When researching Indiana University’s FYC program, I found it interesting that students have four different class options: Elementary Composition, Elementary Composition – Basic Writing (for those who need more help), Elementary Composition- Multilingual (for ESOL students), and Projects in Reading and Writing ( more intensive and geared for those pursuing a major in the writing field). While FAU only offers ENC 1102 AND 1102, I found that through group work and peer review sessions, I was attempting to fulfill these categories in my own classroom setting.

I began the semester by getting to know what majors my students were pursuing, and after the second essay I had a pretty good understanding of their individual writing abilities. For group work activities, I would put my ESOL students together, and put the students with similar majors together, or I would put my students that needed extra help together. For peer review I would do the opposite and mix everyone up in order to give my students perspectives outside of their own bubbles.

This strategy seemed to be really effective as the humanities majors forced my engineering students to think of things not discussed in their groups and vice versa. My ESOL students could come up with ideas as a group and have native English speakers help them to articulate their thoughts, and my weak writers had more guidance in their essays when the stronger writers in the class edited their papers.

All in all, I think taking the extra time to create specific groups and pairs for students during these activities is very beneficial.

In my previous praxis post, I talked about an unsuccessful attempt I made at implementing The “Three Perspectives Guide for Writing” (The Expander) into my ENC 1101 classes. Here I’d like to go into some detail about what I attempted, what happened, and what I think I could improve upon next semester.

I was already struggling with how to get my students to write original and compelling thesis statements when Dr. Mason provided us with The Expander during one of our meetings of ENC 6700. At the time, it seemed like the perfect cure for my ailing classes: a workable heuristic that encouraged expansive thinking and made the brainstorming process more directed and comprehensive.

I introduced the Expander as a mandatory part of the writing process for my students, a worksheet that was due along with their Reading Responses for every paper. The first time I brought it out in class, there were no questions and no complaints; however, what I got back from the students was a hodge-podge of generally misguided attempts. Many of the students believed that the Expander was a tool to help them make sense of the articles they were reading, and so their ability to brainstorm was severely hampered by the topics discussed in the articles. For example, in the first Expander, one of my students listed an article by Matt Richtel as her “topic,” rather than her paper topic. As a result, when she got to the cultural assumptions portion of the Expander, she was unable to brainstorm beyond the assumptions she was able to identify in the article itself.

For many of my students it was very unclear what they were supposed to be doing and why this worksheet would help. I wish I could say that after the first failure I willing threw the heuristic away, but I continued on through two more essays before I finally understood that it simply was not going to work in this context and for this class. By the end, I do think they had a better understanding of what the heuristic was, but they were uninterested in using it in the way I intended. Instead, a few expressed confusion that I was asking them to NOT use the articles, as they actually found the exercise helpful.

One thing I learned, then, was that many of my students were still struggling with feeling like they had a handle on our readings. Next semester, I plan to put a bigger emphasis on understanding and analyzing our readings. Another thing I learned from this experience is that I will need to introduce the Expander from the very beginning (I found this out with the Error Tracking Log as well) if I want it to have any real impact on how the class composes. Finally, I learned that heuristics should be treated more adaptively. I said in my last blog post that I wanted my students to learn to be more adaptable this semester, but I also needed to learn adaptability. Instead of forcing resources on my students, in the future I will make the boundaries and limits of my resources clear. Hopefully, the students will then be able to better understand the heuristics’ purposes and further be able to contextualize their choice to use them.

After our first class meeting, a student approached me and told me she was taking ENC 1101 for the 3rd time. She had freckles and round cheeks and the most melt-your-heart brown eyes I’ve ever seen in a student. As we talked, her eyes filled up with tears and she looked at the floor and said, “Never mind,” and abruptly left the classroom.

That evening, I checked out my roster and saw that she wants to be an elementary school teacher. I sent her a quick message.

“You seemed discouraged when you left class this morning, and I hate to think that you are feeling defeated before we even get started. You are not alone. Several of my students are taking ENC 1101 for the second or even third time. It is a challenging class and you should look at that as a good thing if you can. Very few worthwhile things come easily.

By now you should have some idea of which areas of your writing need work/help. When you turn in your writing sample to me, please make a note at the end of what you need help with and I’ll try to think of a way to make it easier to understand. What kind of feedback have your other instructors given you?

I see that your major is Elementary Education. I have been a teacher for a long time, and I have learned that some of the very, very best teachers are the ones who struggled and persevered. You are going to be a wonderful teacher. Hang in there.”

As most of you are aware (because I’ve been talking about it half of the semester) one of my classes thought it was a brilliant idea to tattoo people who are HIV positive. This idea came from one of my students in the Epstein essay discussion class. Very quickly, it was picked up by the majority of the class. The driving force behind this thought was that people will ALWAYS lie about their STD status so it is better to have a little plus sign tattooed on their bikini lines so people are aware that they are about to have sex with an HIV positive person.

I experienced a precious few seconds of brain fart. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I did manage to speak after a 10-15 second pause where I am pretty sure I resembled a goldfish. I spoke about the history of tattooing a specific section of society (Nazi shitheads) but to no avail. My students were quick to disavow any similarity of their idea to that one.

I faced another hurdle when we read Dan Savage and Urvashi Vaid. The topic of bullying and the same class said that the issues were grossly exaggerated because they had never seen any bullying in their schools.

I turned to the LGBTQA resource centre for help and I had someone come in and talk to my students about stereotypes and the dangers of relying on a single stereotype. She also discussed empathy vs sympathy and used this video. It’s a good video.

But, the big question: where do I separate my ideologies from my students’? We want them to express their opinions but am I not deliberately changing their opinion here? Is it okay? I mean, I know it is okay because they need to know the whole picture about their idea but is it okay from a pedagogical perspective? Am I making sense?

On several Fridays this semester I asked my students to spend 10 minutes freewriting at the beginning of the class. Sometimes I gave them topics that were loosely related to the main ideas of their essay prompts. Other times I asked them to “vent” and tell me what they were thinking and feeling. I wanted to know what they were angry or worried or happy about. The ground rules were that their pens and pencils must move the entire time and that they couldn’t edit themselves no matter how atrocious their spelling or grammar was.

My intentions were two-fold. I wanted to show hesitant writers that words DO come, and I wanted them to understand that words are not a precious commodity to be meted out in fully-formed, perfect sentences. Words are plentiful, and shouldn’t be rationed.

After 10 minutes I asked them to finish their immediate thoughts and then we talked a little bit about what they’d discovered as they wrote. Sometimes they had tiny epiphanies. Sometimes they started out, “This is stupid and I am tired, but my teacher said I had to do this, so I am doing it.” Generally, though, asking them to freewrite enabled them to find what Peter Elbow calls the “center of gravity” in their writing and they were able to begin to scaffold their final papers around their unedited thoughts.

Allowing students the chance to be expressive in their writing and then giving them a platform to speak their ideas is of immeasurable importance as teachers build class rapport and “safe” learning environments.