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Driving Lessons

This summer I took on the task of teaching my step-daughter how to drive a standard shift car. Cara had been driving for several years already, but always a car with an automatic transmission. Since her father traded the car she had been driving for a standard shift car, she had to either learn how to drive this new car or learn the bus schedule. Since she was using my car until she learned either of these things, we thought it would be best to give her a deadline. I also wanted my car back.

We began our lessons driving around the roads of the small town where we live –roads with no stop lights and little traffic. We drove around practicing starting and stopping, making left and right hand turns and backing up. As we drove we discussed the importance of being able to drive a standard transmission. Well, this isn’t completely accurate. There really wasn’t a lot of discussing going on. Cara kept saying, “Why would anyone want to drive a standard?” “Why don’t they make all cars automatics?” “Why do I have to learn?” and I kept saying, “This way you’ll be able to drive any car.” “People like to drive standards because they feel they have more control.” “You’ll appreciate it in the winter when you will be able to downshift.” I did feel encouraged on the second day of our lessons when she said, “When will I be able to shift gracefully?”

After a couple of afternoons of driving around the back roads of our town it was clear that she had mastered the basics. Since my step-daughter was living in Northampton and going to school and working at UMass, she was going to need to be able to drive through the center of Northampton and down Route 9— a street full of stoplights and traffic. Since our next step was to drive in traffic, we started at the university. Cara got in, started the car and pulled out of the parking lot and stopped at the first traffic light. When the light turned green, she stalled. And then she stalled again. And then she stalled again. “It’s okay,” I said, waving the honking cars around us. “You’re okay, keep trying.” Finally she got the car going and we came up to the next light and stopped. The light turned green and she stalled. And then she stalled again. And then she stalled again. Luckily we were near one of the university’s parking lot. “Pull into the lot,” I said as I again waved the honking cars around us. “I can’t do it,” she said. “You can,” I said. “You just need to practice.” We pulled into the lot and practiced stopping and starting in order to regain her confidence and then we went back onto the road.

I wish I could say everything went fine from then on. But it didn’t. She continued to stall at every light. “You’re thinking too much about what you’re doing,” I said and tried to distract her by turning on the radio and chatting about anything I could think of. “I can’t do this,” she said. “Everyone stalls,” I tried to reassure her. “You just need to practice. You just need to drive more.” But after I dropped her off and watched her drive away in my car, I was beginning to wonder if she was right. Maybe she couldn’t do this. What was the problem? She knew how to drive. She actually did know how to shift. She drove perfectly in the parking lot, and around the traffic-free roads of our small town. Why couldn’t she do it? What was wrong?

There was nothing wrong. Teaching Cara to drive a standard is a good reminder of what our writing students go through when faced with new rhetorical situations. Our students come into our first-year classrooms with years of writing experience. They have experience as writers. But like Cara’s experience behind the wheel, many of them have experienced writing specific kinds of things— particular forms of the essay, college application essays, reports, etc. When moving to a new unfamiliar writing situation, on the surface, our students’ writing appears to fall apart—their organization isn’t as focused and developed, their sentence structure falls apart, the word choice becomes a bit silted. It appears they have lost control over the skills they had previously mastered. They stall and they can’t seem to move forward. And, like Cara, they lose their confidence. And who doesn’t? Who doesn’t lose their confidence when faced with a situation they can’t immediately master?

Throughout the semester our students stall a great deal. Each unit presents a different writing situation that presents new challenges. Just as Cara had mastered shifting on our small town roads, and stop-and-go traffic presented a new challenge; each rhetorical situation presents a new complication for the students to work through. It is important to remember that they will work through these challenges. As teachers we need to give them the encouragement (remind them of what they are doing well) and the opportunity to keep writing. The more they write, the better they will get.

And we also need to get out of their way.

As we approached the deadline for when Cara would take possession of the standard shift car, I worried that she wasn’t ready. After our not-so-great day of driving around the university, Cara’s willingness for our driving lessons began to fade. “I’m not sure she’s ready,” I told her father. “She’ll only get better by driving,” my husband said. “She knows how to shift. She just has to do it.”

My husband was right. A few days after Cara took possession of the standard shift car she appeared in my office with a plastic bag. “I drove from Northampton to Wal-Mart and then here and I didn’t stall once,” she said. “I knew you could do it!” I said. “Here,” she said giving me the plastic bag. “I don’t want Dad’s junk in my car.” I happily took the bag from her.

