Response to Hillock's, 9/14

As others have stated, I too am opposed to the Ph. D. (really?) in Hillock’s chapter. This guy’s method is summed up as ‘teaching is tantamount to telling’. Personally, nothing could be further from the truth. Watch any set of parents who simply tell their child what to do. Their commands mean nothing, the behavior either encouraged or ignored, without actions to speak louder than. I AM comparing college freshmen, or whoever may be in our classes, to children merely because each group is dealing with something deeper than before, a terrifying unknown (Durst’s third chapter comes to mind here). I think the same principle applies to teaching, especially in teaching writing for freshmen composition. Additionally, telling as teaching sets the instructor on some sort of pedestal in which he or she looks down upon their students, shining their ever pompously big-headed light of omniscience onto the class. Who wants to be this egotistical? And who among us, come on grad students and first-time teachers, truly believes that they have nothing to learn from their students? I’ve heard a great many teachers say that teaching is not telling, rather it is learning on a vastly different field of play.
I also do not agree with Mr. Ph. D.’s definition of a story within an analytical essay. Not only do I find it confusing, as I’m sure most of his students did, but it’s just wrong, especially from a creative writing standpoint. First, analytical, critical composition and storytelling are two different groups in the field of writing. At times, their methodology is completely opposed. One relies on straightforward, bam-bam-bam factual information with research and analysis to back-up its points. The other floats somewhere between poetry and an abstraction of authorial ideals. The missing the commercial remark makes no sense. The commercial is inconsequential to the TV program. Most of us want to miss the commercial. While yes, first, second, and third do not correlate with beginning, middle, and end, the ending is the conclusion. The ending is what drives the point of the work home. In fact, most stories are judged by their endings. Take a movie for example, ‘The Village’. Pretty good until the groan-worthy ending, right? The ending is the conclusion to the piece, whether the writer wants it to be or not, because the ending is where we leave the reader, where we conclude our tale, letting them know that textually that is all we have to say on the subject. Using these kinds of comparisons on freshmen comp students is mind-boggling.
To jump back on point, reflective practice preaches teaching and learning at the same time. In a sense, the teacher is with the students, in the nitty-gritty, working towards the same goals. Students are trying to figure out their writing, while teachers are trying to figure out what is making them write better or worse and what steps can be taken for the good. In our previous readings, and I’m paraphrasing here, it was said that language and writing work hand-in-hand with cultural contexts to influence theory. It’s an inter-mingling, a shifting sea where the surface appears the same but the currents differ. The same can be said about reflective practice. The four interconnected theories Hillocks outlines are, to me (and I admit no great knowledge of the subject), a very sane way to tackle college composition instruction given this ever-changing climate of writing theory and practice.
I’ll give Mr. Ph. D. a bit of credit. At first, teaching is telling. We must outline assignments, direct instruction, etc. Then, the second step in Hillock’s method is written discourse, the evidence with which we must take in hand and investigate. I like the idea of invention or inquiry. Here, I think, is where teachers prove their merit. Can we, and my god it is an imposing task, correspond to our individual students needs by changing our teaching style? And can we, even though our pride may take a sore hit, admit that what we’re doing isn’t working and try something different? After all, students do that when we tell them to. The answer of course to all those questions is yes, not just we can, but we must.
Both teaching and inventive inquiry, to me, are equally important. Not only do we have to find what works for the students, but what works for us. We have to be comfortable. We have to feel like we can learn from ourselves and our mistakes. Like Durst says in his book, we too come from the materialistic ‘what is the minimum I have to do to get by’ generation. Now, I know if we merely thought that, many of us would not be where we would today. But our jobs aren’t just simply getting our students through our classes and onto comp 2 (or wherever they may be headed). We must also think critically about our methods, the effects of our methods, and what we can do, individually and as a group, to foster a seed of inquiry in the mind of our students.
I do have one quibble with Hillock’s article. I’m probably being over-sensitive, but notice the page under ‘Priority of Reflective Practice’ where he discusses the underprivileged urban children and their poor writing skills. Already, the reader knows the overall demographic this phrase suggests. Yet, later on, Hillocks points out these students are African American. What does that matter? Does this skin color have an effect on their composition? He does this again later on, saying that 21 or 29 7th grade African American in a low-level Chicago school did such and such. My question to Hillocks is if these students being African American have any true bearing on his studies. Again, I’m probably being over-sensitive, but for some reason these descriptions stood out to me as textually odd as compared with the rest of his piece.