Composing a Profession:

Writing About Working,

with a Special Focus on

Nursing

Marc Guidry, Associate Professor of English, Stephen F. Austin State

University August 8, 2012

This presentation is based on the Rhetoric and Composition (ENG 131) course I taught at SFA in the Fall of 2011.

All the students were first-semester Nursing majors.

What is a FIG? FIG stands for “Freshman Interest Group.”

A FIG is a cohort of students who develop a learning community by taking certain classes together.

FIGs increase retention of students and are particularly beneficial for minority students b/c they integrate them more fully with other students, thereby breaking down stereotypes.

The students in my FIG attended 3 classes together in Fall 2011:

Nursing History (NUR 350) A special section of SFA 101 designed

expressly for new Nursing majors (SFA 101.051)

My section of Rhetoric & Composition (ENG 131.010)

SFA Nursing FIG

Multidisciplinary the science of nursing the history of nursing the art of writing

Collaborative group planning for interviews practice teams for interviews peer evaluation of essay drafts

High Impact Learning

Holistic critical thinking invention planning evaluation revision metacognition

High Impact Learning

Service-learning oriented Students had to contact and interview an

area nurse. Selected student profiles of area nurses

were published in The Daily Sentinel, elevating the importance of the nursing profession in the community.ohttp://dailysentinel.com/news/local/article_25b6eda8-0a96-11e1-8496-001cc4c002e0.htmlohttp://dailysentinel.com/news/local/article_7c1ad36a-1975-11e1-8287-001cc4c002e0.htmlohttp://dailysentinel.com/news/local/article_e79bb5ba-303a-11e1-99ce-001871e3ce6c.html

High Impact Learning

Reporting Information Essay Students wrote on a major debilitating disease:

◦ defined it◦ analyzed its causes & effects◦ described treatment, esp. as germane to nursing care

Accompanied the reading of Bed Number Ten, by Sue Baier and Mary Zimmeth Schomaker◦ about Baier’s traumatic experience of a severe case

of the crippling disease known as Guillain-Barré syndrome and the often poor care she received in the hospital during her long convalescence.

Essays Assignments for the FIG

Profile Essay Students interviewed a nurse from East

Texas about her/his career as a nurse. Students created a profile of the nurse

based on the interview.

Essays Assignments for the FIG

Literary Analysis Essay Students analyzed a novel, My Name Is

Mary Sutter, by Robin Oliveira.◦ protagonist a nurse who becomes the first female

American surgeon◦ “Mary Sutter” based partly on real-life surgeon

Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919) Analyses contextualized through application

of primary & secondary historical sources to the novel

Essays Assignments for the FIG

Arguing a Position Essay Students defended a position vis-à-vis a

current medical controversy, such as◦ The Affordable Care Act◦ Birth Control in Texas Schools◦ Physician-assisted Suicide◦ Rationing health care

Essays Assignments for the FIG

Nurse interview standard assignment for NUR 350; ENG 131.010 expanded it into a formal profile essay

Textbook for NUR 350)—A History of American Nursing (Judd, Sitzman, and Davis, 2010)—a secondary source for analyzing historical accuracy of My Name Is Mary Sutter

Strategies for researching essays reinforced by research skills taught in SFA 101

Synergies between ENG 131.010, NUR 350, & SFA 101.051

Purpose: Describe etiology & care for a debilitating disease

Reporting

Information Essay

 Audience: 1st-yr. Author: Nursing students students/witness

to disease

Reporting Information Essay

E:\Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\reporting essay unit schedule.docx

E:\Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\brittany patterson reporting essay Parkinson_s_Disease_Paper[1].docx

Sample Reporting Information Essay

Reporting on Careers for a High School Writing Assignment

The FIG reporting essay asked students to explain the concept of a particular debilitating disease, with an emphasis on managing patient care.

You can ask each of your students to choose a profession they may be interested in pursuing & explain a key concept related to that profession for their peers.

Geologist—Why have we been experiencing so many earthquakes in East Texas this year?

Auto Mechanic—How is it possible for a diesel engine not to have a spark ignition?

Cosmetologist—Why does someone need a license to braid hair professionally in the state of Texas?

Plumber—What types of pipe can be used to run a natural gas line in one’s house? Is there a preference?

Banker/Finance—What is the difference between commercial banking and investment banking?

Reporting on Careers for a High School Writing Assignment

Farmer—How have irrigation methods in Texas evolved over time, and how are they more effective today?

High School Teacher—What is the flipped classroom and in what scenarios would it provide better learning for students?

Carpenter—Is it easier to build a wood-framed or a metal-framed home? What are the advantages of each?

