One thing I liked initially about Mina Shaughnessy's article was her honesty that came out through her writing about the students in BW and what they were able to accomplish. The perfect label she gives for "basic writing" as "a frontier, unmapped, except for a scattering of impressionistic articles and a few blazed trails"creates a perfect mental picture for how she felt, and I think we all have felt to some degree when handling freshman papers (389).* As critics of these students, sometimes we get trapped in the more abstract ideas of how to deal with these students and their lack of preparation with reading and writing skills. Yet, when we think of them in this way as almost native, wild, untrained people needing our helping to guide them towards better writing, we can see more of what's happening on the ground level and therefore be more effecting in using their terms to get results.
Also, I liked how in class on Thursday most people seemed to understand that teachers really should know more than just commas and spelling to be effective. The more theories I read and we discuss in class, the more I view teaching as a whole and that it is not just what the teacher is teaching or just about the students learning; teaching should be about the multifaceted, complex, and intricate process of the class fluidly moving from beginning to end.
Another thought that occurred to me from this article applies to more than just BW students. First Year Composition papers are hard to handle especially when deciding if content and following instructions is more important than grammar and punctuation. But, is all this theory of "the more you push it, the more they back off" we discussed this week just for students who are in freshman composition classes? It would seem that all students would fall into this category to some degree, but are ones who were able to AP credit their way out better at taking criticism because they are better writers? Is error identification more acceptable at the higher levels?
*Shaughnessy, Mina P."Introduction to Errors and Expectations: A Guide for a Teacher of Basic Writing." The Norton Book of Compositions Studies. New York: Norton, 2009. 387-396.
From the class discussions, it seems like most of us are feeling the same way about teaching; that we want to be a whole teacher teaching to the whole student. Maybe we are the wave of the future. We might change the face of writing instruction. How lucky will our students be to have us for teachers?! : )
ReplyDelete