Lowered-Standards Program

I'm not sure if I'm kidding or not with this title. In some ways... yes. I am actually a pretty firm believer in not lowering standards for students so that we can have a higher pass-rate out of 1301. I figure that if we lower the standards much more, the kids are just wasting their money coming to college. Also, I would feel like I was pretty ineffective at my job. When I tell people that I'm an English professor one day, I want to be able to tell them that students leave my class able to write a pretty good short essay, and that they enjoy at least a little bit of reading. I think that in lower-ing standards, I will be letting the students down, and my own expectations for myself.

However, after grading for a bit this semester, I do have lowered-standards as to what I expect the students to submit. I had to realize that my expectations are not the same as the students, and every time I start grading a new kind of assignment, I feel like I have to "feel" around a few drafts before I re-adjust to what kind of work I should be expecting. But back to the original question... I had to lower my ideals for what I want the students to come in knowing. I never really hoped for an interest in reading and writing, but I was definitely expecting students to be able to identify and write a five paragraph essay. I now realize that Plan B will have to be teaching multiple levels of thinking within the same classroom. They are going to have to be taught how to structure their sentences and their essays while I'm trying to get them to form more critical thinking skills/responses. Plan B entails having the students perhaps 'intake' and 'think' about things that are at a different, higher level than what they can necessarily 'output' in their own words. However, I think that this is one of the best ways to learn, probably because this is how I learn best, myself.

For me as a teacher, I am going to have to go on the higher-standards program. I personally am not so hot at grammar, and now I realize I'm going to have to brush up on those skills. Not only that, but I am going to have to get better at articulating and explaining the smaller things that I would probably have rushed right past. I now know that I am going to have to be a much more effective communicator, and more responsive to the class, than what I was expecting. It is one thing to read the handbooks and the lesson plans, but it is a different thing to realize how to parse the information, how to form it and relay it, so that the students can really take it in and synthesize it. I guess I didn't realize that I would have to be doing this much 'shaping' of information at the level of grammar and essay structure. Somehow I figured I would get to talk about all the abstract concepts floating around in books. Plan B for me is going to be learning how to really see the students in my classroom, and really take into consideration where they are, and how my behavior will most effectively reach them.

I was a bad English major...

I have to say, I spent the majority of my time in Undergraduate in the Psychology building. I spent over 2 years undecided because I tried so so so hard to avoid becoming an English major, and especially an English teacher. For some reason, I felt it would be one of the greatest failures of my life if I didn't surprise myself with what I became. Due to my own apathy towards English, I never really thought about teaching philosophies until I spend most of my life tutoring for two years, and until I was asked to for a specific grad class... so, I'm starting from scratch here.

So... Teaching philosophy. Yes, there are different ones because we're all different people and we all have different values. It's what shapes what you stress in class, and how you construct your classroom environment, your interaction, and how the information is presented. Now... on to the more exciting stuff.

Whatever shred of teaching philosophy I have is shaped by a book I recently read. It gave the example of looking at a leaf. Instead of thinking "hey, it's green", and putting it down, or even "hey, this is a green that kinda matches my favorite sweater, much more of a yellow green than a blue green" think... "I wonder if this leaf was ever turquoise". Why not? Why do we constantly view the world through these eyes of normality? We expect the world to fit into a place, and we go into the world and the knowledge of it with expectations of what we will find. I think that's one of the greatest downfalls of education today. Even in English classes in graduate school, I pretty much have a good idea about what I will learn. Why are we all stuck in our expectations of the regular? That is what I would want to pass on to any kids I teach. I want them to question, not to only 'think outside of the box', but to really not have a box at all.

Also, teach less, not more. Inspire with questions, not answers. When I tutored, this was the only way that my students would ever be involved. I had to suck them in. I had to make it personal, the information and the environment. In order for them to actually care about the class, in some ways I had to make them care about the interaction more than the information. They did the work they hated because they wanted to do it for themselves, so that our time together was beneficial, and so that they wouldn't disappoint me. I understand that this may not always work in a large classroom, but it made our tutoring sessions so much better. My students knew my random quirks of teaching style, that I have a passion for using mnemonics and odd stories to make them remember, and that I love highlighters that smell like watermelon. In turn, they were able to feel comfortable conversing about a subject they may not really know the answers to or be interested in. I knew what they hated and I knew their different styles of expression. So... in my teaching style, I'm going to try to focus on the rapport. I don't want to be just a talking head to them so that they sit stoically in class. I'm hoping to encourage class participation is to find ways to get them to care about the class, if not the boring grammar rules. This may be slightly idealistic and not fitting for the numerous big classes I will eventually teach, but my experiences in tutoring one-on-one have shaped my expectations and my self-presentation, and I think it will be hard to get away from that.

