Following Broken Rules

I learned writing through trial and error, mostly. I learned the basics of writing at school, but writing wasn't a lot more than filling in blocks of information and repeating the same things over and over. At university, I too a technical writing class, which guided me into specific ways of thinking about writing, but I learned academic writing through writing academically. I wasn't able to understand what I needed in writing as well as why I needed it, thereby becoming more of a "creator" than an "imitator" until I had made mistakes in writing, a lot of them, and until I had read both as a reader and a writer.

There's a really fine line, and a very interesting one, between following a rigid structure in writing on the one hand, filling in blocks in an organized structure that's been imposed, and understanding that what needs to be said should be said according to this structure. And I think that, either way, I would have learned writing through writing. According to Noel Burch, to learn a skill, we have to pass through four stages: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious incompetence. Getting to the last stage is complicated and definitely not a linear path.

What got me thinking about this is an article titled "7 Writing Rules You Can Totally Break" which talks about -- clearly -- rules, or "preferences" as the author says, that can be broken in writing. While the article talks more about writing creatively, the title intrigued me: that we want to break these rigid "rules." However, I find myself not thinking about all the rules and just following what makes sense to me -- and that's the stage I hope I can guide my students to. While I belt out rules and structures, they might not understand the logic behind them at first. And when they do, they might just follow it. But I really hope they get to the stage where they don't need these pre-structured modes and can use writing really as what it is meant to be: a medium of expression.

It's Teacher's Day -- for everyone else

Happy teacher's day, everyone! It's a day to celebrate educators, thank them for everything they do for students (and society), and just remind them why their jobs are worth it.

Of course, as an instructor, I seem to be stuck in educators' limbo -- we don't get the day off or the glory of being celebrated, and I'm pretty sure we don't deserve it as much as school teachers do. Still, one student actually said "Happy teachers day!" with a smile to me, and it felt nice.

But, other than all the emotional, inspirational stuff surrounding this holiday, an article I read on The Onion that very bitingly pokes fun at the twisted view of teachers: the hard-working, dedicated teacher who is seen as unfair and, excuse my language, a b****h by students, and the hung-over, careless teacher who's loved by students.

As teachers, we know that the result of our efforts is not always immediately tangible -- or appreciated. But we also know that there are a lot of satisfying results, a lot of elements that make it worth it.

And there are a lot of stories that keep people entertained. I first started teaching in kindergarten, and my sister, a big fan of my then class, still asks me to tell her stories about the ridiculous incidents of my day, hilarious, unpredictable, and completely illogical interactions with students. From what students say and do to what I say and do in class. The classroom is a strange mini educational/social/professional context that's immediate and exaggerated in some cases. (I should probably dedicate a post to this, a more serious one.)

Even now, when I teach young adults, serious university students, I have some out-of-body experiences that remind me that some elements of my job are just strange and sometimes hilarious -- in a 90s sitcom kind of way. Meaning that I can stare in horror as things happen, or I can just relax and laugh at them.

This is something I could have heard yesterday, and I understand where it comes from, and the student knows I'll laugh. The student's hopeful, yes, but he knows I know. You know?

And as I comment on papers and grade tests in the hustle and bustle of the semester, this seems to become more and more relevant for both myself and the students -- and then I remind myself there are reasons, goals behind it.

Because, even if students see what I do as the picture below, there's a point.

But, really, what I'm doing is saving lives. It's true -- especially on days when I need to be reminded.

Yes, I'm an English teacher, and to me there's nothing funnier than English teacher jokes -- or more horrifying. Because they're true:

But at the end of the day, really, I love it. So Happy Teachers Day! Enjoy the insanity and the love!

And remember:

From a Nervous Grader to a Helpful Reader

The first time I had to "correct" a paper as a teacher, I re-read, re-graded, and re-commented on each paper about three times. After grading and commenting on all the papers, I went back and did the work all over again, just to be sure. After reading all the papers, I realized I now had a very clear idea of what I wanted from my students because I now had a good idea of what they could produce.

I don't think this is an unfamiliar situation for many teachers. I still go through a semblance of this exercise when I get the first batch of writing from my students -- naturally, I'm more aware of what to ask and what to expect then now than I was then, but the first paper is always the most ragged with overuse. However, I remember that the issue that most caused this revision, hesitation, and lack of confidence in my ability to mark these papers was my obsession with the grade itself: in the institution in which I had been working, I had been told that there was a maximum average I could not exceed and a minimum I could not go below.

My first qualm with this, other than the obvious, is that this was somehow about "me," a teacher, rather than the students whose work should produce the grade, which itself is only a measurement of how well they have understood the material and accomplished the assignment. If the class I'm teaching is one in which the students have an excellent grasp of the material which they then reflect in their writing, who am I to limit the grade thereby ultimately lying about the level of their work?

As a student, especially in school, I had thought there was among some teachers an attitude of competition, of almost enmity, with the students, as though their primary goal was to fail their students or prove them unworthy of the level they had reached. I hadn't understood it till that moment when I had to go over the meticulous and detailed grades I had given to make sure that no one had received even a quarter of a mark more than they "deserved". The problem being that what they deserved was delimited and controlled by an objective and detached understanding of the students that I knew better than the grade limit did.

I'm not trying to say that there's no point in having these limitations. There does need to be some standard, something to fall back on. However, the average that I was supposed to remain under at the time was very low, and this framework for my grading, marking, and commenting even affected how I graded student papers in other places I taught at the time which were by this standard more "lenient." This issue made me what students have termed a stingy grader or a strict grader. I don't mind the term much, especially now that I understand my goals more and have come to develop my own framework, but at the beginning it was a fact: I was stingy because I was afraid.

Also, having to begin by thinking of a grade, and that becoming the sole purpose of commenting on a paper, takes away the point of the whole exercise. A test shows whether a student has understood the material or not, but a paper is a process, not an end point. Focusing on the grade has forced me to feel like I need to judge the student, rather than help them learn and achieve their ultimate goal. Because I felt I would be personally persecuted if a student received a high grade, I began to focus on the problems in their papers, not rejoicing when I found them, but feeling relieved that they were present, meaning the grades would not rise too high. What I should have been focusing on was how to help the students overcome these problems. However, this is where rereading the papers always helped: I would focus on the grade after working on guiding the student in developing the work.

Nowadays, commenting on papers isn't about me, and the grade isn't mine. Guiding the student comes first, and the grade is a reflection of their progress at the time. I try not to think too much about the average while I grade, and now that I'm a lot more familiar with the overall goals and path of the courses I teach, I know what "standard" I am looking for from the beginning. When I read their paper, I'm foremost most interested in guiding my students, since this is about them.