Being a Hard Ass without Necessarily Having to be a Hard Ass

In response to the prompt:

This kind of scenario happens all the time, at least in my classes. Why students choose to ignore some component(s) of an assignment is beyond my powers of reckoning, especially when I’ve made it abundantly clear that a given assignment will not be accepted as completed unless they’ve satisfied each of them. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I still have students who ask if they need to bring two copies of a draft on peer review days, as if maybe I’ve changed my mind on the matter and simply forgotten to make an announcement to that effect. And still I am dumbfounded when I go around collecting their drafts and a handful of students who don’t have a second copy of theirs to turn in act all bewildered about it.

Anyways, back to the matter at hand: In a situation such as the prompt describes, I typically do two things. First, I remind them of the course policies as stated in the syllabus, and thus that I can exercise the option to assign a failing grade for any assignment that does not meet the stated criteria for its completion. If or when a student feels bold enough to pipe up with a slow-pitch softball lob of complaint by saying something to the effect of, “You didn’t say anything last time about needing all this stuff,” then I’m a big fan of the gospel-of-the-printed-word response: If I said it on paper and then gave you a copy of that paper (eg, syllabus, handout, etc.), I’m not required to ever say another word about it. Period. Any and all contestations beyond that are met with a firm and simple No.

Second, I collect what they do have and tell them that they have until noon the following day to submit whatever components they’ve failed to turn in or complete. If it’s not in my mailbox by then, I say, I simply won’t grade what they’ve already spent time and effort to get done, and I will thus have no choice but to exercise my stated right to assign the F. (And I won’t lie by pretending that some part of me doesn’t hope they won’t turn in the missing components. After all, having made it so abundantly clear and having given them a second chance, if they don’t get it done then I have less to grade. Maybe that makes me an asshole, I don’t know, but at least I’ll be an asshole with a little more time on my hands.) By painting it in such black-and-white terms, it’s rare that a student has failed to get done what he/she needed to get done once granted the mercy of an additional opportunity.

The underlying logic of this process is simple and obvious: it allows me to be a hard ass without necessarily having to be a hard ass. Moreover, this kind of response attempts to reaffirm the notion that the burden of responsibility for successfully completing a given assignment falls on the students so long as I am able to demonstrate that I’ve given them the information requisite for doing so. Additionally, I usually take moments such as these to remind them that the grading process is a subjective one. That is, I am not a machine and there are no Scantron writing assignments; hence, why risk putting yourself at an immediate disadvantage by giving me a less than favorable impression of what I should expect when I begin this evaluation process. Attend class, mind the criteria, ask questions, and do the work: this is a simple formula for doing well, I tell them. As for the two students who completed the assignment in its entirety, they will be rewarded according to those terms.

Transparency; or, the Whole Foods Management Approach to a Composition Pedagogy

I recently asked my students to read Margaret Atwood's "A Letter to America" for the next class period and to come prepared to speak about it. Just to be sure there was no confusion, I reiterated several times the part about being prepared to make comments--aloud--on the reading. On Thursday. Read Atwood's two-page essay and come prepared. To speak. Have something to say about Atwood's perspective and how she couches her argument. Thursday is when this is happening. Atwood. Two pages. Read them. Make comments.

Come Thursday, however, the most thoughtful--and damn near only--response offered was: She's old and Canadian and obviously she's upset that things aren't the same as the good old days.

Not wanting to bore you with the details of how poorly I handled the situation, it should suffice to say that at one point I asked if they were actively committed to stumbling willy-nilly through their respective worlds like blindfolded sheep. Several students chuckled at this non-rhetorical question, and so I also laughed but mostly to help mitigate the poor form of my reaction.

Auto-browbeaten and otherwise non-plussed, I shared my lament with several colleagues (because whining and bitching to one another is apparently one of our chief coping mechanisms and ostensibly the best argument for communal office space). In so doing, one Steve Rucker--he being a scholar, gentleman, and otherwise real congenial bastard--shared with me his take on this problem. Fortunately for you, he elaborates this in his April 2nd blog ("I am the Joe DiMaggio...")--which I hadn't then yet read--and so I won't recount it here.

