First Week of Class--Writing as a Discipline

The first few days of class I always take the time to introduce writing as a discipline. We talk about the various methods we write and read, gaining students' awareness of their literacy.

Today, for the first quiz on Chapters 1, 11, and 12 of the St. Martin's text, I had the students list a question about writing that they would like to explore throughout the semester. Here is a handful of those responses:

How do I ask better questions?
How can I become better at creating the right type of outline for whatever I am writing and then use that outline for my paper or what I am writing?
What is the reason we write or what forms of writing do we use in our every day life?
How can I develop my vocab and language so that I am more efficient in my writing?
Where do I turn to begin the inspiration; to help myself get ready and excited to write? How can I do this more often to find myself not not dreading the idea of a writing assignment?

Then, for the next question I took a question from the chapter that asks students to use a simile or metaphor. Write a metaphor or simile that expresses some aspect of your literacy experience. Here is a handful of responses to that question:

Writing to me is like trying to doggy paddle through a pool. Others who can swim can make it look so elegant, graceful and easy, but somehow I find myself expending an immense amount of energy and time to get the same point across.

Writing is an adolescent child, awkward and rich with possibilities, whose inner workings are foreign even to themselves.

Writing is an act like that of a telescope or magnifying glass. Writing magnifies, zooms in, clarifies the abstract item or thought configured in one's mind to share with the universe.

Writing is like lifting a 1000 pound boulder.

Writing is like a conversation with myself that everyone else can listen in on.

Writing is like climbing a seemingly never ending rock face. At the beginning it seems impossible, but once you start and get into a groove, it becomes easier and seems possible.

Writing is like trying to understand biology. ( I am not good at biology.)

Writing is like running a race. It's a challenge but the sense of accomplishment when it is complete is well worth the challenge.

Writing is like psychology. You do research for understanding of the subject and look to see how the reader will feel or react to the writing. Also, research to how you as the writer feel or react to the subject.

Writing to me is like looking at my entire life in the mirror and learning something new about myself as each day passes. When I write, I am able to see the person I become each day compared to the person I was yesterday and I realize who I am more and more with each word I write.

Writing to me is like moving through a blank place with no directions. You write the directions.

Writing is like finding the voice that is too timid to speak, and putting it into action.

Writing is like a chicken flying south for the winter to me.

Writing is like a task that must be completed, a injury that must be fixed a skill that must be learned.


Some really nice thoughts and ways to creating a classroom community. Putting the students on equal playing field works well, at least for the few hours we had today.

Are we doing enough for the students in Developmental Writing Classes?

Developmental Education: Criticisms, Benefits and Survival Strategies
Research & Teaching in Developmental Education, Fall 2005 by Shields, Darla J

Benefits of Developmental Education

"Developmental education benefits students, institutions that provide it, and society at large. Developmental education's goal is to develop a student's skills in order to prepare him or her for college-level courses. Developmental education utilizes a variety of academic and psychological support services to prepare students. Support services often associated with developmental education include assessment, placement, orientation, tutoring, advising, counseling, peer support, early intervention programs, study skills training, learning assistance centers, Supplemental Instruction, support groups, freshman seminars, and learning community clusters. These services provide under-prepared students opportunities to compete for skilled positions in the workforce" (Shields).


After teaching in a learning community for over five years, there are benefits to a student who is enrolled in developmental writing classes as part of a learning community. One of the elements that needs focusing in the developmental classroom is study skills, particularly with critical thinking skills and reading skills. Even though these fundamental strategies are taught in introductory seminars, it is vital to help the students in a writing class read as writers, rather than looking for generic material.


And more from the Shield article, with heavy emphasis placed on our role as developmental writing instructors:

Survival Strategies for Developmental Education
In order for developmental education programs to survive, institutions must take proactive measures. Recruiting, hiring and developing the best faculty may be the single most important element (Smittle, 2003). Important attributes of successful developmental educators include command of the subject matter, knowledge of adult learning theory, the ability to vary instruction, the ability to implement technology, the skill to integrate practical classroom and laboratory exercises, and a true desire to teach developmental classes. Instructors need to understand subsequent curriculum in order to adequately prepare the students for upcoming courses and they should assess students in a variety of ways based on knowledge of future course work. Effective teachers should also communicate high expectations for all students and respect diverse talents.


So the question remains, are we doing enough as teachers?

Developmental students often require more support (affective and cognitive) and structure than other students (Rouche & Rouche, 1999) and they often suffer more insecurities and anxieties. They need instructors who can foster a supportive, nurturing environment and relate material to them in ways that teach them to not only learn the material, but to learn how to monitor their own learning, to think critically and strategically, and, most importantly, to appreciate the subject.

The developmental instructor should make every attempt to build relationships with each student. Developmental students often demand much more from instructors than other students, thus requiring a strong, compassionate, supportive instructor who has a genuine desire to teach developmental classes to diverse students.

Helping our Students find a Writing Process

If Writing is the emphasis of a developmental writing class, then why not make writing the theme of the class? Having students study and learn from other writers is one method of teaching them about the act of writing. This would also envelop the students as they teach once another.

