R3: The First-Year Course

Studying the courses designed by Anson, Canagarajah, Hesse, and Inoue detailed in First -Year Composition: From Theory to Practice proved interesting. Each proposed components that I advocate, but they also left me with a very important question regarding the purpose of a first-year course.

First, I completely agree with Anson’s emphasis on small class sizes for optimal writing direction and feedback. I have found in my own experience that my writers in smaller classes realize the greatest growth. I emphasize the process and provide live feedback during the composing stage as well as the revision stage. I avoid lecture at all costs by sharing a piece of writing, whether it’s stream of consciousness, advertisement, narrative, etc., and then ask the class to identify what makes the genre. Then we compose a piece of the same genre, and I say “we” because I write, too. When I am stumped, I look at my students’ texts and offer feedback while they compose. When they are stumped, they look at mine and each others’ and do the same. This may be highly successful because the course is a creative writing elective, and all students there have chosen to be there, but most take the course to improve their own style, and it works. The constant feedback and small group size seem to foster significant advancements in composition.

Second, although I have not given a great deal of thought to ESL instruction, I had worked with UD’s English Language Institute many years ago, and that experience alone highlighted Canagarajah’s point about considering ESL students as multilingual instead. I really like that approach because it places greater value on what ESL students can bring to any instruction. Forming the course around variety bolsters the course’s practical application, especially when permitting collaborative research, as is frequently expected in the workplace.

Third, Hesse’s program most closely aligns with what I would consider a fully preparatory writing course. It questions writing solely as text and emphasizes the importance of writing separate from a response to literature. Of course, that is important in an English class, but in a writing class, there must be a more realistic view of writing. Hesse mentions the drive that context has over text, which is definitely worth noting. Based on my own experience, very little writing beyond college arises as a response to literature. Of the many engineers, doctors, lawyers, and even teachers that I know, very few write in response to literature. This touches on Anson’s initial point that “A” students were terribly unprepared for practical writing in the career world even though they could analyze literature with astounding perfection. They were not prepared for the jobs for which college seemed to be preparing them. I, therefore, agree with Hesse that context is very important, and knowing how to compose for varying contexts is even more vital.

Fourth, Inoue heavily emphasizes the labor concept. While I would find this aspect difficult to assess, I do find credence in his key points. The final product, I agree, does not have to be a written report. This relates to my fist response about the importance of digital creations. Where I greatly differ with Inoue is in his insistence that the work have an academic focus. I’m not sure what he means by that, but I immediately disdained this belief because solely academic writing does not prepare students for writing in their future. Herein lies my question: What exactly is the purpose of this writing course? Is it to prepare students for further English course writing? Is it to prepare them for future college level writing? Is it to prepare them for workplace writing? What exactly should a student derive from this course?

R3: A Possible better life and better student writing?

I spend about 30 to 45 minutes per essay or research paper, totaling 65 hours of outside grading for each assignment given. One year I calculated that I spend over 400 hours, or ten 40-hour work-weeks, outside of school offering feedback and grading papers. And I average only 90 students a year. The value of my time to a student was made clear when a student looked at the grade on a returned six page research paper with an annotated bibliography, a total of 30 seconds, and then walked to the trash can and threw it away in front of me. I made him take the paper out of the can and told him to have the courtesy to throw it away when not in my presence. Even when rewrites are available for every paper to improve the grade, students do not take the time to rewrite nor look at my comments closely (as evident when I get the rewrites with the originals attached). Such futility. Often I bemoan that another way must exist to provide good feedback so that students listen and I do not kill myself with providing feedback and a grade. Asao B. Inoue understands my pain when he stated that “using conventional grading structures to compute course grades often leads students to think more about their grades than about their writing” (105). I cannot agree more. A better way must exist to engage students in their abilities to “resee” what exactly they are or are not communicating.

Both Chris M. Anson and Asao B. Inoue focus on students owning their own writing, their own feedback, and their own sense of style. Anson focuses on teaching writing about writing to develop a metacognitive sense of one’s writing, and Inoue suggests taking grades out altogether and replacing grades with a labor contract. Both end their courses with portfolios and letters from students explaining what was learned and how this learning will be applied in the future. Though both stress peer editing and feedback, Inoue bases paper assessments solely on peer feedback. He does not grade the papers, only looks them over to see what writing topics might best help the current issues that students are having with their writings. When students provide the feedback instead of the teacher, they have more invested, listen more closely and apply the feedback more carefully. Inoue has found great success in letting students help each other. By taking himself out of the grading, he allows the students to be freer with their ideas and approaches because they are consciously thinking of their writing, not the grade. And their writing improves.

