How it all happened…
My parents raised my brother and me according to the hands-off theory of child-rearing. We were sent outside most of the time, so I was a semi-feral heathen child until a few years ago. I don’t recall my mom or dad reading to me (though, I’m sure they did), but I do remember being in pre-school and how I started to learn to read. Actually, what I most remember about pre-school is getting a corn kernel lodged in my ear canal and having to be anesthetized at the hospital to have it removed. But, when I wasn’t shoving things into my ears, I was learning how to write my name. It started out as just a scarlet letter A emblazoned across the page, dwarfing the poorly rendered illustration of the continents.
But, I did learn how to read, against all the doctors’ speculations, at the age when everyone is supposed to learn how to read. In first or second grade, we read aloud to the call. It was something very dull and generic, a state-sponsored institutionalized morality tales with nothing to engage a mind such as mine. My brother was two grades ahead of me, and he would bring home the glossy, enticing novels he was reading in school. I was immensely jealous. Reading became another way for me to emulate my brother, which always annoyed him to no end. It was not until I was in middle school when I became an avid reader and burgeoning writer. There were several authors who played an important part in my literacy, and their progression shows a rather convoluted path towards gaining the intellectual superpowers I now enjoy.
For a book report in fourth grade, I read Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. I turned in the report having only read the first one hundred pages and relied on the back cover synopsis to fill it out, but the novel initiated a stage of complete immersion into reading. I realized that reading could be both intellectually simulating (there was a long discussion of evolution in the novel that undid the entirety of my Sunday school experiences) and thrilling with lots of blood and guts.
It was about this time when I started to read Calvin and Hobbes. I always loved to draw, so the comic strip appealed to my visual, artistic side. I loved the illustrations of Spaceman Spiff’s adventures to alien planets, painted with the delicate refinement only water colors can convey. Luring me in with bright colors, Bill Watterson made me think satirically and critically of the society I unwilling inhabit.
In seventh grade, while ignoring a lesson on grammar in my English class, I held a copy of Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger under my desk and furtively read. The short story foramt intrigued me; how can an author make such an impact in so little words? I was drawn to his use of details: the poppy-petal mask worn by the Laughing Man, the tragic banana fish. And how can a writer be funny and poignant at the same time? Can a writer be this playful? Reading Nine Stories made me want to be a writer, if only so I could subsist in that non-spatial literary realm. Later in that semester, during the few moments I did pay attention, we were assigned to write a poem on nature. We were required to recite it for the rest of the class, which terrified me to pieces. Never a popular child, I knew that I could win my peers over with my poem. It was an insouciant little thing, funny and silly, probably more so when recited by a nerdy, brace-faced little Arianne. It was such a moment of triumph for me as they laughed and clapped. I began to think maybe I could be a decent writer.
So, I began to dabble in “Literature,” putting away the sci-fi thrillers and comic books of my youth. I fell into Fitzgerald and his short stories, and then Ernest Hemingway. He gets a bad reputation for being terse, but there are passages in The Old Man and the Sea that are exquisite in their detail: the way the sun hits the ocean, the bright scales of the fish. And the lack of explication in Hemingway forced to me interpret more, pushing me to think critically of a text more than I ever had.
By the end of high school, I was thoroughly enchanted by English literature. I was selected by one of my teachers to join the UIL Literarcy Criticism Team my sophmore year. We memorized literary terms, authors and their major works, and learned how to scan poetry. It was heaven. It introduced me to the academic study of literature and convinced me what I should do with my life.
I don’t think my veiws on reading or writing has changed much. My purpose in both has always been to find those sparkling moments when existence and human nature suddenly become lucid. I’m developing myself as an academic, or more like just getting used to the idea of being an academic. A teacher in high school recommended the author Flannery O’Connor; I maintained an interest in her work through college. In my final semester as an undergrad, I wrote a thesis on O’Connor using myth criticism. I became fascinated with Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung; it all seemed so profound to me. It is a sensation almost like vertigo to see the connectivity between all of literature and the elegant realization that there is really only one story.
