Putting Theory into Practice

Now, here comes the hard part about the course:

Having learned about the theories of how we gain/retain language information from Durst, and Crystal, and Zebroski, et al, reading this week's articles from Nystrand and Annette Powell and Robert Brooke (is it just me, or was I the only one thinking of the end of the movie The Incredibles when I read that article?), armed with theories of how we learn language and, specifically, how we develop strong writing skills, comes the truly tricky part. The part where we start considering how we will all, one day very soon, walk into a classroom and start doing it.

The devil, as they say, is in the details.

This concept - getting up in front of a class and actually teaching - isn't scary for me as it may be for some of us. Quite the opposite; once upon a time, teaching was going to be my vocation. 3.5 years of my undergraduate schooling were spent pursuing it. I changed goals at the end of that time and moved into different realms. However, one of the main reasons I returned to graduate school - besides becoming a famous playwright - was for the opportunity to teach. To become a professional in a field I, if not much of American society, respect and value greatly.

Which brings me to one or two observations.

Observation One: There is a method to the madness. Specifically, I'm referring to the method of articles being laid out for us to read. At first, I didn't get it. Why show us these articles now, and these later? Why read THIS chapter of Durst first, and then later, show us the earlier chapter that prefaces and sets up the subsequent? Why this introduction to Bakhtin in Zebroski, in the first reading, and not Crystal, which when I read it seemed a very logical place to start the class?

Observation Two: Learning theory is intertwined with so many fields as to be virtually impossible to boil down to a concentrated theory. (That's not entirely accurate, but I cannot figure out how to express it better than that at this moment. I'll work on it).

I think I'm getting it. Not completely, mind you, but I'm definitely starting to see a pattern. Theories of pedagogy are being reinforced, by this article, and that article, and this author, which references three articles which we will read the following week, and so on and so forth. We are being shown, from the first Durst chapter onward, how a professor's conduct in the classroom makes or completely breaks a student's learning experience. There are strong points being made from Durst to Hartwell and being reiterated in Nystrand about the authority of the teacher being an impediment, a roadblock to the learning process. Hartwell speaks of capitulating the authority completely in the classroom; Nystrand stops short of saying that, but he does report that American classrooms are "orderly but lifeless" (p.3). Teacher control of the discourse is seen as anathema, a problem. It stifles creativity, it stifles discourse, and without discourse, there is only recitation. There is no real learning.

How, then, to control the classroom? Earlier teaching theories I have run across in my younger days and undergraduate classes stressed controlling the classroom. The image of 25 little anarchists racing around a classroom while the teacher is wrapped in duct tape was the image imprinted into our brains. "Don't let this happen to you," they would tell us, as secondary education students. It was ground into us that you had to engage the students, entertain the students, but you did not, under any circumstances, give the students the keys to the classroom. Looking back through the filter of fifteen or so years, it seems that we were being prepared to be court jesters more than teachers, that the hope seemed to be back then that if you were engaging enough, the kids would not view you as an intrusion on their Nintendo time and actually learn something.

Perhaps this is the 'continental divide' we're seeing here, and maybe I'm just now recognizing it. The problem we've all identified in this classroom is the prevailing attitudes and learning modes (or lack thereof) in the incoming freshman, having had 12+ years of recitation rather than engagement. Perhaps what I witnessed as an undergraduate was the building of those flaws. If the problem is so ingrained as to be pounded into the heads of young teachers while they are in training, how are we as university-level educators supposed to correct this?

I don't think we are. To do so would require a fundamental change in how we train our teachers, and even then it would take at least two generations to fix. None of us have that kind of time. The best I can do is sculpt with the clay I'm given, and it's up to me to do my best to turn that clay into a kiln-fired mind, capable of expressing itself with critical writing.

So we come up against what, for me, is the scary part of the course: how do we comprise our lesson plans to actually employ the theoretical ideas we've talked about? How do I come up with a plan to physically teach what we're learning is the most effective way to teach writing?

That's the rub - and that's my focus for the next ten weeks, and beyond.

I'm still attempting to figure out that classroom control thing.