Blog Prompt: Given what you’ve read for this week (or even from previous weeks), what puzzles you? What are you wrestling with? What questions do you have that others might be able to answer/help you wrestle with?
The biggest problem for me is I’m not ever sure I’m getting through to each and every student. When I grade, I’m always second-guessing myself because what seems obvious to me isn’t obvious to everyone else. I guess my basic teaching philosophy would incorporate an emphasis on voice, writing development, structure, and form, but my main objective is to make sure the students understand what they are doing and its importance to their lives. In our last class discussion, we all wrestled with how to confront the lack of a level playing field most schools have when it comes to technology and teaching emphasis. I can’t say with any amount of surety that going school by school will work, but given the current circumstances, it seems to be the most encompassing.
Also, I believe that teaching composition is a beast in and of itself. I understand the financial agenda has a lot to do with how we teach and who teaches these classes, but I think composition studies are sorely lacking because it isn’t treated as a separate entity within the English department. Granted, the English department provides a ton of support, but when are going to stop viewing composition through an all-encompassing lens and start viewing it as it’s own? I don’t know…I think this blog was more of a rant than anything and I apologize now if it doesn’t entirely make sense.
fredkemp said,
October 8, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Olivia, I certainly agree about how much of a “beast” composition is and how hard it is to work with a group of students who come from extraordinarily diverse instructional backgrounds. I don’t want to sound fatalistic, but I think we need measured expectations, and “getting through” to them, or even most of them, may be a bit sisyphean. Giving them lots of writing and feedback, of all sorts, seems like the most pragmatic pedagogy. I don’t thank any one piece of advice or commentary “gets through” any of them, but repetition can do it for most. If they read over and over that their thesis isn’t arguable, they may start trying to find more significant theses. As for composition being separated from the Department, many have done that and had it work out well. The politics are involved and can get nasty. And, as you say, there are a number of non-instructional reasons for the system we have now. Graduate student instructors provide a double benefit: they are cheap teachers and they give us state money by being graduate students Are they the best teachers for the freshmen? Usually not, but overworked lecturers have their disadvantages for students too. Best would be to use tenure-line faculty, but what university could afford that? And where are you going to find all those rhetoric majors. It is a tough problem.
jvontung85 said,
October 10, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I, too, wonder if my comments are making sense to the students. I think you’re right that what seems obvious to the individual in our writing doesn’t communicate to everyone reading it. I’ve seen that with a lot of student submissions–they’ll say something, but not explain why it’s important. They don’t ask the “So what?” question. In my commentary, I try to explain why something needs work; I don’t just say, “That’s not right.” Hopefully that will help the student make better choices the next time around.
kkhammassi said,
October 13, 2009 at 6:34 am
Olivia! We all have our uncertainties. Do not worry about grades. It only means you are a caring and honest person/teacher. I would like to share with you a concern about integrating technology in education from my own experience in Tunisia. There is this piece of research carried out to measure the factor that influences the performances of the Tunisian students at school. The research concluded that social/financial class does not influence the performance in the sense that a student can belong to a very poor family and still be a higher achiever. However, the factor that proved to be either hindering or helping is the family situation in the sense that if the student has family problems, he/she may fail and the opposite is true. This second conclusion is not our concern though. The first outcome of the study is of major significance knowing that the government has started introducing technology at school curriculum. A couple of years ago going to school, all I needed was a pen, some papers and books. I did make through without a computer. Now students will have CDs in their books that they will have to use. Maybe the number of students who will make it through school as brilliantly as others of the same background will be reduced. We need to master technology but how and how fast we should go about it remain the questions one would not know how to answer exactly.
Becky said,
October 29, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Ditto to what everyone said. If I were queen of the world, I would make FYC NOT required. Then I would make it so wonderful everyone would WANT to take it….and thus they’d be invested.
Until then, we’re stuck, and we make the best out of a bad situation. So you treat students with respect, and try your darndest to get them to understand how important writing is and will be in their future.