Garriets and Teacher Response

I found the Garriets piece particularly interesting because I have continually been concerned with the concept of teacher response and how I will go about doing it when the time comes. I love the idea of the cover letters that Garriets utilizes, and I think that the best part of this article is the fact that his student, Jennifer Lowe's, responses are taken into account in the writing of the article. I think that it's not only important for us to think about it from the perspective and goals of the teacher, but also that of the student.

I think Garriets gets right to the heart of a blockage of student and teacher interaction when he quotes Jennifer: "I will never forget it [receiving the letter] because of how scared I was when I saw it. Usually the only time that a teacher takes time to write to students personally is when they did something awful" (257). I personally think it is extremely important, in whatever way you can manage it, to establish a relationship with each of your students and get to know them and the way that they think. This is something that isn't present in high school student-teacher relationships. From my own experience, I went to a tiny high school (72 in my graduating class), but this didn't automatically mean that the teachers went out of their way to get to know each student and the ways each student learns best and where most of their difficulty and strengths with assignments lie. Because I excelled in English, I did have a pretty close relationship with my English teacher, but in some of my weaker subjects, like Math and Sciences, I had virtually no relationship with the teachers and I'm sure they hadn't the foggiest idea of why I did as poorly as I did in their classes. Sadly, I think this is completely backward. Not only should teachers try to have relationships with their students, but I think it's even more important to have one with the students who aren't doing so well. How else do we help them? So, in entering a college course, probably one of their first, I can see where students would be shocked, as Jennifer was. Her words couldn't better describe the reaction I would've had to a letter accompanying a Math test in school. Instant heart attack.

On that note, although it will be surprising to students to receive that kind of concentrated attention to their writing, I also think it would be an immense benefit. I have vented my own frustrated previously on the blog, even with assignments on which I've done well, to the short little comments like "Very Good -- A" that I have received from teachers. Like in the Fox article, I felt that my work was going out into the world where an audience (even if an audience of one) would read and respond to it, and I feel pretty ripped off at putting in a ton of effort just to hear it was "good" or "watch your grammar" or some canned response like that. It has always made me feel like I must be one of 10 people in the class reading the same response. This is why I love the idea that Garriets proposes with using cover letters to get a dialogue going with your students, and using them throughout the semester to establish a relationship, not only with the student, but with their work.

I think this would prove beneficial to both the teacher and the student, and this is something I would like to try in my teaching. For the student, he or she is getting the response that their effort deserves, and they will get the feeling that I'm not only "really there" and reading, but I'm interested in helping them. Also I like his emphasis on being supportive when they are doing something well, and in beginning the letter with some positive reinforcement. I think that this would go a long way in establishing a student-teacher relationship built on trust. If the students think I'm just out to play "grammar police" with them, I don't see how they will trust my advice, or put any personal investment into anything they write for me. The further we go in this class, the more that I believe that the personal investment has to be there if anyone in the class is to be successful.

I think this is an immensely helpful technique for the teacher for a couple reasons. For one, realistically speaking, when we are working full time (someday we hope), it's a possibility that we will come into contact with a rather large number of students each semester, so it might not be feasible to establish a relationship with each and every one of them through their participation in class, or office hours, as some will probably not do that much of either. I think that, for the shy students who don't feel comfortable with that, it would be a huge benefit, because we may not get the same chance with them as with the more outgoing students. I think as teachers, it will be extremely important that we make a connection with each student. Given, it probably isn't all that probable to think it will always happen, or always in the way that we would like, but I think that requiring letters, or journals that circulate between myself and my students on an ongoing basis, I can come that much closer. I think that if there is a standing relationship, that the student will be more likely to make an effort to consider my advice in a more serious way, and will be egged on by my encouragement. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want to be just an evaluator. I want to think of myself as someone who is helping, and I don't know if people will be likely to let you help them unless they feel that they have some kind of relationship with you, and that you're not just an authority or someone who has the "last word," but someone who wants to show you how to improve and come out of the course successfully with new knowledge and skills. I also think that this technique would work well for accomplishing one of the goals of the curriculum, as listed in the instructor's handbook. It it important that students understand and respond to the concept of audience. When their audience never says anything but "very good -- A" or "watch your comma splices," I think it's a bit of wishful thinking on our part. When we're not acting like much of an audience, I don't know how we will impress upon our students how important the notion of audience will be in creating effective writing. In order to teach about audience, I think that we should take the iniative and become a real audience and not just an evaluator. Of course, we will be doing peer response and things like that, where their classmates will also be a part of their audience, but in a way I wonder if we're kidding ourselves in thinking when our students are actually writing that the first audience the student is worried about isn't us.

I only had one professor in undergrad, in an upper level literature course, who really went out of his way to give us full responses to our papers, and I absolutely adored him for it, because I always felt that there was really someone on the other end who was putting as much thought into my paper as I was, and it was encouraging. He always returned a page or so of his responses along with our papers. I have always thought this was great, but in thinking about Garriets's mode of response, I see that it can be even better and more interactive. I think it would be sort of freeing for students to think that instead of pretending that their papers rock all the time, that they can be a bit vulnerable, and instead of going crazy over rough spots that they recognize, that they are able to say to the teacher, "I don't like how things were going in the part about _____. Would you give me some advice on how to make it work?" It seems a lot less threatening (and ultimately helpful) for a student to acknowledge where they feel they're going wrong and ask for help instead of putting up the stone wall and pretending that any draft is ever "finished." As I think we all know all too well, they're never finished, so why teach our students to approach them as finished?