She had done it. It seemed that once I had shown her the basics, she needed to practice without me sitting in the passenger seat reminding her to put the clutch in, to slow down, to downshift.

And our students will do it too. Sometimes the best thing for our students is to send them home to revise and then to revise again. We can show them compelling introductions and tell them about the importance of not using the passive voice, but until they are alone with the page making those rhetorical choices for themselves they won’t completely get it.

So as my students move from “Inquiring into Self” to “Interacting with Texts” I try to keep in mind all these things I learned this summer from Cara—we all lose confidence when confronted with something new and challenging, we all need encouragement, sometimes we learn best by consistently doing it, and sometimes we need our teachers to get out of our way.

And grace comes with experience.

The other day Cara stopped by our house for a visit. When she got ready to leave, her father and I walked her out to the driveway. We watched as she gracefully backed her standard transmission car around and drove away.

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The World Comes to Bartlett

Deirdre Vinyard is the Deputy Director of the UMass Writing Program. She teaches the first-year writing courses (College and Basic Writing) and directs the Basic Writing Program.

It’s the first day of class and students are doing the usual introductions. When Kensuke* introduces himself as an international student from Japan, Mitch, a freshman from Wrentham, brightens and tosses a couple of phrases in Japanese across the room to his new classmate. They both smile. The other students in the class look on with interest. There’s a touch of internationalization in my classroom. I know I am going to love this semester.

For the past two decades, American universities have actively worked to internationalize their campuses, and attracting students from around the world is a big part of this process. UMass recognizes the importance of providing its students with a global experience – through the curriculum, study abroad, and a diverse student body. The university is now actively recruiting international students, and this effort is starting to become apparent in our classes. This fall, UMass enrolled 120 new international undergraduate students, a twenty percent increase over enrollments from the previous fall. The change is palpable.
An increased number of international students is a positive change for the campus and the classroom. International students bring new perspectives and provide a window to the outside world for the rest of us here in Western Massachusetts. It is said so often that it has become a cliché, but our students are preparing to work in a very small world. When I was going to college in the 1970s, those of us who wanted to have an international component in our careers majored in foreign languages. Today, every field has a global element, from engineering to business to the hard sciences, and having an opportunity to live and study and play with peers from around the world is an important part of the preparation for this.

Our writing classes, always a place for collaborative learning, are wonderful spaces where students learn from each other. The more diverse the makeup of the students, the more possibility for engaging exchange. During the first week of classes when my students shared moments of their writing histories, they commiserated on the toil of the MCAS prep-class, recalled with pleasure writing in diaries, remembered writing song lyrics for a junior-high band. But this year they also shared memories of learning to write with Japanese kanji and of making the transition to writing in a second language. Or a third. Or, in the case of one student, a fourth.

Now in the fifth week of class, my students seem less surprised by the wealth of world experience they represent than they did the first day—in fact now they expect to find it. And it’s more than Mitch seeking affirmation from Kensuke on a Japanese phrase. Yesterday when we talked about the range of literature required in school curricula, we had examples from high schools in Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey as well as examples from a high school in Seoul and one in Mumbai. When this happens in a class discussion, the world of my students gets a little bit bigger, and I think this has to be a good thing. The world, at least a little bit of it, has come to Bartlett.

*Student names and identifying characteristics have been changed.

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Do We Have to Be in the Same Room?

Anne Bello is a PhD candidate in Rhet/Comp at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is currently the Technology Coordinator of the UMass Writing Program where she also teaches College and Basic Writing. She is also a former member of the Writing Program’s Resource Center.

In the “Teaching with Technology” practicum, one issue some instructors brought up is marking student work. If, say, a student hands in a paper copy of a homework assignment, the instructor can easily mark the assignment with a check and hand it back to the student. It’s clear to the student that the instructor has read and acknowledged the work – even if the instructor just glanced over the work to see if it was done. With submitting work online, this process can become murkier. If instructors don’t write extensive comments, students might not know for sure whether the instructor read their work or not.

Fortunately, there are ways to work around this situation. Moodle, for instance, has a number of features that make it easy to “mark” student work. One option is to set a grading scale for an assignment or create a custom grading scale to quickly mark submissions as received (or satisfactory or whatever scale you’d like to use). Choosing the Quick Feedback option can make this process even easier. Another option is to create a checklist. If you want to acknowledge student work, you can set up the checklist so you update it; if you want to put more responsibility on the students, you can set it up so that they update it. Moodle can update it automatically as well. Of course, there are always low-tech solutions. For instance, you can refer to what students wrote for homework in class, making it clear you read their work.

