Developmental Writing in the Historical Trajectory of Rhetoric

This post originally appeared at Balancing Jane. 

"So when you get your PhD, will they let you teach real classes?"

This question came from a student in my first year of teaching developmental writing. I was saddened by her apparent belief that she wasn't a "real" student and told her so, but the question kept coming up in different forms.

One particularly strong writer who had spent the semester producing complex pieces of analysis written with poetic flair seemed almost angry as he visited me in office hours (voluntarily) to talk about his future plans as a writer: "What is this? Are you just trying to be a big fish in a small pond? Why are you teaching this class?"

Most heartbreaking of all was a student who said in front of the entire class, "You seem really smart, so why are you teaching us?"

It's a question I've gotten from other sources, too. Colleagues and classmates have asked me what I want to end up teaching, as if a career in developmental education could only be a stepping stone and never a goal. They mean well, and I actually think it's often meant as a compliment, but it stings because I know that their perception is contributing to the cultural climate that makes my students think of themselves as unworthy of "real" teaching, as unfit for a "real" college class.

It, quite frankly, breaks my heart.

And as a scholar of rhetorical history, it also perplexes me.

Code Switching and Culture Series: On Short Skirts and Black Vernacular English, Making Choices from the Intersection

Since we've been discussing code switching and culture on this blog, I wanted to share a post I published previously on my personal blog Balancing Jane. Check out the other posts in the series here and here. And if you have something you would like to add to the conversation, please let us know!

*****

"That student's skirt is too short. You should tell her. It could be a distraction."

Sigh.

I am an educator, and I want all of my students to be successful, but I understand that "success" is not a one-size-fits-all path. Besides, I am not just an educator. I am also a feminist. I am a rhetorician.

So when someone starts telling me that it's my job as an educator to interfere in my students' personal communicative choices, I have to make decisions from the intersections.

Conversations: Time Management and Remembering Information

Robert Talbert writes about his experiences with "flipping" a college calculus class in a recent Chronicle post. He explains that one of the biggest challenges his students face isn't with the material of the class, but in crafting a time and information management system that allows them to be successful, particularly when there are so many little projects involved in their class work.

 

Talbert explains that he would create an online system of reminders for each part of the project (since all of the deadlines are given in advance), but his students handle it differently (and less effectively):

"But for students? Most of them simply try to remember what they need to do, and this is a terrible idea. The brain is an excellent tool for processing information but a terrible one for storing information. Students misremember what they need to do and when, or just forget it. As a result, the #1 negative comment about the class so far from students is having to 'remember several different websites' for their work--which in fact is not the case, as there's one website that puts all the resources and assignments within three clicks of each other. But in their minds, it's not one project but half a dozen disconnected tasks."

Conversations: On Which I Do Not Bash Textbooks

This is not a post bashing textbooks.

It could have been. I, like every teacher I've spoken to, have my textbook frustrations. I worry about the places where they deviate from my own philosophies, the times when they seem to talk down to my students, the times when they seem to talk over my students' heads, and--perhaps most of all--making sure that I use them enough to justify the (often astronomical) cost my students incur by purchasing them.

But I'm not going to bash textbooks.

Conversation: Fake Poker and Having No Stakes, How Do We Manage Audience?

When I was in college, we had a friendly poker game where people would pitch in their spare change. It was tournament-style play. Winner and second place took home some cash.

It wasn't much. In fact, it was usually less than ten dollars, but we were poor college students, so there was one day when no one had the spare change to pitch in, but we still wanted to play.

So we divvied up the chips and played anyway. It didn't work. 

Conversation: Is Parenthood a Barrier to Education?

This is anecdotal, I realize, but a summer class started this morning. Like most classes, the full roster in front of me did not correlate with a full classroom. Each first day, some students don't show up. There's been a nagging trend: most of the people who don't show up are women. In fact, almost all of the ones who didn't show up to my class this morning were women.

Obviously, being a woman doesn't necessarily mean that you're a mother, and being a mother doesn't necessarily mean that you're the only caregiver available for your child. Still, it seems that a lot of the students who disappear mid-way through the semester are also women, women who have often been struggling to find stable childcare.

Conversation: Remembering What It's Like to Be "Developmental"

This post has been cross-posted from Balancing Jane. 

I love to write, and I have been doing it for as long as I can remember. When I was in elementary school, I used to scribble stories on napkins. When I was in middle school, I kept hundreds of pages of angst-filled journals. In high school, I hid in the back of math class and wrote poems in the margins of my notebook (I still studied for math; don't yell at me, math teachers). Writing has always been something that I just do. Sometimes I get the urge to write and literally cannot sleep until I get up and do it. I've learned not to fight it.

But my students don't always feel that way. Some of them do. In fact, I am always blown away by at least one or two students every class who just clearly love writing and have a very clear talent for seeing the world through a creative and unique perspective. They are a joy to teach.

But so are the ones who hate writing, and there are a lot of them. See, I teach developmental writing, so my students have often been told (or have told themselves) that they "can't" write. They sometimes hide behind that "can't" to protect themselves from the sting of failure. If they don't believe they can do it, an F on a paper isn't a big deal. More often, though, that "can't" isn't just a shield; it's a block. It stands in the way of everything else they will do in my class.

I give them analogies, of course. I tell them that too many people treat writing as a one-shot thing. It's like they decided to try being basketball players without practicing, walked onto a court for the first time, picked up a ball, shot it from half court, missed, and said "Oh, I guess I can't play basketball."

When Students Say, "You don't like me"

Last week, one of my students, when confronted with a bad grade, asked me why I don’t like him. In 8 years of teaching college writing, I have had several students ask some version of the question, “Why don't you like me?” They have asked with genuine confusion, hurt, and disappointment, either about a bad grade or my refusal to excuse a late paper.

I have genuinely liked all of these students, and many ended up acing my class. But the question from last week and semesters previous has me wondering: what does my students’ perception of my liking or disliking them have to do with their grades, meeting expectations, my role as a teacher?

Conversation: Phones in the Classroom?

I'm young enough that I've had a cell phone my entire adult life and much of my adolescence. Sure, my first one was a Nokia that required Morse-code like skills to send a simple text message and contained only a pixelated Snake game for entertainment, but I still got in the habit of being constantly connected (well, as constantly connected as rural phone service would let my teenage self be). 

Now that I've got a more sophisticated phone, I love the ability to browse the news when I'm stuck in line at the bank, shoot a quick Facebook message to a friend while I'm walking to my car, and map my route home when I take a wrong turn. I am not anti-cell phones.

Conversation: Accelerated Classes

There are many different approaches to redesigning developmental classes. This article from Academic Impressions explores a few of them, focusing especially on the assisted learning approach (where non-credit bearing classes are eliminated and students are placed into credit-bearing courses with extra support) and accelerated courses (where developmental classes meet for longer class periods over a shorter part of the semester, allowing students to move through them faster).