On more than one occasion student absences and student lack of preparedness sewed minor chaos in my classrooms. The real problem of the two was lack of preparedness–an insufficient number of drafts for peer review—exacerbated by absences. If six students show up with two hard copies of an essay, five students show up with one hard copy of an essay, three students show up with only a digital copy of an essay, and only three students show up the proper three copies of an essay while five students don’t show up at all, how much peer review time is lost trying to manage the disparities and allocate papers?

What you might expect from this was born out over the course of the semester.

Students absent on peer review day fared most poorly grade-wise because they had zero peer review. From there, students who distributed fewer papers among their peers for review garnered weaker grades than those who distributed more or all.

It’s not rocket science but a rocket scientist might be required to conceive of a method to get students to consistently show up prepared for peer review days.

Coming to the end of my first finals week, I’m learning that it is really important to set boundaries with students.

While I have a habit of working late into the night (it’s the only time I have to really work on my own stuff, and the ideas seem to come together better), I need to keep to the 9-5 email schedule I set at the beginning of the semester. Early on, I was in the habit of answering all emails as soon as possible, even those that arrived at ridiculous hours of the night/morning. Well, Saturday night that bit me in the ass.

I had just finished up the final paper that I had to do for the semester, and was heading off to get some sleep when my phone indicated (loudly) that I had a message. As it was 12am (and I was in no state to be discussing anything with a student), I decided to ignore it. About 15 minutes later, the phone went off again. I’m not certain if this is just me, but when something disturbs me when I’m trying to fall asleep, it resets the entire process. This happened two more times before I decided to just shut my phone completely off.The next morning I had 7 emails from 4 different students asking me either look at their thesis or explain where it is that they can find the Error Tracking log (because I guess it moved since midterms? Nope, still on Blackboard). Yeah, that was a fun Sunday morning.

Edit: I guess I should also mention that the majority of the emails were for things that were due to Blackboard Sunday morning. This isn’t so much about late night emails as it is about people expecting quick responses at late hours.

This brings me to my second revelation: printouts are probably going to be my best friend. Any time I post something on Blackboard, state that it can be found on Blackboard during class, and email out a reminder that IT IS ON BLACKBOARD, I still receive a few emails asking if I can send the student a copy (or asking where it is that they can find it). Cleaning out my messages after the semester ends is going to be fun. I’m almost positive I received around 100 during reading week. Sadly, this is not hyperbole.

But hey, I no longer have to work retail during Black Friday or Christmas Eve. So, there’s that… I guess?

My main office hours visitor this semester was an insecure freshman – a nursing major – with very low confidence in her writing abilities, a strong work ethic, and a desperate drive to earn an “A.” After each rough draft was due, she would visit me to discuss how to revise her work. I would hand back her paper with edits and suggestions. Many comments were abstract, such as “This needs more explanation,” or “Why is this claim relevant?” that I hoped would prompt some reflection and meditation on her paper before diving back in.

But students don’t want abstract advice. They want concrete tips and assurance that a specific edit will fulfill the requirements of “good writing.” So in response to my suggestion that the student explain the connection between a certain paragraph and her thesis, my students asked, “So I could just add a sentence here explaining that having a target audience is related to social campaigns because campaigns use advertising?” (or something of the sort).

“There are many different ways you could create the connection. An extra sentence is an option.”

“Well do you think it would work?”

“Probably, depending on how you word it.”

“What about this sentence? Is this right?”

“Sure.” Sigh.

“Is this right?” is one of the most frustrating questions in writing, because it elicits the (likely equally frustrating to students) response “There is no ‘right’ way to do this. Figure out what works for you.”

Students are used to their writing being objectively evaluated by teachers and standardized testing. From their perspective, grades are handed down from an all-knowing writing deity, and not on any subjective basis. Therefore, they begin to see writing as falling into “right” and “wrong” categories. But we know that grades and even general opinions on writing ability are highly subjective. Keats, Whitman and Bronte received scathing reviews in their time, and are now celebrated as “classic” writers. On some level, grading is doing a disservice to students by quantifying the possibilities of “good writing.” Beyond the ability to compose a decent thesis statement, I hope my students become self-aware writers, and this is something that can only be taught so much in the classroom.

I can’t tell how many students will carry their newly acquired writing skills with them, or if they’ll drop them the second they pick up their grade. But as long as a grade is at stake, I’m certain “Is this right?” will stick around.

As Danielle mentioned in an earlier post, formatting continues to be an issue that students refuse to bother to put any effort into. I’ve had one student that has not once had a correct citation on his paper nor turned in a paper without extremely large spacing between his lines. No matter what I say to him or write on his paper, it never changes. One of the most common questions I get asked in regards to this is “Why do we have to format it this way?” Granted, I honestly have no answer for that. Because it’s the way the organization set it up and the university decides to follow it? I honestly cannot answer why we format things the way we do, but I’m sure that if their boss at their job, if or when they have one, asks them to do things a certain way, they aren’t going to put their hands on their hips and ask “Why?” Lest anybody give these types of questions any sort of philosophical importance, the students are just trying to find ways to expand their papers to reach the page limit.

In trying to have students understand formatting, I’ve gone over it multiple times in class. I’ve even had them use sources in their free writing, such as a quote from a family member or friend, and then try to document that source in a Works Cited page. We’ve created citations together in class. I’ve done everything I basically can except hit them over the head with the MLA handbook, hoping that somehow information can be transferred in such a manner. This sounds like a somewhat personal rant, and it is. Formatting is by far the easiest points to receive full credit in, and those points are consistently blown or regarded as useless.

To borrow Natalie’s terminology, I’ve used the Yoga Teacher and Yoga Student approach, pushing them to understand. So, here’s my white flag waving in the wind and white towel strewn at my feet. Help here would be appreciated because I’ve no idea how to handle this.

To help me write my theory camp essay, I ended up reading quite a bit of James Berlin’s work. While I’m still not a huge fan of how Berlin writes, I feel that he offers some good suggestions on how to create a classroom that is conducive to active student participation. I feel that my greatest struggle throughout the semester was in trying to get my students to see themselves as active participants, what Berlin calls active “agents” (“Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class” 491), within the class. I feel that this problem is created because of unequal power-relations within the classroom. As much as I tried to be more of a “mediator” (Berlin, “Poststructuralism and Cultural Studies” 32) than an authority-figure, the general assumption of the class seemed to be that I hold the secret for the desired “A” (or maybe just “passing”?) grade. Seeing restatements, or, even worse, misinterpretations, of things I had brought up during class present in papers was very disheartening. I know for a fact that they possess their own opinions, their own knowledge, and their own beliefs, but very few of my students seemed willing to “risk” presenting these ideas to me. However, those few students who did present their unique, personal beliefs tended to have the strongest papers for each batch of essays.

As such, I feel that Berlin’s belief that students are “transformative intellectuals” (26) is something that students need to know at the start of the semester (actually, I think they need to know this from day 1 of ENC 1101). I also feel that students need to be made aware that I am not only open to critique, but that they must question the validity of my ideas and opinions. To do so, I feel that having students first examine and discuss their own “[formative] personal experiences” (26) with their classmates, and figure out how these experiences interact with a reading, would help them to see that they are not just passive objects in the classroom.

I will probably end up rereading Berlin while planning my courses next semester. Although my inexperience with composition studies still leads to some difficulties in understanding, I’m starting to see some connections and allowing them to influence how I present myself as a teacher.