I scheduled individual conferences with my students this week. We talked about their progress in the class, went over their evaluations, and created a tentative plan for how their portfolio would work. We discussed questions about my comments on their first essays, and some students brought in revised drafts. And at the end of each conference I made it clear to the students I wanted to give them as much feedback as possible over the next week on their portfolios; I told them to feel free to email me revised paragraphs or drafts and I’d return them with comments. I had wanted to serve them.
I’m thinking about Bishop, when she asks herself “Why are my first days in the writing classroom so different than my last days of each term?” (70). I’ve felt that over the last couple of weeks—that difference. And maybe reading hooks started this in me, but I think the difference I’m feeling is the idea of a community. Sure, now I know the students better, they know me, and we have expectations from one another. But it’s also partly because I’m looking at the class and myself in a different way.
Powell says, “A communally focused pedagogy requires that teachers act as guides and elders, subsuming their own needs for the needs of the whole; an individually focused pedagogy pretends to community by claiming that the teacher has “given up” his or her authority” (573).
I’m interested in Powell’s ideas of community, how she understands the course of development in writers and learners, and the responsibility of each to foster other writers and learners on different levels, much like her opening anecdote of beadwork—her learning it and then her teaching it. I think this is how I’m now looking at the class in the last couple of weeks: I recognize that they are on a path that I’ve contributed to, and I’ve felt more responsibility to play an active role in this. Bishop writes about composition teachers from the 1980s, 1990s, and the 2000s hypothetically observing each others classrooms, and this image was especially true to me; I think about the students in my class and remember when professors were actively engaging my portfolios and were offering help and criticism, and I realize that this is now my responsibility to the students sitting in my class.
It’s like fishing with your grandpa, or…
Carl,
ReplyDeleteI echo your feeling of difference throughout the semester, when compared this week. I don’t know what it is, but something is different. It’s easier. It’s more fun and a bit more casual and communal in several respects. I asked my students weather they preferred conferences or class time this week and they all voted for class time. (This completely surprised me. Although, I have decided this is because students would likely spend more time on edits when forced to do so in class, rather than alone in their dorms - which I overheard are currently flooded with tempting holiday jello-shots…whatever those are.) Nevertheless, Wednesday and Friday were spent individually addressing questions, comments and concern while also doing whole class edits, listing genre-specific elements of the essays and collectively pursuing in-depth revisions.
These two classes may have been some of my favorite of the semester. They have been classes that I felt truly echoed much of Bishop and Powell’s ideas of community because the ‘line’ between instructor and student was less visible, maybe even gone. Powell says, “The process of teaching is a conversation that takes place at the intersection of a web of communities in which we are situated” (572). This week, my students and I shared a community of trying to make our writing the best it could be, a writing community that was sharing in the hard work it takes to revise, edit and change your own writing.
Everybody was collectively working, reading, red-pen in hand, truly utilizing our class time. I had mentioned to my students that I have an upcoming portfolio as well, which they seemed interested in – as if it was one of the first times I wasn’t just their ‘instructor’ but a student as well trying to navigate and survive the end of the semester. They asked detailed questions about my portfolio, the requirements and if my process was similar to theirs. I shared a bit with them regarding my own end of the semester revisions and I think it helped them a bit, in some way – to know that I too was working a portfolio of some kind. When my students returned to their work, I started to sing lyrics from Ben Lee’s song, We’re All in This Together. “I’m made of atoms, you’re made of atoms, we’re all in this together…”
This only drew awkward and scared looks from my students, but in a way, it kind solidified our community. A community that has worked hard together to get to this really neat point in the semester where we plunge even deeper into an important process in the writing – revision.
I too thought that Malea Powell's articulation of community was interesting. To me, it seemed as though she was saying that "de-centering" the classroom is mere posturing because, at the end of the day, somebody has to teach something! While initially her tone rubbed me the wrong way (especially because she was explicitly trying to be annoying), I think that her sense of teacherly responsibility is valid and necessary.
ReplyDeleteCarl, when you write that you remember your most engaged professors and feel that same responsibility to your students you are really getting at what the reality of teaching-- the choices we make will make a difference to those students in our classes, and sometimes on a very, very profound level. I think that Powell is trying to express that the overt relinquishing of authority in the classroom is not a strong enough gesture to actually nullify any of the teacher's authority. She seems to be arguing that teacherly authority in the classroom is inescapable, and it is really great to see how seriously all of us take that authority.
I'm curious to know how you are looking at yourself and your class in a different way. Have your expectations changed?
I think the tone of the class year changes in light of how comfortable we begin to feel in our classes that we can be open and honest. The dynamic of the community changes in light of how we get to know each other beyond the stagnant and traditional roles assigned to us (teachers and students). There is a very big difference between a community of "students" and a community of "people," and it is integral that both personas are present to make a classroom community dynamic. I feel that we ultimately always get to know our students as "students" before we get to know them as "people." Thus, in the beginning, they see as "teachers" before they see us as "Carl, or "Jenny," or "Jimmy." Therefore, like Adrianna said, "somebody has to teach something." Our positions of authority as teachers are inescapable and inherently assigned to us in the classroom from the moment we arrive, and therefore is "de-centering" our classroom a facade of sorts.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Powell about her views that our authority can never really by completely gotten rid off. In many ways we are confined by a kind of contextual space when we teach, and thus our "conceived" authority has to be practiced responsibly and with integrity. This never means that we have to claim to know everything, but rather to use what we know in the best way possible.
please forgive my syntax errors...long weekend.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Carl and Jenny: I too noted a shift in the classroom recently. Last week during one revision exercise about strengthening introductions and conclusions, I asked several students to read their introductions aloud for the rest of the class, to demonstrate different ways that just a sentence or two can catch a reader's attention. I asked several students who never participate in class discussions to read a few lines. Everyone was alert, probably because they were afraid I would ask them to read. But also because this was the result of our semester together, and this was their work being read as an example of effective writing, not some professional published writer. They were learning from each other, from the diverse ways their peers had written their papers. The line that Jenny quoted from Powell stood out to me as well as I was reading: “The process of teaching is a conversation that takes place at the intersection of a web of communities in which we are situated” (578).
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