Drew University Composition Program Instructor's Handbook & Guide

First, welcome to the Composition Program at Drew.  We selected you to teach in this program because we believe you posses the qualities our teachers must possess if this program is to succeed. Teaching writing is hard.  It is time-consuming and writing students demand more of their teachers than do students in any other disciplines.  Teachers of writing have to get to know their students as writers, understand their strengths and weakness, and work with them to build on those strengths and to address those weaknesses.  This demands skill, dedication, enthusiasm, confidence, and an open mind from teachers and you were hired into this program because we believe you to be up to the challenge.  As you may already know, teaching writing is also rewarding.  Everything we do in the academy and many things we do outside of it depend on advanced literacy skills.  Through writing we both make and explore meaning.  We develop and articulate our ideas, and we communicate those ideas to others.  There is no discipline in the university that does not demand writing skills. Some might say that writing instruction is the most important instruction students learn in college.  That is certainly the belief that guides this program.

The following guide is organized to respond to the 20 questions that we consider it essential for writing teachers to ask--and answer.  The summer orientation and weekly workshops throughout the year are designed to help you develop a response to these questions, but--like learning itself--your answers will be provisional and the questions must be asked afresh with each course you teach.

The first question that we all need to ask is a deceptively simple one: who will be enrolled in this class?  Many of us think we don't need to ask this question, yet the population we teach today is very different than when you were an undergraduate--even if it that was only a few years ago.  In the last ten years we have seen an increase in the number of non-traditional students in undergraduate programs, and we've seen changes in the experiences of traditional students too.  School shootings and media focus on the "trench coat mafia" send us students sensitized in different ways than most of us were sensitized by our high school experience.  Then there is 9/11.  What is the impact of the new sense of vulnerabilty experienced by many Americans, especially in the New York-New Jersey area?  The rise in students with learning disabilities following their inclusion in the Americans with Disabilities Act challenges us to understand different learning styles.  The knowledge that one in three black men between the age of 20 and 29 is incarcerated or on parole instead of in college challenges us to avoid simplistic models of progress.  Awareness of the incidence of date rape, sexual harassment, homophobia, racism, ethnic bias, xenophobia, ageism, classism, and other details of our students lives--especially those living on campus--makes us ask about the impact of the 164 hours a week when students aren't in our classes.  With the rise in college fees, more and more students are working full-time or almost full-time while in college, an issue that we once thought only concerned teachers of community and urban college students.  At the same time, charges of "political correctness" and bias seem to be increasing--or gaining more publicity--and this, too, makes us ask who will be in our classes.

Only when we have considered who we will be teaching are we ready to consider what kind of writing instruction these students will need.  This question ranges from grammar and stylistic intervention to the kinds of writing they might practice.  It encompasses thinking about how to address learning style differences and second language interference, and it includes deciding whether to give writing assignments that have some connection with the daily lives and experiences of the students--many of whom may not write many more college papers once they leave their composition class.  A course pitched above or below the level of the students in the class can be a disaster.  It can produce papers that are as boring as the students find the class, or as far off the mark as we all are when we don't understand the assignment.  At worst it can lead to unintentional or intentional plagiarism when students either don't care enough to write their own papers or lack any confidence in their ability to do so.  I'm not claiming that plagiarism, boring papers, and failed assignments are necessarily the fault of the teacher--it is the responsibility of the student to learn and to ask for help if he or she needs it.  What I am saying is that if we consider who our students are and what they need we are more likely to develop a course and a teaching style that challenges them to learn and increases their confidence in their ability to do so.

This leads into a question that might really be the first question: How do you feel about teaching writing?  We send all kinds of messages when we don't realize people are looking.  Students who resent being required to take a writing class will soon pick up on teachers who resent teaching it.  A good teacher can build on this mutual frustration to explore the reasons behind the requirements and the resentments.  A teacher who doesn't consider the impact of his or her resentment can reinforce student's own negative feelings, which hardly inspires them to work for the course.  Such a teacher can also reinforce feelings of worthlessness in students who do know that they need to take the course and feel lesser for that fact.  We can't change how we feel about our jobs, but we can consider the impact of those feelings, and explore ways to ensure that they do no harm.  Sometimes this will mean reconsidering the next question: What is your philosophy of teaching writing?  In  some cases it might challenge us to consider whether we need a philosophy of teaching writing, but this, too, is an important dialogue.  And only after we have had that dialogue can we consider our goals for the course.  What do we want students to achieve at the end of the course?  What should they know?  How should they feel about writing and themselves as writers?

