Student responsibility for learning

I discovered an uncomfortable theme in the readings I assigned my graduate English students for next week, Wendy Bishop’s “Helping Peer Writing Groups Succeed”; Nancy Sommers’ “Responding to Student Writing”; and Lynn Bloom’s “Why I (Used to) Hate to Give Grades”: the over-inflated importance of teachers.

I don’t mean that Bishop, Sommers or Bloom considers teachers a Supreme Being, which might be kind of nice. Instead, they deem the teacher She Who Is Ultimately Responsible for Everyone Learning What They Need to Know, making the teacher culpable for students’ failures.

Consider Sommers’ conclusion that “that the news from the classroom is not good. For the most part, teachers do not respond to student writing with the kind of thoughtful commentary” that makes students successful, engaged, thoughtful writers (358). Or Bloom’s doomsday prediction that “grades are big trouble because they undermine good teaching…[and] inhibit, even block, student discussion and response to the course material” (364). Even Bishop, who usually takes a sunny outlook on life, advises a torturous cycle of self-flagellation in which “a teacher who hopes to use peer writing groups in her classroom…plans for her class, trains group members, monitors and evaluates them, and, the next semester, begins the process again, refining and developing her talents as a group facilitator based on her own observations” (351).

Teachers need to be reflective about their response and evaluation practices, no question there. What bothers me about the attitude reflected in Bishop, Sommers and Bloom – an attitude propagated by student evaluations and high stakes testing – is that they place the onus for student learning entirely on teachers’ shoulders.

When I head towards my classroom on peer review days, should my mind buzz with “what ifs”: What if Jane doesn’t have a draft again? What if half the class doesn’t show up? What if two groups finish in ten minutes and two groups only talk about one member’s essay before they run out of time? When I sit down at my desk with a stack of student drafts, should I search myself to see if I’m appropriating this student’s text or reading that student’s work against some “ideal text” I want to read? Should I wonder, with each and every grade I assign, if this student has, to achieve her A, “relinquish[ed] ownership of [her] writing and with it commitment to [her] subject, engagement with its ideas and point of view, and a willingness to rewrite beyond the minimum” (364)?

Lately, my grad students have been very worried about student motivation, and I see their concerns as part and parcel of the same emphasis on teachers’ centrality to learning. How do we make writers want to revise? How do we interest students in writing assignments or assigned readings? How do we convince students of the value and purpose of writing? We’ve offered each other wonderful strategies, but I wonder if the real answer is simply that, if students are responsible for their own learning, they are also responsible for bringing to the classroom a desire to learn.

Sommers’ essentially accuses teachers of alienating students from writing and, it seems to me, from learning. “In the beginning of the process,” Sommers writes, with all the weighty intonation of a biblical cosmology, “there was the writer, her words, and her desire to communicate her ideas. But after the comments of the teacher are imposed on the first or second draft, the student’s attention dramatically shifts from ‘This is what I want to say’ to ‘This is what you the teacher are asking me to do’” (353). Isn’t this an overdramatization of the teacher’s role?

Personally, I’m a happier – and more effective – teacher the more Zen I become about the whole process. If I could write back to Sommers, I would say that rather than worrying myself sick over how “directive” or “non-directive” to be in commentary, I will enjoy reading students’ essays and then, after putting my pencil down, go for a long walk to consider what lessons I could present in the next unit to help them improve on their next piece. Rather than exhausting myself orchestrating successful peer reviews, I will tell students my idea of responsive as supportive, non-evaluative talk, then give them the responsibility of seeking the feedback they want – and do them the courtesy of assuming they ‘re capable of providing such feedback without my constant scrutiny or intervention. Rather than agonizing over grades, I will make my standards for good writing clear on the syllabus and in my rubrics and grade each writer accordingly.

My job is to know my subject, to present it passionately to students, to reflect on my practices, and to be responsive to the needs of each class and each student. It is the student’s responsibility to learn; it is the student’s responsibility to want to learn. In my classes, when students fail, I should ask myself if I failed them – and sometimes, on a particular assignment or activity, I have, and knowing that helps me do better next time. But many times, students fail for reasons that have nothing to do with me. The better able I am to accept that, the better able I am to do my job, because I’m not paralyzed by self-doubt, not riddled with self-blame. And, perhaps more importantly, the better placed I will be to show students that when they succeed, it is not because of me – it is because of them, because of their talents, efforts, and abilities.

