"Knowledge Making in the Trenches" Labor Versus Work in the Writing Classroom
In Restaino’s First Semester: Graduate Students, Teaching Writing, and the Challenge of Middle Ground’s final chapter, “Thinking What We Are Doing: Knowledge Making in the Trenches” I was struck by Hannah Arendt’s worry of there being inbalance in student and teacher labor relationships with work. There is a difference between work and labor. Work may be seen as the tasks to be undertaken and finished to make a product while labor is the process of growth and development to get to that finished product. When these two get confused, it can lead to a difficult time for both the students and teachers in the writing classroom. Restaino argues that “the task of ‘thinking what we are doing’ is far more monumental than it seems” (106-107). The process of reflection and cognitive awareness of the task before you are more important than completing the actual task because the task is designed for improvement and to teach something.
This is something that graduate student instructors have to learn as they go. Writing Programs that have Student Teachers do have a challenge in their approach to accommodating the differing types of writing instructors, making a WPA’s position more complex. However, constantly evaluating and reevaluating the learning process Student Teachers go through to make it better and will ultimately improve graduate students’ understanding and preparation to teach in the writing classroom.
This labor/work relationship is important for our own preparation as teachers, but it is important for how we engage our students. Are we more focused on the process or the final product? Are the assignments we give them productive or busywork? This is actually something I struggle with in my classroom. I tell my students that I care about their effort and their process in their creation of whatever essay or research they are working on, and I assign short assignments that act as checkpoints to “check-in” on their effort and labor.
Because I noticed my students haven’t been reading what is assigned most classes, I decided to give Blogger a try to ensure they were having some interaction with the reading and with each other’s interpretation of it. I want Blogger to be a productive experience and not more busywork to babysit or monitor them. I think taking time in class, after a new blog is created by whoever has blog responsibility, to talk through some of their takeaways as a class to forge that reflective process to make the “work” begin to have the improving benefits of labor.
The title of Restaino's last chapter is super important: "Thinking What We Are Doing: Knowledge Making in the Trenches." There needs to be a method to our madness, a "why" to the work we assign and the work we take on ourselves. It is in that labor "in the trenches" that the most growth and understanding is shaped.
Your struggle with getting students to read reflects some of my own struggles with student engagement.
ReplyDeleteWithin the framework of work, labor, and "thinking what we are doing," I think it's important to realize that most students don't think about what they're doing for classes, just going through the steps provided by the instructor, or just not doing it. One of the hardest tasks we have as instructors is getting the students to understand that the assignments and activities we have them do have value.
Your use of the word "babysitter" struck a chord with me in this context. I haven't yet figured out how to get them to engage without heavily involving myself in their processes, which I don't think is ultimately beneficial, but most of them are coming from situations where they were overly monitored.
My big question is, then, how do we help them transition from a paradigm of needing to be led to a paradigm of self-leading without further entrenching the idea that they will be led where they need to go?
-Lucas
McKenzie,
ReplyDeleteThis conversation of how to engage students with the class and materials is something I’ve been mulling over lately quite a bit, too – especially in combination with another recent discussion of feeling like we need to justify or explain the importance of classwork to students.
In my own class, I haven’t received any challenges about why we’re doing the work we’re doing – a general lack of enthusiasm, yes, but not any pushback as to why I’m asking them to do it in the first place. When we’ve talked about the value of studying rhetoric or any of the concepts or activities we’re doing, I’ve had to bring up the discussion myself.
I’ve been thinking about the whole framework of realizing the format they’ve just come out of is a high school setting, which we introduced with the hand-raising discussion. In high school students aren’t generally told necessarily why they’re studying the topic they are – they’re just given certain classes they have to take to get their diploma, and they’re expected to take them and do the work their teachers give them without asking any questions (of course, there’s a certain amount of freedom with electives, but also required classes).
Which leads me to making sense of my situation – do they even know to ask those sorts of questions? Are they questioning the value of the classes they’re taking at all, or just seeing them as a checkmark towards their degree?
Does this give us as teachers even more of a role to fill, an extra responsibility to teach them to start asking these questions and considering the value of everything they’re learning? To critically think instead of mindlessly follow? Will this mindset lead them to find the value of the course for themselves and increase their motivation to benefit from the course, or simply turn them away further if they don’t find value in it?
