I’ve never thought myself to be a great teacher, though I have aspired to be one. Numerous flaws have kept me from that goal. I am naturally disinclined to organization or consistency, both of which are necessary for excellence in teaching. I am forgetful to the point of scatterbrained. In a teachers’ conference once, I met a guy in much worse shape in that regard. His sisters told him, “You’re like a goose; you wake up to a new world each day.” I could relate. Even my handwriting has many variants.
I am creative, true, but that doesn’t go very far when it comes to creating and implementing coherent lesson plans.
But enough confession. Sometimes I am very good at teaching. When I fail, my students seem to be forgiving because, I suppose, my sincerity shows. I would like to articulate some of the things I have learned about teaching my students over more than 30 years of the attempt.
One very good book that I used when I taught English 101 is The Writer’s Way by Jack Rawlins. Students voiced their approval. I haven’t taught English 101 in many years, but a nice picture of how to learn comes early in the book. Rawlins says that learning requires four elements: motivation, a model of what is to be learned, practice, and feedback.
I have passed this simple description onto students in all my classes. It applies to any learning, whether it’s dance, guitar, carpentry, or writing an essay. So let’s take them in order:
Motivation. It’s no secret that our students won’t learn unless they’re motivated, and we teachers are too familiar with students who are not motivated. In this morning’s paper, I read about how 1 in 4 applicants who take the military entrance exam can’t pass it. And that’s after 75% of the applicants have been disqualified because of poor physical fitness, criminal activity, or lack of high school diploma.
Clearly our young people are not very motivated to learn what school has for them.
How can we motivate them? We could write a book to answer this question. Some don’t seem to be interested in anything that takes concentration, for concentration is effort, and effort is for saps to many of our young people. We can repeat the usual litany of amusements that draw our young people away from satisfying work: film, video games, social networking, texting, etc, not to mention drugs and alcohol.
Despite these many distractions, in a writing class, motivating students should be easier than math, for sure, and even psychology, which interests most people. In a writing class, we should exercise our freedom to choose what our students write about. That is, the students should be able to choose. In some classes, the process of choosing interesting topics might take some time. A good writing teacher is sensitive to the topics of the day and can pick ones to get things rolling, but soon after the class starts, students should be assigned to develop lists of topics. I have had great success with this in English 101 and English 111.
So one piece of advice that I would give new teachers is to, as far as is practicable, let the students choose what they are going to be investing their attention in learning about.
A model of what is to be learned. One of my favorite recent works is called Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a report on what constitutes enjoyment. For decades, Csikszentmihalyi studied people who seemed to be the happiest in their work or recreation. He outlined about 8 requirements for a person to enter this state of “Flow” that also he called, in a somewhat technical way, “enjoyment.” One of the key ingredients was that a person clearly could see what it was they were trying to accomplish. Surgeons, he found, enjoyed their work more than almost anyone else. In the world of sport, rock climbers reported a sense of near bliss as they scaled a slope, and painters and sculptors too. Even as a lay person, we can see that a surgeon always has a very precise and clear vision about what he is trying to accomplish, whether it be to set a bone or replace a hip. Does the Intermediate algebra student have that same luxury? Or a student facing an assignment to write a research report? Not necessarily.
So in a writing class, any assignment should be accompanied by a good example of an answer to it. Of course, our books have model essays and research papers, but why not one written by a peer of theirs: a student from your last semester’s class.
But don’t just provide the model; provide the analytical play by play of the paper showing how the writer did well in the many levels of good writing. I compare this to watching a movie with the director’s commentary. Maybe you enjoyed a movie very much, but when you watch it again with the director’s commentary, you become aware of so many more elements of the work: they may mention how pieces of a scene pay homage to other movies; they mention something about the actor and the preparation he put into his role. Elements of the music that were simply pleasant to you may contain pointed references and value to the director.
Your commentary on a sample work can do the same thing for your students. And it gives them a much clearer target for them to aim at.
Practice: Csikszentmihalyi says another element for achieving the enjoyable state of Flow is that we are well-matched to our task. It is neither too difficult nor too hard. We are neither bored nor frustrated. If we are motivated, and the task before us is clear, and is well-matched to our ability, we have the elements in place for an enjoyable focus of our concentration. That’s our goal as teachers, for it’s in that state that students are learning—in fact they are teaching themselves.
Now, how to achieve that? Remember that most of your students do not read for pleasure and certainly do not write for their own enjoyment. They are not like you—at all. I know that when you teach the 200 level classes, you will meet some kindred spirits, and your spirit will quiver in joy. These students will also suffer at your hands in the traditional manner, but for the others, the seething majority, being asked to read and writes is pure torture. The Russian psychologist Vygotsky did foundational work that affirms Csikszentmihalyi’s assertions. Vygotsky also recognized that students must be supported as they move from ignorance to mastery through tasks that are not too frustrating. Your job is to find that zone for your students. If you simply ignore their current state, they will not learn.
I have friends in my bicycle club who are loquacious, articulate storytellers about their cycling exploits and foibles. But they would never dare, not even consider, writing me a note in an email or posting their thoughts on a discussion board. They are terrified of that prospect. They fear the certainty of embarrassment because of absolute insecurity about the written word. That’s where a lot of your students are as well. So step back two or three places from your assumptions about what your students know and can do. Let them do a lot of free, ungraded writing that you simply check off. You don’t even have to read it. Any kind of writing at all is a HUGE change in their day to day world, and a great pressure on that world. Your assignments from English 96-201 should all include a significant amount of preparation to tune them to the model of correctness and give them practice before the final draft is submitted.
Feedback: How can a person feel satisfaction unless they know how close they are coming to their goal? The surgeon sees how his cuts go, how the bleeding is controlled, the layout of the muscles and organs. He immediately knows if he is doing well or needs to correct his actions.
Your students need your feedback too. But not via a grade, because then it’s too late for him to take corrective action on his work. Instead, try to incorporate peer reviews into your writing classes. You’ve shown them a good paper; now show them a bad one. At the same time, give them your grading rubric—and a peer evaluation form which includes questions that guide them to use the rubric on each other’s papers. Let the students grade the paper themselves. During the next class, put it up on the screen and do what you do when you grade a paper. Again, this is like the director’s commentary, but this time not as a guide to producing the paper, but as a guide to revising it. You are training them to review their classmate’s paper, but you are also training them to revise their own as well.
If the topic is of intrinsic interest to a student, he will be motivated. If the model of the task is clear, he will understand what to do. If the practice is matched to his abilities, he won’t get frustrated. And if he gets timely feedback on his performance—with room and freedom to make revisions—then the product will be more to a teacher’s satisfaction.
