Month: October 2017

Acquiring a new Discourse is a very complex and difficult thing to do if you wish to master that Discourse. You first need to be an apprentice of that Discourse and spend time learning under a master of the Discourse and to understand what it takes to be where they are. Mastering a Discourse is very difficult to do at first. There are some things of a discourse that you cannot get at first.”Discourses are connected with displays of identity:failing to fully display an identity tantamount to announcing you don’t have that identity, that at best you’re a pretender or beginner.”(9-10) In Coaching you need respect in order to gain this respect you need to have experience at first Belichick did not have this like all young coaches do. Due to his young age of coaching it took time to earn not only his players respect but other coaches respect as well. Most Coaches won’t listen to some 20 year old telling them something. But in Belihcikcs case he has been around coaching since birth and he isn’t like the other ones he is the chosen one. Since Belichick is a beginner at the Discourse of Coaching he needs to learn quick or he will fall behind and can lose valuable information on that Discourse he will not be able to display the full discourse of Coaching at first due to his inexperience at it just like with everything else you are never the best at it the first attempt. This means that he was able to learn not only under his father but his friends aswell  and other Coaches he had in his playing career. ‘He already knows so much . He’s like a coach ” (86). With this said Belichick is on the right path to becoming a master of the Coaching Discourse. At this moment Belichick gained more respect this is a very important part of his Coaching career even though he was told by some high school coach that “he already knows so much. He’s like a Coach.” this is proof that he is understanding the Discourse well and gaining trust, and respect within the Discourse of Coaching. This not only helped him learning the Discourse of Coaching but it helped his confidence due to the fact that a Coach said what he said  when he said it. Coming from a former player and aspiring coach this would raise my confidence in myself by 100% if a master of the Coaching Discourse said something similar like this to me.   

Bill Belichick is acquiring his new discourse of being a coach every day if his life by just being around football as much as he is. At the age of 6 he was attending Navy practices with his father who was a Coach at the time. He was getting game reports after every game and study the plays so he could understand them. By the age of 10 he was going to recruiting trips with his dad learning all about the recruiting process. At a young age reasonability and wisdom was installed in him. This is a reason why he is who he is today. He started being a coach and an appurtenance of one at a very young age like how appertains were in the medieval times.Belichick was taught the discourse of being a coach at a young age and this is why he can wear that costume so well. Football is the way of life that Belichick knows. In a way Belichick was wearing the cut off hoodie at the age of six. The hoodie Is the costume and how he acts and talks is part of the discourse. Due to the fact that Bill Belichick was coaching at such a young age the discourse of coaching is his main discourse and he lives and breathes it every day. By the time he was able to become a Coach he was more then ready for the task on hand. He had years of prior experience and practice. In Belichicks case he was surrounded by masters of his discourse his father was one of many of them. Due to the fact that his father was a coach most of his friends were also masters of the discourse of coaching. With this said the only thing Belichick could learn as a young man was coaching and the game of football. The social practices that Belichick was taught was to be respectful,grateful and to be responsible. He was taught this because this is the way he was brought up between his father being a coach and grandfather being a coach and with the people he was surrounded  by at a young age this is all he knew. The reason why Belichick looks so serious all the time is because he was taught this at a young age. This is why he doesn’t talk with reporters that much and what he does say it “ We are on to cincinnati.” But if you were to try and talk just football with him he wouldn’t stop talking if you gave him the chance.   

• Gee explains that apprentices often have to use Discourses before they’re fully fluent in it (9). He also explains that no one can “engage in a Discourse in a less than fully fluent manner…[without] announcing [that] you don’t have that identity, that at best you’re a pretender or a beginner” (9-10).

In most cases Discourse is needed to be use before you master them. This is due to the time and experience that it takes to acquire a good discourse. “Discourses (and therefore literacies) are not like languages in one very important regard. Someone can speak english, but not fluently. However, someone cannot engage in a Discourse in less than fully fluent manner. You are either in it or you’re not.”Gee (9) With this said by Gee it is showing how much practice and time it takes to be good at certain discourses. If a hispanic woman comes up to you and only knows 15 to 50 english words you can tell that she does not know english well. This is just like discourses. You can’t fake them either you have them or you don’t. When I was learning ASL (American Sign Language) I was not fluent at it and I am still not. A way that helped me understand this discourse was the connection to the written language that it has.  It is a lot like written english so I was able to connect one discourse to another. This is how you learn and acquire discourses. Like most classes there was a teacher who is this case the the master of the discourse. And like every other discourse you need a master to show you the apprentice how to learn and acquire that discourse. With time and practice with my master I was able to fit into the ASL Discourse more day by day.   