While teachers have many options for acknowledging student work, there are some larger issues at play. How much marking and responding to texts do we, as teachers, need to do to help students learn? Is it enough for students to do an assignment and learn from the experience, or are we obliged to respond in some way? How can we encourage students to value the work they do independent of our feedback? When I first started teaching, I thought I needed to respond to everything: drafts, homework, in-class writing, etc. I’m at a point now where I mostly just comment on drafts, though I still feel a need to mark most of the work my students do. When I taught College Writing, I had students submit every piece of writing they did in class or for homework as part of a portfolio. I didn’t grade or comment on most of it, but the completeness of the portfolio was part of the grade. Since I’ve started teaching Basic Writing, I’ve moved away from this method. While I have my students submit some in-class writing online (we’re in a computer lab), there are some activities they don’t submit at all. I wonder if the students value the work I don’t collect as much as the work I do mark, but to be honest, it’s a relief not to have to sort through it all. And the fact is there are some writing assignments I don’t value as much. As long as they serve their immediate purpose – giving students something to think about and say in a discussion, for example – that’s enough.

Another issue involved in all of this is the degree to which learning needs to be an exchange between teacher and student. The other day I was conferencing with a student, and he had one of those “aha” moments that make teaching feel so worthwhile. This student had been rather dismissive of the class, acting as if he already knew everything there is to know about writing. Through our discussion of his draft, he finally seemed to get that global revision meant more than just fixing errors. It was as if he suddenly realized, “Oh – this isn’t high school. College-level writing is a lot of work. College is a lot of work.” After the conference, I congratulated myself on helping this student reach a more complex understanding of writing. There’s been a lot of coverage in the press of massive open online courses (MOOCs), which are often held up as a new future for higher education. As I left my office, I thought, “Oh yeah, online learning? Let’s see you do what we just did here! There’s no way the Interwebs can replace me.”

Later, though, I thought about my other students. At some point over the past few weeks, most of them have probably realized, “College is not like high school.” For some, this realization might have come in my course or another class. For others, it may have come while they were talking with friends at the dining commons or working alone in the dorms. I just happened to be in the room when this particular student had his realization. I might have helped, but this student would have probably learned the same thing another way.

The incident reminded me of something my undergraduate advisor once told me: He thought the most important learning took place as a student was reading on her own, seeing connections and disjunctions between different ideas and her understanding of the world. A professor might only get a glimpse of that learning, he said. And that was okay.

His vision of teaching and learning is appealing to me, but it’s also hard to buy into completely. He saw the careful selection of readings as being an important element of his teaching, even though his effort might be less tangible to students than the comments he wrote on their drafts. He had tenure, and he also had years of experience giving him the confidence that his students would learn whether he put check marks on their papers or not. As a grad student with only a few years of teaching experience, it’s harder to feel so secure.

I’d be interested to know how other teachers feel about acknowledging work. What do you choose to respond to and why? What don’t you collect? I’m especially interested in what it’s like to teach an online course, when you’re never “in the room.” Do you get the same kind of sense of student learning that you do in a face-to-face teaching situation?

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Awkward Beginnings

The beginning of the semester has a sense of excitement to it. There is a newness to the fall semester, a sense of anticipation about what is going to happen.  This isn’t just the beginning of a semester, but the start of a new academic year. And for our first-year college writing students this is the beginning of their college careers. They are excited to begin and I am too. I’m excited to get underway.

 But there also seems to be an awkwardness to the beginning of the semester. I would say that my first couple of classes were fine. The students were there, with their notebooks, ready to go. But there were some uncomfortable silences as well. I did a lot of talking those first few days—more than I usually like to do in a writing class. I talked about the rhetorical situation, the importance of revision, and about how writing leads to discovery. I talked a lot about the things we were going to do over the course of the semester.  And my students sat listening to me talk more than I’m sure they would have liked. I’m really not that dynamic of a speaker. On both of our parts there was a lot of hesitation. When I said “Any questions?” I could see them wondering if they really should ask what was confusing or unclear. When I asked a question I could see some of them hesitate before raising their hands, unsure if what they had to say would be the “right” answer. I found myself also hesitating, unsure how far to push them, unsure how long to let the silences go.   

