Empowering students to join the conversation

One of my students, a young African-American woman (I’ll call her “Liz”) from an inner-city childhood and substandard schools, told me yesterday about her experiences and passionate commitment to improving conditions in VA hospitals. She has volunteered in a particular VA hospital since she was 12 years old and at age 16, had some truly life-changing and eye-opening experiences including vets being turned away, uncaring high-salaried administrators, and witnessing the physical therapy department lack the funds and equipment to help vets in pain. She now wants to be in the physical/rehabilitative therapy field as a result, but her anger about the government’s lack of financial attention to veterans’ care lends a sharp edge to her words and presentation of her thoughts. And yet she considers herself a terrible writer. She utterly lacks confidence in her ability to convey her thoughts and ideas in writing.

She received a 99 out of 100 on her first major essay for me. When she saw her score, she was visibly shocked and said in a quiet, shaky whisper, “I’ve never gotten an A on a paper before.” Then she cried.

I was stunned and moved both by Liz’s reaction to her outstanding performance on paper and angry at an education system and English teachers before me in Liz’s life who were either unwilling or unable to recognize her passionate commitment and quality thinking. And then I realized that perhaps Liz’s ability to thrive had something to do with the subject matter of our composition class and my teaching strategy that combines expressivism with critical pedagogy and an awareness that perfect grammar does not make a perfect writer. Some of my best thinkers have imperfect grammar and sentence structures – but their ideas are creative and compelling and usually well-organized with a passionate focus. I also offer as much encouragement as I can to students like Liz, especially when they so clearly care about doing well and are so evidently terrified of the task at hand. How did our educational system get to this point where fear and dislike of writing is so deeply ingrained that too many students tell me regularly, “I’m so bad at English,” “I’m a terrible writer,” “I’m just not good at writing.”

I counter these statements with my own: “You know more than you think you do,” “Give yourself more credit, these are good ideas,” “You’re not a terrible writer, you’re a good thinker and that leads to good writing, I’ll help you.”

Although I am new to teaching in academia, I am not new to teaching. I’ve been a mentor in varying capacities since my mid-20s, I’ve taught at numerous writers’ conferences helping other (newer) writers develop the skills and confidence to start a freelance writing career, and I’ve directed community theatre, which requires all sorts of teaching and mentoring skills with all ages. Encouragement, support, and compassion are at the root of every teaching moment I encounter…and it boggles my mind that all other teachers don’t approach teaching with the same attitude. But then, I’m starting to realize that in academia – at the university level – teaching is often a side dish, not the main course. And unfortunately for students like Liz, this means they become relegated to dishwashing duty instead of learning how to become first-class chefs.

Part of my composition/rhetoric reading list for my upcoming exams includes Min-Zhan Lu’s “Conflict and Struggle: Enemies or Preconditions of Basic Writing” from a 1992 College English issue. Lu cites Ann Murphy’s essay, “Transference and Resistance” that “draws on her knowledge of the Lacanian notion of the decentered and destabilized subject.” Murphy argues that Basic Writers “may need centering rather than decentering and cognitive skills rather than self-exploration…being taken seriously as adults with something of value to say can, for many Basic Writers, be a traumatic and disorienting experience.” I have to wonder – in the case of a student like Liz, would this also be liberating and empowering as well? By giving students a sense of control and ownership of their own experiences and place in the world – or at least opening the door and inviting them to feel this – wouldn’t this also be a positive growth experience?

In addition to Murphy, Lu also cites Peter Rondinone, who maintains that “learning involves shifting social allegiances,” and asserts that “conflict can only impede one’s learning.” Lu is alarmed by this and so am I. Conflict, struggle, difficulties – these are a natural part of life, in or out of the college writing classroom. Conflict and coping with struggles can create some of the most memorable and lasting learning moments – sometimes life-changing, but ultimately positive, even if the conflict moment itself is painful in the short term. The long-term gains from learning how to cope with and articulate struggle can be extremely beneficial in very tangible ways.

Last night, Liz emailed me that she couldn’t locate her finished paper on her computer – she didn’t save it correctly, spent two hours looking for it, and couldn’t find it. So she wrote to say she’d take a zero on the assignment.I got her email this morning, wrote back instantly and told her no, that she shouldn’t give up that easily. I emailed her the two page draft she’d sent me and told her to use that as the base of the new re-written paper. She came to see me this morning and we talked extensively – many things seem to be going ‘wrong’ for her right now, and this lost paper combined with a failing math test were the so-called final straws. We talked about the need to learn how to cope with obstacles and how common problems like this really are – that instead of giving up and giving in to the urge to withdraw from the semester entirely, she should take a moment to be angry, and cry, and lament how unfair life is…then get back on the computer and re-write the paper. Basically, I tried to encourage her not to give up because she has a modest and completely attainable goal – to graduate and help people (in some capacity). She also has never experienced teachers like myself and her math teacher – apparently, we are the only two teachers she has encountered in college thus far who truly seem interested in helping her succeed.Apparently, when she has approached other teachers for help, the result is a rather disengaged rote repetition of common assistive advice – not truly personal help.

Some may argue that a big research university isn’t the place for students to receive personal help from over-taxed professors. Sink or swim. Survival of the fittest. But what if by helping Liz, she realizes her own capacity to overcome adversity and does graduate, then goes on to become a public advocate for improving VA hospitals? Perhaps these learning moments that are fraught with conflict, difficulty, and discomfort are the moments she will absorb and then, years later, benefit a community of people in need because of her willingness to bravely and substantially face the difficulties of life head on.

Don’t we owe it to our students to empower them to learn from conflict and struggle, no matter how small or how large the issue, and to fearlessly join the human conversation? Isn’t that why we’re teaching? Or shouldn’t that at least be part of it?