[Teaching_Composition] Agency, Advocacy and Advancing
Writing *hello*
Michael Day
teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Sat, 07 Apr 2007 18:48:52 -0500
I want to thank Debra and Phyllis for such thoughtful posts, and add a few thoughts on ownership of writing, courses, and programs.
It's a subject that I thought about nonstop when I agreed to take on the NIU FYComp program about 5 years ago. How could I guarantee students some consistency across 100 sections of the same class, while still allowing the instructors and TAs who teach in the program some degree of ownership over their own courses? I had no interest in lockstepping everyone to a single syllabus or text, but knew that I'd have lots of stakeholders to whom I'd have to answer. Since I didn't think that ownership of the course was really mine, I looked to the FYComp Committee, 12 representatives of all levels (TAs, Instructors, Supportive Professional Staff, ESL, Developmental, and Technology coordinators to work with me to follow the Council of Writing Program Administrators' process for developing program outcomes. We had a year of discussion and close editing, after starting with the WPA Outcomes Statement at http://www.english.ilstu.edu/Hesse/outcomes.html, and debated just about every word and phrase to come up with our own outcomes, available at http://www.engl.niu.edu/fycomp/outcomes_all.html. With outcomes in place, and with eportfolio assessment on a programmatic level, we can claim that the outcomes provide the consistency in the program, as long as all in the program know what they are and agree that students need to be able to demonstrate the outcomes in their writing for the class. Then the TAs and instructors can use a variety of materials, activities, and assignment sequences to move students in the direction we all agree on, teaching to their own strengths, not delivering a preset curriculum. And we provide our own faculty development workshops, based on topics raised and presented by FYComp faculty, to demonstrate the various ways we can help students move toward program outcomes.
Yes, there are problems, such as the occasional teacher who uses the freedom as an excuse to teach literary analysis or psychology, at the expense of writing, but I think we're doing OK. I think that teachers who feel more like they own their classes (or better yet, share ownership with students) will be more inspired, motivated, be better writing coaches, and have fun with the students.
But there's another question of ownership that I haven't really touched upon, and that's the students' ownership, or one might say, investment, in the writing. This is the hardest question of all, because it makes us look very closely at assignments as varied as the "personal literacy narrative" and the "longer researched essay" to try to find ways to make them more meaningful to students lives and careers, academic and professional. We scratch our heads and wrack our brains to avoid making it look like they are not just jumping through our hoops without any personal involvement. We've tried service learning, community-based learning, practical documents such as resumes and applications, and academic electronic portfolios that might become professional portfolios, but I don't think we're there. Reading the student evaluation comments at the end of each semester, I still see very mixed results in the area of relevance and ownership.
Michael Day
FYComp, Northern Illinois University
>>> Phyllis Mentzell Ryder <pryder@gwu.edu> 4/7/2007 5:03 PM >>>
Thanks, Debra, for an interesting topic. As an assistant prof in a
brand new "independent" writing program, your question of "ownership" is
really timely. Here are some thoughts--
* Faculty in our writing program "own" our courses in that we can design
course assignments, topics, readings, etc so long as they meet our
course goals as specified in the course template.[
http://www.gwu.edu/~uwp/fyw/fyw-about.htm ] Since the teaching methods
of the course have not been standardized, I assume that we are seen as
experts in the teaching of writing who know how develop appropriate,
engaging, and effective syllabi to meet these goals. On the other hand,
I know I always feel some anxiety that the professors in sophomore or
junior level classes will question my writing-faculty expertise when my
students arrive in their classes still making grammatical errors.
(Never mind that they much more capable of asking viable research
questions and organizing their analysis to meet audience needs--I sense
that we writing faculty are not in control of the definition of "good
writing" at our University.)
* Faculty in our writing program do not "own" our courses because none
of us (and indeed no composition experts) created the course template.
The template was composed by a multi-disciplinary Task Force that
designed the whole new writing program. (I was invited on to that
committee near the very end, after the template had been established.)
In many ways it's a fine template, one that is expansive (or "capacious"
I might say--a word I've picked up from Kathi Yancey and like to say as
often as I can.) And yet it's also a difficult template to work with
because the course objectives include so many different components that
they are challenging to measure them. We can't stray too far from the
current wording without setting off Administrative alarms the that we're
trying to "work around" the template . (Consider how to set up an
assessment to measure this: "A functional grasp of rhetorical
principles: the purpose or genre of each piece of writing, the
expectations of various audiences, and the use of formats, evidence,
tones, lengths, and levels of formality appropriate to a range of
contexts.")
