What I have learned this semester in my blog is that it is more important than ever that my students enter into dialogue in their academic writing and also in the classroom. In order to get them to enter into the writing dialogue, they must enter it in the classroom as well. I know this partly by the looks on their faces. I have learned that those individuals who are not comfortable speaking in class are probably still thinking. Furthermore, they are worried about not speaking in class—they are waiting for me to fill up that airspace so that they don’t have to. I have learned that they may be deathly afraid of being called on. That even the students who are eager to speak would probably rather hear other students speak more of the time, so that they can learn from other students as they are expected to learn from me.
I learned that it is no accident that composition has moved from the sole focus of university studies to a basic knowledge students are expected to have attained somewhere between the end of high school and the end of English 101. With the help of all the members of our class, I’ve thought a great deal about the kinds of assignments that can get all of us, teachers included, to wrap our minds around visual rhetoric, from design and execution to interpretation. I’ve used versions of several of our activities in class this semester, with degrees of success that indicate both the success of our 609 classmates’ strategies and also the high level of involvement that a graduate class encourages.
My own focus this semester has been in grading strategies through fairer rubrics and in more effective peer editing sessions for students. This week’s much-commented post in the KY Kernel Opinion section. It’s linked here:
http://kykernel.com/2011/11/30/uk%E2%80%99s-writing-center-could-be-more-helpful/
An employee of one writing center attacked the other writing center’s aloof tutors and short sessions. The author, Amanda Powell, claimed that the writing center didn’t have enough time to edit her essay. The most recent post was today, from screen name “SurrealWorld,” and I’ll excerpt it here:
“Also, the term editing has different connotations for undergrads than it does for those in the writing field. Thirty minutes is not enough time to delve into deeper writing issues. Heck, it probably isn’t enough time to simply edit, even editing as writers understand the term.”
This is one of the better responses yet, because it addresses the most glaring issue the comments raised: The comments said largely that writing centers cannot edit, because uncredited editing is plagiarism.
I believe that rebuttal needs some serious work. In the university environment, ideational editing, whether credited or not, should happen every day. It should keep us up at night, and I believe it does. Students should be both daunted and provoked by good ideas from editors. If the problem is distinguishing peer review from line-editing from proofing, then who cares—who would want credit for proofing or line-editing without reference to ideas? We could do away with all the editors in NYC and also fire half of the authors for academic dishonesty, while simultaneously abolishing all peer editing in classes. In my own classes, I’ve often wondered if that wouldn’t be the very best reinforcement of the need for peer editing. If we can’t edit each other’s essays, we oughtn’t be calling it a writing center or a writing class—but instead a brainstorming session.
