Pedagogy

Most of my teaching experience is derived from working within compulsory classes, such as ENG 101 and 201, the basic components of the Rhetoric/Composition cycle.  So, the classes are not ones students automatically approach with enthusiasm, and this same apathetic acquiescence seems to saturate their senses of the purpose of a college education.  It is mandatory so as to be competitive in the workforce.  College is simply a practical step, not necessarily a time of self-observation and growth.  Coupled with this hurdle, they also carry many preconceptions about writing and language into their classes that have positive foundations, but are by no means paradigms capable of achieving the kind of elevated critical awareness we hope to foster—one that engages to understand problems and offer opinions toward solving those problems.  Student success, then, is not simply a function of student intelligence.  In fact, most are quite smart, but that intellect focuses in directions often difficult to understand or harness. 

Thus, teaching is, at least within this field, entirely problematic.  I deal with students who generally only take the class because they are required to do so; are, hence, preoccupied with their grades rather than their work, expecting from the class a formula into which they plug various pieces of data to end up with an essay that will receive a good grade from me.   They enter college with “critical” approaches that cannot be critical because they lack adaptability, something like the Five Paragraph Essay that morphs into any number of variations, but ones that all end up with similar results on a page:

Introduction

Opposing Point-of-View

Agreeing Point-of-View

Author’s Point-of-View

Conclusion (a haphazard revision of the Introduction)

Though by no means universal, this is the ubiquitous model I encounter, even from writers that exhibit some skill or knowledge of paragraph organization and sentence structure.  Making this problem worse is that each component only has the very loosest of relevance to any other part of the essay.  For instance, differing perspectives do not interact very much.  There is no juxtaposition, comparison, or contrast between different ideas in order to glean any insight into an issue.  Standard rhetorical models are far too simplified.  And asking students to formulate an argument becomes even tougher because they want to bury their ideas at the end, or withhold such ideas altogether while simply summarizing research.  Then they offer an interest-killing “insight” near the end that “there will never be an answer to this issue.”  Therefore, writing this particular assignment has no purpose whatsoever except to receive a passing grade to get out of Rhetoric and Composition. 

This would be disheartening, not because I expect students to be fantastic writers, but because of the lack of interest, mostly in issues about which they might be able to write.  Or they harbor an apathy toward any writing enterprise, as if it were antiquated, a quaint throwback to something basic from grade school.  In order to write, one must exhibit an interest in what s/he is writing, or at least in the process itself.  And far too often the desire for formulas proves itself a function of this apathy.  Writing must be easy for students, or else it is a waste of time in their minds.

So the first hurdle I drag my students over is this apathy.  A student’s writing often improves immeasurably if I can convince him/her to care about something—anything.  I have to be aware of the differences among all of us as a classroom community, and that I have been given a certain amount of practice approaching culture from the perspective of an academically trained critic.  Early on, it’s easy to forget this and to ask students to dive into the deep end of the pool with me when they’re not even all that sure which pool they can find me in.  So, we work to build a pool together.  I’ve used current events, pop culture, campus concerns, and their own individual lives to spur conversations, and these conversations then become the starting points for students.  Identifying such a foundation grounds our community within a discursive framework from which we construct a meaningful nexus of facts and conceptual information.  The rest is matter of helping students seek a set of cogent connections among the data they possess and that which I provide.  Instinctively, our nexus begins to branch, digging newer tributaries into the intellectual landscape. 

Centering the classroom on students allows those students to develop ownership over their ideas, and a sense of responsibility tends to be the outgrowth.  A student-centered approach also allows me to skirt around or even transgress most of the myths they carry about English and its teacher into the classroom.  I take an interest in those things that matter to them.  They often throw something out for discussion they think is funny, and that they’ve learned to be “useless”.  But, I see this as a challenge, and if I can’t develop a discussion immediately from what I do know about the subject, then I will meticulously research it until I’ve developed some lesson that uses the subject as its focal point.  I attempt to promote a student-centered approach that keeps the onus of teaching on me, yet adapts classroom models to fit their interests.

My primary hope is not that they feel as though I have taught them, but that they feel as if they have learned, that they have worked to include tools of the writing process or the meaning of literature into some space of their lives, however cramped a space they are willing to spare.  I don’t ask that anyone walk away from my class an “expert” in the application of rhetorical abilities.  Frankly, two semesters of composition simply isn’t enough time or space to master the sophisticated discourses we hold up as models for emulation.  Doing so only frames the learning environment as stodgy and difficult.  All I ask is that they work to understand what experts do to prepare.  Writing does not seek conclusion.  It is only one voice in a much bigger conversation.  An essay is not a product, but only one step in a search for some conclusion no one has ever truly seen.  Once students understand this, suddenly writing doesn’t seem the daunting task it used to be.