please enjoy this interesting TEDx from an interesting speaker

When Kim told us that our “thing” for this week would be a grammar quiz, I had already been working on a “thing” for a few days.  I wrote it immediately after class last Wendesday, but I never published it, because I take an opposing stance on something we had discussed that day and I was worried it might be too abrasive.  I wanted to be careful not to belittle anything that was said in our discussion, so I just kept editing and editing, trying to smooth out every rough spot.  I guess it’s not really relevant to what we’re doing in class this week.  But at least I raised it to a “publishable” standard.  I may as well publish it…

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Wednesday in class we spoke briefly about the negative effects of having structural levels/labels in a literacy education system.  A few people criticized the concept of having separate categories for remedial/standard/honors, the class joined together in a small hurrah! , then we moved on to the next topic.

But I wasn’t ready to move on.  My initial reaction was not hurrah!  It was more like …huh?  

I gathered that a few of you were placed into remedial classes at some point during your academic careers (or knew personally someone who was) and that your experiences working under that label were not very positive.  I can imagine how stifling that must have felt.  If it had been me, I would have probably been wondering why can’t I just study the same things as everyone else.  I don’t want your specialized treatment.   But [with as much humility as possible] during my academic career I was labeled as “gifted”, and the 1990’s reality for that brand of student in a small central valley public school was, “We’re sorry we can’t provide more specialization for you.  Your gonna have to learn the same things as everyone else.”

I still have audible memories of my eighth grade math teacher explaining for over an hour the concept of “fractions equal to one”, the way he stressed the word “over” like he was really concerned we weren’t getting it.  Two….OVEEEER…two…will equal…one.  Fourteen…OVEEEER…fourteen…will equal…one.  We spent an entire class session studying this idea.  I remember thinking what…THE HELL…am…I doing…here… I don’t know why that memory in particular stuck has stuck with me for so long, but I know that that same feeling has pervaded my classroom experiences over and over again, frequently in mandatory classes–twirling my pencil, twiddling my thumbs, wondering why there can’t be a different academic track for students wanting more of a challenge.

I don’t think you, my classmates, were suggesting that students who are ready and willing to be challenged shouldn’t have the opportunity.  Nonetheless, that’s part of the message I felt we were sending when we said that we should do away with the whole idea of honors and remediation.  Personally, I’ve appreciated the opportunities I’ve had to take honors classes.

I think what was missing from our denunciation of levels is that, at present, with each higher level of college composition (i.e. remedial, standard, and honors) comes a more discriminating standard of exclusivity.  Students can be excluded from higher levels until they prove their merit through their performance in lower levels.  Students placed into remedial English aren’t free to move into a more advanced level if they feel capable; students wanting to enroll in honors courses must first be accepted into the honors program; (more fundamentally, students ready and willing to take upper division composition classes must earn this exclusive right by completing prerequisite courses) and ultimately, its this exclusivity–not the levels themselves–that should be removed.  Students should not have labels imposed upon them which determine how qualified or unqualified they are for a certain area of study.  They should be trusted to find their appropriate levels for themselves.

Or, maybe what was missing from our discussion was simply the recognition that what we really don’t like are the names of the labels.  “Remedial, standard, and honors” sound a little bit too much like “dumb, regular, and special”.  All students deserve to be treated as if we’re expecting great things from them, not just a select group of special ones.  As things are, we sound like we’re forecasting our own goals: the specials will realize their greatness, the regulars will just keep doin’ their thing, and the dumbs will hopefully make it back to regular.

But when I heard in our discussion that levels were the problem, that levels need to be removed from the educational structure, I got images of my worst nightmare, the dystopian realization of my frustrated 8th grade math class daydreams: the day when school finally becomes one big group, with all levels, all types, all classifications of students thrown together–advanced and beginner, motivated and unmotivated, career oriented and G.E. fulfiller, grammar nazi and ESL–one big happy classroom where no one learns faster or slower than anyone else.

I didn’t think the idea “having levels” should have been discredited so easily.  Even with the slides Kim showed us in class, I’m not convinced of the inefficacy of the practice of grouping students with similar abilities together.  It makes too much sense to me.

