TCE Seed for Revamping Resume Idea
I have been studying Writer's Block for another project, and I think that students can become blocked only in certain genres. Miriam Axel-Lute wrote an article about contextual writers block and how a student can be blocked because of the content of the material, issues with the professor, or the discourse itself. Let's say a student is in a business class and is required to write a resume. This is pretty simple, right? It is a genre for sure. So, the student may know the genre: resumes, but he may not know what to fill in the form. He may not have any experiences. He may not really want to go into business and be taking the class to please his mother... Long story short, he sits down to write a resume for a job and he has no idea what to write. The blank screen consumes him. A fear that his life is not reportable consumes him. He has nothing to report. The generic resume may be a sort of block in and of itself, because it assumes a person can be summarized in list format. It assumes that one can be understood without using complete sentences. It assumes that the quality of one's word can be interpreted from a list of action verbs and context-specific nouns. It assumes that one's history and past makes the person a professional, and most students don't have a professional past, so where do they begin in writing a resume, when there is nothing there to summarize? Dean also wrote about resumes as a problematic genre for some writers: "By downplaying the voice and persona of resume writers, the resume depersonalizes job seekers, portraying them as commodities that can be sold” (31). So, anyway: let's say we revamp the resume and include visuals or other types of materials. The MacArthur Foundation is soliciting help from programmers to form an online badge-making system that future "resume writers" could use as hyperlinks on their resumes. These badges could be for non-traditional or non-professional accomplishments, like having designed a website or organized a fundraising event. While these activities might not have happened in a business context and therefore would not be reportable on a typical resume or on the top of the resume where one lists professional experiences, the badge system could be a standardized way to receive an honor for hard work and valuable experience which has no specific tangible definition, certification, or label. It is an attempt at labeling new 21st century skills (such as YouTube video making or social media developing) and putting them into a format that could be accepted by a new sort of 21st century resume system (perhaps a conventional resume with hyperlinks to the online badge portfolio). Later, I decided to require students to make a Writer’s Resume as a Writing to Explore (WTE) Assignment. I am teaching genre first, and I think discussing resumes as a social construct and all of the implications will be helpful to discuss resumes as genres in action. I will probably discuss the badge-making system and challenge them to “revamp their resume.” At the end of the course, Section 5 of the portfolio will be a creative assignment labeled something like “Myself as a Writer.” Because of contextual writer’s block, the writer’s resume does not have to be written about the student or life experience. It can be entirely invented for a fictive person, or a made up resume for a fiction writer. It can also be researched and put real bibliographical information about a writer, but I don’t really expect that. In the Writing Summer Institute, I may use “revamping the resume” as my demonstration project in order to preview the idea before I implement something similar in the classroom. Resumes are so threatening to people, and I think we should explore them as a genre. I have already been thinking how to implement this in a teacher workshop. I will probably ask if I can do this as a 15 minute presentation on a Monday (for example). I would show them my revamped resume, and challenge them to do the same. Also, I would discuss resumes as a genre and how they could work as a genre in action, even though they are so rigidly formatted. Then, on the following Monday (for example), we could all show our revamped resumes. My personal revamped resume will be a digital story, which would probably take me a week to make. I am not going to teach the technology of a revamped resume, but challenge people to explore new digital literacies to reformulate their resumes to be more multidimensional (or multi-modal). *Axel-Lute, Miriam. “Consciousness, Frustration, and Power: the Making of Contextual Writer’s Block. Podis, Leonard A. & Podis, JoAnne M. (Eds.). Working with Student Writers. (2nd Edition). New York: Peter Lang. 2010. Dean, Deborah. Genre Theory: Teaching, Writing, and Being. Urbana, Illinois: NCTE. 2008. **The Badge-making System; http://www.macfound.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=lkLXJ8MQKrH&b=6479569&ct=11641493
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