Castle's Blog

                When I was born, my dad was still working on his Bachelor’s degree and when he and I were alone I would lie quietly in his arms across his chest and listen to him read physics and philosophy aloud.  He imitates his voice to me sometimes, soft and soothing, singsong like a storybook, “The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant.   There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience…”  Apparently, I was either a wide eyed and attentive or napping, but respectful audience. 

                Oddly enough, I moved from the outer realms of physics and philosophy to more simplistic readings like Pickle Things, Where the Wild Things Are, The Plant Sitter, and The Velveteen Rabbit.  These books I forced my parents to read cover to cover each day and every night until the colors were faded and the pages were worn.  Sometimes I’d lie in bed on my belly propped up on my elbows, quietly flipping through books alone, searching for something and absorbing something I could not quite wrap my head around. 

                At age four, on a road trip to Galveston with my parents (a road trip which I cannot actually recall), my mom and dad remember being suddenly confused by my seemingly random backseat murmurings.   They wonder if perhaps an imaginary friend had made their way into the car.  My mom asks what I am doing.  I reply that I am reading and she and my dad chuckle.

                In a restaurant that evening, I read expertly from the menu and my parents are dumbfounded.  When had I learned to read?   On the way home they discover that the seemingly random backseat murmurings had been me reading billboard advertisements.  They decid I must not have been reciting my children’s books solely from memory, they decide something must have just clicked.  Soon after, with my new found superhero like power, I demand a chapter book.  No pictures.  (That much I do remember). 

                In the midst of some of my very first memories, are my parents, busily writing or reading, accessing the dictionary, the thesaurus, and each other’s separate but equal bodies of knowledge.  My mom has worked in only three organizations in the last 25 years—the Lubbock State School, the Lubbock Mental Health and Mental Retardation Center, and now she is the head of the Texas Council, an organization which lobbies on behalf of Texas’s Mental Health and Mental Retardation Centers—language has been at the center of her job for 25 years.  The same is true with my dad.  Although he has worked in numerous fields for various organizations, he has been consistently the head of human resources.  Countless times while I was growing up, one of them would turn to the other and say, “What’s a more powerful way to say _____?” or “What’s a less loaded word for ______?”  I noticed early on, that language has an endless amount of power when used wisely.   I’ll be lucky if I can use it a quarter as wisely as half my parental unit.

One way we can learn from what we do/teach is by being open to suggestions from instructors who came before us and instructors who are teaching alongside us and from students who are taking classes with us.  I think it’s important that we not become too attached to any singular way of doing anything.  It’s much more productive to keep an open mind and be objective (even when we’re thinking about our own methods or styles of engaging and teaching students).  As far as becoming “reflective practitioners” goes, it’s hard to say.  I haven’t been in the classroom, but something that I think might help me reflect is just honest (perhaps self-effacing) assessment.  For example, while the idea of video-taping myself teaching sounded jarring and uncomfortable at first, I can see how this practice would be a really useful tool in this assessment.   We need to be careful of becoming self aggrandizing and therefore unmovable, unchangeable.   Being open to change is imperative, even when it means scrapping our current teaching methods and going back to the drawing board.  At the end of each class period (okay, this is a lofty goal, but I have to start somewhere), we must ask ourselves what worked and what didn’t, what was effective and what was not, what we can do differently the next time around to make the material we are teaching more accessible to our students.

Considering there are times I feel I don’t really know anything, I suppose there are a few things students should expect their FYC teachers to know on day one.  I think first and foremost, we should know where to find the answer when we don’t know it.  Someone somewhere in our adventures in education taught us to seek knowledge for ourselves (perhaps it was Google and other technological advancements); we should be able to impart that concept to our students.  Like the old adage about teaching a man to fish…

I think we should know basic grammar.  Hmm…what IS basic grammar?  Well, we should definitely know how to construct a meaningful sentence (but maybe not necessarily how to diagram it).   Notice I avoided saying “proper” sentence.  I believe we have a responsibility to teach them “right” from “wrong” for the sake of their own academic and worldly success, but at the end of the day if they can communicate their ideas in words with passion and meaning I think they’ll do okay, even if they are prone to spelling errors—yes, including homonyms.