But this is okay. With newness there also comes awkwardness. The students and I are getting to know one another. As students new to academic life, they are unsure how to be in a classroom with a teacher they don’t know, with classmates they don’t know. They are figuring out who I am, what my expectations are, if I really mean what I say about the importance of taking risks.

I’m also getting to know them, trying to figure out how long it will take them to do peer review, how long they need to do a freewrite, what knowledge and interests they are bringing into the classroom. I’m trying to figure out if they will be a quiet class or a talkative class, how long will it take them to do any given exercise and activity.

It takes time to get to know one another.

This weekend I read through the first drafts of their first papers. I was looking forward to reading these drafts because I knew through their writing I would begin to get to know each of the students in my class a bit better. And I wasn’t disappointed. Through their writing I began to see them as individual writers with fascinating things to say. As I wrote my responses to their drafts, I found myself hoping they would know that I truly am interested in what they have to say and want to help them progress as writers.

But as I was sitting at my desk this weekend reading through these first drafts, I realized something else. These drafts are the real start of the semester. Telling students how to write is not the same as putting them in motion. And now that we are engaged in the process of generating writing, drafting, responding, and revising the awkwardness of the first couple of weeks is fading away.

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Facing the Blank Screen

It is the end of the semester! Yahoo! And although the conversation I have with everyone I meet on campus this week is “I can’t believe the semester is over already! It went by so fast!” January does seem a long time ago. I began this blog at the beginning of the semester with the intent of posting an entry a week. With the help of some guest bloggers (Thanks Mark, Kate, and Deirdre!), I have met that goal. In January I didn’t think writing a post a week would be too difficult. I’m a writer, I like to write, and I have a lot to say. As the semester moved along I began to joke that I didn’t realize what a demanding pace writing a weekly blog was. It wasn’t really a joke.  My plan in January was to write my post early in the week so I would have plenty of time for drafting, thinking, crafting sentences, revising. However around mid-semester I found myself starting my weekly posts closer and closer to the deadline and therefore condensing this writing process.  Regardless of a few stressful nights, I’m not sorry I took on this task and plan to continue—well maybe with the help of a few more guest bloggers. But I’ve learned some things this semester by writing this blog, some things I will take with me into the College Writing classroom in September. 

 Here is what I’ve learned:

 1)     Facing a blank screen /page every week can be daunting.

 2)     Despite the best intentions, things like other work priorities & life obligations can and do get in the way. 

 3)     I don’t always write the best I can.

 4)     I don’t always practice what I teach.

 5)     Sustained weekly writing does make me a better writer. 

 Understanding all this may not make me a better writing teacher in September, but it will help me be more empathic towards my students and hopefully more humble in the classroom.

 

 

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Pen and Trowel

This past weekend we were lucky to have Monday off due to the Patriots Day Holiday and the weather was great. I was able to get outside and start working in my garden. I raked oak leaves, cut away last summer’s plant stalks, and picked up dead branches. I like having a garden for all the usual reasons—the flowers, it’s nice to grow things, a garden makes my yard look better. But having a garden also helps me to better understand the writing process and teaching. Now I know this isn’t anything new. The garden as a writing metaphor is common, and the garden as a teaching metaphor is, well, cliche. But, I’m talking about something different here.

First I need to make two things clear.
1. I love to write. Really—I’m not just saying this because I’m a writing teacher. I love to write. I love working on a piece of writing—working on sentences, working out the structure, revising. I love being absorbed in a writing project. My favorite part of the summer is that each morning after I walk my dogs by the lake, I can go into my study and work out a narrative problem in my novel.

2. I don’t really like working in my garden. I know I should work in my garden. I know I should be out there everyday weeding, moving plants around, cutting things back, watering, fertilizing, dead-heading, spreading mulch. I know my garden would look better if I did all these things, but I tend to procrastinate and avoid getting out there to do what needs to be done. I’m always happy once I’ve made myself weed because the garden does look better, but I must admit working in the garden is something I usually have to force myself to do.

So what I’ve come to realize is that I like having a garden more than I like working in the garden. It is this realization that helps me better understand writing and my teaching.

