When students walk into our classrooms I would make the presumptuous statement that they are trying to figure out what roles they should be playing just as much as we are. An important line of inquiry posed from this week’s readings is: what are our students’ identities and how does this fit into our positions as classroom facilitators? Or better yet, how do we feel about those roles and how do we use them to both of our benefits?
In this week’s readings, Peter Elbow, appears to be engaging in a skewed version of the old “chicken or egg” argument with himself, but rather than discussing which came first, he is trying to figure out whether it is more important to place the emphasis on our students roles as writers or as academics. The tension he feels between these two roles never comes to a concrete resolution, instead he furthers complicates the matter be stating “I’m proud to be an academic and a writer, partly because I’ve had to struggle on both counts. I’d like to inhabit both roles in an unconflicted way, but I feel a tug of war between them” (82). I think it should be possible for him to inhabit both roles even if he feels like they are inherently oppositional. This makes me wonder how Elbow plans on assigning a role for his students to occupy if he is still trying to reach an understanding between the two. My advice to Elbow would be to embrace his own advice. A concept that resonated with me was when Elbow quoted writer, William Stafford, to rationalize his desire to let students write without worry or fear, or in other words, to write with the confidence of a professional. Stafford believes that writers, like swimmers, need to understand the “value of an unafraid, face-down, flailing, and speedy process in using the language” (78). Students should accept the reality of inevitable mistakes, we all make them, if only to experience what uninhibited writers feel when they write without hesitation.
A way for students to own their work and relate it to their academic lives would be to incorporate what Robert Brooke’s refers to as an “underlife.” This would allow students to reflect on their personal lives and the identities they experience away from the classroom. The importance of using personal writing in the classroom is that it would focus “on the identity and abilities of the student as an original thinker, rather than on the student’s ability to comply with classroom authority” (152). Brooke asserts that these “underlives” are existing identities that students do not get to express or use in the classroom, so they present themselves often as distractions, like engaging in conversations or notes that are done in a secretive way that could be used in a productive way during class. The reason for this, Brooke’s explains, is because even if the behavior mimics activities that are not classroom related, they are often relating to the ideas presented in class (145).
The counterargument to this idea comes from David Bartholomae, who does not see the value in incorporating creative non-fiction techniques into his composition writing course because he does not “want [his] students to celebrate what would then become the natural and inevitable details of their lives” (71). If these details are seeping out of our students “underlives” anyways then why shouldn’t we try to figure out how to incorporate into our classroom curriculum in a way that lets them express their inner identities and give them some authority by letting them write about their lives?
I have seen some of these ideas play out in my own classroom, but it is not the once-in-a-while side whispering that worries me as much as when my students want me to give them all the answers instead of figuring them out for themselves. I do not necessarily believe that my students ask me for cookie cutter formulas to follow for their assignments out of laziness, as much as it is done out of the apprehension they have about doing it wrong. This is why I think it is important for our students to embrace a professional assertiveness while writing, even if they lack the experience to justify the approach. I should clarify here that I do not mean that I want my students to engage in some sort of haphazard cannon ball into the deep end of the composition pool, I want them to observe the methods of experienced writers and emulate them while writing, even if we have to go back and clarify it later. The addendum I should add to my title is that I want them to responsibly “fake” the authority of practiced writers while seeing what kinds of writing they can produce and still accept guidance until they can make that type of writing on their own.
How did you react to Elbow’s idea that we should help our students resist the “am I doing this right” worry that plagues inexperienced writers? Do you feel that we can embrace our students “underlives” without appearing to be accepting of classroom distractions? How can we explain the difference between allowing our students to deviate from the classroom agenda if it relates to the class and not appear to be encouraging unproductive disruptions?
Michelle, you pose many interesting and difficult questions in your concluding paragraph. I will try to field one of them here.
ReplyDeleteAs far as it concerns the resistance to the "am I doing this right?" mentality, I think it is normal that students feel this way. Being new to graduate studies, I too grasp onto such a mentality. The resultant questions may then be: How does one avoid such sentiment? And how can we, as teachers, encourage students to abandon such an attitude?