With an emphasis on process rather than final product, this might allow students to ponder and reflect that writing is the result of a process. The steps are not predetermined or formulated, but within the curriculum various writing strategies and methods are explored. In Berstein's Teaching Developmental Writing, she states in an introduction to "Adapting the Writing Process" that "good writing comes from continually asking questions such as:

• Why am I writing?
• For whom as I writing?
• What do I want to say?
• How can I clarify my meaning?
• How can I identify and avoid errors that confuse my meaning" (Bernstein 83).

The need for observation, research, and reflection is an informed pedagogy. So perhaps either assigning a written in-class reflection the day the papers are due, or circling up the chairs and really having students listen to other students' reflections about writing might be meaningful in a number of ways. 1.) Pondering and reflecting help them to realize what they have learned about writing, but also about themselves as a writer. 2.) It allows them to learn from each other and hear about a myriad of processes that others used for the same end result. 3.) The act of taking the time to evaluate, ponder, and observe the writing process shows students that we value their individual paths to writing success.

Leki states that "it is vital that writing instruction involve feedback in the intermediate steps rather than at the end" (Berstein 84). Rather than reading the rough drafts, try reading the opening paragraphs or have them write journals that build up the paper. Fluid feedback is crucial to the developmental writing student.

More to come on how to give quality and useful feedback to students.

How about a Literacy Narrative?

For the past few days I have been immersed in writing theory, particularly in the instruction of the Literacy Narrative as the first assignment in a developmental writing class. I hit a gold mine, simply because there is an abundance of solid research validating and assessing this assignment, both academically and personally for students as developing writers and learners.
The next few posts might be a series of Literacy Narrative posts, as to make sure that we are looking at this from all angles.

Once again, if we go back to building a course around writing and helping our students to understand and embrace why writing matters, we must introduce some essence of a rhetorical awareness to our students, so that they can begin to see writing with a myriad of purposes, other than for a grade in the classroom. Life-long writers is what we are after. But with this hope, comes a lot of looking back, hence the Janus Figure is introduced during the opening week of class.


The Janus Figure is a powerful metaphor because it is something visual that the students can hold in their minds while they are looking back and also forward in the same piece of writing. I use this in almost every writing class particularly when students are doing a sort of personal/autobiographical piece of writing where they are looking back and discovering how the past shapes pieces of the future. The more research I find on Literacy Narratives, the more fascinating the Janus Figure becomes as a viable teaching tool within this genre.


Susan DeRosa has a foundational article in this conversation, entitled "Literacy Narratives as Genres of Possibility: Students' Voices, Reflective Writing, and Rhetorical Awareness." She bases her whole premise on the fact that students placed in developmental writing courses often have self-perceptions based on outcomes of standardized writing assessment tools or what they've been told by the experts--past teachers who have labeled them. This causes students to have a narrowed definition of literacy,which is often what they bring with them to our classes. What they don't realize is that literacy is fluid, not static or fixed. Writing is not a set of skills to be measured in a single writing event/test or acquired in a semester of a college writing course.


We could consider a starting point of our conversation as writing teachers with these two questions DeRosa asks:

• What pedagogical strategies could I use to offer my writing students a space to reflect on, or even challenge, these limiting ideas about literacy?
• How would such reflective writing encourage them to rethink their roles as writers--writers who make choices based on rhetorical situations?

Literacy Narratives may provide us with an opportunity to explore changing versions or literacy and writers' visions of themselves as writers. DeRosa argues that "student-produced literacy narratives can encourage self-reflective learning and help students develop a sense of critical agency about their literacy practices."

The literacy narrative is a more specific, targeted version of the autobiographical and biographical essays. Its emphases on literacy and knowledge would seem like a natural fit to a developmental writing class that focuses on Writing as the theme, or subject matter. Trimbur states that "the term literacy event gives us a way to think about how reading and writing enter our lives and shape our interactions with others."

The purpose of a literacy narrative is to look at a time in your life when reading and writing had a significant effect on you, and then to analyze this effect in writing, which is the reflection and ponder part of the writing assignment. Often times students will discover some fascinating pieces of who they are as a writer, and who they have the potential to become. It is a narrative essay that focuses on an issue related to writing, reading, and education. This type of writing is especially relevant to writers and writing students. Also note that we should not limit students to only classroom events. Home life, influences or lack of reading in the home, might be just one example that might contribute to a student's story of literacy.

Lastly, DeRosa claims that "by writing self-reflectively about their literacy practices in narratives, students may: 1)identify and reflect on their roles and responsibilities as writers--a sense of ethos; 2) develop understanding of their literacy in flux and a sense of agency as writers; and 3) develop awareness of their "literacy in action"-the ways that their writing can effect change in their communities---a sense of civic literacy."

As students look back at where they have been with writing, reading, and their education, the literacy narratives allows them the space to reflect on how it has shaped who they are today, and also how they will move forward to this continuous process called learning.

Sharing the literacy narratives in peer workshop could be a very nice way to create a strong classroom community where students begin to teach one another.

Who are Basic Writing Students?

This works:
On the first or second day of class I have my writing students write me a letter with the prompt:

Tell me whatever you think I should know about you?