Combining Anson’s recognition for metacognition of one’s own writing skills and style with Inoue’s ideas of student feedback for assessments offers students control of their own writing and progress. I am a good editor. I can help students write phenomenal papers, but only students driven by grades make the attempt to do the three to five rewrites necessary until the paper is excellent (according to my standards). My policy of rewriting until happy with a grade does work well, but I also believe I alienate a lot of students and destroy their own sense of themselves as good writers, when in actuality they really are if they would work or put labor into their writings. I grade strictly, requiring a focused thesis, good development, seamless transitions, concise language, and always a significant “so what?”. By being strict with the grades, I hope to motivate students to rewrite for a higher grade, and yet the number of students who do take me up on the offer—usually those whose grades never need help—surprises me. They are the serious, self-motivated students who look closely at criticism, and they are a small bunch.

Rewriting is one of the best ways to learn how to write, but this rewriting must be done with some sense of awareness of what one is writing and why. Having the metacognition of how a good paper works and where one’s skills lay helps with the rewriting tremendously. When a student does come to a private conference prior to a rewrite, we usually have a 30 to 40 minute conversation, not about the paper, but about the topic of the paper and what they find most fascinating about the subject. Then we look at the paper. If this process works well with students having these same conversations with each other about their papers and ideas, then I can step away from that responsibility too, not to unload myself from such responsibilities (I love having these talks with the students, so much easier than grading) but to offer the ownership of improving one’s writing to the students.

If Inoue’s method of assessment with his contract for labor works and students improve, I have got to give it a try. If metacognition of one’s own writing also helps, that too must be done. (I do like Hesse’s ideas about rewriting the same material into different modes of writing to become conscious of how writing changes and why with its audience.) I may just get my life back if these changes in how I teach writing occur. I am so excited to give them a try, not just in my writing class but my Brit Lit survey and AP Literature classes too.

According to Anson, I can find more class time by flipping the class. Students would take notes on a lecture or reading that I provide for homework so that they come in ready to apply that material in class. Such a shift is doable but would require me to put all my lectures on a podcast or video or find readings, podcasts, TedTalks, etc. that share similar perspectives and information. Then students could review other students’ responses to their responses on-line and come to class with pre-determined questions to participate in the discussion (much like this class set-up). Though such a set-up would take a lot of time (and for me a huge technological curve), the extra class time to help students find good sources or write annotations or critically understand a text would be beneficial and appreciated.

I firmly agree that metacognition of one’s own writing is important because only awareness brings change. But if I can switch students from caring about writing instead of grades, then I must try the idea of grading one’s labor and not one’s quality of writing. I know from my own experiences that doing the writing is itself a lesson. Done often with peer feedback, great changes in students’ writing could happen. Teaching writing without formal grading is a dream come true. Inoue’s proof that student assessments work better than teachers’ makes complete sense, and I too hope to show my students that writing is a labor of love.

Coxwell-Teague, Deborah and Ronald F. Lunsford, eds. First Year Composition:  from Theory      to Practice. South Carolina: Parlor Press, 2014.

