Response 4 Collision Course
Arthur T. Zheng
9/16/09
Know Thy Students
“Be friends with your students,” so we are often advised. But given the tight class schedule, amount of assignments to read, and the hours we are actually in the office, it seems a mission impossible for teachers of college composition to meet their students on a regular basis. Knowledge of students has often been a result of wild guesses.
The question of knowing students arises when I read the part where Joshua was competing with his friends to produce a deliberate “lousy” draft simply as part of an assignment. Such practical jokes may sometimes be serious enough to destroy the authority of the instructor and the entire course. As identified in Collision Course, different expectations of the class, social-economic backgrounds, and academic backgrounds all contribute to the difficulty to deliver the goals of critical literary outlined in the course statements. Is it impossible to overcome those differences? The answer may lie in proactive communication in and out of the class.
To start with, it may be unwise to criticize the careerism students bring to a composition class. Most students hold the view that the composition class offers a bunch of “rules” they could apply to writing or their fields of study, thus the use value of the class. However, there is more in the writing class that those rules; critical thinking is part and parcel of any process of inquiry. If teachers can encourage critical thinking across curricula, they would likely improve students’ awareness of critical literacy. In this sense, teachers are put in a position to know more about their students and build the ability to communicate in other subjects.
Confidence and efficiency from the side of students may also be established in a composition class with the instructor’s ability to negotiate a balance between comfort and rigor. Even though students who differ evidently in their levels of writing competency may be placed in different classes, the difference within a class may be significant enough to justify adjusting comfort levels accordingly to set in motion a writing process within students. The process may or may not include the supposed steps of prewriting and revision; students may challenge or conform to the authority of the instructor; they may or may not stick to the grammatical details and fail to see the bigger rhetorical picture. The actuality in a composition class requires instructors to know their students individually and not impose uniform course objectives on them. Take Joshua for example. His love of mountain bikes may fall out of the class objective; however, that interest may not be a barrier for him to write proficiently in other fields. Writing within a theme may be a good beginning to engage students. In Joshua’s case, the instructor may set a level of rigor that is higher than and just different from those students who find writing dreadful or disappointing. Such fine tuning of the rigor level entails the instructor’s in-depth knowledge of the needs of students.
Does that mean a teacher has to be the maternal type? The classroom is a new opportunity for students from different social-economic backgrounds to establish an equal environment. The instructor’s intervention is highly necessary to enact such an environment. Such matters as where to sit, whom to be in a group with, even whom to talk to are significant to a democratic classroom. The instructor, then, needs to be informed about his or her students in such a way as to establish democracy in the classroom and minimize cliques or dependence on the teacher.
Misunderstanding of the classroom as a self-sufficient community may blind the teacher to conflicts he or she might be in. However, even one-on-one interviews with students constitute a social process in which politics may rule. Should insider information then, if not too practical, be a way out?
Arthur T. Zheng
9/16/09
Know Thy Students
“Be friends with your students,” so we are often advised. But given the tight class schedule, amount of assignments to read, and the hours we are actually in the office, it seems a mission impossible for teachers of college composition to meet their students on a regular basis. Knowledge of students has often been a result of wild guesses.
The question of knowing students arises when I read the part where Joshua was competing with his friends to produce a deliberate “lousy” draft simply as part of an assignment. Such practical jokes may sometimes be serious enough to destroy the authority of the instructor and the entire course. As identified in Collision Course, different expectations of the class, social-economic backgrounds, and academic backgrounds all contribute to the difficulty to deliver the goals of critical literary outlined in the course statements. Is it impossible to overcome those differences? The answer may lie in proactive communication in and out of the class.
To start with, it may be unwise to criticize the careerism students bring to a composition class. Most students hold the view that the composition class offers a bunch of “rules” they could apply to writing or their fields of study, thus the use value of the class. However, there is more in the writing class that those rules; critical thinking is part and parcel of any process of inquiry. If teachers can encourage critical thinking across curricula, they would likely improve students’ awareness of critical literacy. In this sense, teachers are put in a position to know more about their students and build the ability to communicate in other subjects.
Confidence and efficiency from the side of students may also be established in a composition class with the instructor’s ability to negotiate a balance between comfort and rigor. Even though students who differ evidently in their levels of writing competency may be placed in different classes, the difference within a class may be significant enough to justify adjusting comfort levels accordingly to set in motion a writing process within students. The process may or may not include the supposed steps of prewriting and revision; students may challenge or conform to the authority of the instructor; they may or may not stick to the grammatical details and fail to see the bigger rhetorical picture. The actuality in a composition class requires instructors to know their students individually and not impose uniform course objectives on them. Take Joshua for example. His love of mountain bikes may fall out of the class objective; however, that interest may not be a barrier for him to write proficiently in other fields. Writing within a theme may be a good beginning to engage students. In Joshua’s case, the instructor may set a level of rigor that is higher than and just different from those students who find writing dreadful or disappointing. Such fine tuning of the rigor level entails the instructor’s in-depth knowledge of the needs of students.
Does that mean a teacher has to be the maternal type? The classroom is a new opportunity for students from different social-economic backgrounds to establish an equal environment. The instructor’s intervention is highly necessary to enact such an environment. Such matters as where to sit, whom to be in a group with, even whom to talk to are significant to a democratic classroom. The instructor, then, needs to be informed about his or her students in such a way as to establish democracy in the classroom and minimize cliques or dependence on the teacher.
Misunderstanding of the classroom as a self-sufficient community may blind the teacher to conflicts he or she might be in. However, even one-on-one interviews with students constitute a social process in which politics may rule. Should insider information then, if not too practical, be a way out?
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