practices back around to regulation, for identity can also be defined as the image we use to regulate our own practices in resistance to the cultural practices foistered upon us (Haswell 1278).

I love the Haswell's inclusion of this definition and the infusion of cultural concepts within his article. I believe that writing is a reflection of personal identity, or at least should be. Cultural constructs and cultural formations tend to define what and how we write. The Western world tells us to value time, to value a linear form of movement. Order, pattern, system. Problematically, teaching such formats often creates a gap between the actual written words and the author's voice. In Holcomb and Killingsworth's text Performing Prose: The Study and Practice of Style in Composition, the authors move away from the use of the term "voice," instead utilizing the term "footing:

"The concept of voice focuses on the performer, but footing always puts the performer in relation to someting else--or somebody else: the audience." (Holcomb 61)
"Footing is a metaphor derived from the physical act of gaining a stable placement of the feet, but when used to describe social interaction, it covers a range of behaviors--from the actual physical stance speakers take with respect to listeners, to the emotions and attitudes they express, to the social roles, languages, and dialects they adopt." (Holcomb 61)

I personally agree with these authors. I think that in many instances "footing" is a better descriptive term, especially for students who are learning to write effectively. The term itself places them in closer relation to their audience. I also beleive that there has to be a way to develop this idea of "footing," a concept of voice, and I believe that that concept of personal expression is more important than the develop of structural format. Perhaps that isn't very realistic...But it is very important for students to have an idea of their own position within society, the importance of their writing, and the recognition that what they say matters. Holcomb and Killingsworth believe that writers' style can "position them socially" (Holcomb 64).

Three segmentations of social footing:

1. Social standing between writer and reader, an analogue to physical distance that guages position along two axes: one ranging from high to low, the other from formal...to familiar.

2. Social roles take up be writers and assigned to readers: advisor-advisee, expert-novice, urbane wit-country bumpkin, employer-employee, politician-constituent, trickster-dupe, lover-beloved, and so on.

3. Social languages, dialects, or registers--that is, styles of writing or speaking characteristic of particular activities, groups, or professions. 
(Holcomb 64)

I think this analysis of authorial position within the social space provides an intersting correlation to Haswell's twelve categories of "teacher-responder[s]" (Haswell 275).

1. Distanced aesthetician or rhetorician
2. Involved co-creator
3. Demanding coach
4. Persuasive motivator
5. Experienced modelor
6. Prompting dialoguer
7. Judicious lawgiver
8. Supportive parent
9. Expert reader
10. Sharp-eyed editor
11. Experienced diagnostician
12. Real reader

I often wonder whether or not teachers even have a real grasp on their writing identity, and Haswell's list remarks upon the idea that we need understand our roles as readers as well. How do we effectively comment on our student's work when we don't comprehend our own footing?

I find myself coming back, once again, to Brannon's Thinking Out Loud on Paper: The Student Daybook as a Tool to Foster Learning. The author's describe the daybook as "that drawer in the kitchen where we stick everything that does not yet have a place, but we know we might need someday" (Brannon 11). The daybook is a place for thinking, for developing ideas, for identifying one's self, not only in relation to classroom material, but also relation to audience. Students improve their reading and critical thinking skills, their writing and analytical skills, their ability to connect information from class to class, from classroom to real world. This tool is helping students to discover that identity. Brannon and her fellow authors are adamant, however, that the daybook won't work if it isn't modeled by the teacher. The daybook becomes a communicative tool in which students and teachers develop together, assess their footing, and find a sense of identity which they might not have otherwise discovered. As a teacher, I have to be aware of my footing if I want to comment efficiently on my students' work. I'm excited to eventually see how well this technique actually function within the classroom.