I think it’s safe to say that most people don’t like writing and most of these people are in my required first-year writing class. Granted I’ll get a student or two who loves writing, but most of the students in my class don’t like to write. I hope this doesn’t sounds too critical or mean. But it’s a fact and I know it’s a fact because most of my students are up front about how they feel about writing, reading and English classes in general. “I never liked English classes,” they will say. “I don’t like writing and I don’t like to read,” they will confess to me in my office. “No offensive, Professor Woods, but I dreaded taking this class.” I like that my students feel they can be honest with me.

I think I’m like most people. Because I love something it can be difficult for me to imagine that other people don’t like what I love. I’m still shocked when people (students and non-students) tell me they don’t like to read. Really? I think to myself. How can anyone really not like to read? My students are also very willing to point this out. “You don’t understand,” they will say.“You’ve always been a good writer because you love to write.” Well they’re wrong about the part that I’ve always been a good writer, but they’re right that I have always loved writing. It’s because I love to write that I work at it and want to get better.

But I think they are right that I always don’t quite understand why they don’t spend hours and hours thinking about their essays. It is gardening that helps me understand what they are saying. Just like I want to have a garden, but not too keen on the process of getting a beautiful garden, my students want to have an essay, but aren’t too keen on the process of writing it. To put it simply, I like having gardened; my students like having written.

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Early Morning Musings: Teaching at 8:00 AM by Deirdre Vinyard

Deirdre Vinyard is the Deputy Director of the UMass Writing Program. She teaches the first-year writing courses (College and Basic Writing) and directs the Basic Writing Program.

Ok, I’ll admit it. When I ended up teaching a section of Basic Writing last spring semester at 8:00 AM, I hadn’t actually requested that early hour. After I had assigned all the Basic Writing sections based on teacher preferences, the one section left over was at 8:00 AM. A little resentful, I took it and vowed to avoid scheduling classes this early in the future. I was sure that my students would come to class late, or worse, comatose, and that I would be fighting with them all semester about my attendance and late policies. The class I taught was one of five sections of Basic Writing that semester, so the students had little choice, and I thought they would be annoyed about the time. I also feared that discussion would languish at that time of the day, with everyone’s system just barely waking up by the end of class. I pictured myself lugging an espresso machine to my classroom on the first floor of Bartlett just to get through the semester.

The first day of class, I took an extra early bus, to make sure that I arrived on time. That winter (remember winter?) was cold and bright with snow. The sky was still a bit dark as I boarded that Amherst-bound bus in mid January. As we rounded the corner onto Massachusetts Avenue to the UMass campus, the morning sun was just coming into full form, lighting up piles of hard, white snow. It had begun, my 8 AM semester.

I arrived at class that first day prepared to wait for my students, sure they would drag in late. To my surprise, more than half of my students got to class at least 10 minutes early. An even greater surprise was that about half my students consistently arrived at class earlier than I did. As the semester progressed, they took the time before class to chat, listen to songs on each other’s I-pods and amuse each other with tales of dorm life. I found out at the end of the semester that three of them had taken to going to breakfast together after each class. I had assumed that my students would be mute with fatigue. They were anything but.

As the semester progressed and the sky at the bus stop each morning grew lighter, the students in my 8 AM class continued to get to know each other. A few snuck in late on occasion (I did have to talk to one student about lateness) but in truth, my students were tardy no more often than they were when I taught at 11:15 (a time considered very much before his preferred rising time for one of my students that semester). So my fears about the perils of the eight o’clock class were allayed.

But then I realized that something else had happened, having nothing to do with my students. My teaching was over by 9:30, leaving me the rest of the day to work on other things. I find that even though I have been teaching for a long, long time, I still mentally prepare for my class a little bit up until the time I teach. By finishing so early, I felt that I was more focused on my other work (and had longer stretches of time to do it).

So this spring I opted for another 8 AM class, this time a section of College Writing. To my surprise, the section filled up very quickly in the registration period, a sign that students were truly looking for an early class—since many sections of College Writing later in the day filled after my 8 AM section was full. This semester, I have almost no lateness. I have not had to reprimand my class or any of my students individually even once. In talking to my students, I have found that they have a number of reasons for wanting to have an early class. Four of them are on UMass teams and have practice later in the day. Two of my students are roommates and wanted to merge their schedules to make getting up and out of the room a collaborative effort. I even have one student this semester who took my 8 AM class in Spring 2011—clearly a fan of the early morning sky.

I recognize that problems can arise from teaching at 8, particularly if the students have little choice in registration. As I said, the students in my Basic Writing class had only five sections to pick from, and I did have to speak a few times about lateness. I think the 8 AM choice works better for College Writing since students have over a hundred options.