-Jessie
I think you ask some interesting questions, Jessie. I, too, certainly think that the high school education system really works against us in our effort to make the class something more than a check on check sheet...and, in some ways, the core curriculum does, too. But I was talking to Jennifer about the new core curriculum set up, and how unstructured it is; I don't really know if that's a good thing. I kind of them they don't know how to ask the appropriate questions yet, and they'll need a lot more guidance than just us if they want to be successful in college.
DeleteMcKenzie,
ReplyDeleteI really like your idea of using a blog in order to encourage reflective thinking. I feel like I also have a problem with students not reading what is assigned. Maybe this is because they just don’t see the value in it, or see it as “busywork” (like you talk about). I think that creating an assignment specifically tied to the reading is something that would be very beneficial. This could be done in the form of quizzes, but I think that a less anxiety provoking way would be through blogging or even discussion board posts. As you discuss, this could then be a tool to start class discussion and have students reflect on what they read or posted about. I think that the most important thing is that the students see this work as productive and beneficial. This is something that I may consider implementing in a future semester.
Thanks for your post!
-Taylor
I really liked your explanation of the difference between work and labor. I feel like much of our discussion so far has dealt with what we as instructors are doing in terms of work vs. labor (and action in there as well). However, students themselves are also taking on the same struggle between work vs. labor. I would have to agree with what you said about the concern of assigning busywork (or at the very least, students’ perceptions that it’s busywork). I have tried to emphasize a lot with my students that everything they learn and create in my course will be able to apply to something outside the class. At the base of it, what I am trying to show them is that what they are doing is not labor, it is work.
ReplyDeleteI also really love the idea of a course blog. I had considered it before coming into this course, but now I am sold on the concept. I definitely intend to set this up in all my future courses. As you said, I think it can be a great opportunity for showing students that what they are doing, what they are reading, is not labor. If they take the right attitude about it and really THINK WHAT THEY ARE DOING then we can all really gain something out of the experience of taking FYC.
McKenzie,
ReplyDeleteI think we often struggle with the idea of balancing work and labor, not only for ourselves, but especially for our students. As grad students, we hate the idea of busywork and want our assignments to be meaningful, but since we are the ones giving these assignments, it can be difficult to tell how they are being received. I think a real struggle is that our students often show us their poker faces, when in reality we are striving for real interaction from them.
Abbie
Mckenzie,
ReplyDeleteI liked your idea of blogger. That really will give them some practical knowledge. Besides, I really appreciate how you differentiated the thing between actual work and busywork. That's really important. It is hard to balance between these things.
Hi Mckenzie,
ReplyDeleteI consider that "Thinking what we are doing" as stated in the book motivates a wrong though among us as grad students and instructors, and among the people in charge of the writing programs. I feel like the way it is stated here means that probably we are not thinking what we are doing. However, I am completely sure that everything that happens in The Writing Program, at least at Ball State, has to do with a previous consensus that has led to all the decisions that had been made lately. The fact that we have mentors before we start teaching and even while doing it, seems to me like there was someone who thought of the advantages of this system applied here. If we go back to the examples from the grad students mentioned in the book, we can see how they lacked many of the things that have been implemented at Ball State. Even if there are still things to improve, we can see that there are heads behind this system who were or are thinking what they are doing to help the Writing Program be more effective in its labor
On valuing labor on the way to work… I found myself getting irritated with the shift in epistemology (epistemology as it pertains to Restaino and Ardent and ‘labor’, ‘work’, ‘action’). I guess I found myself conflating the terms rather than treating them as mutually exclusive agents (does that make sense?). However, on the topic of labor and you tasking your students with the Blogger/reading assignments, brava to you! Though you say you hope that this task serves as a productive experience rather than a disciplinary/penalizing one, I think it is okay to see it working (not Restaino/Ardent “working”) as both. Right? Sometimes, though we hate it, students need a task that requires them to illustrate their labors. If not to prove that they did it (most likely), to prove that they learned something from the thing we are asking them to do. I think so long as you are providing an activity that you can be proud of, an activity that is deliberate and legitimate and of course parallel to the objectives that you seek, then all systems a go! Continue to be reflexive in your pedagogy and aware of the implications of your strategies and I think the results will be proof enough that you are moving in the right direction!
ReplyDeleteGreat post!