What appeals to me about Steve's approach, though, is that it attempts to demystify what seems to me are some of the more counter-productive aspects of the typical student-teacher dynamic by establishing a substantial degree of pedagogical transparency. Perhaps because I've had a consistently rough go at generating student participation (excepting the sport vs. game debate), and also because I share many of Steve's sentiments regarding what may be the source of their reticence to speak up, it strikes me as logical that elucidating one's teaching philosophy to students may go a long way towards alleviating their fears. Maybe more so, I think, if you subscribe to a Social Constructivist model, since alerting students to the notions that 1) you don't perceive yourself as the sole bearer of Truth within the classroom (ie, acknowledging your fallibility), and therefore 2) they are expected to be active in the construction of the truth-making process should help significantly undermine their fears of sounding "stupid" or what have you.

I feel like it's too late in the semester for me to implement this kind of pedagogical transparency with any sufficient impact, though I anticipate giving it a whirl next semester for sure. In the meantime, I'll be sure to stay apprised of how it's working out for ol' Steve "DiMaggio" Rucker.

Fear & Pain: Twin Pillars of Any Earnest Pedagogy

Question: How do you respond to students who submit final drafts that do not reflect instructor comments from the rough drafts?

Maybe I was naive in thinking that I didn't need to discuss this particular issue with my students prior to collecting their first final drafts of the semester, I don't know, but it was made abundantly clear that I needed to afterwards. No shitting you, more than half of my nineteen composition students outright ignored all of my written comments on their drafts. And I don't mean only those comments where I wrote "offer some reflection on this point" or "how did/does this make you feel?" or "don't tell us, SHOW us" and so on. No, most of them chose to ignore even clearly-stated directives like, "Start your essay here, revise accordingly" and "This is extraneous info.--either make it relevant through revision, or delete it" and "Don't misspell your own name" (I've had at least three students turn in final drafts with the latter "error"). It literally got to the point where my only comment for an entire paper would be: No substantial revisions from the rough draft, refer to instructor comments made there. In the end, I didn't dock them any points just for ignoring what I had written, but rather graded the drafts on their own terms, so to speak. The result: three As, two Bs, and fourteen very generous Cs.

What I did do, however, is begin the next class period with the following question, without preamble: How many of you have ever played organized sports or been on a team of some sort? Every one of them raised their hands, of course, so I went on: When you were playing basketball or baseball or marching in band, or whatever, and the coach told you to do something, what was the purpose of his/her comment? "To help us win?" Now, did you have to do what the coach asked you to do? "Well, no. You could choose not to do it." And what usually happened when you didn't do what the coach asked you to do? "We'd get benched or have to run sprints in practice, or something." Okay, now we're getting somewhere; namely that fear and pain feature prominently as effective coaching tools. So let me get this straight: If the coach told you to do something, presumably his/her motivation for doing so was to help you succeed? Moreover, it was ultimately up to you whether or not to follow his/her instructions, since you were the one playing and he/she was on the sidelines, right? And win or lose, if you didn't follow the coach's advice, you could expect to be penalized in some way? Does that sound about right? "Yeah." Good. Now, tell me why you think I might be so suddenly interested in this topic. "Because we screwed up?" Bingo, jackass! (I jest, of course.)

As much as I hate resorting to sports metaphors, this one seems to have worked rather well for this particular situation. I explained that, similar to a coach, I invest a good deal of my time in trying to help my "players" succeed both on (in) and off (out of) the court (classroom). (Blech! It's awful, even if effective.) And when I don't see any attempt by them to provide a return on my investment, I quickly begin to lose interest in those players and whether or not they succeed, period. That's shooting pretty straight with them, granted, but I believe the direct approach is, in the end, better for all involved. And they seemed to get the gist of what I was driving at, so we'll see how it turns out.

Golf Ain't A Sport, And Neither Is Turkey Farming

I stumbled upon a good catalyst, if you will, for class discussion regarding critical thinking. This past Thursday I was attempting to engage my class in a discussion on that particular topic by asking them what they thought constituted critical thinking, in the first place, and when they have been called upon to practice it. Unfortunately, and as usual, they were not forthcoming in offering any opinions and/or ideas on the matter, which left me looking out on a bank of faces so devoid of interest--intellectual, practical, or otherwise--that I was half-tempted to line them up and, one by one, show 'em both sides of my hand, in a manner of speaking. Instead, I asked how many of them were sports enthusiasts, either as participants, fans, or both. Naturally, most of them showed some sign of assent, even if they maintained their vigilant reticence. Venturing further, I asked if any of them were baseball fans, in particular. Again, many of them gave some indication that they were. "Good," I said. "How would you feel, then, if I told you that baseball isn't a sport, it's a game?" A small thing, really, but I shit you not, the room erupted in a cacophony of dissenting voices.