The best way to improve teachers is to turn us all into robots with microchips in our brains. I would like a special bionic arm that can crush things. That would be the best way. The hard way is to be constantly self-reflective. I believe that all CIs are required to post online their thoughts on how well the class worked that day. They have provided an excellent model on how to be a self-reflective practitioner. Could I have explained it better? Why didn’t this group activity work? Looking at their papers, where are the gaps of knowledge?
Making sure all (or most) of the student are engaged in the material being taught seems to be the most important self-reflective question to ask. Communication with other teachers seemed to be essential in developing one’s teaching toolbox. This all requires being open and willing to change methods and accept criticism.
This is going to be obvious, but I think that a FYC teacher should come to class knowing how to be a teacher. I have no experience teaching, so this concern looms largely over my head like a pterodactyl or something.
A teacher needs to know the material, know where the gaps of education are in the student’s knowledge, and where they need to be at the end of the class.
I expect students to come into the classroom knowing how to be students. It is hard to learn how to be a student; I’m still trying to work it all out. I can’t comment on what specific skills a student needs to have to have prior to enrolling in FYC, but I think that it is essential that they come ready and willing to do the work.
Grading
I try to grade based on content. Everyone makes typos, slips up with grammar usage, and writes an awkward sentence or two. I spare the occasional accidents, but I also point some out.
I had a professor who was working with me on a long paper. She asked me to come and visit with her, and she pointed out a typo in my paper, saying something to the extent that every typo I made wasted an immense amount of her time and angels in heaven would lose their wings and then stab themselves in the faces because they were so distraught.
Accidents happen. That’s why pencils have erasers and I wear diapers. I don’t want to make anyone feel stupid because they don’t know when to put the apostrophe in “its.”
Another professor story: A professor asked me to come visit her in her office, and while looking at my paper, explained to me the difference between passive voice and active voice. She then let me look through my paper and find the errors myself. It improved my writing by leaps and bounds, and she did so in way that wasn’t alienating. I hope that is the kind of grader and teacher I become.
I did my classroom observations this past week, and I could not the shake the feeling that it was just really weird. It is just weird that next year, I’ll be teaching — teaching – a group of students. It isn’t that I don’t want to teach, I just feel too much like a student myself. My question is, then, when will I ever feel like a real, authentic teacher? That is what I’m grappling with.
I am having very strange daydreams. My future students are probably still in high school, still in the process of applying to schools, or maybe they already know that Tech is where they want to go. Little do they know, next fall they will have a composition teacher more nervous than they are. They probably have all these great expectations and dreams, which I will soundly crush inadvertently. I weep for their future selves.
I am also wondering how all of the things in 5060 will come together. The issues we’ve discussed have all been open-ended, which I suppose forces us as teachers to continue to question our assumptions. This will be interesting for me, as I have never taught any sort of class and I have never taken a class like First Year Composition. I think all things English-related are fascinating, even the dull grammatical stuff that everyone complains about. Will I be able to relate to my students? Or will I just be some strange, barely human robot to them?
Working with others
I’ve been trying to get my head around the idea of collaborative learning. My knee-jerk reaction is that I hate group work. Whenever my teacher told us to get into groups, I would panic. First, because I’m an introverted person, the social anxiety would kick in. I like everyone, but sometimes personalities just don’t mesh well. One time, when I was assigned a partner for a computer programming project, my partner showed up drunk to the computer lab.Things like that make me hate people.
Then, I would think of the two possible ways in which this assignment would unfold: either I would be the one doing most of the work or I would be completely lost and the group would go on without me, leaving me to die alone in the forest or on the side of the mountain.
On the other hand, I can see the value in collaborative learning. Sometimes, when I would be lost on an assignment, having another student to clarify the concept would be incredibly helpful. I think Condon said it well when he described collaborative learning as getting the learning process out of hiding. Cushman’s assertion that students need to be invested in the group work they are doing is the most salient point. If the assignment is painful to do, or if one student is really interested in the subject and others aren’t, groups seem to deteriorate.
