Writing What We Teach

Although I see a great deal of benefit in writing the same assignments we ask our students to write, it is a rather difficult task (at least for me). It is not difficult because the types of papers are difficult - I have no doubt that I can write each type of paper that I ask my students to write. It is difficult because time is something that is not easy to come by (at least for me). I put a great deal of time and energy into my the classes that I teach and take. I love teaching, but when you are trying to write degree papers, study for comps, and write all the other papers and projects for your other classes, there is little time left to write along with my students.

I recognize the importance of being able to do so, and giving them solid examples definitely helps. Luckily this semester we have composing ourselves and I have found that in terms of introducing the textual analysis this time around it was much easier. My students read the examples in CO and read the article from Lunsford allowing us to break down what the author did in a textual analysis. My process is a little screwy sometimes and to try and show that and explain it to my students would probably scare them.

So, I don't really know what else to say on this whole "writing what we teach" except that I understand the reasoning behind it. I just wish I had more time (but don't we all).

The Importance of Product

In her article, “The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children,” Lisa Delpit states, “Teachers do students no service to suggest, even implicitly, the ‘product’ is not important. In this country, students will be judged on their product regardless of the process they utilized to achieve it. And that product, based as it is on the specific codes of a particular culture, is more readily produced when the directives of how to produce it are made explicit” (90). This is where the product oriented side of wants to just say “Ha! I was right!” I can’t tell you (anyone who decides to read this) how many times I have tried to get it through people’s heads how important the final product is. Now, I realize we are human, and no product will be mistake and error free, however, this does not mean we should not work toward producing the best possible product.

It annoys me to no end when I get a paper that is not properly formatted from my 110 and 210 classes; I just don’t understand why it is so “hard” to format something. I have tried everything I can think of. I’ve taken them to the computer lab and shown them the quirks to fixing things in Word 2007. I’ve made handouts that outline everything they need to know about where things should appear on the page. And I’ve even shown them where to look in Hacker. The only thing I have left to do is take off points for it. My view on the whole format issue is that if you can’t follow simple instructions for how to format, then why should I believe you are properly citing things and so on. This is where the tech writer side of me surfaces.

I still think that the process is important. When I am put into a situation where my process has to be thrown out the window (so to speak) then it becomes hard for me to compose. I enjoy the act of writing; I mean handwriting things with pen and paper. Once I’ve composed a good “chunk” by hand I go to the computer. Very rarely do I compose strictly on the computer. I tend to handwrite, input the words into the computer, print and continue handwriting.

I think we need to teach our students to discover their process, what works best for them to compose a “document” or an essay. But we also need to teach them to pay attention to the product. Beyond the writing classroom, very few people see the process, so the final product is incredibly important. When I grade I am able to see the evolution of the piece and have the ability to grade accordingly, but others do not.