R3: Adding to the Mix

R3: Adding to the Mix

This second set of articles from First Year Composition has certainly provided me with additional ideas for components of my own E110 course. However, I have to admit that I often feel like I am in a Chinese restaurant choosing some items from column A and some from column B. As the deadline for the initial outline for our course is rapidly approaching, I am apprehensive whether all of these components that I hope to integrate will come together in a logical and cohesive way. I am also beginning to wonder how the vast difference in the actual class meeting time and opportunities for individual and/or small group conferences between the typical collegiate setting and my own high school situation will affect the decisions that I will have to make in regard to course content, structure, and procedures.
Keeping all of these concerns in the back of my mind, I am intrigued by many of the course elements described by each of the four authors. I particularly liked Paula Mathieu’s name assignment, belief essay and extension, interview project, and letter assignments. I also feel that at this point her overall structure of revolving the assignments around the question, “To what extent is language powerful or not?” seems to be the most logical way to organize my own wide variety of course ideas. I agree with Mathieu’s contention that as James Zebroski points out there is “a need for teachers to model ideas of coherent thinking through the writing assignments we write.” I think that her name assignment would be an interesting one for the students to begin the course with even though many of them will have known each other for three years. It would also set the groundwork for understanding the nature of writing for a local audience. The “What Do You Believe?” assignment seems to be a natural extension of providing the students with an opportunity to write on a topic on which they should feel confident in expressing their thoughts and adds the additional requirement of supporting their opinions with specific examples from their lives and experiences. Adding visual description to either of these first two assignments, as Mathieu suggests, would be an excellent way to have the students see the value of and power in making substantive revisions to their writing. I also enjoyed Mathieu’s description of her storytelling unit. I like the idea of students gathering primary research through oral interviews and enhancing it with extensive background research. I don’t believe that the students will have had much experience with gathering primary material and I think that having them combine these details with their own background research will give them a greater sense of crafting the project instead of just regurgitating research material. Hopefully the assignment will also give the students a sense of pride because their writing will help to keep this oral history alive for future generations. I also hope to incorporate the last two elements of Mathieu’s course material: Writing a Letter You’ll Never Send and Portfolio Letter. I had a very profound personal experience with writing a letter to my husband’s best friend when he was accidentally crushed by two railroad cars while working for Amtrak. Being able to write the letter and slip it into his coffin (with the permission of his wife) helped me to deal with the intense grief that I felt at losing someone who had become like a brother to me. I like the idea that the students will write the letter and then will reflect on and report on just the process of writing the letter. This letter as well as the portfolio letter in which the students reflect on the work they have done throughout the course should certainly help to emphasize and make them more consciously aware of the power of writing.
Other possible activities that I have gleaned from this set of articles are the book review and research analysis assignments explained by Teresa Redd and the group presentations described by Jody Shipka. Since I assume that I will still be required to hold my students accountable for their required summer reading, the 500-word book review could fulfill that requirement. I also really like the idea of having the students submit the review to Amazon.com. This would provide the students with a real-world application of their writing skills. Redd’s interdisciplinary analysis assignment which requires the students to submit a 500-word analysis of one piece of their research data would also be a beneficial assignment to consider for my course. Finally, I am interested in considering a group presentation component that Shipka outlines in her article. I am a firm believer in allowing the students to lead the class in a productive and thought provoking way. I especially agree with Shipka that the presentation should require the students to extend or enrich the issues raised by the assigned readings through an in-class activity. The other elements of this project as outlined in the article: the conference with the instructor one week before the presentation and the follow-up individual reflection are also important to include. My only quandary is what assigned readings to require for this component. This will take some additional thought and exploration.
All of the articles from this text have certainly provided a wide variety of assignment suggestions and structural philosophies. Now I just have to solidify in my mind the direction and scope of my own future course. It won’t be the first time that I have taken a leap of faith as an educator and I am sure that it won’t be the last time either.

R3: Considering Context

As we quickly approach the due date for the initial work on our plan for next year, I find myself searching for common threads throughout all of the approaches we’ve been assigned so far.  One in particular has jumped out at me – the need to consider context.

As we tackled the first 4 readings, I found myself feeling (in certain cases) as though some of the material, though intriguing, may not be applicable in my classroom.  But as Paula Mathieu explicitly points out in her piece, understanding our “place” is critical in determining our approach to a first-year comp course.  As is evident in the numerous academic readings about FYC (Shipka lists 12+ in her suggested reading list, none of which include any of the professors asked to contribute to the text we are studying), approaches to this course inevitably change with time, audience, place, instructor, among other factors like required grading policy guidelines, number of students enrolled in the course, etc.

Crafting our courses will require us to consider all of the factors I mention and the contributing authors allude to, as well as, of course, others, as we adjust to schedule changes (snow days!, last minute assemblies, testing windows, prom, field trips, . . .) and other demands we encounter through implementation.  I do not suggest we not plan – in fact, the plan is CRITICAL – but rather that we heed the advice provided to us to consider our context.

In reflecting for this post, I flipped back through my annotations to look for obvious connections or ideas throughout the texts.  I discovered that many of the ideas I marked were ideas that I thought sounded fun and engaging to teach (like Mathieu’s researched interview – I found this assignment terribly interesting) – I was thinking of myself in the context of the course – what might I enjoy teaching.  I also noticed many question marks with notes like “how might this work at Conrad?” or “would this work in the HS setting?” (like Reid’s publicly posted forums and grading policy). With these notes, I was considering the students sitting in my classroom – my audience.  I even discovered a note in which I mentioned a particular student and how the strategy might be particularly successful for him (I taught him as a 10th grader and know he is registered for this course next year).  Designing a course with particular students in mind has obvious implications (not all positive, of course), but the context in which I will be teaching this course next year (which includes teaching 15 out of the 20 students whom I taught as 10th graders) facilitates some ability for me to consider the context of the particular learners in my classroom to customize the activities to meet some of their specific needs.  This context will be available to me as long as I continue to teach 10th graders and E110 students at Conrad.

