Category: ENGL 820 – Pdgy & Instr Design

“Will Rogers once remarked that ‘we are all ignorant, only on different subjects.’ To teach anything well, you have to place yourself in the position of the learner who does not already know the basics and has to be persuaded that the subject is worth studying.”

Morson (2015) hits on a key point that I think much of tenured academia needs to remind themselves of: Our specialties and fancy degrees make us scholars in a very specific area, leaving us ignorant in many other areas. We may know much about Derrida, Dante, and Foucault, but we know nothing about plumbing or electrical work.

I am—quite frankly—embarrassed when my colleagues gaff at blue collar workers, farmers, and stay-at-home moms who are not college educated. These citizens are essential to our society and economy, and their wages often fund the salary of many academics. The fact of the matter is, when we “smart people” need something fixed, we call the “uneducated” people to help us out.

Following the 2016 presidential election, one of my students commented that the reason more rural areas of the country voted for Donald Trump is because mostly uneducated people live in rural areas. And the reason she thought this was because her political science professor explained this phenomenon to the class.

Such rhetoric is dangerous, especially when dealing with students who don’t understand the value of taking a Literature course or wrestling with poetry (Schmieder). Such rhetoric leads students to think narrowly, forgetting that voting is a right of all citizens (educated and uneducated). It encourages students to cast stereotypes, assuming that no educated individuals live in rural areas and only educated people live in urban areas. But what is perhaps most depressing here is that such rhetoric influences students to categorize people in a society in which we already deal with much discrimination.

If we want buy-in… If we want our students to even begin to understand the complexity of Literature, then when we stand in front of a classroom, we need to be people before we are professors. We need to show humanity and compassion before we flex our published muscles. We need to remember that—like our students—there is much we don’t know. To teach them effectively, as Morson highlights, we have to realize our audience and help them understand not only the value of what we do, but the value of what everyone else does, as well. We cannot expect students to recognize the value of anything, including Literature, if we do not reciprocate respect for those who do not know about Literature.

Learner first. Teacher Second.

Huot (2002) draws on Louise Wetherbee Phelps to answer questions about teacher response to student writing. Phelps (2000) highlights the issue that “Response is fundamentally reading, not writing” (p. 113), yet we (professors, instructors, teachers) make it about correct writing rather than meaning-making. Our comments focus on what’s right or wrong instead of how to move the learner to develop their thoughts more richly in writing.

For Huot, this means “we are limited by our ability to evaluate student writing by the process we use to make meaning of a text in the first place” (p. 113). Such an argument is striking to me only because I hadn’t before considered how my comments may be limiting my students. I work to ask questions and develop my thoughts in the margins of their work, but I wonder to what extent my comments are pointing students to evaluate and critically analyze their own writing.

In the examples of teacher response that Huot provides, she also suggests that when we read as teachers we are limiting ourselves. Drawing on Freedman (1984), Huot explains that the teacher-raters judged student writing as inappropriate when the teachers assumed the roles that the students were supposed to fill as immature writers (p. 117). First, it seems to me that a teacher should never argue that he or she is done learning or learning to read. To assume that because one is a teacher that he or she is also a master at his or her practice is a poor understanding of what a teacher does. Second, how can we cultivate a curiosity and a desire to create meaning among our students, moving them to think and write more critically, if we assume the role of knowing best? Huot’s work reminds me that as a teacher, I am committed to being a life-long learner. I argue that I am a learner first and a teacher second.

A Rhetoric of Reflection

In the introduction to A Rhetoric of Reflection, Yancey (2016) draws on DiStefano et al. (2014) to explain that people use reflection to “secure their learning” (p. 8). This comment strikes me because, to this point, I have been thinking of reflection as a means to transfer skill, not as a means to reinforce or affirm skill. Of course reflection can be used for forward-reaching transfer, but I think sometimes discussion of solidifying an existing or newly learned skill gets bypassed when we begin talking about transfer. The aim is always looking forward. Yancey’s division of studies on reflection into generations (p. 9) was also helpful to me to see where our understanding of reflection has been and also conceptualize where it’s going.

Horner’s discussion of Action-Reflection and its alignment with Friere (p. 107) makes me want to investigate further to see if and where this idea may intersect with Russel’s activity theory. Horner notes that for Friere, “Action and reflection occur simultaneously. . . Critical reflection is also action” (Freire, 1970, p. 128). Russell (1995) describes human behavior and consciousness as “goal-directed,” and uses examples of action such as a child reaching for a toy (“Activity Theory and Its Implications for Writing Instruction”). In the past, I have drawn on activity theory in framing my discussions on transfer, and it seems that the goal-directed action of activity theory would necessitate reflection in order to affirm the action so that it could be conducted again.