We should know our potential power as teachers and use it wisely.   Yeah, sure, they won’t all give a rat’s @$$ that we’re trying to help them and they’ll only tolerate FYC for the sake of a grade, but there are students who are still coming to an institution of higher learning to actually learn.  I think those are the students who matter. 

As far as what we should expect the students to bring to the table, I really don’t know.  They should know they will have to work relatively hard.  I should certainly hope they bring fervor (even a miniscule amount) for learning.  I hope they have a desire to improve their writing skills, at least by the second week or so.  Since I haven’t been in the classroom yet, I’m not sure what I can realistically expect of my future students on day one.  My mom has always said that if something/someone fails to meet your expectations, lower your expectations.  I’m cynically prepared to lower my expectations everyday, but simultaneously hopeful I won’t always have to…

I think what was most surprising to me was the teach response to the “one thing that every teacher should know” prompt. I didn’t expect so many teachers to say something like “we don’t really know anything.” I was also surprised by the book selections. When asked to pick one book every writing teach should read, Errors and Expectations was the most popular (not so surprising), but Pedagogy of the Oppressed was mentioned a couple of times as well and I was excited about that. I studied Theatre of the Oppressed in college, but I had not made the connection between teaching writing and Paulo Freire. That was sort of a light bulb moment for me.

The theme I really took away from Take 20, is that everything about teaching writing is completely variable. There isn’t anything about writing that is constant. Rules change, process changes, technology changes, the dictionary changes, the students and teachers grow and change and we have to be prepared to sort of, you know, roll with the punches.

I was most inspired by the way the featured teachers answered the questions posed. Their tone was always filled with excitement and enjoyment. I could see their love for teaching writing coming through in their answers, as though there could be nothing drab about it. I haven’t been in the classroom yet, but grading has sometimes been slightly depressing. I read writing I can barely decipher and wonder why in the world any of us are beginning a career in teaching writing in various capacities. But I see the incredible inspiration these teachers have harnessed and it reminds me why we are here learning and why we must be absolutely relentless and genuinely passionate when we teach.

My writing process varies depending on what I am writing and what I am writing it for.  I am more structured with academic writing than I am with creative writing.  When I write academic papers, I generally like to have an outline and a thesis statement prior to delving into the material.  When I write more creatively, I usually just…start writing and go wherever the narrative takes me.

There are two things I absolutely do during both processes: 1) I sit in a quiet place, alone and undisturbed and 2) I constantly revise as I write.  If a word or a sentence is not working for me as is, I will usually get stuck on it if I don’t fix it immediately.  When I absolutely can’t make it work at the time being, then I put the sentence or word in bold font so I can return to it later. 

As I write, like anyone, I will have a thought I want to further explore, but know that if I choose to explore it in the moment then I will undoubtedly get off track of my presupposed final destination (the presupposed destination is never hard and fast for me, but it’s there from the beginning, like a lighthouse in the storm—here is where I begin and there is where I end).  Sometimes, if the new path seems promising enough I will travel it, but if I’m unsure then I jot down the thought in bold and come back to it later. 

I’m sorry to say, I hadn’t thought much about writing process before we started reading about it and talking about it in 5060.  Writing has always come very naturally to me. Writing has always just been something I do. Sure, I have trouble with certain parts of grammar and I have to revise and I spend a ton of time writing and rewriting, but usually my thoughts come into words pretty readily. That said, I am beginning to discover my process now and I can see myself becoming a better writer by recognizing it, exploring it, and bettering it.  I see so much value in encouraging students to explore their own writing processes.  Students have to understand that writing is a process and doesn’t just magically happen (not even for those of us trying to make careers of it); they need to be exposed to various processes in order to find something that works for them.

