Academic Independence

Student: "Aren't you going to correct it for me?" 

Me: "No, you're going to do it."

Student: (Disgusted sigh)

There was an article last week on HuffPost College by admissions consultant advising parents on how they can back away from their High School Junior and Senior aged kids in the name of independence and self-sufficiency. And then results of a new survey comes out claiming that parents are hovering around their college attending children more than ever. And while I fall to the side of letting kids go and making their own way and their own mistakes, I don't think that students are adequately prepared to succeed academically on their own. 

What do I mean by this? As I stated in my previous column on how most admissions standards encourages a narrow focus on only certain kinds of writing, students have no idea how to adapt their writing depending on the circumstances and demands of their assignments. More troubling, perhaps, is a general inability of students to look at their own writing and work to improve it. 

We are currently doing peer-review and self-assessments in my writing classes. The exercises are guided, using questions and directions that exactly mirror my own process when evaluating their work. My goal is to get them to be more critical and aware readers of their own writing, partially through looking at the work of others, partially through repeatedly revising their own writing. 

With my developmental writing class, we are working on a short narrative essay, which makes it easier for me to work with them and offer my own feedback along with the feedback of their peers. Plus, this is a developmental writing course - they need more help, or else they wouldn't have been placed in the course to begin with. In my larger 200-level class, we are writing a longer essay. When I revealed to the students that I would not be giving them any feedback on their drafts, I faced an open revolt. How did I expect them to do well on the essay when they didn't know what I would be grading them on?

First question, how do you write your papers in other classes where there is no peer-review or drafting process? Second question, how do you ever expect to be able to do this on your own if you don't start somewhere? If you don't know how to properly cite sources, what good does it do for me to simply correct your mistakes for you? If you don't know the rules for proper comma use (which I have to now check and double-check myself), what good does it do for me to just mark it on your paper? 

My goal is always to teach my students skills and how to adapt them to different situation. In other words, academic independence. Or, more appropriately, intellectual independence. Parents can't do their school work for them; then again, neither can I.

Admissions Insanity

"But I did so well in high school. I never got lower than a [insert high grade here]."

High school is barely back in session and already the admissions frenzy for a select group of Juniors and Seniors has begun. I say select group because the statistics show that most students who attend college are at open admissions, non-selective colleges, not the highly-selective ones written about constantly.

For these select students, college admission counselors are offering advice, tutors are helping prep for the SAT/ACT, and parents are paying a personal admissions advisor direct their child through every step of the process: from extra-curricular activities to international volunteer work to the right number of AP courses. The goal, of course, is admission to the "perfect" school … But then what?

I look at this from the perspective of a college instructor completely removed from the process. I look at what lessons students learn from the admissions process, and how these shape their behavior in and approach to my Freshman Writing course.

Students seem to be concerned with two things: their grades and their test scores. If the sheer number of available test prep services are any indication, getting high grades in school do not necessarily translate into high test scores. Moreover, and from my experience, neither seem to predict student success in a basic writing course at the college level. Students learn to write one way for high school classes, another way for admissions essay, and yet another way to do well on their SAT/ACT. They learn each way of writing independently from the others, and are never shown how to transfer their skills from one style of writing to another.

Students seem to learn a small number of rote formulae and stock phrases to pad their essays, leading to high (enough) scores and grades, but few skills to write (and think) beyond those taught to them. And why should they? They do well on tests and get good grades. When students are first faced with an essay that doesn't fall into one of the three categories mentioned above, however, they have no idea how to adapt. A student who has learned to master the five-paragraph essay (but little to nothing else) is ill-prepared to write anything longer than five paragraphs, let alone the five, ten, or twenty page essays required in college. 

While I understand parents’ and students’ desire to get into a “good” school, I want to remind them that getting in is only the first step. The student still has to take the classes once they get there. And more often than not, high school and standardized tests have left the student ill-prepared for the rigors of college. The process to get into college may be stressful, demanding, and challenging, but it is completely different than the one facing you once you get in and want to continue getting high grades (or just simply passing).

I might not have been the one who decided if you should get into college, but I do evaluate your writing to see if it is at an appropriate college level once you’re here. I just wish there wasn’t such a disconnect.  

Self-Censorship as a Contingent Academic

I've written elsewhere how academic freedom in higher education is a bit of a misnomer. And I'm not saying that what I'm about to write about here should fall under the category of academic freedom. But it does fit into the category of faculty members needing to speak up and speak out about what does (or does not) go on academically on campus.

I picked up the student newspaper last week. On the front page, below the fold, was a story on how my school was now focusing on college readiness. In the article were some sobering statistics about the academic level of students we are admitting to the school. But I already knew that. The article, however, only quotes administrators, not faculty or instructors tasked with helping these students overcome their deficiencies in reading, writing, and math. The only mention of faculty is to throw our Education program under the bus, saying that "we" need to do a better job training teachers here.

