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.