The answers range from personal passages to simple stories about their education. Pouring over this first piece of writing is one of my favorite parts about the beginning of the semester. Listening to and critiquing students' realities can lead to self-reflection and critical consciousness of differences as an increased sense of agency for students and teachers.

In her article, "Revisiting the Promise of Students' Rights to their own Language: Pedagogical Strategies," Valerie Kinloch proposes that "writing teachers are responsible for what our teaching does to the self-image and the self-esteem of our students"(2).

One of the proposed pieces for developmental writing is to spend time helping students develop their ability to read and write texts. Teaching critical and deep reading skills, which I refer to as micro-reading, is a must in developmental writing. Devoting a class period to proper study skills is also something that I have discovered helps the students teach one another. Students can learn from other students. What helps you to be a successful student? Pose the question and spend the hour having the students teach one another.

Teaching reading and response strategies should be done during the second-third weeks of class. Giving the students a strong foundation to stand on will ensure success, or at least help them realize that their is a common starting point for growth.

I keep coming back to the idea of having students read a non-fiction piece of writing, a book, so that we can discuss what writing looks like. It might be nice to gather in, literally circle in, once a week and discuss writing, which after all, is the discipline that we are trying to teach. If students believe that we care what they think, and what their thoughts and reactions to texts are, then this will surely empower them to believe that they are a meaningful piece of the classroom community. Maybe the deeper question is Who are basic writing teachers?

Sustaining our Writing Students

"To be asked to write in college is to be asked to see farther, wider, and deeper, and ultimately to develop one's own lenses through which to see the world. Writing does not shape a student's education in one course or one year. It is the cumulative practice and sustained instruction...that gives students opportunities to participate in the world of ideas first as novices and later as experts" (Sommers 2004).

In the fall 2004 issue of College Composition and Communication, Sommers and Saltz identify the novice writer as an expert by these key pedagogical theories and practises:

1. Help students see in writing a larger purpose than fulfilling an assignment.

2. Try this in the classroom: Have conversations with students about why writing matters. Ask direct questions like: Why do you think faculty assign writing? What is missing from so many discussions about college writing is the experience of the students. Do students experience writing as learning and thinking and, if so, under what conditions? It might be a nice idea to start the first week or two with this conversation of writing. Readings could be grouped where students read literacy narratives about how other learned to write and value the process of learning itself.

3. Students who see writing as something more than an assignment, who write about something that matters to them, are best able to sustain an interest in academic writing throughout their undergraduate careers.

4. Experiment with different types of writing.

5. Try this in the classroom: At the opening of the semester, have students reflect about the role of writing in helping them make the transition to college. Give them the confidence "to speak back to the world." A literacy narrative might be a more meaningful assignment rather than just an autobiographical assignment. What has shaped the student and who they are today? Perhaps this might be another nice prompt for the first or second day of class as a diagnostic essay. Possible idea: Looking back at your years as a student, where have you been with your writing? What experiences have shaped the writer you are today? How do you plan to move forward as a writing student this semester? It calls for specific answers and organization, which might be a nice way to find out the individual strengths and weaknesses of each student.

6. As writing teachers we should remember that writing serves many functions during the freshman year, both academic and social, to engage students with their learning. Don't you love the word engage?

7. When faculty construct writing assignments that allow students to bring their interests into a course, they say to their students, this is a disciplinary field, and you are a part of it. What does it look like fro your point on the map?

8. Freshman need to see themselves as novices in a world that demands something more and deeper from their writing than high school. This is the beginning place of growth.

9. Writing allows students to bring their interests into a course but also to discover new interests, to make writing a part of themselves.

10. Writing papers lets students think and show them how they are thinking.

11. Learning to write well is a slow process, infinitely varied, with movements backward and forward, starts and stops, with losses each time a new method or discipline is attempted. The surprise is that some students are able to sustain an interest in academic writing throughout college, while others lose interest.

12. Students who initially accept their status as novices and allow their passions to guide them make the greatest gains in writing development. As teachers this is where we come in. It is key that we help our students understand the relationship between writing and learning. College is a time for students to learn how to think broadly and deeply, to ask questions and be questioned. The classroom should be a place where students can discover that academic writing can be an exchange of sorts.

13. Writing will help students find or discover their identity.

Nesting Assignments

Nesting writing assignments might bring a bit of safety to writers in a developmental writing class. Think of the image of a nest with three Robin's eggs in perfect hue. Or nesting dolls bring this same image of being gathered in. There is something safe about watching a familiar piece of writing grow into expanded words and thinking.

Try this in the Classroom:

• Have the students write about writing in 100 words.
• Have the students write a journal about how they see themselves as a writer. What is their story, backward and forward?
• Have them take these two pieces of writing and use them as the foundations for a literacy narrative.
• An added bonus would be to have them read a narrative literacy so that they can evaluate the structure and language of a polished piece of writing. Karen S. Ueling from Boise State suggests that "reading a challenging nonfiction book is also critical because a text that forces a reader to stop, look, and think about language helps develop awareness of language and the kind of seeing required for effective editing" (Berstein 31).