One of the biggest concerns I had with teaching was the strong sense of inadequacy informed by inexperience. Sure, last time I checked I had about seven siblings. And sure, being the oldest I’ve helped them all with their homework throughout the years. But I don’t know whether to consider that tutoring or teaching, or are those one in the same? There must be a difference between helping along one student into the comfort of understanding than helping twenty students.

In my last year of high school, a classmate and I helmed a Catholic school class of several eight year olds once a week. I guess we taught them––but, there is a huge gap in consequence between teaching mythology and teaching writing; one is required to survive (you pick which).

(Aside: If a student was being talkative, I would tell him/her to hold up their hand straight in the air for as long as they could. This was a big joke between me and the students, and the kids knew that. However, once a parent found out: I got kicked out of the program and was almost expelled from my high school for inflicting corporal punishment upon the children. This coming from the Catholic church. Ha.)

Two months in to teaching undergraduates and I’m beginning to wonder: perhaps stepping directly out from twenty years of learning shoes into fresh teaching shoes might be just enough of substantial experience to begin with. This brief segue from learning to teaching also affords me the understanding to relate to those I’m teaching.

When you meet a new friend, you begin to pick up an each other’s habits. Every teacher I’ve come into contact with has informed me somehow, someway; what I liked and what I disliked was imprinted and (hopefully) flows out unconsciously into a new hybrid form.

(I began to lose steam towards the end. Hope these ideas make sense……..)

Nearing the end of high-school senior year, the before-departing English assignment was to select three experiences, assignments, or persons who contributed the most to my budding understanding of the subject. This required a detail their contribution, specific moments of breakthrough, and time frame if applicable. The paper accounted a field trip to Hemingway’s Key West home–invigorating a practical application of writing (a living can be made), a short-story I had written in elementary school about a dog lost on a raft out at sea, and Mrs. Feldborg, whose praise, criticism, and very-used donation of Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye  showcased the sensitive, nurturing, and revealing nature of literature. Most of this was bullshit. I’ve never been to Hemingway’s house and the story written in elementary school was terrible and done out of obligation. I got an A, but didn’t feel any closer to understanding my understanding. This was because I approached the assignment with the same obsessive adherence to the prompt I always did–give one experience, assignment, and person that stands out under associations with Literature–and that was that. “One of the common assumptions of…composition…is that at some ‘stage’ in the process of composing an essay a writer’s ideas or his motives must be tailored to the needs and expectations of his audience” (Bartholomae 9). The “Why” had been buried in anecdotes and there was no reason to dig.

I’d figured out exposition. I knew how to write to keep my teachers from  frustration and that was enough. Students new to college-level writing, whose literary efforts haven’t expanded beyond personal accounts and obvious narrative, have learned the same thing. The concept of argument, of proving something, is foreign. Argument, in this way, is the discourse awaiting appropriation, and it’s a monster in importance and introduction. College writing require a pushing of the self–the main staple of high-school argument–to the edge of consciousness in favor of assertion, evidence, and discussion. It’s an uncomfortable place for a centerpiece.

Elbow’s article explores the importance of liking. He suggests that teachers make an effort to get to know and like their students. Doing so will make it easier to evaluate and offer meaningful, constructive comments. When we like our students, we approach their essays as a willing, friendly, reader who will offer genuine advice. He notes: “If I like a piece, I don’t have to pussyfoot around my criticism. It’s when I don’t like their writing that I find myself tiptoeing: trying to find something nice to say—and usually sounding fake, often unclear.” I’ve had this experience while grading papers. For papers that I struggle to get through, I always try to start off my end comment with something positive (“You have some really great ideas here…”). This is often difficult, and I’m sure I sound insincere to my students. In this sense, I am not the receptive reader that the student needs to like his or her own writing.

While it is important that teachers like student writing (and therefore are able to criticize it better) it is equally (perhaps, more?) important for students to like their own writing. They are more motivated to revise and rework a paper if they actually care about it and what they have to say. This makes sense. However, as we have all noted in class, in the office, and in colloquium, students are completely burned out on the topic of technology. They never showed much interest in the topic in the first place, so three essays in and their passion for the topic is nonexistent. In this case, I’m not sure how to get them to “like” their work when they care so little about the topic. While I can work on “liking” my students/student writings, I can only hope that they’ll be more invested in the next theme, thus allowing them to grow as writers and critical thinkers.

In case anybody was curious for more information on the infamous Peter Ramus, here is a pretty comprehensive link:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ramus/

Hello all.

When I was doing my undergrad work in Hawaii, I took a course called Comp Studies that covered a lot of the issues we addressed as a class on Friday. I wrote this paper about Creative and Academic writing, the divide between the two, and ultimately how they cannot be separated because ALL writing is inherently “creative” writing.

After reading Freire and hearing what everyone else in the class had to say, I felt myself drifting back toward that same notion. At first I wanted to side with Freire – his ideas are compelling in the beginning. But as I read on, I just couldn’t get on board with the polarization of the two schools of thought. Freire wants to get rid of this “banking method” of teaching and embrace this “problem-posing” model. We figured out in class (I think) that he looks at students, the learners, as these receptacles for knowledge and completely dehumanizes the individual.

The idea is that each individual learns by having an understanding of BOTH his/her own background, upbringing, interactions with the world AND an understanding of the fundamental tools (historical methods) for writing, rhetoric, etc. Once these two understandings happen, the individual can then create.

And ultimately, that is what we are asking students/writers to do from the onset: create something new on paper. The parameters of which are defined by these historical methods. So my question would be, how can we tell students to create something, but not be creative when doing it?

In Hawaii, the schism between academic/creative writing is HUGE because nearly all teachers on the island are white and come from a Western cannon, while all the students are either Filipino, Native Hawaiian, hapa-haole, Micronesian, etc. There is this idea that “non-white” learners need the fundamental knowledge so badly that creativity is virtually non-existent. The result of this however, is a complete disinterest in the fundamental knowledge and therefore no learning or progress whatsoever when it comes to expressing argument/ideas on paper. As I said before, this is a prime example for how the two schools of thinking are imperative to successfully teaching.

In a practical sense, I think we can encourage creativity in lesson plans, writing prompts, reading responses, and just general class discussion. I say “encourage creativity” because I truly believe that, no matter what we do as teachers, the creative mind is active at some level in every thinking being. Figuring out how to utilize that idea is the job of the instructor/program.

I encourage everyone to watch Ken Robinson’s TED Talks on Creativity if you haven’t already.

Also, I hope this is what these posts are supposed to look like…