The next series of questions get back to the institutional location of the courses we teach.  It took me a long time to think that it was important to ask why this particular institution offers this particular writing course, yet without asking that question I couldn't really explore how the course fits into the overall learning goals of a college or university.  And without considering that larger question we are at risk of developing or teaching classes that seem isolated to the students in them.  If our students can make connections between the areas of knowledge they are investigating they are more likely to be engaged with their classes.  They are also more likely to ask questions and see connections that we didn't think of.  Those of us who value critical thinking miss an important way to foster it if we ignore the institutional and the programmatic goals for the course.  We also may find ourselves treading in water we'd rather avoid if we fail to consider the course within the history of the institution and writing program at that institution.  Were the programmatic goals developed by writing faculty, by other faculty, by administrators outside of the field of writing, or by state legislators?  To whom must the course answer?  Who will measure the success of the course? And what criteria will be used to measure your success as teacher of record?

Once we have learned the answer to this series of questions, we can address a more specific question:  How can your syllabus meet the needs of the institution, the program, and the students?  Does it reflect institutional policies such as those on academic integrity?  Does it respect State and national laws such as FERPA and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and respond to the needs of those covered under such laws, such as students with learning disabilities?  But we can't answer these questions without also returning to that earlier question about our own goals for the course.  If our goals, philosophy, or pedagogy conflict with the goals, philosophy, pedagogy or needs of the students in the program we have a problem, and it is best to consider ways to address that problem before the course begins.  If we do not, the tension can destroy a course, making it constantly undermine itself.  It can also undermine other courses or instructors by contradicting what they have taught.  If faculty in other courses or departments assume a certain body of knowledge will be delivered in a class designed to deliver that knowledge, no one is served by a teacher who doesn't take the time to learn what those expectations are.  This doesn't mean that all classes must follow lock-step some externally imposed philosophy, but it does mean that instructors who deviate from the expectations of the course should do so deliberately and thoughtfully rather than accidentally.  Such a conflict may provoke a valuable dialogue within the program if it is backed with sound theory, and the weekly instructor meetings and summer workshops are the place where such dialogue should be explored.

The next series of questions focus on the nuts and bolts of course design. We often spend time thinking about the course itself, articulating goals, and developing strategies for achieving them, without thinking about the impact of course policies and whether they further the goals of the course.  A course designed to empower students and encourage them to take responsibility for their own learning may send another message if it prohibits late papers or punishes absences.  On the other hand, a course that uses writer's workshops and emphasizes the importance of respecting other writers in the class might benefit from a clearly stated non discrimination policy.  The same questions can be asked about how text books, rhetorics, and handbooks;  available technology;  writing assignments; reading assignments;  responses to papers; and grading strategies further the goals of the course.  A lot has been written about these issues, yet many of us fail to give these facets of our teaching the serious thought that they deserve, and as a result often adopt policies, texts, assignments, and strategies that at worst pull against or undermine our goals, and at best simply fail to further those goals.  This makes it harder for us to predict--and so answer--the last question in this sequence: What problems do you anticipate in this course?

The final series of questions invites readers to step back from the course they have designed and place it into a larger disciplinary context.  Once the course is designed and the crucial theoretical, philosophical, administrative, and pedagogical questions have been answered, you are invited to locate the course within the field of composition theory.  This meta-analysis allows you to think about the course as a coherent whole, considering everything from course goals and textbook selection to classroom arrangement and course policies.  It may lead to further questions about the course and tinkering with aspects of its design.  On the other hand, it may allow you to provide a rationale for job application letters and interviews, and later for colleagues, annual reports, and promotion and tenure documents.  A similar self-interested motive should encourage you to ask the two final questions:  Have you designed a course in which the students write more than you do? and Have you designed a course that allows you adequate time to continue your academic life while you teach?  It is important for all of us--from the full professor a few years from retirement to the adjunct just beginning his or her career--to design and teach courses that encourage us to continue to develop professionally.  Some of us make the mistake of designing a course in which we write more than our students in comments, handouts, emails, and so on.  Such courses may not benefit students as much as those in which they are asked to do the bulk of the writing!  Similarly, courses that are so labor- intensive that we have no time to read current scholarship, write our own texts, or even spend time with families and friends will quickly lead to burn-out for most normal mortals.  The final section of this Guide explores how to take some of the labor out of writing classes without reducing their effectiveness.  And that will leave everyone time to come up with twenty questions of their own.

  Index

  The Twenty Questions!

  Further Reading