Current Struggles

Sadly... I've spent a lot of time on the phone with my mom and talking to my roommates this semester... When grading, I am frequently overcome with self-doubt and exasperation as I struggle to gain confidence in my ability to fairly grade and to give good comments, and to strive to do better. It is hard for me to grade, to feel like I am qualified to tell someone how they did. There is still so much that I am learning as a writer myself, so how can I claim to know what is wrong with someone's paper? So I call people who I know will be objective, and they can tell me if my comments seem fair and helpful. I guess I still am pretty dependent upon feedback. After reading this last article on error, my mental block only grew. I am definitely not a natural at grammar. I can write it pretty well, but no one should ever ask me to diagram a sentence or to take a comma test. (I got nervous when I had to take the one at orientation). This is probably why I spend so much time focusing on content in my comments- it's what I'm actually slightly confident in. Today's discussion was really helpful to me because it addressed many of the issues that I struggle with regarding grammar (besides me low esteem in dishing out the grades). How much grammar should I myself know? How much should I emphasize it to the students, in the comments and in the classroom? These are questions that I cannot presently answer... I do not know if it's ok that I put all my grammar comments at the bottom because I figure that it's the least important part. I hope it's ok that I usually only tag 3-4 grammar errors per page. Is it ok that I do not emphasize these grammar elements in my comments, but I do expect the students to turn in drafts that have minimal errors? I think that I do not emphasize the grammar elements because I think that students should be able to edit their papers by the time they get to college, and it's not my job to be an editor... Maybe it's more of my job than I am realizing. However, the one thing that I do think that I have realized is that I will have to study up on the grammar hand book before I teach. I need to be able to fully explicate dangling modifiers and all those other terms to students one day... I would like to be able to learn the lessons fully to be able to use mnemonics or something clever in helping them in daily lessons in the classroom. Maybe that's a summer project.

I have no idea about ideology...

It doesn't seem like theory can be a discrete element of literature that can be contained in a solitary class. It involves the negotiation of ideas, the construction of knowledge, its shaping and formation. Theories are related to history, and so they are inextricably related to the growth of man, to social identity, and to the present being of society. Theories give definition to where we are in life and what we believe, and so I think it would be difficult to be able 'learn' separate from them. Personally, I love theories. Honestly, I love literary theory more than educational theory... but I see both of them as pertinent. Not only do I see them applied daily within the class, but I see them within the political system, people's belief systems, and people's perception of the world. I personally want to think about whether 'love' is a social construction, a fiction that is elaborated through language. Luckily, there are tons of books about it that I can go and explore. Theories allow us to not just blandly accept a piece of knowledge as universally accepted and absolute. They help us see that, as people, as scholars, everything is a postulation. Everything is growing and evolving in the literary field and in the educational system. It is much greater to be able to try to understand how things have become and the paths they have taken than to take facts at face-value, as isolated events that do not have a history. It takes self-reflection and discernment to apply theories to the self and to the personal construction and formation of knowledge. It gives meaning to everything we do. I can simply believe that it is better for people to try to learn through key words and by presenting associations, or I can understand the educational past of these ideas and its relation to mnemonics. I can simply read an educational theory, or I can delve into the cognitive psychology of mnemonics so I can understand better how my students are going to be sorting through the information and I can help them form pathways for better memory. Theories just seem to give more meaning to the things that we do, in school, and in life. I would like to know why I think as I do and try to understand how I got there.
At the same time, I'm taking a literary theory class this semester and it just took me a good 2 hours to read 40 pages. So I'm a little frustrated with theory because it seemed to take a simply issue and complicate it. On Friday afternoons, complication is the last thing I want. So maybe it's a love-hate relationship...