Process

My process is thusly: Pace. Stare out the window. Smoke cigarettes (not recommended). Drink lots of water (recommended, writing or not. It is hot here. One gallon per person per day). I also like unrelated reading materials around, perhaps a news site minimized in the browser. This is why the unrelated reading material: When a person looks at stars, the more she stares at a specific star, the dimmer it becomes. However, by shifting the gaze to the left or the right increases the apparent brightness of the target star. I don't know why this is so, but the same principle works for writing. If I get gummed up, I look to the left or right of the task at hand. Sometimes, by not thinking about a solution directly, a solution appears. Curious, Alice, curious.


Process for a comp course is very important, too, I think. But I also really like Donald Murray, so, you know...Naturally, there comes a time when we have to judge student writing, and we should not let a student's amount of effort in the process shade our evaluation. I have had to fail students who busted their butts in the process. And, while I praised their efforts, those efforts did not translate. So, in that way, I make it clear that process can only help with the product. It is the means to the end of producing strong writing. It is not the goal in itself. Though I do think that, regardless of grade, the experience is valuable. It should be at least.


Nonetheless, I couldn't help feel like a process approach was misleading. It's nice to coach and coach and teach and root for our students, but the fact remains that, sooner than later, we'll have to assess and judge, say yea or nay.


But to do otherwise is to reward effort alone. That's a dangerous road to travel. Without the discernment we have to exercise on student writing come evaluation time we are essentially a nanny service, and the benefits of process in writing devolve into busy work.

Voice Goes to Market

I would say that voice, whatever exactly that is, should enhance academic writing. To explain why, I think it's useful to move outside the realms of composition, which will also address my belief that we can be successful academics precisely because we cultivate a distinct voice.

In my secret life, I'm a messy thinker about the relationship between science and religion in contemporary ethics, especially when it comes to bioethics and how those questions relate to quantum physics, the origins of the universe, and whether or not there exists room for a prime mover, an unacted upon actor, and the other phrases we use to demystify the idea of an intelligent force who is solely responsible for our existence. You know, the whole God, gods, Goddess question. Semantics! Semantics!

Regardless, I offer the opening passage from Leon R. Kass' "The Wisdom of Repugnance" to illustrate a few key points:

Our habit of delighting in news of scientific and technological breakthroughs
has been sorely challenged by the birth announcement of a sheep named
Dolly. Though Dolly shares with previous sheep the “softest clothing,
woolly, bright,” William Blake’s question, “Little Lamb, who made thee?”
has for her a radically different answer: Dolly was, quite literally, made.
She is the work not of nature or nature’s God but of man, an Englishman,
Ian Wilmut, and his fellow scientists. What’s more, Dolly came into being
not only asexually — ironically, just like “He [who] calls Himself a Lamb” —
but also as the genetically identical copy (and the perfect incarnation of the
form or blueprint) of a mature ewe, of whom she is a clone. This longawaited
yet not quite expected success in cloning a mammal raised
immediately the prospect — and the specter — of cloning human beings: “I
a child and Thou a lamb,” despite our differences, have always been equal
candidates for creative making, only now, by means of cloning, we may
both spring from the hand of man playing at being God.

Whatever we may think of the content of the paragraph, it's clear that there is a speaker, a voice articulating and warming to a theme of some pretty heady ideas in accessible, fluid prose. There can be no doubt that Kass is a real live human being with real live thoughts and that he wants to get something he feels important across to us, non-theologians and non-scientists. The sentence structure is varied, complex, and aids our eye-flow; the word choice is careful; and the tone is appropriate to the gravity of the situation without sliding into mind-numbingly technical or jargonified distancing techniques. Is this not good voice? Are we not entertained? It is and we are. In fact, I am sure it is so clearly intriguing that I have the link to the rest of the article here.

