Composition Conundrum

The other day, TM brought home a stack of grading. As it was sitting on the kitchen table, I glanced at the top paper, as one does. It was written by a student who passed my Comp II class last year (with a C, as I recall). I read a couple of lines.

Boy howdy.

This guy has some writing problems. For reals. Grammar, spelling, even spell-check; we're talking "the"/"they" and "be"/"by" errors, not to mention your run-of-the-mill run-ons, frags, and subject-verb agreement problems.

Now, I wouldn't be surprised if this particular student had a learning disability--not because of anything else in his performance, but because I do remember that he really struggled with precisely those kinds of very basic issues. (Dyslexia? I don't know.) But I remember, too, that he was very engaged in class, had always done the homework and spoke up frequently, offered interesting insights into nearly every discussion, worked hard, revised often, researched energetically, and had great ideas for his papers. I remember that he knew he had writing problems and struggled to improve. And this, of course, is how he got a C when his writing itself was so poor: he did everything that I asked him to. He completed the assignments and developed the skills (thesis statement, citation, research, revision) that I taught him.

What I didn't do was teach him grammar. Or spelling. How, then, could I fail him for the course?

Comp is not a grammar course. We say this up front, on Day 1, and on our syllabi. We declare that we expect our students to come in with the basic skills that they need to write sentences, and that we expect them to seek additional help as they need it. Now, of course I do some grammar teaching--things like dangling modifiers and pronoun-antecedent agreement, the scourge of my life--but we do not teach subject-verb agreement, and frankly I don't know how to teach basic grammar. Besides, most of our students at least mostly don't need that. But the fact of the matter is that many of our students do need basic spelling and grammar help.

So where does that leave us? Passing students who cannot write sentences, that's where.

Now, I could, of course, fail these students (and I seem to get at least one a semester--one who actually works hard enough to pass the other tasks that we assign, anyway). But there are two problems with that. First, it seems totally wrong to fail a student for something that I am not teaching him, and that I will not teach him (because of course I figure out his problem right away, and try what I can, and send him to the writing lab, but I don't spend the semester teaching him how to spell. How do you even teach spelling??). And second, another semester of comp would do him no good, as far as I can tell. He's learning the things that we teach in comp (insofar as one can, without the basics).

What we need is a developmental or remedial course. But we don't have one, and we don't have any way to screen students for one, and we don't have anybody to teach one.

I don't know what to do.

I'm not teaching comp this semester, but I had a student who (nearly) fit this description last semester, too (he was less...accomplished in the higher-order areas than the first student I mentioned), and he got a D because he did improve a great deal and learn a lot about citations, theses, research, etc. But he can't write.

What should we do? What do you do?

The little-known secret of Composition courses

....

..
.

..

nothing

works.


I hope, I only hope, that I am speaking too soon. There is still one chance for my students to redeem themselves this semester.

But oh, God, if I could physically insert the drive to cite sources into their heads, then maybe we'd get somewhere.

Does this happen to you? Do you find yourself becoming obsessed with some one thing, some single obvious thing that 80% of your students simply won't do? Like cite their sources? In a research paper???? I can't think of anything else. It's practically all I read for anymore.

OK. I will stop. I've been raging about this for two weeks now (6 conference days in 10 days, yes indeedy, that'll make you nuts). And tonight I made the mistake of figuring out that I spend about 200 hours a semester (or thereabouts; this was a highly unscientific calculation) working on comp when I teach two sections of it, as I normally do; that's five full work-weeks. And really, I'd be cool with that, if I honestly felt that it resulted in significantly improved writing. But I don't. And I'm frustrated.

Or maybe it does work, and they're all learning, but I just can't see it. Maybe. And maybe they'll continue to develop in the directions I've pointed them long after this semester ends.

The thing is, when I meet with them one-on-one, my frustration fades and I want so badly for them to get it, to succeed, to write kick-ass papers and do really really well. And I hate to hand them Ds and Fs. But love can't make them write any better, no it can't. And neither, apparently, can the textbook, multi-stage assignments, in-class discussion, group work, endless activities, feedback on a neverending series of papers, peer workshops, individual instruction, email reminders, checklists, or anything else I can come up with.

Sigh. Oh well. I'm off tomorrow night for Thanksgiving with the in-laws, and my computer will be staying home. Have a nice week, all.

Do I have time for any of this? Why no, I do not!

Nor do I have the patience!

Does anyone else simply lose patience at about this point in the semester? Ooh, I have been a Cold Bitch to my comp students this week, and have felt absolutely no remorse. (In fairness, I was only a Cold Bitch to about three or four of them, and they were being singularly annoying, in their various ways.) But oh! The papers I am grading! They are atrocious! My comp-teaching colleagues and I have decided to truly Uphold Standards this semester, and I am--disturbingly, weirdly--reveling in giving Fs and Ds to the truly F- and D-deserving papers. Normally I agonize. Am I being mean? She tried!! It's not his fault that he can't write a sentence!! But this time, I think: Can I genuinely pass this student on to a colleague with my writerly stamp of approval? Why no, I cannot!

