Pedagogy Statement

The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.
-The Prophet Mohammed

Muslim lore states that their holy prophet Mohammed was once an Arab merchant, and one evening during his travels he fell asleep on the roadside. Suddenly, the archangel Gabriel appeared before the Prophet and, after waking him, dictated the Koran to him, expecting him to write it down verbatim because it was the Word of God. While Gabriel’s apparition and Mohammed’s task were immensely special, the true miracle of this story is that at the time it took place, Mohammed was reportedly illiterate. While I can never be sure of the story’s validity, one thing is for certain: modern composition teachers (and students) can infer from it that one doesn’t have to be a naturally gifted writer in order to write something important. Everyone is more than capable. This is the attitude I approach my pedagogy with. I believe that everyone, no matter how talented they are, can learn to write better.

Learning to write better, at least in the academic setting, means learning to engage the texts and teachers in a manner that is conducive to scholarly discourse. I am fond of saying that English is my favorite subject because it gives a voice to all the other subjects. Mike Rose seems to agree with me when he says, “Indeed, it is worth pondering whether many of the ‘integrated bodies of knowledge’ we study, the disciplines we practice, would have ever developed in the way they did and reveal the knowledge they do if writing did not exist” (593). The point is that whether they admit it or not, the other academic disciplines look to composition teachers to chisel at the marble that is the inexperienced writer and turn him or her into La Pieta. This is the noblest calling, I feel, because our very existence as a specialized discipline and a necessary component in the university curriculum rests upon how well we sculpt our students. Our role is even more important when we consider how traditional education, according to Faber and Eilola, “is merely assumed as a baseline skill, important but not particularly valuable” to the corporations who will eventually employ the students we teach (1074). So teaching students to write better, then, is not only to introduce them to scholarly writing, but it is also to adequately prepare my students to write in a real world setting.

I believe I must begin by teaching them to think about themselves as writers and not as students. To do this, Robert Brooke argues that “we must help both them and ourselves to see our interaction in writing classrooms as cut from a different mold than ‘regular’ classrooms” (729). To achieve this goal, I will take David Bartholomae’s advice: “the student has to learn our language, to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse of our community” (605). In my experience, this language is rhetoric, the art of persuasion, the art of arguing. There is very little real world application for purely explicative writing, or for compare/contrasts essays. No matter what a person in the real world writes, there is always an argument driving it. So I believe in teaching students how to argue professionally and in a scholarly manner.

Furthermore, I believe that in a composition classroom, students should be writing because it is a skill, and Mike Rose argues that “a skill, particularly in the university setting, is, well, a tool, something one develops and refines and completes in order to take on the higher-order demands of purer thought” (592). Similarly, James Moffat argues that “students learn to write by writing, not by talking about writing” (qtd. by Lindemann 98). Both men elegantly cite that old adage, “practice makes perfect,” especially when it comes to writing, and I agree with them wholeheartedly. So my classroom will be writing-intensive. I will instruct them to rhetorically analyze their reading assignments so they can make arguments about their assignments in regular responses. As an undergraduate in David Keplinger’s poetry survey course, I, along with my classmates, was required to write weekly letters to him in response to letters he wrote to us about the discussions or readings for the week. This introduced us to the notion of scholarship by means of conversation, but it also helped us establish our identities as writers and scholars ourselves, and I will implement this exercise in my own classroom. As with our Theories class, I would like to begin my class time with “Sacred Writing” because I believe it will help students get into a writing frame of mind; when one goes to the gym, he or she must warm up before moving on to serious exercise. That’s what “Sacred Writing” is to me: a warm up activity that prepares the students for serious writing. I will also finish classes with “Evening Pages” to further nurture the students’ creativity and identity. And of course, there will also be the mandatory essays to gauge how well they’re progressing as writers, as critical thinkers, and as scholars.