Here's another paragraph. This time, it's from badass atheist and Oxford professor Richard Dawkins and his book The Blind Watchmaker:

Pretend as they will to scientific credentials, the anti-evolution propagandists are always religiously motivated, even if they try to buy credibility by concealing the fact. In most cases, they know deep down what to believe because their parents recommended an ancient book that tells them what to believe. If the scientific evidence learned in adulthood contradicts the book, there must be something wrong with the scientific evidence. Since all radiometric dating methods agree that the earth is thousands of millions of years old, something obviously has to be wrong with all radiometric dating methods. The holy book of childhood cannot be, must not be, wrong.

In this example, the voice is a bit more pronounced, a bit more scathing even. However, in both examples there is a distinct voice speaking. While I find the voice in Dawkins to be a bit too flippant, I don't know that I'd fault a student's writing for that too heavily, especially in light of the paragraph's obvious strengths.

True, both authors have earned their stripes. They are accomplished, respected, and widely read by specialists in their fields and layfolk alike. So, perhaps we argue that they can use voice in their professional writing because they've achieved a certain amount of acclaim. But I think they achieved a certain amount of acclaim because they used their voice in service of their research, their writing, and the advancement of ideas and arguments.

Take on Take 20

One of the most important commonalities amongst those interviewed was a seemingly fundemental humaneness in their various reflections. I don't know that I agree with everything said but everything said was steeped in what can help us overcome any of real or imagined shortcomings in the classroom. Namely, a general sense of compassion for our students and interest in their development.

In my experience, the most rewarding moments are not with those who love writing, who sign on wholesale to the goals of our course. Rather, it's when persistance and commitment on my part whittles down a student's indifference or active hostility toward the class. For me, that usually came with the returning of their first drafts. Because of a near-tragic flaw in my small motor skills, I do not write very clearly. It's more like this: "ths gdafdfad fdsafadf. Expand?" So, when Take 20's professors were talking about commenting on student work, I noted that the importance of good commentary tailored toward the student and the goal of the draft should be seen as a natural extension of the classroom time. So, my chicken stratch actually works in my favor; if students know or suspect that I took time and care with their work, they'll want to know what I wrote. Which means this: office hours. It was here, with their work tattooed in my ink, that I could interpret the scrawl while expanding my commentary. And I was sometimes surprised by which students were concerned with more than the grade.

Take 20 also reminded me that Raider Writer is not the only way to teach comp. While I respect the relative merits of an attempt to provide a more standardized experience, I think this comes at a high price. I do not know my students names. I do not know their writing. I do know what matters to them. So, while much of the video speaks to the potential for a genuine foundation in liberal arts education, one that goes a touch beyond grammatical concerns and correctness, this opportunity is made more difficult by our current system. Surely, a comp course should not focus on haiku, to use an example given in class, but I will not accept that, with an honest, earnest instructor at the helm, the students would leave that class with nothing of value to show for it.

Thus have I heard, Ananda begs alms in many ways. Such that, with the general humane and compassionate views spanning Take 20, we can, whatever we're covering, whatever our course goals, take a nick out of forgivable ignorance and indifference.

Prompt: Why do we teach first year composition

I like stuff that works and stuff that makes other stuff work. WD-40, for instance, is a really good sort of stuff. A high-grade steel blade on a pocket knife is good. AWD in snow is similarly useful. That's the same way I see teaching composition. We are their WD-40, their scrimshaw-handled pocket knife, their AWD in the blizzard.

Or, we're not. Maybe we're place holders until they matriculate with a shrug and get handed off to their employers, to the rest of their lives. I subscribe to the first view touched on above but have seen the second held in the private thoughts of many overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated composition faculty members.

For years, we've heard about grade inflation, barely literate college graduates, and potential employers bemoaning their young recruits' inability to think or write clearly. Those employers, reasonably enough, pass the blame back toward the colleges. In their turn, the colleges blame the high schools; the high schools point to the middle schools, which point to the grade schools; the grade schools, in their defense, then say that parents aren't involved enough. The parents, say school admins, are pawning off their responsibility to help educate their children.