This may sound silly to some of you; I don't know and I really don't care if it does. But I was simply excited that I had finally said something to elicit impassioned responses from most of my students. From that point forward, I basically played devil's advocate by hammering their every emotional objection and logical argument against my declaration. This led to questions like, "Well, what about Nascar? Do you consider that a sport?" No, I don't consider it a sport because it's not one. "But it takes a lot of physical and mental endurance to drive those cars and those guys are drained when it's over." So? My old man was an over-the-road truck driver, driving sometimes halfway across the United States in a single run, at the end of which he had to unload his own truck. Needless to say, it took a great deal of physical and mental endurance, and he was surely wiped out at the end of his working day, but he was also drinking coffee and chain smoking the whole time. Would you consider truck driving a sport? "What about golf? Walking 18 holes carrying a golf bag is hard." Yeah, well, turkey farming is more physically demanding than that, and probably more exciting to watch than golf is, but you probably wouldn't consider that a sport, would you? "Of course not, that's stupid." I exacerbated the issue by conceding that, in my opinion, competitive ballroom dancing is a sport, as well as competitive cheerleading. And so on.

The trick to all of this, of course, is that eventually you have to come full circle by demonstrating how this constitutes critical thinking. For instance, there was one girl who got (I thought) unreasonably heated about my contention that baseball is a game, not a sport. So I challenged her to consider why she was so upset, especially since I had never once intimated that being a "game" was in any way a discredit to baseball. In fact, I had up to that point lauded baseball for its complexities in spite of having already stated that I find it boring as hell to watch and don't otherwise like it. I asked her why she was so married to this term "sport," and to ask herself whether or not one term or the other in any way affected her appreciation of the game. Moreover, I challenged the class to identify any assumptions they might have about those two terms and to consider, specifically, what differences exist between them. For instance, are all sports also games, and/or vice versa? Or is sport simply a sub-category of games and, if so, what criteria must be present to qualify as such? Blah blah blah, you get what I'm getting at. Mostly I just wanted to put this out there as an idea you might resort to in a moment of desperation for class feedback, and from which you can derive a pretty substantial lesson on critical thinking.

Critical Review as Transition

Instead of jumping straight from the Memoir to the Textual Analysis (TA), I've chosen to include a transitional assignment in the form of a Critical Review (CR). By doing so, I am basically trying to employ (among others) Gerald Graff's thesis that we all have vernacular interests that, if carefully utilized in the classroom, can be successfully translated into a valuable academic experience. So, according to the criteria for this assignment, students are allowed to choose a short story, poem, CD, movie, etc., that they already either passionately like or dislike. Subsequently, they must then compose a review (850-1000 words) either recommending or condemning their choice by focusing their critique on two to four of its key elements (i.e., plot, character development, diction, imagery, cinematography, score, and so on). I think this is a relevant and beneficial lead-in to the TA for obvious reasons, not the least of which being that it challenges them to begin thinking critically (via analysis) about their chosen "text" in order to justify whatever opinion(s) they already have about it. Likewise, the CR is also helpful to the extent that students bring with them a fair amount of enthusiasm; that is, like most of us, they are relatively eager for an opportunity to share and discuss a vernacular (i.e., non-academic) interest about which they feel strongly, even if they have not yet made much effort to examine the precise reasons for their feelings.

As further preparation for the TA, then, I also required that they find and bring to class a published review of the sort they think they might do for the assignment (i.e., movie review, CD review, etc.). Then I had them get into to groups of three and analyze each other's published reviews with regard for the following: thesis, tone, assertions, evidence/support, and concrete examples. In this way, then, they gained some preliminary experience in formal textual analysis and acquired at least one potential model for their own reviews. Rough drafts aren't due until Thursday, though, so I don't yet have any concrete evidence to suggest whether or not this is going to work as well I hope it does. If nothing else, I think it will help mitigate the abrupt shift from the personal style of writing we encourage for the Memoir to the more strictly academic/formal approach and style of writing required by the TA.

More Vigor & Zest

Two class periods into the spring semester, I don't find myself having much to say in the way of issues related to composition and/or rhetoric. (That is what this is all about, right? My brain seems to be missing on at least a couple cylinders lately.)