 

“In The Social Construction of Literacy, Jenny Cook-Gumperz reminds us that literacy learning consists of more than the acquisition of cognitive skills; it also involves the ‘social process of demonstrating knowledgeability’ “

I think it’s fair to say that most categories of learning, not just literacy learning, include a component of demonstrability.  The notion that they wouldn’t reminds me of the wannabe superhero from Mystery Men, Invisible Boy, who’s superpower was the ability to turn invisible only when no one was looking at him…

But if we think of ‘the social process of demonstrating knowledgeability’ as a learned skill itself, or, at the very least, as a habit of being which we adapt over time to meet the expectations of our demonstrative environment, then we have to ask: what are the expectations of the demonstrative environment of the classroom, and do those expectations support or stifle positive habits of being regarding demonstration?

When a freshmen biology major gives a short presentation to his class about how to grow bacteria in a Winogradsky column–an activity which he himself has never actually done–is he practicing the real nature of professional presentation?  When a graduating senior majoring in anthropology writes a research paper demonstrating her writing proficiency, in what sort of environment is her demonstration being judged?  Is she submitting her paper to a peer-reviewed journal to be seen by hundreds of unknown experts in her field, as a practicing anthropologist would?  No, more often she will be submitting her work to one very-well-known professor.

It’s an important distinction to consider.  As a writer, ‘audience’ is one of the primary considerations shaping any work.  Or, in stricter sense, ‘audience consideration’ is a first-order step which must be performed before true writing can even happen, and it is therefore a necessary habit to practice and develop.  Does the classroom setting adequately address this?  Is the practice of “writing for an audience of one” related in any meaningful way to the real-world situations for which these writing exercises are supposedly preparing students?

The obvious counterargument to this train of thought is that teachers and students know that their setting is an artificial one; the students write for the classroom as if they were writing for a given real-world situation, the teacher grades them accordingly, and the end result is an environment which simulates that situation.  The artificiality of the setting is acknowledged by all, and is therefore not detrimental to the learning process.

Admittedly, I see some merit in this argument.  Should a baseball player never take practice swings in a batting cage because it’s an artificial substitute for a real pitcher?  Should a piano player never use an isolated practice lab in preparation for a live performance?  Indeed, the ability to separate an activity from its physical and social setting and isolate it in an artificial one is often a very valuable luxury.  It allows for necessary hyper-focus on specific components of the activity.  In the batting cage analogy, for example, the batter could attack one hundred low curveballs while focusing only on proper wrist action–perhaps without even really trying to make contact the ball–without being distracted by the social pressure of standing at the plate in a live stadium with ten of thousands of people expecting him hit it.

The problem arises, however, when the artificial setting entirely replaces for the real one.  Should a baseball player take ten thousand swings in a batting cage before he takes one on the field?  One hundred thousand?  One hundred million?  Is there any amount of batting practice that could substitute the experience of one live game in a stadium?  Or–perhaps more pertinent to the classroom learning parallel–is there any merit to becoming an excellent batting-cage hitter?

As human beings, we are inseparable from our social selves.  The feeling of the crowd urging on the batter is real; it has measurable physiological effects.  And the feeling of imagining the future reader of piece of writing is real. “Sitting in front of a computer writing an assignment for a teacher” doesn’t feel the same as “sitting in front of a computer writing a thesis for journal submission”.

I mean, it probably doesn’t.  I’ve never actually done it.  We stay in the batting cages in undergrad.

From today’s reading:

“Because the tutor sits below the teacher on the academic ladder, the tutor can work effectively with students in ways that teachers can not. Tutors don’t need to take attendance, make assignments, set deadlines, deliver negative comments, give tests, or issue grades. Students readily view a tutor as someone to help them surmount the hurdles others have set up for them, and as a result students respond differently to tutors than to teachers…The relationship with a tutor is likely to begin with questions like “How can I help you?” or “What would you like to work on today?”

I had a professor once who began every lecture with, “Before we move forwards, does anyone have any questions?”  Towards the beginning of the semester, this question would always be followed by a few seconds of silence, then we would proceed to the new material.  I don’t know why neither my friends nor I ever asked anything.  We had questions for each other all the time.  I think we were a little intimidated at the idea of outing ourselves to the whole class as the weak link, the only one who couldn’t do the work, the lowest-common-denominator to which the course must be catered.