All this probably has some truth to it. However, when was the last time students at the college level were called out to take up their own cause? They are, after all, not required to be in college. No one's forcing them; as adults, they've made a decision. And I believe first year composition courses, in addition to providing the opportunity to learn portable skills we're all familiar with, should challenge students to cut their teeth on the world. It is entirely possible that many of our students just aren't cut out to cut their teeth at the college level.

There's no shame in this. Somewhere along the line, the idea has perfumed our culture that a college degree is a foregone conclusion for anyone willing and able to pay the tab. What this means, though, is that previously respected and valuable careers are now deemed undesirable. This is a classist view that not only demeans any number of careers available to non-degree holding adults but pressures college systems to accommodate students who are, while deserving of the chance to receive their degrees, unable to make it work. There is nothing wrong with this fact. College ought to be hard; it ought not to be for everyone. It is important that, while we support and actively work toward providing opportunities to achieve a degree, we do not confuse the chance for with the promise of.

Take the converse of the argument. Growing up, after abandoning my hopes for a starting position as a Green Bay Packer defensive back (Bye, Brett!), I wanted little else but to raise goats in the mountains or be a stone mason. However, know-how and genetics conspired against me. I did not--still don't--know how to raise goats. As for stone masonry work, I get winded lifting bricks. No one suggested that they make stone masonry work easier in order to accommodate chicken-armed folk like myself.

The same should be true for the why and the how of teaching composition. If the skills in our classes can't be developed, can't be honed and built upon and adapted to the learning which will help our class succeed as students, employees, and humans, then it's possible they missed the point, that they just might need to find another, equally important and meaningful , goal for their lives.

In that way, in addition to FYC's set of learning goals, we are gatekeepers. And while we should keep the hinges well oiled, I am also sure to keep it shut tight when need be.

For another voice addressing some of these similar ideas, click here for an insightful article from The Atlantic about teaching adjunct night classes at the university level.

Prompt: The Three Most Important Concepts in Composition

I love pedagogical issues because they provide a theoretical basis for the scope of our classroom work. I find studies and statistics, philosophies and paradigms, and all the rest of the buzzwords valuable when it comes time to justify our actions, to take stock of our methods and beliefs and how those translate to the successes of our students. However, I am always on the lookout for solipsism and idealized notions that, taken to the extreme, these issues can foster in our beliefs about teaching. For that reason, I try to keep those concerns as closely related as possible to the essential fact that we walk into a classroom as has been done countless times before and stare down the barrel of a group of people who need our help and guidance in order to teach themselves to clearly and thoughtfully articulate ideas to an audience.

That's number one. The composition classroom is a community of working writers. The main difference between the instructor and the class is experience with the struggle. I believe Donald M. Murray, author of Write to Learn, provides a sleek, stripped down philosophy when he writes, "Nulla dies sine linea." "Never a day without a line" is an appropriate concept that acknowledges and celebrates that writing is a process; it is an evolving relationship that, when our students accept it as true, will liberate them from the primers and paranoia that whisper to them their fears and insecurities about writing. It means we can accept failure with an eye for the next opportunity to learn the craft.

Furthermore, reading well leads to writing well. When left to my own devices, I use the first week of class to do little else but hammer home the basic ideas of annotation and active reading skills. For example, if we read, say, The Blue Machinery of Summer, I have each student analyze a paragraph within the context of the essay's main goals. We discuss Komunyakaa's choices, his rhetorical modes, and its success or failure according to the criteria we determine as valuable. When the class begins to define for itself a rough-and-tumble network of "what's good" in an essay, we can then learn as a group how we may appropriate and morph those "goods" into strategies for our own writing process.

