Wagner 1 Jamie Wagner Dr. Roggenbuck English 306.

01 September 23, 2013 Baby Steps for Fixing the Crisis Are there problems in the high school classrooms of our country? According to Charles Silberman, [s]erious problem in the educational system of America have been troubling teachers since at least 1970. Two years prior, Peter Elbow described how a Dartmouth English teacher asked a freshman if English was rea lly [his] native tongue (Elbow 115). Richard Fulkerson explains Silberman and his theory of how mindlessness has lead to such a negative state. In an era that is overwhelmingly calling for higher standards and accountability, its clear that many feel that high school teachers can be better. Our first step to remedy any potential crisis is to first be aware of our own pedagogies. Fulkerson describes four theories of writing, that he adapted from Abrams; they are the formalist, which deals with conventions and form, the expressive, which places importance on the personal views of the artist ( Fulkerson 430), the mimetic which values truth and logic, and the rhetorical, according to Fulkerson, says that writing is good if it is able to accomplish what it was supposed to among the recipients that it was intended for. I think that rhetorical pedagogies, in Fulkersons general sense of writing for an effect on the audience, would be the best type of writing style to strive for. All of them, however, may have a place in the classroom. Although the dreaded five paragraph essay may have a rightful place in the classroom, it is not necessary to rely only on one single style of often formalist writing. On the other hand, having certain standards for spelling and grammar can help prepare students for the future, whether they are moving onto college, where they will be expected to write formally, or the

Wagner 2 workforce, where they will need to write things such as resumes and cover letters. Hillocks Jr., however, shows that the traditional methods of teaching grammar [have] no effect on raising the quality of student writing (Hillocks Jr. 537). In addition to its ineffectiveness, if we stuck with teaching from only the formalist school, students and teachers would end up becoming tired and exhausted about reading papers that the authors had no ownership of. This can be alleviated, however, by offering students their own choice in topics. In ninth grade, students in my high school had to write a research paper with rules and conventions that would be considered normal; margins, font type and size, length requirements, title page, and all the little things that high schools dread. Although this project stressed form and mimetic qualities of truth, we students were still allowed to pick our own research topics. I remember this going over well with the class, and I personally felt extremely motivated when I was allowed to write an eight page paper on such an unscholarly, arbitrary topic like professional wrestling. The open choice of topic helped me ease into the dealing with the somewhat daunting aspects of composition a relatively lengthy research papers. We students were also given, in eleventh grade, the choice of what book to write a critical review for. As long as the book is appropriate to student reading level, projects like this can encourage rigorous learning that is motivated by the students own choice of reading. Lad Tobin, an advocate of process pedagogy, frames this situation by saying that students actually have something important and original to say (Tobin 5) when allowed to choose anything to write about. Tobin also uses words from Donald Murray, who says that allowing his students to choose their own topic allows him to hear the voices of [his] students they had not heard before (Tobin 5). Anything, however, might be too broad of a topic; a high school class with a school-board mandated curriculum and book-list may not have time or a

Wagner 3 place for personal anecdotal stories about something as relatively trivial as a students favorite video game. Some teachers may be rightfully apprehensive about having a completely open choice of topic. Offering a choice from a list of different topics would be one way to strike a balance and ensure papers are relevant to the goals of the class. Tobin is sure to mention that process pedagogies have never ignored standards or skills (Tobin 12). The movement to whole language and process methods, Tobin implies, still keeps in mind the necessity of teachers and schools to teach the standards that they are supposed to; process pedagogy clearly isnt about students just writing whatever they want. Teachers still have an active role, and Tobin notes that process pedagogies can be modified and regimented (Tobin 10) by the quirks of some individual teachers (Tobin 11). I personally felt that I was able to write papers more easily when I was given opportunities to be creative, though I always kept my work within the confines of the assignment. Its important to recognize that focusing on the process of writing does not mean that we should give regimented outlines and pre-writing organizers. I personally felt that these sorts of assignments were inflexible and limited my creativity. Nancy Sommers calls the accepted linear model of composition nothing more than a parody of writing (Sommers 324). Sommers also found that students constantly struggle[d] to bring their essays into congruence with a predefined meaning (Sommers 330). She implies that writing an introduction and thesis and following it too closely can restrict and circumscribe not only the development of [students] ideas, but also their ability to change the direction of these ideas ( Sommers 327). By making students chose what theyre going to write about too far in advance, we are perhaps setting t hem up to give us unmotivated, stifled pieces of writing. Sommers study compared novice, student writers to experienced writers and found that students, for the most part, focus on small changes