* Faculty in our program do not "own" writing in the University at large
because we do not have much interaction with those faculty across the
University who have been recruited/ cajoled into teaching Writing in the
Discipline courses. We are not permitted to teach WID sections because
a) this might reduce the incentive of faculty in the Disciplines to
teach writing and b) we don't have enough faculty to teaching first-year
writing and so can't afford to loan ourselves out to the other
departments.
* We're working now on a middle ground--UWP faculty may serve as
liaisons in other Departments to help them articulate what "writing"
looks like in their disciplines and what they might do in their classes
and what they might expect from students coming out of our first-year
course (and why the students probably won't arrive in their classes
already knowing everything about how to write "properly" in that
discipline.)
Phyllis
--
phyllis mentzell ryder | assistant professor of writing |university writing program | the george washington university | 2100 fox hall road | washington dc 20007 | pryder@gwu.edu | academic center 107 [mt vernon]|fax: 202.242.6669 | 202.242.6667
Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.
Debra Dew wrote:
> Hello everyone~
>
> I am grateful for this opportunity to discuss some of my favorite
> administrative terms--agency, advocacy, advancing the discipline--with
> all of you here on the Teaching Comp List and to likewise learn a good
> deal from your local experiences, whether they be successes or
> struggles, probably some of both.
>
>
> I thank Anne and Chris for their generous invitation to discuss
> administrative and instructional experiences and those theoretical and
> ethical principles upon which we act to advance writing as a
> professional enterprise in all of its teaching and learning dimensions.
>
>
> The topic is--how do we theorize agency to defend and protect, advance
> and enhance the writing enterpise writ large?
>
> To begin, I invite you to situate your teaching and/or administrative
> selves relative to the following . . .
>
> 1) In your local case, do you and your writing colleagues *own
> writing* without an essential understanding of what *ownership* does
> and does not mean in your context?
>
> I will begin by situating myself within the UCCS Writing enterprise,
> where I have been the Director of the Writing Program with its various
> programmatic subsets, including FYC, advanced, creative, and then this
> year, prof/tech as well. So perhaps, I might say--I do OWN
> writing--because I am the only tenure-track faculty member in writing
> on campus. Our program is staffed with 25 career instructors. I have
> been the *owner* for six years, and this is now my seventh year in my
> tenure-track line.
>
> Locally, I have always *owned* writing in the sense that I am she who
> technically accounts for the current state of writing instuction and
> assessment across campus contexts. All matters related to writing are
> mine for the overseeing, but I must also reflect on this question--Do
> I own writing in the sense that Doug Hesse's Chair address of 2005
> invokes? In his sense, owning writing might mean I locally enjoy
> first rights or primary rights by disciplinary training to "order"
> students' writing experiences for all of our UCCS students. To own
> writing locally may also mean that colleagues and administrators
> unconditionally recognize and affirm my ordering and framing authority
> over the UCCS writing enterprise.
>
> That has not always been my experience, nor yours locally, I imagine.
>
> As WPA, I have brazenly invested MOST of my intellectual energy for
> the past 6+ years advocating for writing such that our local
> stakeholders 1) see writing as a disicipline with due
> rights--theoretical, curricular, material rights--to equitable
> academic relations with disciplinary peers of all kinds, 2) to
> performatively *own* writing when such rights are readily granted, but
> then largely 3) to relentlessly pursue a greater degree of
> disciplinary ownership of writing in all the dimensions of my
> professional work here at UCCS.
>
> I will share several accounts of local advocacy and defense
> initiatives as we move along in our discusion.
>
> I could quite clearly summarize my WPA mission for the whole of my
> tenure at UCCS as a WPA's PURSUIT of disciplinary happiness in
> strategic collaboration with an extraordinary crew of committed
> writing faculty. Our aim has been nothing short of Hesse's vision of
> *owning* our writing enterprise in the local instituional case.
>
> I am anxious to hear from the rest of you . . .
>
> Best,
>
> Debra
>
>
>
>
>
>
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