It helps, I'm finding, to have some clear guidelines. E.g., use 5 or more sources, at least 3 of which must be books or peer-reviewed articles. So when a student uses 5 newspaper articles or websites, boom! No! Fail! (Or a seriously lowered grade.) When a 5-7 page research paper has 3 citations in it, total, wham! Demotion! It's all so shockingly...easy.

The thing is, we've spent--in one way or another--six weeks on these damn papers, including three or four peer workshops and two conferences with me. I've told them what to do. I've told them that you can't write a good research paper if you write it first and then go looking for "stats" to support it. (How I loathe "stats," and "facts," too, for that matter.) The good thing here is that, while this paper is worth 20% of their grades, they now need to write a new research paper on the same topic, but directed towards a different audience--and this will also be worth 20% of their grades. So they can fail this one and, if they work their asses off, maybe redeem themselves next time.

Tomorrow, therefore, we will not discuss the reading (which is on style, and I don't much like the chapter anyway, as it tells students to write in their own voices and not try to sound more formal--well, that's a little unfair, but it does say that, and frankly writing too formally is not a problem that besets the majority of my froshes). We will, instead, discuss Why Passing Composition Is Important, and Why Blowing Off This Course Is A Huge Mistake. I actually have some good thoughts on this, I think. See, they might know, in their hearts, that they can do research. But my responsibility is to ensure that they can do research, and so, if they don't show me that they can do it, they can't pass. Easy! We will then Review The Goals Of The Course (which include things like, "Appropriately use MLA or APA citation style"--really difficult, people, and we did spend, what, two or three weeks on this? Lordy). And then--then!--I will give them an exam. Yes, a surprise composition exam! It is genius. It will ask them to do things like cite, and create a topic sentence, and use signal phrases appropriately. It will ask them what a research-driven paper is. And, at the end, it will ask them to please tell me what it is that they're struggling with, and where they'd like more instruction. For ultimately the exam is an assessment tool, even as it is also there to scare them into giving one little damn about their next papers.

Oh, and in the meantime, one of my heart-monitor reports alarmed somebody who contacted my electrophysiologist, and starting tonight I will need to take a twice-daily heart medication "to get things under control." Dudes, my heart has pounded away since I was born, but okay, whatever. I don't mind. It's only until the surgery. The downside, though? The medication causes fatigue. And man, I have me some fatigue. Siiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

(Otherwise, all is well on the Mihi front, I promise.)

Bad blogger

My cold is gone, but I am inexplicably weary--yet I do feel that I should post something, if only so as not to grade/prep/think about conference papers. So I'll ramble about here for a minute and then go take out my contacts, or something.

Today launches us into Week 5. Spring break is in less than a month. And, although my conference papers have yet to manifest (where the hell are they?), it's been a productive 4+ weeks. I shall regale you with a list of my accomplishments:

• assisted (albeit somewhat minimally) in the revamping of our comp sequence, which, as I mentioned, passed at the last faculty meeting;
• entirely rewrote Field's academic dishonesty statement. My version has passed my peeps in the Humanities, but won't come up before faculty until next month, and I anticipate contention. Why this should be a controversial issue is beyond me. All I'm trying to do (with the endorsement of the dean) is to articulate the guidelines that we're supposed to follow when we catch plagiarism and suggest--not require!--that strong measures (i.e. failing) be taken. I'm already anticipating the opposition. Sigh;
• finished the Incomprehensible Chart of Alien Timesuckage;
• met with all (7) juniors in the Honors program to discuss theses and substantially helped a thesis advisee with her latest chapter;
• taught a bunch of stuff--some new, some old, mostly new;
• practiced yoga nearly every day (accursed cold!); and
  
• written not a damn thing that wasn't a) in my diary b) online c) work-related.

Other than the last point, I'd say I'm doing all right.

That last point, though--oy. I am feeling radically unmotivated when it comes to my work, and I keep putting it off. The current plan is to read ahead all week so that I can take the weekend to outline the Kalamazoo paper and revisit the texts it's on. I am stupid, though, in that I proposed a paper on two really fucking long books [medievalists: think of 2 of the longest canonical texts out there, other than the Divine Comedy--one's in French, one's in English--I'll leave you to sort it out and gloat over my stupidity], neither of which I've actually read in a long time. I can rip the framework for the paper out of my dissertation, but I won't feel intellectually honest unless I look back over said long books. Damn me and my intellectual honesty! Why can't I just slap some rambles together and get on with my life? I'm sure I wouldn't be the first.