The professor would repeat, “Are there any questions?” several times throughout each lecture.  Of course, we responded with questions to these later promptings.  The material was brand new; questions seemed appropriate.  Where did we learn the idea that questions about the current lecture would be welcomed, but questions about previous or unrelated material wouldn’t?

After a few weeks of classes, students slowly began asking questions during the initial question-asking-period at the beginning of each lecture—at first about the previous night’s homework, later about material from several weeks before, and eventually about things wholly unrelated to the class.  We felt that our professor’s interest in our confusion was genuine, that he was prompting us not from a sense of duty or obligation, but from enjoyment.  He seemed to really enjoy answering questions, and where before we as a group were fearful that he’d be taking note of our ineptitude, we were now filled with a sense of purpose in giving him at least one question to answer.  He enjoyed playing the role of question-answerer; he seemed to have no interest in being an ignorance cataloger.  If no one had a question pertinent to the material, we’d ask his opinion on a current event.  Perhaps I’m biased because I was fortunate enough to experience it while in the role of the student, but I’ve felt for a long time that every lecture for every course, regardless of discipline, should begin with the leader asking the students, “Are there any questions?”

Our mission is to help our students surmount the hurdles in front of them; should we claim to already know these hurdles without even needing to ask?  Our role is to provide an environment where inexperience can be safely revealed and transformed into experience (not an easy role to play given the abundance of environments in which students might opt, for countless reasons, to mask and sidestep their inexperience); by not beginning with, “Is there anything you’re feeling uncertain about?”, which type of environment are students likely to feel that they’re in?  Behind all the bullshit of grades, program requirements, progress reports, class titles—the referencable, on-paper reflection of how we as teachers have helped them as students—at the core of the concept of “being a teacher” is the idea the student wants to learn, and we would like to help.  In a sense, he is trying to grow-up, and we look at him and say, “You know, I grew up once, I think I can help you with that.”

He is on a mission of self-improvement, and our mission is to facilitate his.  I never understood why professors—for all courses in all disciplines—don’t begin every lecture by asking the class, “Before we begin, are there any questions?” It’s the teacher reaffirming I am here for you.  

Pretending for a moment that writing was an activity which welcomed learning by observation, I want to imagine the things I might notice as I watch my idols tapping away on their keyboards:

Do they tackle their pieces linearly, like a scavenger hunt; or do they start with a framework and let the details evolve together, like a painting?  Or do they like to refine and perfect standalone components and connect them later, like an appetizer, entrée, and dessert?

Do they edit and rewrite each sentence as they go, doing thousands of one-sentence first drafts, revisions, and culminations?  Or do they first push forwards relentlessly to a messy yet complete essay?

Do they seem focused like a metal welder, or whimsical like a daydreaming child?

Do they laugh at their terrible spelling?  Do they grind their teeth?  Do they write only in the morning?  Are they a Merriam-Webster or an Oxford English?

Do they rub their chin for a few minutes staring deeply into the keyboard, write four words, delete three of them, write five more, delete them all, then go back to rubbing their chin?”

This last one is important—the dreaded “writer’s block”.  Everyone who has ever tried hard to write well has had this moment.  This is where many of us begin to believe that we have no knack for writing, because this is where we realize that writing is difficult, and things we have a knack for shouldn’t be difficult.  But to see a master go through the same struggle…to have every broken backspace key vindicated…I would watch William Shakespeare sit quietly at a desk for a hundred hours, if only to see that one moment when he screams and breaks his goddamn pencil, then storms around the room for a little.

I imagine most serious writers would watch him too, if given the chance.  But there is no place for “watching” in the modern realm of teaching how to write.  I think most teachers would feel uncomfortable with the idea.  Writing is supposed to be personal, intimate…and you want to watch me…?  Yes.  Yes I do.  Like athletes, musicians, painters, tailors, architects, glass blowers, sixteen-year-old drivers, cash register operators, ice cream scoopers, dancers, chefs, parents—anyone who’s ever tried to learn how to be anything—I would like to watch masters so I can imitate them.

Who knows, I might even ask them questions.