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Blog #3: Shhh. Don't tell anyone I'm faking it.

Discourses, according to Gee, are like identity kits that include all kinds of things. He names some of things things in "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics," stating, "At any moment we are using language we must say or write the write thing in the right way while playing the right social role and (appearing) to hold the right values, beliefs and attitudes. Thus, what is important is not language, and surely not grammar, but saying (writing)--doing--being--valuing--believing combinations" (2).

In other words, it's everything. The way I sound, the way I walk, the way I dress, the values I hold, the way I interact with machines and people and data.

I think that's why people I meet always assume I am a teacher. I SEEM like a teacher. And truth be told, most of those people who assume I am a teacher also assume I am an English teacher. (Most of them don't know there is such a thing as a rhetoric class.)

What is it I am doing that tells people so much about me?
I have no idea, but whatever it is, I didn't always do those things.
I wasn't always a teacher. But I wanted to be a teacher. A good teacher. I successful teacher. And I didn't really know how to do that.

In fact, I was absolutely positive my first students (and there's always a first) would know I was completely faking it. I had absolutely no idea what a teacher should behave like, and I'm pretty sure my first day absolutely sucked. I was so terrified about my first day teaching at RWS 100 at SDSU that my husband walked me to class.

The next day was better. A little bit. But I still felt like I was faking it.

I went through the same thing when I taught RWS 305 the first time.
And when I taught RWS 290, the business writing class. I really felt out of place for that one.

And yet I survived. And no one knew I didn't know what I was doing all semester until the end when I actually told them. Every time I pulled what I knew, and I translated it to what I knew about what I was supposed to do, and I applied all of that and I just did it. 

Gee talks about how to acquire a new Discourse and the importance of learning to mushfake when necessary.

In this blog, I want you to write about a time when you needed to mushfake a Discourse you weren't familiar with. How did you do it? What kinds of things did you need to fake?

For example, I regularly simplify my vocabulary when I teach RWS 100. And if I do need to use more complex words, I explain them or have students look them up on the phone. I needed to amp up my sentence structure and stop explaining everything when I started teaching 305.

And I wore business-type apparel to my first business writing class instead of the normal loose flowy dresses that say, "She's a creative type with quirky style." It felt strange.  I also talked about my three years as an HR person. (I didn't tell them how much I hated working in an office.)

So those are some of my stories of faking it, and I hold those stories to remind me that I can do things I have never done before, that I can fake it till I make it, to quote that old adage. Because as long as we are growing, we will be doing new things, things we aren't quite sure how to do.

Like all the other blogs,
1.  Keep in mind that you are constructing your own class identity for anyone who reads this blog.
2.  Write about what you know about, what you're interested about, so that you can show how knowledgeable you are about what you are writing. 
3.  Show, don't just tell.
4.  Adapt your writing style for your audience and purpose.
5.  Try to have fun. 

A few other things:
1.  Even though I have not assigned the Gee reading, this blog must demonstrate that you are entering into an ongoing conversation about Discourses and identity kits and mushfaking that Gee started and I continued in this blog. That means that you need to reference Gee and perhaps me.
2.   Incorporate at least two to three relevant hyperlinks. Hyperlinks take your readers to another web page that gives them more information about a topic they might not know about.
3.  Your blog should be about 500 words. It takes time and space to develop ideas.

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