A teaching experiment

Ortho has requested a "not boring" post. It's a tall order, but I'll see what I can do.

First, I would like to say that I had an extremely modest book-related breakthrough today (on the New Semi-Chapter that I'm sort of writing), and I'm therefore feeling pretty good about things. I'm also startlingly on top of my course-related reading for the week, and we're moving into what I think will be fun territory in a couple of classes (mitigated by the Milton and Kempe that I'm teaching in two other classes), so things are looking up.

Perhaps I'll take a stab at being interesting by doing something that I don't normally do, which is to talk about something that I'm doing in my classes. This is an experiment that I'm conducting in comp. We're just about to start it, and I'm nervous, but in the idealistic haze that I was apparently inhabiting in late August I decided that this was a really exciting idea.

So. This idea came out of some frustrations that I've had with the culture at Field--not so much with the individual students, whose personalities and interests (naturally) range all over the map, but with the ways in which I've felt that students are Expected To Be on this campus, and how very different that is from the culture at my undergraduate institution. I've blogged before--somewhere--about coming to terms with the differences between the elite SLAC of my formative years and Field; I understand those differences better now that I did last year and I'm okay with some of them. But sometimes, especially in comp--where we talk a lot about current events and issues and suchlike--I've been frustrated and alarmed by what I perceived as a deep apathy in my students. Now, they may not have been genuinely apathetic; for all I know they just hated comp and didn't really want to talk to me. That's fine. But there's so little activism or global awareness of any kind visible on this campus. There isn't even a recycling program (although that seems to be changing, finally. Welcome to 1993, Field!). Earlier this semester, some students put up fliers about the importance of voting, and they were taken down because they were "too political." These were nonpartisan fliers, people--they were just reminding students how important it is to vote. But apparently we all must pretend that nothing in the world exists outside of this campus of under 1000 students, or something. It's very disturbing.

And then I think about my incredibly idealistic and exciting and quite likely irritating college years, when I felt that everything! could! change! and I could live exactly the life I wanted! and I'm so much more aware of global problems and their solutions than my parents! and so forth (did I mention irritating?), and it makes me sad that there's so little room for that kind of excitement here.

We have the power to change our lives. (I swear, I'll get to comp soon.) I don't mean that the poor can simply will their way out of poverty or any of that Secret crap. I mean something much more basic--that our habits are our habits, and we can change them. That we can choose (in my case) vegetarianism, or to stop using plastic bags at the grocery store, or to quit watching TV. Not life-changing stuff in itself, but realizing that power can lead to the recognition of more and more ways of actively choosing the manner in which we live in the world.

And we can choose, in at least some ways, who we are. For example: One really powerful moment in my life came about when, at the age of 20, unemployed and just out of college, I was invited by a friend to leave the next morning for a cross-country drive with no projected return date and nothing in particular for me to do when we got there. I stewed about it all day. I wrote in my diary that I wished that I were the kind of person who could just take off for a cross-country trip at a moment's notice, with no plans and no expectations. And it hit me: The only thing that was distinguished me from "that kind of person" was that the latter would say yes to my friend's invitation. And that's what I did. It was a really fun trip, too.

So. Back to comp: here's what I'm doing. The whole course is about how we interact with the world--how it affects us, how we affect it, what our responsibility is. And in the last month of the course, each student will have to undertake a "life experiment": to change something--dramatically--about how he or she lives in the world and to sustain that change for at least one week. (And to write about it, of course.) It could be, for example, to commit to not buying anything made using sweatshop labor (perhaps during Christmas shopping), which would involve research into which companies treat their workers humanely; to eat only locally produced foods; to produce no garbage at all, composting and recycling everything (except toilet paper, of course); or maybe even to practice unconditional kindness all week.

I really don't know how this is going to turn out. I have a terrible fear that they'll all pick something super easy (despite the fact that they need to clear their projects with me) and then fake the results. Well, I can't control the latter, I guess. But I hope that at least a few of them will start to recognize the incredible power that they, as new adults, have over their very own lives.

Too idealistic? Probably. And it might just baffle the hell out of them (I'm not always the clearest explainer). But I'll let you know how it turns out.

Pod Professor

Dear small corner of the academic blogosphere:

I regret to inform you that your beloved--or, at any rate, your tolerated, infrequently-posting, usually rather whiny Dr. Mihi has been replaced by an alien instructor from outer space, and that said body-snatcher is, yes, is looking forward to the comp course that she's designed for this semester.

Damn straight y'all. How did this happen?

Classes start a week from Wednesday, and I'm going to hold onto my glorious dream of eager, engaged freshmen right up until it bursts.

Love,
The Pod