Tag Archives: teaching writing

Teacher Appreciation

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Classrooms are organic entities. Each class session contributes in some small way to negative or positive momentum.

This fall my first year writing seminar titled “Teaching’s Challenges and Rewards” began positively and then got better and better. It was a great group of young adults who got to know one another during orientation. From the beginning they decided to give my more student-centered course design and informality the benefit of the doubt.

I lead discussions one and two, and then they paired up and took turns co-leading discussions three through ten. The first pair did a great job preparing their guide, facilitating the discussion, and setting the bar high. Afterwards, I detailed exactly what they had done so well thus nudging the bar even higher. And during that first discussion I purposely sat on the floor, out of sight of most of them, to ensure it would truly be their discussion.

Did their writing improve? For the most part yes as they’re in the process of detailing in their final papers.

One of the students was a Portland hipster who was committed to becoming a nurse. I liked her a lot. Mid-semester she confided in us that she spent a lot of her senior year in high school hiking in and around Portland. She was personable, a thinker, and always had nice insights.

A few weeks ago, after class, she asked if she could talk to me. Turns out she was troubled because the course content had gotten under skin. Now she explained, “I think I want to teach secondary science more than I want to become a nurse.” I told her she had time to learn more about both and that it was a win-win situation, she’d be a great nurse or teacher, both important, selfless professions. Complicating her future was rewarding.

The students’ final papers are trickling into my inbox. Several have added notes like this most recent one, “Thank you for teaching such a wonderful class in my first semester at college! I really enjoyed my time, and I look forward to the next three and a half years I get to spend at this university. This was a very interesting intro class and you were a very good professor to have! I appreciate all of your hard work!”

That’s not meant to be self-congratulatory. I share it knowing I can’t take much credit for the course’s success. It was a great course mostly because they always came prepared, they interacted thoughtfully with one another, and they worked hard on all of their papers. There wouldn’t have been a whole lot I could have done if they came unprepared, refused to engage one another, and threw their papers together at the last minute. If this sample of young people is any indication, I’m happy to report the world is not going to hell in a handbasket.

I also share it to highlight how much easier it is to teach adults. It’s rare for elementary, middle, and high school students to write or tell their teachers how much they appreciate them. That’s why K-12 teachers deserve much, much more of the public’s respect. Instead of scapegoating them for a litany of social and economic problems over which they have little to no control, we should compensate for their students’ who too often take them for granted by acknowledging the importance of their work, tangibly honoring it, and making sure they know they’re appreciated.

Teaching Writing

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I’m in the middle of reading my sixteen writing students’ final papers for this semester. In general, I think the predominant 20th century model of higher education—students gathering in one location at a designated time to listen to a lecture—is hopelessly obsolete. When I was an undergrad I had the good fortune of having several professors who inspired me to read, think, write, and in the end learn more than I ever would have on my own. Despite that admission, I did my most important studying and learning in the Powell or Undergraduate library stacks. Head buried in book, analyzing others’ ideas, noting patterns, grappling with abstract concepts, mulling over papers I’d later write on a typewriter.

My first class, on the first Monday in October 1980, was memorable. Dude, I said to myself since I didn’t know anyone, that’s Kenny Fields (Milwaukee Bucks). And Don Rogers (Cleveland Browns before he overdosed) and Kevin Nelson (USFL). The best first year bball player and two of the best football players in my small writing seminar, what are the odds? Coolest full-length mink coats I’d ever seen. Wait a minute, did she say “Remedial Composition?”

I had been a mediocre high school student and I figured someone in admissions had made a mistake by accepting me, but damn, “Remedial Composition?”

Long story short, I had a great teacher, a no-nonsense, hands-on editor who taught me to write succinctly. Through hard work and a healthy fear of failure, I made genuine strides in just ten weeks. I wrote lots of papers throughout my first year since I was in a three-course Western Civ sequence. I was catching up to my peers pretty quickly. Early in my second year, in a 150-200 student Latin American History class the prof, who was pretty famous for getting under Ronald Reagan’s skin on the U.S.’s Latin American policy, read my name aloud for writing one of the most outstanding papers during one unit. In terms of my confidence, that was more significant than anyone could have realized.

But I digress. The class size at my university for writing seminars is about fifteen students too large. Teaching writing requires intensive one-on-one work. In their last paper, the students were asked to summarize what they learned about the course theme (Teaching’s Challenges and Rewards) and to describe the ways in which their writing did or didn’t improve. Most improved a lot and became more confident. I was disappointed when one admitted to me he was less confident. When I probed why he said because he had never had anyone read his work as closely as I had, and as a result, he learned he had a lot more work to do than he had previously realized. I can live with that.

Unfortunately, I learned too late in another students’ final paper that, despite always concluding with three strengths and three next steps, my careful reading and extensive commenting overwhelmed her and left her discouraged. I feel as if I failed her. She earned her best grade on that paper because it was an authentic, courageous, semi-subtle skewering of her professor.

We need more hybrid higher education models where students spend some of time interacting and learning on-line and some interacting and working on group projects in person. Writing is a process that will prove exceptionally difficult to teach on-line at virtual universities. It requires a student and what the Brits refer to as a tutor sitting shoulder to shoulder, reading, editing, talking, revising, and repeating, over and over.