Response to Susan McLeod’s “The Pedagogy of WAC”
After reading McLeod’s essay, I am reminded of how much I don’t know about teaching writing. When I was teaching in Indiana, I took a one-week workshop on how to teach students to write across the curriculum within an English class. We used the Bedford St. Martin’s text Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum so as to provide students with non-fiction texts they might encounter in non-English courses. While I was able to identify for students the differences in the content of the reading material, it was still hard to identify the unspoken and unwritten rules for writing within each discipline.
McLeod’s argument that we often fail to see beyond our own training rings true, and I experienced this first-hand last year while working collaboratively on a writing assignment with a history teacher. He came to me with the idea, for he wanted students to write in his class but felt he needed my support in doing so. I jumped at the chance to work interdisciplinarily. We acknowledged that we came into the writing assignment with different expectations, so we communicated early and often about what we were asking of the students, how we would comment on the drafts, and how we would eventually grade the final product.
Interestingly, the history teacher commented more on grammatical issues than I did, just as McLeod found to be true in her work. The content of the papers was historically-based, but I was still able to ask students to expand on particular issues that I didn’t understand. I suppose in that regard the paper assignment was more “authentic” in that the students believed they knew more than at least one of the teachers (me) . . . many actually did not as I was a history minor in college and they were only 15 years old. However, they didn’t know my background, so when I asked them to write in such a way that explained their position in more detail than their history teacher required, they did so for my sake. Further, students were able to see cross-curricular expectations–what they did in history mattered to me, and what they were learning in English about topic sentences, transitions, and citing their history teacher also cared about.
Besides creating a more relevant writing experience for students, this project was extremely insightful for both teachers. I learned a little about historical writing and a lot about the content, but my biggest lesson was in how to identify and communicate to others my own unwritten and unspoken “rules” for writing, rules with which I’d wrongly assumed most other disciplines shared. My history counterpart afterwards spoke about how much he’d learned about how to communicate on weaknesses in organization and elaboration, as well as a few comma and citing rules. Highly worthwhile, but a lot of work!
I was very lucky to work with a teacher who desired and respected writing, but many non-English teachers see WAC as a chore and don’t take the time to communicate common expectations and methodology. Often what happens in high schools is teachers of other departments are told they must teach writing, but they are not trained in the pedagogy nor do they have a vested interest in doing so. For example, our PE department agreed to require writing of students, but they provide little instruction (not that we English teachers would relish relinquishing this control). Further, the assessment is often haphazard at most . . . students claim some of the teachers don’t even read the papers, others deduct points for grammatical issues we in English wouldn’t, and some contradict what English teachers teach as basic organizational structure. Who can blame the students for being confused? This is not WAC, for students are not truly learning or communicating through writing.
I am meeting this summer to further discuss interdisciplinary teaching with two members (science and social studies) of my freshman academy team, and I will certainly bring forward some ideas for journaling and double-entry notebooks, both of which I use in my own classes. I will have to rely on them, therefore, for teaching me their expectations within their own disciplines. For one, the science teacher and I are going to work on teaching kids how to write a lab report, something which I haven’t written since high school. I know now that I have a lot to learn, for I couldn’t successfully teach this particular type of writing tomorrow if I needed to. We as teachers need to read more outside own own disciplines, talk with other teachers, make visible for students unwritten expectations, and acknowledge the rules we teach are not steadfast in every discipline. I’m interested to pursue this in my own teaching, for I know I’m failing my College Writing students in this regard . . . I’m only teaching from my own perspective, based on my own college classes, and using my own expectations and biases. Scary.
June 17th, 2008 11:33
Katherine, as always, your comments are thought-provoking. I also think McLeod’s article is interesting. From what I have observed as a tutor, what you describe about WAC is also prevalent on the college level. As McLeod (and others) point out, it’s difficult to combine expertise in a specific discipline, such as history, with English conventions. It sounds like your experience with the history teacher at your school was ideal–you both were willing to cooperate and probably compromise for the good of the students. As sort of a middle man in the writing center, suspended between confused students and confusing professors, I had no idea that some professors could be resistant to establishing a formal relationship with writing “specialists” (for lack of a better term) who are willing to help their students. As one writer explained, teachers can be suspicious of tutors helping their students for fear that plagiarism is involved. I would love to see a syllabus and assignment sheets for each class at the beginning of a semester and to spend a few minutes with teachers to ascertain their expectations before panicked students start dropping in for help to figure out what the heck their profs want. Of course, students should communicate with their own teachers, but sometimes they just don’t. The collaboration between various disciplines and composition teachers provides such a great opportunity to accomplish the two aspects of writing that McLeod describes–writing to learn and writing to communicate. Inherent in both those angles is simply learning to write. And certainly demonstrating to students that writing matters, not only for the sake of getting good grades, but also for preparing for a world in which nearly every job demands good communication, is sufficient reason to push WAC at the high school and college levels.