Given the boost to my work schedule (and the nice surprise that I do not face a pile of slumbering bodies twice a week), I am definitely going to go for the early morning class next time I teach College Writing. (I’m even beginning to feel a little nostalgic for the cool light coming from a January sky in the early hours before class.)

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Re-Visiting Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich, the poet, essayist, and feminist, died last week. When I learned of her death, I was, of course, sadden, and then her words about revision—“[r]e-vision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction…”[1] came to mind. It wasn’t too odd that her words came to me, because these words from her essay “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” are never too far from my mind. It was through Rich’s essay that I really understood the meaning of revision as a continuous process.

Although Rich’s work has influenced my work as a feminist writer on many levels and in many ways, it is this concept of re-seeing or re-visioning that I carry into the writing classroom. I work to move my students away from thinking that drafting and revision are about getting to the perfect text as quickly as possible. I ask them to think of the texts they create as never done; to see their work as ever-changing pieces of writing. I encourage my students to acknowledge, to articulate, to examine the eyes they see, read, and understand with. I do this by writing “revision” on the board as “Re-Vision.” I do this by designing exercises that ask them to re-see what they have written.  I do this by paraphrasing Rich—Remember, revision is not about fixing or correcting. It’s about the act of re-seeing.   

If you haven’t read “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” (of if you haven’t read it in a while) I encourage you to do so. You will find the piece in many anthologies, but also here at this link: http://www.nbu.bg/webs/amb/american/5/rich/writing.htm.

 As Rich invites us to return to “old texts” with fresh eyes, I invite you to share your “old texts,” here, with all of us. If there is a text that has influenced your work as a writer and a teacher of writing, please share it with us.   

 

[1] From Adrienne Rich’s essay “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” from On Lies, Secret, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978

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The Do Nothing Teacher

This semester I’m teaching an experimental writing workshop. The class has 12 students and we meet once a week for 2 1/2 hours. The course is divided into three units and for each unit the students complete a writing project. The day the unit projects are due we spend the majority of the class reading one another’s projects. I should clarify here. The students spend the majority of the class reading one another’s projects. I spend the majority of the class doing nothing. I do have a pedagogical reason for doing nothing—since I’m going to collect and comment on all the projects I want to give the students the opportunity to read as many of their colleagues’ pieces as possible. I also find the discussion we have about the projects to be so much more productive because I have yet to read them. The students must carry on the discussion without me interrupting constantly with my 2 cents. So while the students are reading through their projects, I’m sitting there trying to look like I’m doing something. Sometimes I write in my notebook, sometimes I read the book I’ve assigned for the following week. I’ve considered bringing my laptop in order to do get some work done while they’re reading, but I don’t want them to think I’m checking my email or on Facebook (just for the record, I don’t have a Facebook page). I’ve also considered using that time to read, but I thought I would feel funny reading while they are working. I feel I must do or at least look like I’m doing something that is class related.

 This also happens to me when I teach College Writing. I set up the peer review activity or some other kind of revision activity and then I watch the students work. Sometimes I sit at the “teacher” desk in the front of the room, open up my lesson planning book and look at it. Sometimes I stand by the blackboard and pretend I’m gauging their progress with the activity. Periodically I circulate the room under the pretense of checking in with them, but really it’s only to give me something to do while they were working. During these days, like in my experimental writing class, I’ve been tempted to pull out a book to read. But it doesn’t feel right. I don’t want them to look up and see me reading The Hunger Games when I’m supposed to be teaching the class.

 I don’t think I’m alone with this problem. In fact I think this is a common problem in writing classes. When the students are writing in class, doing peer review, doing any kind of activity either in groups or individually, what is the teacher supposed to be doing?

We think that as teachers we are supposed to be doing something in the classroom. And of course we aren’t wrong in thinking this—we are supposed to be teaching the class. But sometimes we think teaching means we should be explaining something, lecturing about something, telling the students something, calling on people, and answering questions. Sitting at the desk, reading a novel is not teaching the class. So while the class is actively engaged in peer review, there can be such a strong temptation to interrupt the students as they work. Sometimes I catch myself interrupting them to further explain something, letting them work for a while and then interrupting again to tell them something else. Sometimes I find myself pacing around the room and hovering over them as they read and write. I don’t think any of this really helps them learn.