• Gee explains that the “superficial features [of a Discourse] are the best test as to whether one was apprenticed in the ‘right’ place, at the ‘right’ time, with the ‘right’ people. Such superficial features are exactly the parts of Discourses most impervious to overt instruction and are only fully mastered when everything else in the Discourse is mastered. Since these Discourses are used as ‘gates’ to ensure that the ‘right’ people get to the ‘right places in our society, such superficial features are ideal” (11).

 

“superficial features [of a Discourse] are the best test as to whether one was apprenticed in the ‘right’ place, at the ‘right’ time, with the ‘right’ people. Such superficial features are exactly the parts of Discourses most impervious to overt instruction and are only fully mastered when everything else in the Discourse is mastered. Since these Discourses are used as ‘gates’ to ensure that the ‘right’ people get to the ‘right places in our society, such superficial features are ideal” (11) This is a true statement by Gee. I believe that everything happens for a reason and it might take a lifetime to understand why or to find out why but they due simple happen for a reason. Sometimes you just aren’t at the right place at the right time like discourses. In some cases you are needed to be able to learn certain discourses quicker than others and if you can’t keep up then you are out of it. You also need to be with the right people at the right time. I want to become a college football coach and i believe that I am at the right place, at the right time, with the right people. I say this because this is a start up program in its beginning years. This looks very good on a resume to any employer and especially other coaches and schools. I believe I am with the right people because i have the chance to work with people who have been around division 1 football for over 30 years and this is the discourse I am attempting to enter I have a multiple masters of the discourse of being a coach at my fingertips. Most apprentices  have 1 master in my case I have over 8 that are very excited on working with me and this goes both ways.

 

Discourses can be the difference between getting the job you want and working at Mcdonald’s flipping burgers for the rest of your life: It can be the difference between finding your future wife and being lonely for the rest of your life. Discourses simple come down to Black and white but, they make a lot of grey.  

 

According to Gee, discourse is how people act, value things, and do things with different groups of people (6). For example, you wouldn’t talk to your boss the same way you would talk to your kid. I wouldn’t act the same way in a bar as I would act in the office. Discourses are like a costume they are interchangeable and with this costume comes with the character if you were to dress up as a cowboy for halloween you wouldn’t go around saying Arrgh!! Wheres me Booty? You would talk and act like a cowboy. This is how you act in discourses you follow along with what you’re in. For example when I am at football I am a completely different person then I am around my family and friends. As soon as I walk into the Athletic complex it is all business I am more serious then I am anywhere else. This is part of that discourse, my behavior is more serious than otherwise. This can also be completely flipped around depending on the discourse you are in at the moment. The way you speak,act, think, dress everything is depending on what discourse you are trying to be part of at the moment. With that said they can change rapidly if needed. Sometimes you are needed to be part of certain discourses for a very long time and this can either be good or bad.

 

Discourses give us the ability to not always be our truest self. It gives us the freedom to either persuade people or hide from others. You can get jobs from using discourse the right way. It gives you the ability to show off character and to use things differently. Discourses allow people to connect with people they usually wouldn’t connect with.  Discourses are developed according to Gee by “Two Discourses can be transferred to another Discourse, as one can transfer a grammatical feature from one language to another. (9)” What Gee is explaining is that you learn discourses from one another they all connect one way or another. For example when I was learning American Sign Language I was able to understand it better by connecting the signs with words and terms that I used every day. By doing this I allowed myself to understand the concept of the language.  

 

Discourse is gained by experience and time. Over a lifetime you will learn different discourses, these can be also called costumes. And just like learned about costumes it takes time to learn them how to act in them and what ones mean what. With time and experience with older and wiser people you can acquire multiple discourses. Like most good things in life it takes time to acquire many discourses. In order to get good discourses you need to live life. You can’t be shy or be not around people and real life simulations you need to experience things in life.

James Paul Gee is a Mary Lou Fulton presidential professor of literacy studies at Arizona State. Gee played a role in the formation of a new field that which is the field of “New literacy studies.” He studies language, learning, and literacy in an integrated way. He is in touch with the digital world and how it affects these concepts. He wrote “Good Video Games and Good Learning” as well as “ Women as Gamers.” He explains how video games can be applied in K-12 classrooms cognitively socially and culturally. He has 14 reasons why video games have important learning principles. 

 

 

Matt Cook , Dwayne Roberts Jr