“The human voice is the organ of the soul.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My high school English teachers didn’t allow us to use first person in our academic papers (which was all we wrote).  The Great Gatsby, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Alice in Wonderland, The Grapes of Wrath, Macbeth, The Scarlet Letter, and A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man all came and went and I wrote the best academic papers I could muster using suggested themes from the teacher.  The papers were difficult to write, dry, and many times I “failed to dig deep enough.”  My senior research thesis, over Alice in Wonderland, received a B and I do not really remember what I wrote about, something to do with the topicality of Carroll’s characters.  Come to think of it, I received mostly Bs on all my high school essays.  I didn’t use “I.”  I kept myself firmly out of the paper.  I kept my voice out.  Now, looking back, I can honestly say my work suffered, because my voice was stifled.

When I got to college, my first assignment in Composition and Argumentation was to analyze an advertisement of my choice.  I turned in my initial outline and my teacher said something to the affect of, “You can write, but this feels very contrived.”  I stared at her blankly, and wondered what academic papers are, if not contrived?  “Don’t be afraid of the first person, Erin,” she said, “Don’t be afraid to bring yourself into the writing.” 

Don’t be afraid of the first person.  Don’t be afraid to bring yourself into the writing.

So I brought myself into academic papers.  In the beginning I tread softly, with trepidation.  As my fear of self in writing dissipated, I became a better writer.   With my voice present and welcome, I was able to dig deeper into my subjects and present my professors with polished, academic papers that were unmistakably my very own.  

Perhaps there is a line for some students and I think it’s unquestionable that the use of self, voice, and “I” can be abused.   However, I think teaching voice is one of the most important lessons you could ever teach in an intro to writing course.  At the very least, students have to be taught to explore many voices, including their own.  Whether this leads them to self discovery via paper immediately or to something else entirely depends on the student.  For beginning writers though, even just the awareness of voice—learning of its presence and its potential power—can open the door to a whole new realm of possibilities.

What I want to know is: why do they teach College Algebra?  I’m only kidding…Sort of. 

Because of a lack of familiarity with writing, bad experiences in English courses, a deep hatred for reading or a predisposed penchant for spelling everything wrong and putting commas in all sorts of interesting placing, writing is a terrible and unforgiving practice for many students.  I think we teach First Year Composition to dispel the notion that writing is terrible and unforgiving and uphold the idea that writing is a useful tool for the communication and expression of ideas. 

Students of math, philosophy, engineering, business, agriculture, theatre, etc all have to be able to put their ideas into writing.  They have to be able to analyze reading (along with other forms of communication) for the completion of their required general coursework and for the coursework within their field.  Many of the students taking 1301 have never been given (or even shown) the tools for effective writing before, so it seems as teachers of writing we have to start basically from square one. 

I am one of the few people starting an MA in English that actually took a Freshmen English course as a freshman.  I started out Pre-Journalism at the University of Missouri and one of the required courses was Intro to Composition and Argumentation.  I witnessed firsthand how important courses that teach basic writing can be.  While 1301 begins as a necessary evil of being able to go to frat parties or getting away from the ‘rents (parents), many will actually walk away with a better understanding of and a new appreciation for composition.   

What do we teach?  Well, I know what the syllabus of 1301 entails, but I have never graded or taught composition and I haven’t observed the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of our program at TTU yet.  Ask me again in a few months.

1) The writer–without the writer of the composition (be it speech or written word), there is no composition being formulated, no idea being communicated. 

2) The reader (or, audience)–the audience is as much a part of the composition process as the writer.  They are an integral part of composition and more importantly, in order for writing to be effective, the audience has to be invited into the dialogue somehow.  Without an engaged audience, you don’t have a show.

3) Mindfulness–in order for a writer to write and a reader to read with the utmost clarity and with an open mind, we must be aware of ourselves, our experiences and feelings, the experiences of others and their feelings, and quite generally, the world around us.  We have to maintain a high level of conscientiousness to engage in active writing/orating and listening/reading.

I believe these three elements of composition are the most important.  While they may each stand seemingly independent from one another (i.e. a great orator in a roomful of detached listeners), they are each key components to effective and meaningful composition.   Standing alone, they are each lonely and insignificant.