What the High School Educator Must Know

What the High School Educator Must Know Consider all that a high school educator must know (or at least attempt to know). The truly good 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 understand 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 don't consider rhetorical studies an important aspect 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 really good high school educators know and do, it might seem absurd 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 don't understand the powerful impact discourse communities have on what we do, how we do it, and what we're trying to ach ieve, we are shortchanging ourselves, and more importantly, we are shortchanging our students. Just what is a discourse community though? And why are so many in the field of rhetoric bandying about this term? This "social framework regulating textual production" (Porter 38) goes by many names: it's what Stanley Fish calls "the interpretive co mmunity," what Michel Foucault calls "the discursive formation," and what Patricia Bizzell calls "the discourse community" (38). James 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 group of individuals bound by a common interest who communicate through approved channels and whose discourse is regulated...[The community] shares assumptions about what objects are appropriate for examination and discussion, what operating functions are performed on those objects, what constitutes "evidence" and "validity," and what formal conventions are followed. (38-39) It is important to remember that we all are part of various discourse communities throughout our lives (each of which dictates the conventions we follow, the language we use, and the credence we give to what we hear or read).