Collaborative learning seems to work best when work is properly delegated. I like being able to go off on my own and work through the problem, and then come back and discuss it with the group, teaching them what I’ve learned. Just sitting around in some sort of committee formation and coming to a consensus is just a recipe for mediocrity.
…and then chaos ensues
My writing process is much like the terms the authors of our assigned texts use euphemistically: overlapping and recursive.
Things do not fall into nice little patterns. I was taught, back in my TAAS days, to write in a linear fashion. Once you figured out the system, what those TAAS machines wanted, it was supposedly easy. As one of the authors says, you can plug it into an algorithm and have it spit out an essay.
But humans don’t think like computers; we aren’t manufactured with algorithms programmed into our brains. In fact, as individuals, our cognitive processes and predilections vary wildly. Like a drunken sailor, I often change course while writing.
Creative writing has helped me develop my own methods to academic writing. As an undergraduate, I took two creative writing classes. The first attempt I made at writing a short story was a miserable failure. I had, what I thought, a gorgeous story all planned out in my head. I then sat down at my computer and proceeded to write what turned out to be a plotless (other students called it “pointless), strange, and confusing short story. I had not done enough “pre-writing,” I suppose. For my next short story, I tried something different. I wrote it all out by hand in my notebook. The resulting story was much better. It was, by all accounts, a triumphant of literary genius. Roses showered upon me as I stood in the spotlight from the heavens where angels sang my name.
So, what I learned from creative writing I’ve applied to my academic writing. I need to have that messy stage. Having something physical to look at helps form my final product. I need something to mark on, to cross out, write over, or most frequently, write out the word “SHIT” in red letters.
How ironic. I just spent several hours wading through the mess of student essays attempting to squash any hint at individual voices that might peek through.
One girl (I could tell just from her writing that she was female) wrote in a way that sounded exactly like she was talking to me, that some person had transcribed the girl’s words as if for some weird anthropological study. Comma splices, damn you! I wrote. Be concise! You’re being too wordy.
I doubt it crushed her soul, and even if it did, it needed to be said. Still, I feel like I’m trying to take some soft, sweet little animal and trying to shove it into a dark, dank box stamped with the red-letter words of “ACADEMIC WRITING,” and breaking off their legs in the process.
That being said, this ain’t no high-fluentin’, warm and fuzzy, hippie love-in! This is First Year Comp. It’s supposed to make students want to drop out of college and become marijuana farmers. There’s an expectation, and as DIs and CIs, we have a responsibility to beat students into submission with those standards.
It’s working voice into that little box that’s the tricky part.
I like what Peter Elbow suggests. Free writing without an audience. Fearing the audience’s reaction seems to be the big stumbling block for students in getting their voice. They feel like they are writing for their teacher, who is barely even human to them. But once students feel that writing can be their own, that they can elevate their style to academic standards without turning into a robotic automaton, a free flow of voice can be theirs for the taking.
Things to Teach…
I think that First Year Composition should strive to be practical. Most of these students are not going to be English majors, so they need to gather the tools and skills in writing that are cross-disciplinary.
Grammar, the necessary evil, ought to be taught to mastery (or at least, competency). I don’t think the nitty-gritties of grammar terminology ought to be enforced, maybe just have them exposed to scary terms like “dangling modifier” or “comma splice.” Students should learn how to write a decent sentence, and that requires knowing a bit about nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, etc.
Moving up from the sentence level, students should be able to develope a paragraph. The necessities: a topic sentence that restates the thesis while developing a new concept, followed by evidence, then some sort of concluding and transitional ending.
This all leads up to the grand, unified theory of everything: developing a thesis paper. Getting from Point A to Point B in a few pages is a hard skill to learn. The goal of the course ought to give students the ability to summarize, abstract, and organize ideas.
