Wrestling With the Readings (The Easy Allusion)

                Of this week’s readings, I looked first at the “Literature Web” designed by the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William and Mary. In fact, the words “Gifted Education” are what jumped out for me first; I realized, thinking back through my education and experiences, that I have only ever been presented with graphic organizers as a tool for helping struggling students, a kind of crutch. Just to see what would happen, I presented this web to my current American Literature II class as a way of encountering a lengthy piece through which we are working, and I was pleased and surprised to see the  majority of students using the web. “Make the circles bigger,” was the only critical comment I received. In the past, I’ve primarily used questions to guide students through literature, but perhaps it’s time I revisit that practice.

                I next read “Wrestling with the Angel” because that’s just an appealing title. From that piece, I found an idea with which I very much agree and one I strongly question. I agree with the idea that, “Deep reading can’t happen without writing” (Schmeider, 2005, p. 2). I don’t fully process an article unless I mark all over it, and I find that students also process and retain information best from the pieces about which they choose to write. The assertion I question is, “[W]e know they will not admire what they cannot understand” (p. 1). I allow students a wide range of choices in what they write about, and their choices often surprise me. Many students choose to tackle difficult pieces, and while perhaps students do not catch every allusion and literary device, they do express an admiration for pieces I would have never guessed they would opt to read. Perhaps I’m trying to say that supposing instructors know what and in what way students can and will encounter and appreciate any given piece is a dangerous assumption, one that is unfair to students.

            I found much to ponder in Fink’s (2003) proposed taxonomy. While I still see much value in Bloom’s accumulation of action verbs, I do see a need among my own students for those deep learning experiences that cross disciplinary and cognitive boundaries. As I read through Fink’s proposed kinds of learning, I could only think of the many students who drop out of college every year; very rarely do students cite the difficulty of classroom work as a reason for leaving. Overwhelmingly, students talk about struggles that fall under Fink’s categories of Human Dimension, Integration, Caring, and Learning How to Learn (p. 3). I view Fink’s proposed taxonomy as a step to addressing each student as a whole person.

Responding to North (Who Responds to North)

               If every scholarly author spoke as straightforwardly as Stephen M. North, I know that I, at least, would read more journal articles, and I think the field, as a whole, might get more done. He pulls no verbal punches in his “The Idea of a Writing Center” (1984), and maintains that no-holds-barred style as he critiques his own ideas in “Revisiting ‘The Idea of a Writing Center’” (1994). It’s not just North’s approach that appeals to me in these articles; in both I recognize elements of my own experience both as a former tutor and a current teacher. North opens his 1984 article with a direct run down of the ways in which both students and faculty, particularly English faculty, misconstrue and misuse campus writing centers (p. 433), and I know I am complicit in these crimes.

                During my first semester teaching college, after nine years teaching secondary, I got quite the dressing down in some student evaluations for overemphasizing grammatical correctness and formatting. Students expressed that they wanted more than a “13^th grade” experience from me. I knew where I had gone wrong; when I encountered errors I didn’t expect to see at the college level, lack of paragraph breaks or the non-capitalization of “I” for example, I immediately made addressing such errors the focus of my whole group instruction. My next strategy to help students making these types of errors was to, I groan now to say it, send them to our campus writing center. That’s not to say our writing center tutors do not help students, but I have realized, and realize even more clearly in light of North’s words, that I am abdicating an important part of my teaching responsibilities when I comment, even in the nicest possible way, “Take your next paper to the writing center before submitting.” Knowing what to do with students whose writing skills are below what I would expect to see even at the secondary level remains a challenge for me.

                North’s assertion that writing centers should “produce better writers” (1984, p. 438) is one with which I agree but also recognize that I have not, in action, supported. Just as students often do, I have focused on the texts, the products. Rightly, North encourages a focus on people, and I will bear that in mind as I approach my interactions with the writing center in the future.