Preparing the next generation

I've been thinking a lot lately about the "next gen" English major. Maybe it's because I'm preparing to teach a writing tutor practicum in the fall, so I'm thinking about preparing English teachers for today's classroom. Or maybe it's because last week my colleagues and I sat down to review our Rhetoric and Writing major curriculum, so I'm thinking about the "value" of an English degree. Or maybe it's because I'm on a committee charged with recruiting new English majors, so I find myself wondering after every meeting what attracts students to English.

English majors have a lot more possibilities than just teaching writing nowadays. Case in point: My husband, who has a BA and an MA in English but is actually an attorney (one who works in healthcare administration, not as a trial lawyer, in fact). When I started out as an English major, I had in mind becoming the next great American author, though admittedly I was convinced I might need to teach to support myself before my first novel hit it big. I look at today's English majors and I think to myself, in our visually-saturated culture, what do you want from your English major?

Our committee polled the English faculty for some slogans we could put on the lanyards, jump-drives, coffee mugs and posters we're going to distribute as "swag" at all recruitment and orientation events. Here's a sample of what we came up with:

English majors: We help you get the words out
Write or Wrong - Workshop It
Write Your Heart Out
English Majors Have Character
English - Because Numbers Don't Count
English Majors luv txt
There's no tense like the present
English - because we already know American
Just in case you run into subtitle
English - Go Words!
English - You just wouldn't understand

It's this last slogan that makes me simultaneously laugh and cringe. I laugh, because I know it to be true: Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I teach the hell out of short stories, essays, and rhetorical theory that many of my students would never bother thinking about on their own. I long ago accepted that I am the weird one in the room, not because I love learning, thinking, writing and reading - many of my students do - but because I see the intersections between those activities in a way many of my students, bright and wonderful as they are, simply don't.

Yet I cringe, because it strikes me that as institutional entities English Departments may be watering down what it is that we do, what we offer. Our Rhetoric and Writing emphasis has opted for the language "marketplace-oriented writing" to describe what we teach. I don't disagree with this assessment; we teach technical writing, grant writing, web authoring, all useful skills in the marketplace.

But do students major in English because they're worried about the marketability of their degree? Do they become English teachers to pass on a marketable skill? Or is it more likely that English majors become English majors because they understand the preciousness of this statement: "English Majors: Without us, you're stuck with reality TV"?

I understand the need to evaluate how our degree programs prepare students for life after college, not only for financial success (which is certainly not unimportant in our floundering economy) but also for professional success (offering them a skill, a craft, they can really use). But I'm wary of creating a new generation of English teachers, authors, critics, or hell, even lawyers and businesspeople who feel like others "understand" what it means to be an English major. I want us to hold onto our weirdness, our bookishness, our obsession with the life of the mind ("Real Life Sucks - Live in Ours"), even if it means we don't go mainstream, can't easily convince worried parents that their child really will make a living from reading and writing.

I want a next generation of English teachers who live by this slogan: Because the world is in the hands of its author, major in English. That may mean we have less people clamoring to be English majors than pre-med, pre-law, computer science or business majors, but I think it's time we accepted that it's okay to be small. Hey, it might even mean we're elite.

The problem of motivation

I think it's that time of the semester when all of my fellow teachers are starting to experience a certain amount of burn-out. One of my graduate students, a high school English teacher, wrote in her post for class this week that a student remarked in her reflective writing how much she loved Ms. X's class because it was so easy. Needless to say, my student, Ms. X, was more than a little frustrated - here she is trying to design a class for writers labeled "remedial" that won't intimidate or bewilder them, and while they seem to be learning and improving, she now has this fear that she's simply liked for being the "easy teacher."