Wagner 4 when revising compared to experienced writers who focus on restructuring and rethinking their actual ideas. As teachers, we could do better at focusing on the entire process of writing, including revision. Too often, as a student in the high school and college level, I would check my papers for grammar errors, print them out, hand them in, and forget about them for the rest of my life. We could place an emphasis on revising and restructuring in order to have students evaluate and think critically about our own work. One simple means by which we can accomplish this would be by having students keep a portfolio. I, for instance, kept a portfolio in my AP English class in twelfth grade that included the students graded papers in addition to revised papers. More often than not, however, I found my revised papers were revised in what Sommers describes as a thesaurus philosophy (Sommers 326), meaning that I focused mostly on minor edits of grammar and convention. Using this portfolio method would be more effective if we teachers encouraged the revision and restructuring of the ideas in the paper themselves; Sommers shows that experienced writers often do this (Sommers 329). Though a cornerstone for expressivist writing, its worth noting that free-writing and stream-of-consciousness writing can be hard to evaluate. This seems true, from my perspective, even if those sorts of assignments are only checked for completion. Hillocks Jr.s metaanalysis shows that free writing is not as effective at raising the quality of student writing as other methods of instruction such as modeling, sentence combining, scales, and inquiry (Hillocks Jr. 537). That being said, I have found personal writing to be effective at getting me ready to write and discuss class topics. This writing was usually based on some sort of bell-ringer prompt, though, so it wasnt entirely free more than it was open ended. Hillocks Jr. notes that [s]tructured free writing, in which writers jot down all their ideas on a particular topic, can be successfully integrated with other techniques as a means of both memory search and invention

Wagner 5 (Hillocks Jr. 538) Though this sort of subjective writing can be good for the grand scheme of the class, I would warn against giving it any kind of importance when it comes to grading. While the ideas of the process school seem ideal, I think that the rhetorical school must be combined with the process methods in order to create the strongest writers. Writing from a rhetorical perspective, in a general sense, involves writing for a variety of audiences. Different audiences can lead to diverse and perhaps more interesting writing. It is important to consider that whoever the target or assumed audience of a student work is, the true audience is the teacher. For this reason, student works often include having requirements relating to the formalist school. William Covino offers a definition of rhetorical pedagogy that is much more in-depth than that of Fulkerson: he says the rhetorical pedagogy should [kee p]in view the skills and contingencies that attend a variety of situat ions and circumstances (Covino 37). He advocates the encouragement of writing that is not restricted to self-expression or the acontextual generation of syntactic structures or formulaic obedience to rules (Covino 37). Covino uses words from Kenneth Burke, who says that form is the arou sal and fulfillment of desires, and thus must therefore vary with reference to the audience and context to which it appeals (Covino 45). As teachers, it should be known and accepted to our students that we are the audience for student writing, and for that reason proper form and convention is expected more often than not. Sometimes, however, we could and should assume and encourage additional audiences. Though I didnt recognize it at the time, I wrote for different audiences within the same paper during high school. Whenever we were allowed to write short stories for creative writing, my works ended up as comedy bits for my peers to enjoy during peer review circles; I catered to my audience, and my teacher ended up having a good laugh herself. By keeping the teachers

