"When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own" Jackie Jones Royster

This essay is a starting point for me in research about technology and writing. Of many of the great essays we read in 220A, this one is very memorable. Royster points out some very important issues about voice and asks some thought provoking questions which I think definitely spill over into teaching writing with technology. At the beginning of the essay, or in "Scene One", she discusses how isolated and insulted she has felt around her colleagues when they discuss aspects of her culture without considering her or her cultural experience. If she feels this way, how would a student in 1A feel? Then in "Scene Two" Royster describes how she, as Dubois has, lifted the veil between her culture and mainstream. She has decided to speak, but she feels that her voice is often "muted". In "Scene Three" she shares her experience with hybrid voices. Royster even gives an example of how someone told her she sounded like herself, like she was using an "authentic" voice when rendered characters' voices during a presentation. So all of Royster's assertions and experiences make me consider the students who will be in the comp class at Sac City or any other JC in Sacto. How can I help celebrate their voices? or maybe that is the wrong question? How can I help them to recognize the validity and powerfulness of their own minds-when they have had these "Crash" encounters either in their academic experiences or just in daily life?

Royster then asks some important questions of her own "How can we teach, engage in research, write about, and talk across boundaries with others, instead of for, about and around them?" (620). Now for me this is where I think of technology. Discussion boards provide a way to do this, to make sure everyone gets a chance to talk and blogs provide a release for creative identity.

In using the blog, I think that a student could have the oppty to use all of her voices/discourses possibly...I have to explore more on this.