Teaching is Easy!

My fellow SILs and I often compare notes and share teaching resources.  We talk about what works and what fails miserably, and I rarely talk about teaching away from Dominguez Hills.  However, not long ago I had an unusual conversation while getting a haircut.  First, it was unusual because the person speaking with me was not Nicole, my stylist, but another client, which seems to me a violation of the unwritten beauty salon code.  My haircut is ME time, and I generally don’t want to make small talk with complete strangers who require me to explain my life.  After a decade or so, Nicole just knows.  It was also unusual in the trajectory of the conversation.  After learning that I am a teacher, this woman, a retired teacher herself, remarked that many people think that teaching is easy; they believe that anyone with a modicum of patience and a smattering of general knowledge could walk into a classroom and just start molding young minds.  We had a good laugh about that.

I liken those people to my well-intentioned neighbors who believe that they could competently parent a child based on their ownership of two highly-strung Bichon Frise.  While house-breaking may be similar to potty-training in ways I’d rather not go into, entirely different skills are needed to nurture lap dogs vs. children.  For one thing, when a human child gets restless, you can safely put them outside.  But I digress.

Berlin’s article on pedagogical theories highlights many of the difficulties I’ve experienced as a supplemental instructor.  He asserts that teaching composition is “teaching a version of reality,” and therein lays my greatest problem:  the professor for whom I work and I exist in parallel universes (766).  I used to think that our pedagogical differences were due to his being an education major, whereas I studied and wrote about Literature, but that isn’t the issue.  He is a Current-Traditionalist, and I am on the wobbly fence between Expressivist and New Rhetoric.

Here is how this difference plays out in the classroom:  There are weekly grammar drills that are never gone over in class, and those students who tend to omit articles or pair disagreeable subjects and verbs continue to do so.  The class is expected to read about the structure of various forms of composition, compare and contrast for example.  Next, they are asked to read one or two examples of that mode, some written by professional authors and some by students.  We rarely discuss these readings in class.  Finally, they are given a prompt and a due date.  There is no mention of invention techniques.  Sometimes, there is peer review, and all students are required to have conferences with both the professor and me.  All too often, students attend both conferences on the same day, less than 48 hours before the paper is due.  As the subordinate in the room, I cannot argue with his methods; my only recourse is to supplement like hell during my Friday workshops.

Here is how I’ve been subtly subversive:  I introduce selected literature to talk about voice, style and syntax, develop vocabulary, and challenge their critical thinking.  Guess what; they liked it!  I’ve introduced them to Burke’s Pentad, the rhetorical triangle, and a variety of heuristics swiped from Lindemann to develop the content of their essays.  Knowing that they hate grammar work and desperately need it, I try to come up with paired and small-group activities that won’t put them to sleep.  I encourage students to see me multiple times for feedback, and to do so early in the process.  In conferences, I ask the question “Why?” a lot, encouraging them to examine their thinking and writing processes.  As a SIL, I have experienced moments of blissful inspiration and horrific train wrecks.  Writing may be easy, but teaching is not.