I totally agree with Elbow when he says, "But damn it, I want my first year students to be saying in their writing, "Listen to me, I have something to tell you" not "Is this okay? Will you accept this?" (Elbow 82) In agreeing with Elbow, it seems necessary that I begin questioning my own teaching methods in order to foster to this student as writer approach. However, in doing so, I begin thinking about the feedback that I have given students. Brooke writes, "As teachers, we want students to write in their own voices, but how can they when we assign them to? And how can their voices really be their own when they are evaluated by us?" (Brooke 149). This is exactly the dilemma I find myself in. During class, students and I discuss personal experiences, and I tell them to delve deeper, to write with their own voice. Then when it comes down to assessment, I feel like I lose consistency with regard to the message I have preached since day one. In the end, I don't feel like I have answered your question at all. I am only led to another question: How can we be consistent in encouraging students to use their own voices?
Michelle, you pose some fabulous questions. I want to start by echoing a lot of what Nic said. Of course, I am frustrated by my students’ hesitancy to embrace the authority in author, but like Nic, I am totally sympathetic to the “Am I doing this right?” question and all its distractions; in fact, when I started my I-Search proposal, I hadn’t written an annotated bibliography/prospectus in so long that I become horribly overwhelmed by the question of whether I was “doing it right” – from format to ideas, I was certain my proposal wasn’t going to meet the graduate standard. Our students grapple with the same insecurities about format and ideas, but they also question their voice and general style, something that I think most of us are comfortable with in our own writing at this point.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, don’t I sometimes wonder whether my tone is too casual? Revise my voice to be more or less academic? Worry about how I am approaching my audience? Sure. I think of these issues as falling under a more mature writer’s questions of whether or not she is “doing this right,” and I wonder if, in those questions, there might be a more productive way to frame the right or wrong question. This goes back to my post on purposefulness (which I have become obsessed with lately); what if we could dismantle or decode the question of “Am I doing this right?” by teaching our students not to think of their writing choices as being right or wrong but, instead, of having consequences that might be advantageous or disadvantageous to the purpose of their writing? In that context, “Am I doing this right?” can become a question that the student does not pose to her instructor but to herself, in regard to her own motives and goals for the writing.
These are all very layered and challenging questions. I like to hold to the opinion that without celebrating the 'underlives' of our students, how will they feel valued and connected as academics? I find this idea most important for an introductory college writing class, because it is exactly this course that seeks to bridge a very fresh and new connection between our student's lives and their new goal - a four year commitment to a state university where they are charged with the mission of succeeding as academics before they are awarded a degree. Where else are they to gain a sense of belonging, understanding and community of such an idea, if not in a writing course that seeks to help and offer them one of the primary skills they will need to meet this goal? On the flipside, if we don't celebrate or at least inform the importance of their 'underlives', I think it can be said we are doing them an incredible disservice as a University in the message ultimately communicated if we only answer the question, "Am I doing this right?" In short, the stories and lives of our students first as writers, seems to directly corrrelate with where they will stand as academics. I like to think WRIT 101 invests in this kind of relationship, in that each paper seeks in some way to engage our students underlives. I don't think any other freshman course has the opportunity and curricula to do so.
ReplyDeleteNoel, I just wanted to say that your post is awesome. I never thought about the question of "Am I doing this right?" in quite the manner that you describe. Thanks for the insight.
ReplyDeleteI have to say, I'm kind of Biased towards Peter Elbow on this one. The situation he describes and the reasons he teaches to a personal voice is much like the one I encountered as a student, and the attitude of Bartholomae is frighteningly similar to what I encountered as well.
ReplyDeleteThe problem as I see with Bartholomae's stance is that it feels exclusionary. Either conform to a standard or else. I think this is sad. After listening to some of my students this year say "I didn't think I would ever be a good writer, I'm more of a math person", I attribute it to this type of attitude in Academia. first year college students should be exploring their voices and exploring humanism, not critiquing it as Bartholomae suggests. There's plenty of opportunity to learn critique in the different disciplines.
I'd like to echo Nic's admiration of Noel's reframing of the "Am I doing this right?" question. Both Elbow and Brooke tapped into one of my greatest fears as a Writ 101 instructor--Elbow by bringing up the "Am I doing this right?" mentality, and Brooke in stating "we worry that they [our students] may see themselves only as gamesplayers, as individuals forced to play the student role and who consequently distance themselves from that role as anyone working in an organization does” (150). I think both of these moments from Elbow’s and Brooke’s texts have a common root—our students’ uncomfortability with acting, writing, speaking, and thinking critically within the academy (and I suspect that their insecurities might stem from the academy-worshipping, personal/student-based-denigrating pedagogy that Bartholomae champions).
