Yancey

I struggle with the system of a grade-less writing course for many reasons. But reading Yancey’s statement, “Too often, we see our students as ourselves; of course, they aren’t” encouraged me to rethink why I struggled with the idea of labor based effort (327). I come from a background in which I like grades. I’ve understood since fourth grade that grades matter because they play a big part in helping you arrive at the next level. So I’ve seen in my own experience the need for fair grading, and I’ve worked hard and put in the labor I knew the class would take to get the grade. I see learning for its intrinsic value as well, and I see how a grading system can increase anxiety and make learning a checklist instead of the pursuit of a gift. For Inoue, a very specific local condition of labor minded people needs to be met. Though there are surely students of similar backgrounds in every university, most of their other classes will assign earned grades because, in my opinion at least, grades work. They are a measure of assessment that adds structure and understanding that make an education understandable in a large context. So I think to best fit all of the standards, I’m still going to plan to use grades in my future first year composition course.

The Yancey statement that we should not teach to correct the bad teaching made me think not just about grades, but about the good and bad teachers I’ve had. Though their examples are clearly influential in my developing teaching philosophy, I cannot assume any other person will think the same way that I do. The simple understanding that students are experiencing a different education surrounded by an overwhelming swirl of variables introduces a different approach to teaching. At the same time, I think reflecting on my own education (even as it continues) is essential as well to maintaining the humanity of a classroom.

The idea that when students engage in a project that in some way provides help to the community they are more deeply connected with the subject seems like it would make an effective theme for a composition course. The statement, “In any of these arrangements, when students engage with audiences, projects, and purposes outside of the classroom, they are able to wrestle with, analyze, revise, and produce” has immediate context within the assignments students might complete and the actual work they are doing in the community (57). Students working in the context of a community-engaged pedagogy are given ample opportunity to reflect and take action (58-59). This critical thinking seems to flow more naturally when students are actually doing the work instead of just reading about it. It also seems like it would make for a wonderful collaborative project. The challenge comes in creating effective spaces both for helping the community and the students, “developing an effective community-engaged curriculum requires explicitly negotiating roles through significant planning and communication throughout” (63). I went to a small, liberal arts school for undergraduate and this concept of community engagement was a central goal of the university. We were constantly assigned opportunities to find a way to ‘help.’ But oftentimes, it became a checklist. We were assigned such menial community tasks that my critical thinking certainly didn’t change by just stacking canned goods without any story. When I sought my own ways to be involved though, I grew by bounds and my best writing came out of those experiences. Therefore, I like the idea of starting to meet this challenge of effectiveness with instructor involvement. “If students see their teachers working with their placement agency, too, they more readily accept that the places where people live and colleges where people study can interact productively” (69). If the goal of education, particularly that of a first-year composition course, is to create more civilly minded, critical thinking students who will then contribute to the betterment of humanity, then learning to write by practice seems a good foundation.

#TeachingComposition #grading