 Since this is such a strong temptation and since doing nothing can make me uncomfortable in my own class, I need to keep reminding myself that teaching just doesn’t take place in the classroom. Every teacher knows that all the work we do outside of the classroom – the papers we read and respond to, all the prep work, all the lesson planning is all a part of our teaching. But when I’m in the classroom pretending to be doing something “teacherly,” I have to keep reminding myself that I’ve already done a lot of my work as a teacher before I’ve walked in. The lesson plan I’ve designed for a peer review day or a revision activity is my teaching. And since writing is an activity that is best learned by doing, creating the space for the students to work through the activity and letting them do it is teaching the class even if on the surface it looks like I’m not doing anything.

Of course it’s difficult, and of course I’m not saying I would ever be comfortable with putting my feet up on the desk, drinking coffee, and reading the paper while the students are working. But I’m working at being more comfortable with taking on the role of time manager, being quiet, and getting out of the students’ way so they can learn.

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Teaching texts that seem difficult but are worth the risk by Kate Litterer

This week’s guest blogger is Kate Litterer a second year MFA student who currently teaches in the UMass Writing Program. Kate is a member of our Resource Center staff and serves on the Writing Program Curriculum and Diversity Committees.

 One of my teaching goals is to help students learn to analyze and respond to what they read so that they can ultimately learn to argue and develop their own points for their own purposes.  In order to get them there we read essays from our common reader, Other Words, an anthologized collection of essays by many different writers on and in many different themes, topics, and styles. What I enjoy most about Other Words is the diversity the texts offer to me as an instructor. I don’t mean just in terms of the topics or themes, either; many of the writers are minorities and their being so offers enriching readings of the essays. 

 Before this year I stayed away from essays I felt were too difficult to teach. Indeed, I hope that I can find ways to teach my students how to read and respond critically to texts no matter the theme or topic, but I avoided essays that I felt might spur challenging conversations about race, gender, sexuality, class, etc. This is surprising, as these things motivate me in my own studies as well as my discussions, my friendships, my research, and my writing, but I was nervous to talk about them in my role as an instructor! However, I decided that it was the important thing to do, and starting with “My Memory and Witness” by Dean Spade and Lis Goldschmidt, I breached the topic of a personal essay about transgender identities and class inequalities.

 There is no way to tell how a class will take a text; fifteen different bodies and minds from fifteen individual experiences affects the ways they will read a text. During that particular conversation one of my students spoke for the entire class, stating, “We don’t have experience with [being poor] so we don’t know what to say about the essay.” I was dumbfounded—much of my identity as a scholar (and a person) comes from my working class family background and reading an essay from and about a working-class experience is not only natural but also exciting and powerful. Of course, I didn’t expect my students to all jump on the personal experience as connection train, though; I just didn’t expect them to speak for one another, to assume they could not enter to text, or to give up on their analysis before they had begun.

What I did and do is take a step back and talk with my students. Sometimes this involves asking them questions: Why didn’t they think they could get into the text? Why did Spade and Goldschmidt write about the topic, then, if not everyone could immediately access the text? Who are Spade and Goldschmidt? Why does it matter that we are reading this text? Sometimes we take a break and they write about their response or their ideas before we chat. This has been instrumental in helping my students to enter into texts that are initially difficult, because they feel they don’t fit into the text personally or as a student (difficult texts can include those that are formally challenging, too!).

 In my opinion, I can say that students enjoyed and benefited from reading difficult texts…sometimes we just had to have a class discussion in order to help them find their way into the texts. With Jamaica Kincaid’s “A Small Place,” I ask my students to share their responses (which are sometimes, if not often, viscerally harsh) before we look at the style of the text. I recognize that they bring their fifteen different feelings and responses to the text and we/they work together to talk through the purpose, style, and rhetoric of the text. What I love most about these discussions is they way students engage with one another, supporting and building on one another’s points, adventuring into the text together, and eventually hitting on the purpose and importance of the text.

 If I had to say what I have learned about teaching “difficult” texts is that it is entirely worth it. Sometimes it doesn’t go exactly how I had planned and I have to extend discussions or offer prompting questions. Sometimes my students challenge one another, the author, or me. But through all of these sometimes difficult situations I have found that my students and I both appreciate our new knowledge about something that is more than just rhetoric, style, and form; we appreciate that we are learning about the world, about what matters to real writers and audiences, and about how writing can express those powerful voices to larger communities.