ReplyDeleteTheir academic insecurity surfaces in their “underlives,” in the behaviors they use to distance themselves (or reorient themselves, in the case of the “creative use of classroom ideas” surfacing in side conversations, the type of underlife Brooke observed most frequently) from their prescribed role as a student. It also shows up in their writing when that “Am I doing this right?” question surfaces—many students are not comfortable enough with their thoughts to embrace the fact that their ideas, opinions, critiques, and suggestions matter in an academic context, so they’re more concerned with the teacher’s opinions than with making their opinions heard.
Thus, some students might be inclined to see their work in our course as a means to an end, with the end of course being a passing grade and one graduation requirement ticked off the list. These students will forever remain “gamesplayers” and not the “original thinkers” that we all hope they can (and will, after Writ 101) be. I think that one way to encourage their role as original thinkers (and to stave off their academic insecurities) is to value their opinions and experiences, as we do by teaching the PAA and Life Place Essay.
All this thinking about our students’ uncomfortability in the academic realm makes me wonder how we can effectively dip their toes in the academic waters instead of, to borrow Michelle’s metaphor, forcing them to perform a “haphazard cannon ball into the deep end of the composition pool.” I think Elbow has the right idea here when he asserts that we should encourage our “first year students to feel themselves as writers and feel themselves as academics” (72-3). We should take a balanced approach to foster these dual roles, especially since students already struggle to adopt the student role (as Brooke’s article on underlife clearly shows). As Elbow suggests, this balanced approach could include reading and discussing both student texts and published works—a suggestion that I plan to implement better in my classroom next semester (74).
I agree with Joel’s comment in that I’m definitely leaning toward Elbow’s side; to me, Bartholomae’s academic manifesto feels too immersive--to continue the water metaphor--for a first year writing course (not to mention the fact that he completely devalues students’ voices and rails against the personal essay genre, which I believe is a valid and intellectual writing form—but that’s beside the point). As Brooke’s article on underlives shows, our students are already dealing with situating themselves as students—it’s too much too soon for us to force a fully academic role upon them. I’m not advocating hand-holding or coddling, or saying that all of our students are incapable of taking on an academic role—just that we should encourage the academic role in subtle ways (such as having our students envision themselves as entering into an academic/civic conversation in the Op-Eds, having our students orient their own experiences/opinions with the research of experts in their PAAs, etc.). To fully force them into the academic pool—to make them take Michelle’s cannon ball—would essentially be to let them drown.
Nic said, "...students and I discuss personal experiences, and I tell them to delve deeper, to write with their own voice. Then when it comes down to assessment, I feel like I lose consistency with regard to the message I have preached since day one."
ReplyDeleteI read Elbow as an undergraduate and experienced and benefited from his ideas first hand. I like Elbow and, like Joel, I'm biased. So while reading Bartholomae I wanted to think hard about his propositions, and he brings up some ideas that resonate with my experience as a teacher, ideas that conflict with my experience practicing Elbowian rhetoric. I'd like to explore the thread of genre between the two. Considering Nic's assertion, I also have a problem with consistency. I try to get my students to avoid the question "Am I getting it right?" but when it comes for review, I feel like I'm coming to the essay and asking "did they get this right?" And maybe it's genre that I'm thinking about here. That's where Bartholomae makes an intriguing assertion: "The danger is assuming that one genre is more real than the other...-in assuming that one is real writing and the other is only a kind of game academics play. In order to play against my bias, I want to think about Bartholomae's suggestion that Elbow is only focusing on the writing of one genre. Elbow asks, "Is there a conflict in general-apart from first year students or students in general-between the role of writer and the role of academic? Elbow lumps the argument into writer vs. academic. Bartholomae seems to address the argument between writer of (a) style, to writer of (b) style, to writer of (entire alphabet) style. However, Bartholomae also seems to argue against the specific genre of personal narrative.
My problems manifest in genre, in the students struggle to identify appropriate writing while using invention and free thinking to establish appropriate writing. I want to think that this is something the student learns over time, not just in the first year, and that the lessons that are imperative are the lessons of authority with their writing, learning to adapt that authoritative voice to different genres, to academia. But still, my students seem to continually get hung up on, "am I getting this write?"