This article made me mad for several reasons. At the beginning of the semester, a newly-hired administrator in a newly-created position came to talk to us (the instructors who teach remedial writing) about student retention and college readiness. He made a big deal about how his position was created to help us ensure student success. So would we please add some more administrative duties to the five classes we're already teaching. He was quoted extensively and given a lot of praise for his coordination of the testing innitiative on campus in the aforementioned article.

I know he makes more money than I do as an instructor. He has more job security than I do as an instructor. I know that I have more experience and education than he does. No one in that room was in a tenure-track appointment. Some, like me, were lucky enough to have a full-time instructor position. Others were adjuncts, with low pay, no benefits, and little job seecurity. I'm not attacking him personally; he taught remedial math and lucked into the position because of an angry letter he sent in regards to the last-minute implementation of testing requirements. But when an administrator comes into a room full of tenuously-employed instructors, politely requiring them to do more work, I get my back up.

And while I have my own issues with the faculty of education, I think it is unfair to disparrage the work that they do to train teachers according to madated State and Federal guidelines. The impetus of the article was that our State has signed on to the Common Core Standards innitiative, to better prepare students for college. But until there are clear State guidelines as to how these standards will be evaluated, teachers will be prepared in order to be able to meet the current standards set by No Child Left Behind and now Race to the Top. Teachers are being trained to teach to the test and administer those tests.

Now, what does this have to do with "Academic" Freedom? I wanted to write a letter to the paper, outlining exactly what I said above. But I didn't. As I have been told by many, I am lucky to have a job, at the same school as my husband, full-time, with benefits, in this area, in this economy. My chair went to bat for me and fought for me so I could be a full-time instructor and not simply an adjunct. But that could change; I'm the last one in and could very well be the first one out. This is a small school and a small community; I don't want to sabotage my husband's tenure case because I spoke up. And while I know my words will probably be appreciated by many in the faculty, I'm just just as sure that members of the administration will probably not look too kindly upon them.

So I'm left blogging, semi-anonymously, where my message will certainly reach a larger audience, but an audience nonetheless that is less relevant to the immediate issue at hand. I can blog all I want about the larger issues, but when do I need, when do we need, to start making concrete changes where we work and teach? This is why I should be "free" to speak up about the academic issues that impact me and, more importantly, my students and future students. I'm not doing anything wrong; I'm trying to do what's right. But that's not what is expected of me.

What do you think, readers? Send that letter or leave it here in the vaste spaces of the Internet?

In Defense of the Narrative Essay

I'll admit it; I was a narrative essay hater. What was the point, I lamented. The last thing students needed to do was to do more writing about themselves. They needed to learn how to do proper research, organize their well-thought out ideas in a coherent way, and draw reasonable and meaningful conclusions. What does writing about themselves have to do with that?

Now, I see the narrative essay for what it is: a valuable bridge between where my students are and where they need to be. Especially with my remedial students, they need to practice writing in a more organized, thoughtful, and coherent essay without worrying about doing research. They tend to see essays as being too prescriptive, too limiting, while a story offers them the opportunity to be creative. They get to be more creative, and I get them to follow some guidelines that bridge into "real" essay writing.

Here are some of the other advantages of the narrative essay:

1) Brevity. Typically, a story can go on and on and on and on. The narrative essay can easily be limited to 500 to 750 words, and the whole idea of making sure your story has a point or message is powerful tool to get them to reign in their tangents, asides, and repetition. Keep it short and simple, stick to what matters, and make your point.

2) Breaking "Bad" Habits. I have voiced my displeasure at the reliance on the five-paragraph essay, so relentlessly taught all through junior high and high school. You can't tell a good story, with a clear purpose or not, in the form of a five-paragraph essay. Students have to come up with new ways to introduce their ideas, new ways to progress and build on those ideas, and new ways to conclude without relying on repeating their thesis statement. 

3) Show, don't tell. You may tell a story, but the best stories paint a picture with words. Students, because of the requirements of a good narrative, can't simply "tell" the readers what the point of the story is. They have to find a way to create characters and setting that come alive, while communicating their point. 

4) Confidence. Every student has a story (heck, many stories) that they want to tell. On twitter today, someone I'm following wrote: "People who plagiarize weren't told enough when they were younger, "Your ideas and writing are great!!!" Hence, they steal." I had never thought of it that way. Most of my remedial students have been told that they aren't good writers, not to mention that they aren't the smartest, either. Part of the challenge is just getting the kids to feel confident about their writing and ideas. They know their stories and we can work together to tell it well. 

5) Adaptability. I tell my students that they will probably never write another narrative essay in university. But being able to adapt their writing and ideas for different audiences? That's a skill that will serve them well long after they've graduated. A narrative essay is really wonderful because it more naturally has an audience beyond just the teacher. Students need to think about who they are and will be writing for outside of their professors.

Once they've built up their confidence, seen the value of having some rules or guidelines that they need to follow, and begun to think beyond the five-paragraph essay, my students are more willing and more able to learn about and write more traditional college essays. I'm glad somewhere along the way I was "forced" to teach the narrative essay. My students are the ultimate benefactors.