Wagner 6 required conventions, I was able to assimilate my personal goals of being a class clown into her curriculum. Aside from the entertainment aspect of these peer review circles, they mostly served the purpose of having extra eyes to spot grammar and spelling mistakes. There never was, for me and my peers, any sort of deep reflection or evaluation; the standard reply in these situations was something along the lines of it was good. Students may simply be too nice to their peers to truly encourage them to re-think and improve their writing. Peter Elbow, who suggests a form of process pedagogy, places great emphasis on peers as judges for student writing. By focusing on peer judgment, Elbow says that writers, when judged by their peers, are more coerced to assent to [the peers] judgment more powerfully yet more validly (Elbow 117) than they would be from teacher judgment. Elbow mentions that a teacher acting as a singular judge can become prejudiced towards certain students or writing. It is important, then, to be aware of our own biases when we evaluate our students writing. Hillocks Jr. found that having students use scales and questions for their own or their peers writing has a powerful effect on enhancing quality (Hilllocks Jr. 537). One way, then, to improve the flow of peer review sessions would be to establish criteria, perhaps by giving students rubrics. With this in mind, students and teachers both are an audience. These two groups, however, are not the only possible audiences. We can diversify our assignments by giving our students an assumed audience. This could encourage them to reach outside of their comfort zones of providing dry third-person essays, especially if we also grant them opportunities to have an assumed voice. It is important to note that the assumed voice and audience of an assignment may not adhere to the formalist conventions, though we may still have our own criteria and objective in place. For example, a student writing a narrative letter to Tom Sawyer from Huck Finns perspective should by no means contain proper grammar and conventions. This sort of assignment may not be seen as a

Wagner 7 technical masterpiece, but it can definitely serve a purpose in the class by relating writing to story comprehension. The importance of keeping in mind diverse audiences and situations, from this perspective, is quite clear. Flower and Hayes compared novice and expert writers, and they found that good writers create a particularly rich network of goals for affecting their reader (Flower and Hayes 475). Flower and Hayes also say that plans for affecting the reader also

give the final paper a more effective rhetorical focus (Flower and Hayes 475). Flowers and Hayes list their model of the rhetorical problem as a situation and writer goals. The goals are further broken down into the reader, the persona of the writer, the meaning of the writing, and the formal conventions of text. Students, they imply, do not get enough exposure or practice when it comes to forming their own rhetorical problems, though they do mention that exploring their problems is eminently teachable (Flower and Hayes 477). Thats where we come in. Giving students assumed audiences can give them incentive and purpose for their writing; they wouldnt be writing it just for us to read over and grade. We need to be creative, as teachers, in assigning pretend audiences if we want our students to be creative with their writing. Overall, the four rhetorical pedagogies manifest themselves in almost every classroom in one way or another. Sometimes, as Fulkerson mentions, teachers become confused with what pedagogy they are teaching from. I believe that above all else we teachers must keep in mind the audience and purposes that our students are writing for; they often are writing solely for us teachers, and for that reason their purpose is to get a good grade. Its clear, though, that not all writing needs to be written from a relatively rigid formalist perspective. A major way to spur creativity, for instance, by offering our students work that has them assume different audiences and roles. Writing for a rhetorical perspective, by focusing on the audience, is a method that experienced writers often use, and we can have our students improve their writing by improving

Wagner 8 their focus on who they are writing too. Mimetic qualities of truth and reason are often requirements of writing, and expressivity writing, though very hard to grade, can have a place in helping writers develop. We can also help students become motivated by carefully offering them a choice of their own topic. Tobin mentions that despite the intense debates between scholars over composition pedagogies, practitioners usually found something to borrow from each approach (Tobin 10). This makes it apparent that being mindful as a teacher is the ability to use different aspects from different pedagogies. Striking a balance between the four philosophies of composition will likely take trial and error. By finding this balance, however, we can take steps to fix the crisis that is plaguing our educational system.

Wagner 9 Works Cited Covino, William. "Rhetorical Pedagogy." A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Eds. Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 36-49. Print. Elbow, Peter. "A Method for Teaching Writing." College English. 30.2 (1968): 115-125. Print. Flower, Linda, and John R. Hayes. "The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical Problem." The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009. 467-477. Print. Fulkerson, Richard. "Four Philosophies of Composition." Trans. Array The Norton Book of Composition Studies. . 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009. 430435. Print. Hillocks Jr, George. "What Works in Teaching Composition: A Meta-Analysis of Experimental Treatment Studies." The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009. 537-538. Print. Sommers, Nancy. "Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers." The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009. 323-331. Print. Tobin, Lad. "Process Pedagogy." A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Eds. Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 1-16. Print.