To be clear, my plan is not to design this course year after year with my particular students in mind, but I mention my unique context as a consideration, one that is impossible for me to remove from my thinking as I begin to piece together the approach and syllabus for E110 at Conrad.  We must be sure that the context of our individual styles, students, school requirements, and beyond work their way into our course plans, in the same way that each contributor designed courses that met the context of their unique situations.

R3: Theme for Composition (B?)

“The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.”

-Langston Hughes, “Theme for English B”

Langston’s first assignment for English B (and his submission) seemed so idealistic to me.  A professor posing the same assignment to a class of 30 students would surely be lucky to get even 1 response like Langston’s (I thought).  But with a little more direction (“…a page tonight [about how powerful language can be].”) and a curriculum focused on a thematic inquiry , these results seem more realistic.  Bringing student experience and expertise to the center stage empowers, motivates, and refreshes students to excel in life (and composition class)!

As we near the development of our own courses, I am relieved to realize the variety of directions, topics, and personalities encountered in exploring the instruction of Composition in FYC chapters 5-8.  It is refreshing to read about the value of individuality at the collegiate level when uniformity is all the rave at the high school level.  That isn’t to say I’m inspired to jump ship, but I’m inspired to right my own ship.

Mere teachers  can’t change policies that dictate our profession, but we can modify our curricula to foster individuality.  The more we read, it becomes increasingly apparent that what experience or expertise students individually possess are the foundation of course content.  The failure of our education system lies in the muting of such uniqueness in favor of prescriptive methods, general conformity, and strict adherence to the literary canon.

By allowing (and even encouraging) students to discuss personally relevant topics (sometimes even in their native language which may completely ignore conventions of SWE), we are providing ownership, value, purpose, and ultimately intrinsic motivation to improve writing (or expand writing repertoire).  In fact, many of these instructors suggest an even “tighter” focus on individual experience with language and composition to provide for individuality, but still a certain commonality and relevance to keep class discussion (both in class and online) based on composition in a cohesive context.  In other words, composition instructors need to provide a united curriculum that is thematically focused on linguistics yet still provides students with opportunities to talk about their experiences.

Having read the work of 9 experienced composition instructors and being exposed to even more through their references, planning around a central theme related to language and linguistics seems the most crucial decision in the entire planning process.  Most instructors describe their starting point as an overarching theme or question.  No matter what they called it, they started at a concept broad enough to provide many decisions to students and focused enough to ensure resulting work would be similar and rooted in linguistics/composition.

In reflecting on my own college experience, I am most appreciative of my professors who adhered to this school of thought; by involving myself with the content of the course, I became a stakeholder in the course not only for a grade, but for my role in helping evolve the course/subject and providing my own content to help others learn (and likewise learning from the content created by other peers).  Having this realization and reflection, I plan to adapt this practice for my own instruction of Composition and likely any other aspects of writing instruction outside of my Composition course(s).

 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

• Mathieu offered a great framework/hierarchy for assignments.  I really appreciate her point about the relevance of what I keep referring to as a thematic focus – she says the writing in the course will improve grasp of thematic inquiry, and thematic inquiry will improve writing – that is a valuable point to realize to commit to such a thematic approach to planning this course.
• I really valued Redd’s discussion on Rubric Assessment. I find many teachers rely on rubrics for ease of commenting, but Redd makes many good points about grading consistently and providing clear expectations.
• Reid was great.  I honestly never understood his point about Actor-Networks and Assemblages (194-195) because it was a moment of serious text complexity, but he made great points about writing in the public domain (as we are for E688) and his grading process.  I also love his analogy of composition instruction as a fitness trainer developing a workout program that clients need to use appropriately to garner expected results.  And lastly, he makes an excellent point about problems in education as a result of developing education from the context of the 19th and 20th century industry and institution as opposed to the reasons for and the means of how the context of those times resulted.  That’s a really deep realization which could (should) turn the entire field of education upside down.
• I appreciate Shipka’s delineation of writing and composition.