The more I read, the more I realize how little I understand about writing pedagogy. I am having to unlearn so many rigid, non-negotiable paradigms that have ruled my own writing forever. Five-paragraph essay, be darned!! Reading Peter Elbow’s “Writing Without Teachers” is getting me so excited about the creative possibilities inherent in approaching writing from the needs of the individual rather than from an established format. Perhaps less emphasis on writing rules and more freedom in style and content should be part of the WAC process. I hope to tutor more creatively in the fall.
Even though each discipline demands its own methods for documentation, vocabulary, organization, etc., it seems that on the high school–and even college–level, there could be enough common ground to make WAC work effectively for the good of students. I’m not sure how WIU approaches WAC, but I’d like to explore that issue.
June 17th, 2008 17:24
I am interested in reading Elbow’s book as well, but I fear most of my students would struggle with too much creative freedom. I asked my College Writing students last semester how they would feel if I said, “Write me an essay, due in two weeks” with no guidelines whatsoever. Two said they would relish the freedom. The others admitted their desire for structure and guidance, a need most assuredly fed by the teachers they’ve had in the first eleven years of their schooling. Still, I think I could strike a better balance between too much rigidity and too much freedom.
June 19th, 2008 10:40
Katherine, your “I was very lucky…” paragraph summarizes many of the challenges in WAC and WID. Establishing common standards, methodologies, and assessment rubrics is difficult at all levels where WAC is desired.
As for Elbow, give the book a read; it won’t take long, and I think you’ll find that while Elbow can be loosey-goosey, there’s more structure in his pedagogy than you might think. If I am remembering WWT correctly (and it’s been a while), the real difference is the way Elbow imagines authority. Desire for a good grade often pushes students toward structure; when that’s diffused (or removed altogether) students supposedly behave differently. Analogically, it’s like comparing a book club and an English literature class. They both do the same thing–quite often with the same texts–but for different reasons.
June 27th, 2008 15:58
Upon reading all the different pedagogies discussed in this collection, I too realize my own short-comings in my preparedness to “teach” writing. So much of what I retain as important with regards to writing is an accumulation of many years of trials and errors, sparsely accented with individualized success. I forget how challenging it was to adjust to the individual expectations of my teachers and professors; and yet, one expectation was perfectly clear across the disciplines: read broadly.
As a staff member at MHS, I took part in a mixed-disciplinary team responsible for grading the junior class PSAE writing responses three years ago. Two impressions of that process left a permanent mark on how I approach writing in my classroom. First, teachers and staff on the whole were horrified at the writing samples we were expected to score wholistically. Students were criticized, laughed at, and in general stamped as illiterate. Second, as in McLeod, all fingers loaded with blame were pointed at the English teachers. WE weren’t doing our jobs! And yet, by their very action of pointing the fingers toward the English department, these other disciplines were de-emphasizing the importance of writing within their own classrooms. I agree with McLeod in that all teachers are needed in ensuring students learn the particular discourse used in writing in addition to teaching the content.
Katherine has been fortunate to be matched up with a teacher who respects the importance of writing in his own classroom. Nan, it is very important that teachers set clear expectations of writing assignments so that, from the students’ perspectives, the grade isn’t meaningless or even unattainable.
What I found most intriguing was the distinction between writing-to-learn and writing-to-communicate. In my College Writing class, I incorporate both approaches throughout the developmental process. McLeod states that the students will discover “what they need to learn” through this approach, and yet that typically is the stalling point for most of my students. Only if they are truly invested are they willing to reflect and work to discover what they need to know. This is probably why my peer-editing sessions fall so short of my instructional goals. Writing to communicate occurs as the students draft their essays, and yet again, they are typically unwilling to take on the role of informing their audiences to the degree of complete understanding. They too stall out in their depth of support, so that the reader(s) gain only partial insight, only part of the picture.
I do believe that a more intensified focus on writing across the curriculum will help deliver the message that writing is important, and that it serves a purpose in educating both the writer and reader.