What the High School Educator Must Know :: Discourse Community Education Essays

What the High School Educator moldiness KnowConsider all that a high instill educator must confine it off (or at least attempt to know). The real equitable ones--the ones who motivate us, instill a love for learning, and ultimately change our lives for the better--know a great deal (salaries and public perception notwithstanding). They know their subject matter, they know and say human motivation, they are aware of the power of interpersonal relations and how to use that knowledge to gain the most benefit from the least potential, they understand the po wer of their own rhetoric (even if they dont consider rhetorical studies an important thought of their academic lives), and most importantly, they know how to share this knowledge with others. High school educators today (the good ones) are mentors, frie nds, counselors, coaches, researchers, sources, role models, disciplinarians, crisis managers, and on and on. With all that our sincerely good high school educators know and do, it might seem cockeyed for me (a high school educator) to suggest that we need to dig in and truly understand yet another aspect of our students lives, and yes, even our own. But I am suggesting just that. If we dont understand the powerful impact discourse communities have on what we do, how we do it, and what were trying to ach ieve, we are shortchanging ourselves, and more importantly, we are shortchanging our students. serious what is a discourse community though? And why are so many in the field of rhetoric bandying about this term? This cordial framework regulating textual production (Porter 38) goes by many names its what Stanley Fish calls the interpretive co mmunity, what Michel Foucault calls the discursive formation, and what Patricia Bizzell calls the discourse community (38). crowd together Porter of Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne, however, seems to have generated the clearest definition of a discourse community. A discourse community is a g roup of individuals kick by a common interest who communicate through approve channels and whose discourse is regulated...The community shares assumptions about what objects are appropriate for examination and discussion, what operate functions are performed on those objects, what constitutes evidence and validity, and what formal conventions are followed. (38-39)It is important to conceive that we all are part of various discourse communities throughout our lives (each of which dictates the conventions we follow, the expression we use, and the credence we give to what we hear or read).