This semester, I found myself going back and forth between formulas and heuristics. At times, it seemed that what my students wanted most was something concrete to grasp onto, something that they could call upon again and again to get the results they desired. For instance, my one class was very concerned with Works Cited listings because of how definitive they are: this goes here, that goes there, add a period and you’re good to go! In many ways, I felt that they were trying very hard to replicate the more current-traditional learning they encountered in high school. It seemed to be very difficult for many of them to gain a level of comfort with being asked to think a different way.
Because of this general class feeling of wanting definitive answers, I often provided my classes with writing resources in order to help them feel like they had a handle on their composition. I even provided an Outline Template, and with my one course discussed the Super Secret Formula (with very mixed results). The most successful students were the ones who found some aspect of the resources lacking and so improvised in their writing. The least successful ones were, unsurprisingly, those who adhered to the resources’ instructions as closely as possible.
A little before halfway through the semester, I introduced the “Three Perspectives Guide for Pre-Writing,” or “Expander” heuristic that Dr. Mason provided us with in ENC 6700. I thought that this would turn the tide in my courses and that my students would begin thinking “outside the box.” I believed that their writing would take on new life. However, I soon realized that not only was the heuristic generally misunderstood by the class, but even once that confusion was cleared up the students found it to be little more than exhaustive busy-work.
In my final blog post, I will talk in more detail about my experiences with using the Expander, but here I want to summarize my semester-long struggle with figuring out what works better for helping composition students learn. I believe that next semester I will work harder to introduce resources and heuristics from the very beginning, in an effort to make it clear to the students that what works for one person might not work for another. Ultimately, where I feel my teaching needs the most improvement is in the area of helping students to understand what they are doing and why. This lack on my part made it hard to implement heuristics or more formulaic resources effectively, because the students were unable to see the possible benefits of taking the time to utilize something that might not work every time. I often stressed that I wanted students to learn to be more adaptable, but for many I think this seemed like a dismissive cop-out.