Doctor—Why are surgeries increasingly being performed to fetuses in utero, when this can be risky to the mother?

Chef—What is the local foods movement and how is it affecting menus at restaurants?

Reporting on Careers for a High School Writing Assignment

Respond in complete sentences to the following:

Brainstorm 3 jobs you would like to know more about.

Why are you interested in those jobs? What fascinates you about each job? What is a key

concept/phenomenon/question related to each job?

Exercise for Reporting on a Career Essay

Purpose: Profile an East Texas nurse

Profile Essay

Audience: Daily Author: Nursing Sentinel readers Student

Profile Essay E:\Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\profil

e essay unit schedule.docx

E:\Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\briana jones profile essay.docx

Sample Profile Essay

Oral History Resources Baylor University Institute for Oral History,

“Introduction to Oral History”

http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/43912.pdf

Oral History Association, “Principles and Best Practices”

http://www.oralhistory.org/do-oral-history/principles-and-practices/#general

Nurse Interview Questions E:\Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\nurse interview questions.docx

Format for nurse interview transcriptE:\Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\format for nurse interview transcript.docx

Schedule for Nurse InterviewsE:\Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\schedule for nurse interviews.docx

Release forms for nurse interviewsE:\Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\Interviewee Release Form.doc

Materials for Conducting Interviews in the FIG

Have students interview someone working locally in a career in which they have an interest.o It can be any field.

Have students transform their interviews into formal essays.

Adapting Profile Essay to a High School Course

Use selected interviews from Studs Terkel’s book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (NY: Pantheon, 1974)—a pioneering work in oral history—as models.

Adapting Profile Essay to a High School Course

You might want to give particular consideration to the interviews with

Roberto Acuna (a Chicano migrant worker in California) Lincoln James (a black worker in a Chicago rendering

and glue factory, where spoiled meat and bones are transformed into industrial products)

Phil Stallings (a white spot-welder at a Ford factory on the South Side of Chicago)

Grace Clements (a white worker at a Chicago luggage factory where the conditions border on the Dickensian)

Bud Freeman (a successful jazz musician on the tenor saxophone).

Adapting Profile Essay to a High School Course

Break up into pairs. Interview your partner for 10 minutes about

the first job they got after they began high school: ◦What was the job and what kind of tasks did it

involve? ◦Why did they take it? ◦Was it fulfilling? ◦Was it creative in any way? ◦Did it change their life for the better?

Partner then interviews you for 10 minutes.

Exercise for Profile Essay

Purpose: Analyze My Name Is Mary Sutter

Literary Analysis Essay

Audience: Readers Author: Informed readerof the novel

Literary Analysis Essay E:\Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\litera

ry analysis essay unit schedule.docx

Mary and Stipp’s first amputation—p. 149-51Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\Mary and Stipp amputate leg.pdf◦ Compare to passage from The Practice of Surgery

by Samuel Cooperhttp://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/leg-amputation.htm

◦ Compare to reenactment of Civil War surgeon’s amputation of a leg from video produced by the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginiahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T5v_QbFZDU&feature=related

Sourcing My Name Is Mary Sutter

Mary’s misunderstanding of suppuration of a wound as something beneficial to the patient—pp. 170 and 196oTeaching Writing 2012 Presentation\Mary thinks suppuration makes patient well.pdfoTeaching Writing 2012 Presentation\Mary not to worry about suppuration.pdf

Compare to discussion of advent of germ theory in A History of American Nursing, pp. 47-8Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\A History of American Nursing on germ theory of infection.pdf

Compare to Ehistory archive (hosted by the Ohio State University Department of History) on Civil War medicinehttp://ehistory.osu.edu/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/introduction.cfm

Sourcing My Name Is Mary Sutter

Sample student papers\nikki childs literary_analysis_final_draft[1].docx

Sample Literary Analysis Essay

There are two recent anthologies of fiction centering on the working life:◦David Gate’s Labor Days: An Anthology of

Fiction about Work (Random House, 2004)◦Richard Ford’s Blue Collar, White Collar, No

Collar: Stories about Work (Harper, 2011) There are also some classic American

stories about work, such as Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener; John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath; and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

Analyzing the Literature of the Working Life in a Secondary Setting

Read the following passages from My Name Is Mary Sutter :oE:\Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\Blevins shows Mary bacteria in his microscope.pdfoE:\Teaching Writing 2012 Presentation\Mary regrets Lister's findings didn't come sooner.pdf

How does the following film by Dr. Robert Berdan, “Microscopic Life in a Drop of Water,” inform readers’ appreciation of the above passages?ohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5KFVAJH5TU&feature=related

Sourcing Literature Exercise