Pete's "visible learning" draft

I think of Paul, in my Freshman Comp classroom. I don’t now remember the assignment but I think it was a pretty standard “bring these three essays together” into some kind of argument (draw some comparisons, how do they speak to each other, that kind of thing). I don’t recall whether he asked for permission to do so, but I do remember encouraging the class to be creative, try something new, to write something interesting and that interested them. Paul handed in a comic book: it was six pages of his draft, each of the three authors represented by a character. He knew what he was doing; knew comic books had his own visual style that was consistent across each panel. I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I encouraged him to keep going, was thrilled with the creativity, the uniqueness.

 His next draft was 15 pages or so, elaborately drawn and scanned into his computer, then printed up. What I most remember was having a conversation after class, me bent over his comic book draft, he sitting back watching. I was perplexed, couldn’t name my discomfort with his work until finally it hit me. I said to him, “This is an ok academic essay that looks like a comic book. But it’s not a comic book. It’s missing the stuff I associate with the kind of adult comic book you seem to want to write here….where is the moral ambiguity,…the sudden use of jarring images….” In that moment I realized my problem, and his. And he did too, when he said back to me, “I need to get a good grade. If I wrote you a comic, I wouldn’t get a good grade.” I had pressed him into a corner, and he had written himself into that corner: I had asked him to engage in a complex negotiation of genre and audience and context when I wasn’t even sure how to do it, nor did I feel equipped to guide him, until, really it was too late…ok so that was more about me learning….

Comments

[Nichole]

Having just read "Inventing the University," this post jarred me a little, and I liked that. I was expecting the "conventions" that teachers use to talk about their students--basically, an amazing moment in their class that everyone should try to imitate, I guess?--and instead, your story was about a moment of experimental/progressive teaching that didn't work. Surprising but a little refreshing? Thanks for the story.

[Renee]

It's interesting that you brought up "Inventing the University", Nichole, because sometimes it feels as much as students need to learn our language or participate in our discourse, we need to do the same in theirs, which I think is really well illustrated here. (Although I think this can be done really badly, like "Let's think outside the box, kids, and have a rap session out on the quad.)

[Pete]

I hear what you are both saying about "Inventing the U" -- and on thing that B has been critiqued for is representing academic discourse (whatever that is) as rather monolithic. There is a huge amount of space to move in and around in "doing academic work", I think, and we tend to for get it. There is something about writing in particular where we get caught up in certain forms and hold onto them (or certain kinds of teacher narratives, as Nichole points out), regardless of their ultimate usefulness.

In the quad or in the building, the more I ponder it, coming to some sense of that shared "box" can be very difficult to attain. I think it can happen across specific courses (or is this just an illusion I sell to myself so I go home thinking I'm a good teacher when they all nod at the end of class?)...

[Mehmet]

It's interesting that in academic research all different genres of communication can be used as units of analysis in formulating our arguments. But wouldn't we be more effective researchers if we tried to practice those genres honestly? I know of a history professor who had his students write a memoir taking on the persona of a historical figure. I think of the students get a sense of what is entailed in producing a memoir, they'll be better able to analyze such genres.
But the classroom will always be an artificial environment, and the best we can hope is to acknowldedge it and work with it. Perhaps more open communication, as in Pete's class, about engaging a genre such as the comic book would help lessen the anxiety for the student so that he/she gives a more honest effort.

[Belle]

I'm intrigued by your notion of the classroom as an "artificial environment"--I know what you're suggesting (I think), but I'd like to hear more (from anyone, really) about the nature of this artificiality--What makes it artificial?--the power relations and conventions of communication and production, which are often not acknowledged, or at least not foregrounded--and, if so, are the workplace, or the family dinner table less artificial environments? If so, why?

[Pete]

Interesting about "artificial." I think the term comes up when I think about learning, as in, there is no particular reason why classrooms are the best places for learning, but we force (assert)(demand) the classroom as a meaningful location for learning to happen. So maybe in that sense it can feel/is artificial because it is so designated a learning space and ONLY a learning space (we don't eat family dinners at the table there).

This gets me back to what one of my mentors impressed upon me when I first began teaching. He'd ask, rather bluntly, why bother getting all these people together into one room? Is it only efficiency a la 250 person lecture classes? Why not just do it all online, now that we can?

[Mehmet]

The "artificiality" as in recreating the personal journal of a historical figure is dependent on how convincing it is. The fact that it has to be "convincing" indicates a kind of artificiality. In this regard it is sort of what an actor does.
In a way, Bartholomae was pointing to a similar kind of problem among student writers who are expected to take on academic conventions but are not really taught how, and are constantly reminded that they are outsiders by their student status. Consequently, being outside the academe, the student writers were trying to convince their professors.

[Mehmet]

The "artificiality" as in recreating the personal journal of a historical figure is dependent on how convincing it is. The fact that it has to be "convincing" indicates a kind of artificiality. In this regard it is sort of what an actor does.
In a way, Bartholomae was pointing to a similar kind of problem among student writers who are expected to take on academic conventions but are not really taught how, and are constantly reminded that they are outsiders by their student status. Consequently, being outside the academe, the student writers were trying to convince their professors.