Lean Into the Pivot
In my first year teaching, I assigned a literacy narrative in which students would explain their experiences learning to read and write. This is not an unusual assignment for a freshman composition course, so I felt confident about the assignment. But when the students submitted their essays, and I sat down to comment/grade them, I was first startled and then puzzled and then sort of angry.
Every essay talked about the “joys of literacy” or “joys of reading” or “joys of writing.” (Literally 90% of them used the term “joy.”) They also almost all ended with a gesture toward looking forward to or being excited about continuing their “literacy journey.” (Again, 80–90% used the term “journey” here.)
You may be wondering — why would a stack of papers, enthusiastic about the subject I was teaching, cause me surprise, confusion, and then low-key fury? To understand that, you would have to know what I did about this class.
Of the 28 students, there were at least 8 who had previously disclosed that they had some sort of learning challenge, from ADHD to dyslexia to dysgraphia, to at least one TBI. Further, the students came from six different first language contexts other than English. The languages represented in the classroom were Spanish, Romanian, Russian, Thai, Persian, and Chinese. All of those students had experiences having to learn oral and written English after the age they would have first learned to read and write in their first languages. Finally, at least a fourth of these literacy narratives failed to meet the minimum word count in the assignment prompt.
I knew that there was a zero percent chance that the student who was a second language learner, had documented dyslexia, and only wrote a page and a half in response to the prompt honestly felt “joy” in writing and reading and “excitement” about the “literacy journey” ahead. I couldn’t understand the disconnect between student experience and what they reported in these narratives. My confusion and frustration led to, frankly, unkind written feedback. (Forgive me. I was new to teaching.)
The morning after this grading session, after much thought, I reread my comments and decided I could not possibly hand them back to students. I had begun to suspect that the papers reflected not what the students thought, but what they thought I wanted to hear. And, my frustration was replaced with sympathy. They were afraid that, if they told the truth about their experiences, I may not grade them favorably or I might be disappointed in them.
So I went back to the drawing board. The next class, I came in and explained that I would not be passing back the essays with comments. Instead, I asked students to talk about how they approached the assignment. That led to a little opening up, but I thought they might still be holding back. So I explained that, in assigning this kind of paper, I had wanted and expected to hear about their real experiences — wins, yes, but also challenges. At that point, students expressed not knowing how to write about something about which they had negative feelings. I told them I would take that under advisement, and I asked them to give me until the next class period to think about it.
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When the next class came around, I passed out a handout titled “cranky writing.” This included passages from famous writers like W. H. Auden, Allen Ginsberg, Dorothy Parker, H. L. Mencken. It also included criticism by sharp minds: movie critics Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael; food critic Jeffrey Steingarten (the scary guy from Iron Chef), and music critic Kurt Loder (the angry old man from MTV News). I even included some “I, Anonymous” columns from the local indy paper, where people wrote in to complain anonymously about things (and people) they had experienced. We read these. And then I had students brainstorm and write on the board “angry” or otherwise negative words and phrases that really conveyed those kinds of feelings. We explored the world of the critic, the complainer.
I cancelled the next essay, and asked students to rewrite their literacy narratives. Honestly.
If you have read this far, thank you. But you might now be wondering what the point of this relatively long anecdote might be. For me, there are three takeaways — and they are all centered around adaptability.
First, as instructors, we often don’t foresee problems. We write assignments, give out readings, create lectures and in class activities, often with a significant degree of pleasure and enthusiasm. We might stop to ask ourselves how students will respond — but we can’t possibly anticipate all of the possible responses.
Second, when confronted with student feedback or results that we didn’t anticipate, we may have a variety of our own feelings. Disappointment. Frustration. Anger. We may question our students. We may question ourselves.
Third, while in that response state, sometimes we don’t find good ways to adapt. Or sometimes we are slow to adapt (How many times have I given an assignment to a new class that didn’t work for the class before, only to have the same reaction?), particularly when we are convinced that we are on the right path. OR sometimes we are slow to adapt because adapting means losing time. That time equals content. And we are sometimes so focused on outcomes that we don’t perceive the bigger picture.
In this case, my lack of experience probably helped me adapt to what the students were telling me through those essays. I was new — and, therefore, not convinced that I had the right answers or was on the right path. There wasn’t much to lose by trying something else. And, if I’m being honest, I was pretty blissfully ignorant to the idea of outcomes. I was just vaguely trying to get the students to write and to do so authentically.
Now, when I find myself barreling through content or stubbornly sticking to things that didn’t really work the first time (or even the second), I try to remind myself of that more flexible new teacher, and how she was pretty good at slowing things down and trying to hear what her students had to say. And how she didn’t fight adapting her teaching to the context.
It’s humbling.
As we head into the last term of the year, I hope for myself and for you that we remain attentive and limber, that we can weave and bob while keeping our feet firmly planted in good practice and deep knowledge of our content. Good luck out there.
