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.