I can say that I've become suddenly and acutely sensitive to how bored my students appear to be while...well, pretty much during the entire class period. Granted, it's basically understood that many, if not most, undergraduate students are generally going to be uninterested in and/or resistant to their required (i.e., general education) courses, but my students' lack of immediate and abundant interest in 110 feels somehow personal. It (probably?) isn't personal, of course, but now that the seeds of this particular insecurity have been planted in my over-active head, I find myself increasingly concerned with trying to contrive ever more fanciful means of engaging my students. This is ridiculous, I know, and made more so by the fact that while I'm teaching sometimes I'm actually thinking about how I am not actually this dull (I hope)--that if I were attempting to convey this exact same information outside of class it would be with more vigor and zest. Instead, I've begun to feel like a vaudeville comic whose talent, charisma and good-looks aren't translating so well to the big screen. And that's all I've got to say about that.

Sara Biggs Chaney: All things to All Students?

I’ve not yet taught a composition or basic writing course, so I’ve no first-hand experience of a situation like Sara Biggs Chaney describes in “Study of Teacher Error: Misreading Resistance in the Basic Writing Classroom.” And I hope that I don’t have that kind of experience, either, even if I recall one of my father’s favorite sayings as I type those words: “Wish/want/hope in one hand and shit in the other, then tell me which one fills up first.” (I think that was his course way of teaching me that hoping against hope and wanting what you cannot have is foolish and/or a waste of energy.) That said, I found myself sympathizing nonetheless with Chaney’s sense of disappointment upon learning that Amber had plagiarized much of her final paper for the BW course, especially after Chaney described becoming personally invested in helping her student, Amber, achieve the so-called “critical gesture.” I also admired her thoughtful and critical reflections about how she may have been able to better assist Amber. However, I found myself becoming somewhat irritated the more Chaney went on about how she felt she’d failed Amber by being “guilty of a misreading” the student’s expressed resistance to the academic institution, generally, and to composition, specifically (33). Not because I don’t appreciate her desire, as both an instructor and a caring individual, to help each of her students achieve academic success, because I really do. Rather, I am not convinced that she failed Amber in any sense of the word. Her solution didn’t work, sure; but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have worked, or that it wouldn’t have worked in a similar scenario with another student. Chaney’s article, at least for me, begs the question: Can an academic institution and its constituent programs (like Basic Writing) be all things for all people? Or more realistically, should they even try to be all things to all people? I don’t want to be misconstrued here as cynical and/or unsympathetic, but the fact of the matter is that educators cannot win them all, as the saying goes, no matter how sincerely or desperately they may want to. So while I truly appreciate the critical and rhetorical paths of inquiry (and their pedagogical relevance) Chaney followed in her search for answers to the Amber conundrum, it seems to me that ultimately an educator has to recognize that a student’s membership in the university classroom is elective, regardless of her educational experiences and socioeconomic status. She does not have to be there, she chooses to be there. Thus I’m kind of baffled when Chaney says that Amber “does not value academic essay writing, has no internal motivation to excel at it, and is nonetheless compelled to practice it by an institution that insists on a universal value for academic writing that she just doesn’t buy” (33-4, emphasis mine). It sounds like Chaney is indicting the institution as somehow oppressive by forcing its students to practice academic essay writing. She lends credence to this notion later when she rather absurdly remarks, “it was unfortunately not within my power to stop assigning writing in the writing classroom and take up some other topic Amber found more practical” (35). Really? It was unfortunate? What about the other students in that class? Besides also being so-called basic writers, did they find the practice of writing in a writing course impractical? Because, I mean, that really is a damn shame to make students write in a basic writing course, especially if one of those students thinks it’s “worthless.” Now I’m not suggesting that placing a universal value on academic writing is good or bad, right or wrong, or whatever. But it is the status quo of most liberal arts institutions and, so far as I know, enrollment is not compulsory. All educators can really do is give their students the best shot possible, working with individuals when they can, but in the end doing what’s best for the greatest number of them. What is “best” will change, of course, with experience and knowledge; but educators cannot be all things for all students. Though it’s good to reflect on relative successes and disappointments, learning what works and what doesn’t, Chaney should accept that she did for Amber what she thought was right at the time. It didn’t work, true, but that’s a far cry from “failing” her student.

Chaney, Sara Biggs. "Study of Teacher Error: Misreading Resistance in the Basic Writing Classroom." Journal of Basic Writing 23.1 (2004): 25-38.