Motivation. It's a tricky concept in writing classes, because let's face it, unless you're teaching a creative writing workshop, most students aren't enrolled in a writing class because they *want* to be there. They're fulfilling a core curriculum requirement or a major requirement, or, however grudgingly, acknowledging that they need to improve their writing skills. But even that last motivation isn't much motivation, at least not from the perspective of a teacher who also loves to write, as so many of us English teachers do.

How do we motivate students? I suppose the first step is realizing that we may have to redefine "motivation." Students are probably not going to develop the same passion for writing that led us all to be English teachers, or else the world would suddenly be filled with English teachers (since every college freshman takes English). But we can motivate students to be interested in their topics, if we give them some freedom of choice and express an interest in what they have to say; we can motivate them to improve their writing, if we offer substantial feedback that engages their ideas instead of only commenting on their errors.

A larger problem may be motivating students to care about learning. The resistance I feel from many of my students, whether freshmen or seniors, whether basic writers or advanced composition students, is a resistance to engaging in the difficult intellectual work of college at all. Students don't want to come to class, don't read the assigned material, don't follow simple instructions for completing homework assignments, don't turn work in on time - or at all. Now, I'm painting "students" with a broad brush, because I have some excellent, engaged students in all of my classes every semester. But I also have many who simply don't want to work, and I get fed up pretty quickly with being the person in the room who is putting forth the most effort. I say this problem is larger because it's more difficult to solve; its roots go deep into our education system, which seems to turn students off from learning at a young age by focusing on rote memorization and useless knowledge, and which doesn't ask students to really "learn," just to pass standardized tests.

I don't have an answer for the problem of student motivation. I have a feeling Ms. X will be disappointed by that response in class tonight, because it would be wonderful if I, the experienced college professor, could produce a magic pill for curing student laziness. I do have some strategies to offer, but the truth is, I'm not sure we can motivate someone else. At the end of the day, students either want it or they don't. It's our job as teachers to make the material clear, accessible, interesting and challenging - not an easy feat, by any means, since if you analyze that list you'll note that some things, like "clear" and "challenging," are almost directly opposed to one another - but it is not in our power to make students want to learn or want to write. Teachers aren't the only people with agency in the classroom; students have their own agency, and with that agency comes the responsibility to care enough about their educations to work hard, whatever the subject or their opinion of it.

Chaos in the writing classroom

Here’s why I like chaos theory in the composition classroom. Friday, I hauled the laptop CART down to my classroom for my basic writing students to use in a “revision workshop.” I opened the lesson by distributing a handout with revision prompts for “re-discovery” and “rethinking audience,” and before I set students to these tasks, I explained my understanding of revision by deconstructing the word on the board (re: to do again; vision: to see; revision = to see again). I had imagined this as a quiet, orderly day, students first attempting a revision prompt like creating character sketches of their target audience in their Writing and Reflection Journals, then opening their rough drafts of the Literacy Narrative on the laptops to begin their revisions.

Immediately, one student – I’ll call her L – bounded up to my desk to ask if I could help her decide where to go. I bit my lip; I vacillated between helping her (my initial inclination) and telling her to try the revision prompts. I want my basic writing students to become self-directed, so I hesitate to do too much of the work of writing for them. But here was L, hopefully extending her essay toward me, so I decided (as Mina Shaughnessy says) to dive in and see where the conversation led.

L didn’t want me to do her work for her, it turns out. She didn’t stand quietly beside my desk while I read her essay. Instead, she leaned over the paper with me, explaining each paragraph: “I was trying to say here why I liked writing,” “This is when I started to procrastinate,” “I don’t know how to end it.” I began asking her probing questions about what she was trying to tell readers and what she had learned about herself as a writer from composing the Literacy Narrative; she started talking about the good and bad aspects of procrastination, and how her writing classes had made her so fearful of writing she didn’t like to get started until she had to. When I suggested a structure that could keep her focused, L didn’t immediately capitulate to my advice. We talked it over, debated its merits, and settled on a strategy she could take back to her computer.