James Berlin argues that “writing…is an art, a creative act in which the process – the discovery of the true self – is as important as the product – the self discovered and expressed” (674). His words resound with me because being a writer has always been a significant aspect of my identity, and I have observed that it is not a static skill that stops improving the moment the writer learns how to make letters. Professional writers don’t churn out perfect drafts on their first try, and they certainly aren’t Shakespeare right out of the gate. They are constantly pre-writing, writing, and revising. Student writers need to understand that the writing process is a fluid, living thing that is always changing and evolving. Maxine Hairston argues that teachers “have to initiate them into the process that writers go through” (446). I believe she is correct, and that is why in my classroom I will emphasize the importance of drafting and revising.

However, Bartholomae also rightly argues that “if writing is a process, it is also a product; and it is the product, and not the plan for writing, that locates a writer on the page, that locates him in a text and a style and the codes or conventions that make both of them readable” (611). Teachers don’t grade students on their personal writing processes. They grade them on their final products. This is why grammar, specifically sentence mechanics is important to me. “Writers need to develop skills at two levels,” argues Patrick Hartwell. “One, broadly rhetorical, involves communication in meaningful contexts…The other, broadly metalinguistic rather than linguistic, involves active manipulation of language with conscious attention to surface form” (579). I am a firm believer that too many surface errors detracts from the meaning a writer tries to convey, so in spite of what many researchers think on the matter, learning correct grammar is important. However, the word “grammar” has such a strong negative connotation that when students hear it, they automatically tune out anything that seems to be related to it. But if the word is not used, I think the students will be much more likely to retain knowledge of it.

That is not to say I believe in, to paraphrase Stanley Fish, the rote memorization of different parts of speech (15). Hartwell suggests, and I agree, that students already know more about grammar than they give themselves credit for, having learned the basic mechanics of English when they learned to speak it. That is why I don’t want to teach grammar with formal drills and exercises. I will address grammar in subtle ways, like catching mistakes in their drafts and before the final product is due. This relates back to my emphasis on the writing process because it reinforces the idea of revision during drafting. I prefer to do it covertly as Erica Lindemann suggests in Rhetoric for Writing Teachers, by not letting students know they’re learning it. This means I will not circle mistakes in a red pen. Rather, if I see a student struggle with the same issue, say a tendency to write run-on sentences, I will gently point out one example of the mistake and instruct them to find the others. This will help me keep from focusing on errors, and it will help the students learn how to proofread their own work.

Returning back to Mohammed’s legend, one can’t overlook Gabriel’s role as teacher. If we assume for just one moment that he was not a divine being, we are forced to acknowledge his tremendous patience, dedication, and love for communication. These things compelled him to teach Mohammed how to read and write, and because of his efforts, he created a profound thinker who left a lasting impact on the world. I don’t know if any of my students will ever be the father or mother of any major philosophy, but I do know that if I follow Gabriel’s example, I too can create profound thinkers who will contribute something to the life of the world rather than be indifferent spectators to it. Gabriel taught Mohammed more than just the Koran that day: he taught him that writing is God’s work. Writing is sacred. And hopefully, when I’m done with my students, they’ll know that too.

Works Cited

Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2009. 605-630. Print.

Berlin, James. “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2009. 667-684. Print.

Brooke, Robert. “Underlife and Writing Instruction.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2009. 721-732. Print.

Faber, Brenton and Johndan Johnson-Eilola. “Universities, Corporate Universities, and the New Professionals: Professionalism and the Knowledge Economy.” The Norton Book of
Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2009.
1059-1080. Print.

Fish, Stanley. How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011. Print.

Hairston, Maxine Cousins. “The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution in the
Teaching of Writing.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2009. 439-450. Print.

Hartwell, Patrick. “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar.” The Norton Book of
Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2009. 563-585. Print.

Lindemann, Erica. A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Print.

Rose, Mike. “The Language of Exlusion: Writing Instruction at the University.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
2009. 586-604. Print.