And, finally, I tell myself and my students: "Slow down, Turbo!" Buddhist scriptures remind us that we should lean into our discomfort. And, for many students, writing can be uncomfortable. And it is important to me that I reckon with this reality without slacking the line of the expectations I have for their development as writers. To slow down is to think. To think is to assess. To assess is to learn. These steps encourage the process, regardless of the discomfort it might cause. It also lets students know that I respect their intellects. By challenging them to articulate themselves in their writing and their speaking, by challenging them to defend their ideas, lets them know that we are for real. This is big kid school now, and they're expected to, however clumsily at first, think their way through the problems and struggles of writing effectively.

In short, these ideas, at least I hope, have provided a strong foundation for the various writing courses I've taught. They are broad and flexible enough to be adapted to various goals and learning expectations.

First Class Reflections

Wednesday saw my sections of 1301 meet for the first time. Though first days are, obviously, the first and last chance to make a first impression on students, I find that it's also their first and last chance to make a first impression on me, their instructor. This is obvious but worth noting, along with its qualifiers, for a few reasons:

1. In any given class meeting, instructors are essentially teaching, in the case of 1301, 35 different classes. Because impressions and opinions are digested differently by each student, I like to reflect on Wallace Stevens' opening stanza to "Metaphors of a Magnifico" to ground myself before starting. He writes, "Twenty men crossing a bridge, / Into a village, / Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, / Into twenty villages". So, 35 students are 35 students seeing 35 instructors and hearing 35 different messages.


2. My name is in the right hand column of the roster. Dr. Mark Smith, former composition director at Northern Michigan University, told incoming TA's this factoid in order to quell any concerns about our fitness or ability to command respect, convey important information, and provide students with a positive learning experience. Because graduate school asks us to learn and to teach, it can cause some stress fractures in our psyche. However, in even the worst case scenario, I will not do my students any harm with my relative inexperience teaching composition. Though certain teaching techniques may be roughly hewn, I am capable of overcoming these lack-of-experience issues by being a decent human being who knows and cares about the material I've been charged to help them learn.


3. I do not remember the first day of my undergraduate career. Though it is true that impressions are likely cemented on the first day, I don't think that a rough start is that big of a deal. Students, especially first semester freshman, are often overwhelmed, rattled, and eager to overcome their real or preceived shortcomings. In short, I wonder if sometimes they're not more concerned with how they're seen than they are with how they see their instructors. And, for better or worse, those impressions grow fuzzy and indistinct as the semester moves on. We can either reinforce their positive impressions or begin to dismantle their negative ones.

Those are my main thoughts as I start a new semester. For this term, I was more concerned about the technology aspects of the class than I was about presenting material, making a positive impression, or getting flustered or rattled. Though, and this is funny, I could not unlock the cabinet in my second section. I knelt behind the podium, jimmying the key, swearing to myself, and, after class, realized that that's an apt image for teaching composition with or without technology. Sure, there are all sorts of great things to be gained by teaching or taking composition courses, but if the cabinet or the packaging of the material is junked, broken, or flat out stinks, all the goals locked away and theorized about--those goals that will best provide students with the skills and techniques to succeed in their college and professional lives--are meaningless.

All in all, a successful first day. 14 more, and we'll call it a term. Zippy.

It Starts

Welcome to CottonComp, a blog dedicated to reflections on teaching in the first year comp department at Texas Tech. I hope to chronicle here the first five weeks of successes and failures with my two sections of 1301.

Before starting the PhD program in Creative Writing at Texas Tech, I received an MA in English from Northern Michigan University and a BA in English/Humanistic Studies from the University of Wisconsin--Green Bay. My teaching experience includes adjunct work at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College (Business Communications; Communication through Writing),TA and adjunct work at Northern Michigan University (Freshman Composition; Technical and Report Writing), and real-time internet tutoring and essay review services through Smarthinking, Inc, an online tutoring firm based in Washington, DC.

So far, I like Lubbock just fine. It's like a huge city in the Upper Midwest sans trees, water, hills, and Canadian coins being foisted off on me at the gas station.