That wasn’t the end, however. Perhaps L’s example had prompted the rest of the class to take advantage of my accessibility. My own writing sat untouched on my desk, my vision of an orderly class disappeared in a puff of smoke, as hands shot up all over the classroom. Students had good questions. They wanted to know if this was a good introduction, if this theme was clear, if they should start over with a scrap of an idea, if this transition from one segment of the narrative to another worked. I ran all over that classroom. I had to set students to answering each other’s questions because there wasn’t enough of me to go around. While this was probably the best teaching day I’ve had in a very long time, to any outsider, I am sure it looked like absolute chaos. And I think that’s exactly what it was: the “productive” chaos Bonnie Kyzburg describes in “Meaning Finds a Way: Chaos (Theory) and Composition”:

When composition teachers and scholars consider their work in the context of postmodern sciences such as chaos theory, they may entertain the notion that order emerges from chaos in unpredictable yet comprehensible (albeit perhaps new and radical) ways. Earlier order-out-of-chaos models endorsed a fairly monolithic and unchanging notion of order that occluded the sorts of alternative discourses currently shaping (our thoughts about) "order" in the form of "effective writing"; they aimed at clarity, coherence, and correctness, specific genres, the modes, and pre- dominantly expository prose. Chaos theory reconfigures chaos as a conceptual metaphor in ways that privilege chaos as order, as a complicated kind of order, or as potential order. 505

Kyzburg’s chaos theory captures the potentiality of post-process theory for composition. Instead of nihilism, Kyzburg embraces a departure from the prescriptive orderliness (I hesitate to say “linearity,” for process theory, unlike process pedagogy, never prescribed a linear writing process) of process theory. Writing is a “complicated kind of order,” meaning that emerges from messy, dis-orderly thought processes that occur as a result of writing, reading, and talking. For instance, I think what happened in my basic writing classroom on Friday could best be described in Kyzburg’s terms as a self-organizing system: “As students engage in chaotic writing processes,…and as meanings emerge from within a wider cultural matrix…we see the possibility of multiple cultural and ideological influences…from a student's mood, to his health, to her gender, to a teacher's pedagogy. Thus, writing does, in effect, self-organize, as the number of influences is potentially infinite and therefore indescribable and uncertain” (510).

Had I assumed that my basic writing students could only benefit from one model of the revision process – the isolated model of a writer working through her/his own meaning, with nothing more than the memory of Wednesday’s peer workshop to stimulate dormant ideas or prompt restructuring and refocusing – I would have sent L back to her desk to “write through” her confusion. And she might have gotten there, and the rest of the class along with her. But by choosing to become an “influence,” a “variable,” within L’s writing process on this particular piece, I think I showed her (and by extension, the rest of the class) how fundamental is the give-and-take between writers and readers. Standing together at my desk, hunched over L’s essay, talking not in whispers but in normal, conversational tones, L and I modeled what Bruffee calls the “productive talk” that leads to new ideas, new insights, new goals. That model was so satisfying to the students listening in that they wanted their own turn, and that excites me because it suggests these disenfranchised writers have ideas they do care about getting across to readers.

In Kyzburg, I find a less troubling version of post-process theory. Although she agrees with Kent that “writing is thus irreducible to "a generalizable process" (5) and is pragmatically unteachable” (510), for her, having no single, monolithic Process to teach isn’t an end to writing instruction. In fact, it’s a new beginning, for “self-organization makes potentially equivalent variables of all variables; thus, students, teachers, contexts, ideologies, and much more all carry equal potential to contribute to the creation of meaningful texts, meaningful theories, pedagogies, and changes to the orientation of the system. That's progressive. That's promising” (510).

I, too, find chaos theory “progressive” and “promising” for the composition classroom because it reminds us that, not only does no single process exist, no single influence “makes or breaks” a writer. My decision to engage with L and her classmates in their revision processes becomes far less fraught with weighty pedagogical consideration when viewed this way, since it’s impossible that this choice means my students will remain stuck in teacher dependency, unable to engage in self-directed revision. Chaos theory gives me the freedom to teach each individual student, each specific class, each particular day according to my best judgment of what might work in that moment, on that task, for that writer. And at the same time, chaos they reminds me that getting it right once won’t solve every future writing problem for these students. They, too, need to learn to “develop a disposition toward the chaotic, to nourish an epistemology of chaos” (519) that values just how beautifully unpredictable writing really is.