Rethinking the Role of Writing Teacher

The readings for this week have gotten me thinking about the role of a writing teacher, and what this will mean for me. I suspect that I might be one of the older students in this class, so my experience with freshman writing (they called it English when I was a freshman) might have been different. Strangely, it has just occurred to me this very moment that although my course was called freshman English and not composition, the particular section in which I enrolled was much different from its more traditional counterparts. I took an English class that was "paired" with Geology, of all things. So I guess in a way that it did focus on critical thinking, structuring arguments, etc., and not so much on reading literature as a "way in" to composition. I digress, however. Most of the classes that my contemporaries back in 1995 were taking were literature centered. So, in response to some anxiety that Alex expressed at the idea of not using literature to teach composition, I can absolutely identify with that feeling, because this was simply the "way it was done" at the time. Although it feels different and slightly strange to me, I am not resistant to the idea of using a more diverse approach to the teaching of writing. I'm inclined to think that for most students in my freshman class, the class probably ended up being even more beneficial to the other students (as non-English majors) than a traditionally taught, literature based course. It was helpful for me because it made me feel that what I was learning in that class was "translatable" to other areas. So I imagine for someone uninterested in literature, this benefit was probably very noticeable. And in a very practical way, writing about plate techtonics and all of those kinds of rocks that I don't remember anymore, was beneficial in a more obvious way in that it reinforced information we were learning in (what I felt to be) another ridiculously boring class. They snuck in some extra Geology study-time on me.

At any rate, although that class was progressive for its time, there were ways in which it was not--particularly the role of the teacher. This class was an authoritarian regime, and frankly, it was kind of scary to even go to class, muchless to hand in written work that we all knew was destained to be ripped to shreds in what I would call a less than constructive way. Of course, we did do peer editing, but basically we weren't working toward helping each other produce the best essay we could, we were trying to help each other avoid being shamed in front of the entire class and figuring out how to "get by," in much the way that Brooke describes. We tried in our underlife to help each other out, but ultimately we failed. It was a brutal experience that certainly would've frightened anyone even considering a minor, or another course in English (a major notwithstanding) to stop consideration. This is precisely where I do not want to go, and the way that I do not want to be perceived.

This leads me to one point that I found most interesting in this week's reading. In the Brooke pieces, he refers to Knoblauch and Brannon, who suggest "changing the structure of the classroom to a 'writing workshop' where students and teacher can really talk to one another 'as members of the same community of learners'" (150). I am very intrigued by this, but at the same time I also wonder how I could do this. Brooke goes on to quote Donald Murray, who champions one-on-one conferences between students and teachers in which the student directs the discussion of his/her writing. I have always liked this idea because I have experienced it as a student and found it to work quite well for me, and have always planned that that would be part of my teaching. I'm interested, however, in thinking about ways to take it further. I'm interested in defusing the idea of teacher as "authoritarian," not only because it is a methodology that I have cultivated a distaste for personally, but because I suspect that students will be much less responsive to this kind of thing. I absolutely agree with Brooke that it is important to make a shift from the roles of a "traditional" classroom because teaching writing is not a traditional curriculum, but I continue to wonder how I will do this in my own classroom. I don't want to be their "best buddy" or anything like that (which would clearly not accomplish anything,) but at the same time I do not want to slip into this authoritarian "I am the teacher therefore I am right" kind role that I detested so much as a student. So I guess I am just wondering how I will negotiate the middle ground between these two extremes.