"Falling into a Motivational Style of Teaching"
Motivating students—we’ve talked about it before. We all want to try, and even if we have some success, the students who don’t take to it still make it seem impossible. I’ll admit I’ve become a bit discouraged after having too high of expectations for changing students’ opinions on writing. And a suspicion when students do express enthusiasm—is it an act? Do they just want to put me in a good mood so I’ll be more favorable when it comes to grading? (I didn’t know I was quite so much of a pessimist until I started teaching.)
Laurie Bower expressed a very similar idea in chapter seven of In Our Own Voice, “Falling into a Motivational Style of Teaching,” stating that “The idealist in me hopes that, by creating a safe environment, initiating fun writing exercises, and having students evaluate themselves, some favorable writing attitudes are fostered. The skeptic in me argues, ‘You’re being naïve. Students are only trying to impress you in order to get a better grade’” (180).
So what’s her solution then, to truly motivating students? To pull out a specific quote, “successful ‘origin’ teachers couple an accepting attitude with high rules and expectations, which later enables their students to attain higher academic achievement” (180). But how do we institute this balance in the classroom? She gives a handful of very practical tips, so I thought it might be helpful to summarize and comment on them.
1 1. Convincing students they are writers. You know
how it goes, if I had a nickel for every time a student told me “writing’s just
not my thing”….
2 2. Use free-writing. No rules, no expectations =
freeing students to explore what writing has to offer for them.
3 3. Praise them! Be careful; make sure it’s
warranted and they know there’s still plenty they can learn and improve on. But
encouragement can go a long way.
4 4. Use of personal writing. She took a little bit of
an expressionist standpoint here, but I think this type of writing does have
its place in being used to break into/become comfortable with the writing
process – not necessarily an end in itself, but a stepstone towards helping
students tackle the bigger issues/ideas we want to present to them.
5 5. Peer Workshop. Sometimes they’ll follow their peers’
examples even when they don’t wish to follow yours. I think it also helps
them feel like they’re not in this alone, and it’s more achievable that way. Fosters
a mindset: If Brian, who sits next to me, can do this, why can’t I?
6 6. Modeling imperfection/allowing for failure. Use “fairly
good but still imperfect student essays as models” (183). Write with them. Show
them you also misspell things, write run-ons, forget commas. That you’re not
expecting perfection on the first try. Sometimes we think allowing them to see
this part of us undermines our authority, but if they’re so intimidated by you it
increases their fear of writing, is that authority doing any good anyway? I
also liked her practice that when students receive a failing grade on a paper,
they must explain why it failed and what they learned from it.
Which of these have you tried in your classroom? Ones you might try? Thoughts, effectiveness, challenges to them? What might some of these things look in our new, online setting?
I've done all of these in my class this semester (probably not that surprising).
ReplyDeletePersonal writing is something I think is really important, actually, as opposed to your framing of it here as a a stepping stone to other writings projects.
What do you think of as those other writing projects? If it's academic forms, I think we should remember that the majority of our students are not going to be doing much writing that falls into traditionally academic genres. The future nurses and accountants and construction site managers and graphic designers aren't going to be doing rhetorical analyses or research papers or analytical essays. The majority of their communication with the world is going to be through less formal modes of interpersonal communication, which personal writing is much closer to. To push back against Bartholomae, we need to understand that the college is probably the least important discourse community out there, particularly if we're thinking of rhetoric and communication as a social endeavor.
Lucas,
DeleteThanks for your input. I think I may have given the unintentional impression that I didn’t think personal writing has merit on its own, which is not my opinion at all, because I definitely have experienced its benefit. I’m a creative writing major, after all. I think it came across that way because I was speaking to those who have concerns with that type of writing overtaking the classroom or being a cop-out for tackling hard topics/current issues. I’ve heard others say that personal writing should solely be left for the creative writing classroom, so I might have been a little bit on the defensive here. I may also have been too limiting in my definition of “personal writing” as solely narrative-style writing… but hopefully you see my point.
As to your question of what value I see in the academic forms, I would disagree that those can’t be useful to career-specific work. While yes, students will most likely not be using those specific forms, a lot of them will be writing reports/assessments/problem-solving proposals that interact with real-world issues and require critical thinking, which share many of the same characteristics of, and I believe are the purpose of, these types of writing assignments (your research paper, rhetorical analysis, analytical essays).
And while I also agree that college isn’t the most important discourse community out there, I do think it’s role is in learning how to best communicate/function within those other, more important, discourse communities—which is the whole purpose of teaching rhetoric-based composition, is it not?
I hope I didn't come off as too grouchy. Tone is hard in this form!
DeleteI think it does depend hugely on our definition of personal writing. I probably have a much wider definition than some people, so maybe that's where some of the disagreements come from.
College definitely can be a useful place to understand how to operate within different discourse communities (and yes, definitely the purpose of teaching rhetoric!). I guess I'm mostly concerned with the insular discourse community of the university itself. I've just notice that a lot of the scholarship we've read talk about the university as a distinct place where things happen. As long as we're agreeing that the purpose of what we teach in our classrooms is skills for students to practice outside of the classroom, then I think we're mostly on the same page.
Hi Jessie,
ReplyDeleteOverall, I have taken a variety of approaches to try and motivate my students. While we were in class, we would have pep talks, or even "get it together" talks when it was needed. Now, I try to have peer workshops as best as I can manage online and continue to send out encouraging announcements each week with reminders of due dates. It's not much, but it seems to help.
Abbie
Abbie,
DeleteThanks for sharing! I love the idea of giving pep talks, or even potentially a setup where students give each other pep talks? Seems like something that could easily turn into a regular, take-a-few-minutes-at-the-start-of-class thing.
Sometimes I have difficulty balancing encouraging and emphasizing the importance of things at the same time—I want them to see everything as manageable and that I’m working with them for flexible due dates, etc., but I don’t want them to get too comfortable and fall behind/not take due dates or assignments seriously.
Practicing of freewriting really worked well in my classroom. However, I always encourage them to get the exact essence of freewriting. Though some students get confused and they think freewriting means only writing and they do care about punctuations, spellling etc. That's why I used to hold freewriting for 5 minutes most of the days and now they really do freewriting. They write whatever they feel, they think at that momemt about that particular topic. However, my students told me that freewriting helps them to navigate through the main paper later, so they feel much comfortable starting a paper and it helps them to de-stress as well.
ReplyDeleteMow,
DeleteI like that you emphasized the importance of making free writes a consistent practice. I feel like free writes are often something I reach out to for a specific lesson/assignment. It would definitely help them become more comfortable with the process and help scaffold progress on their upcoming major assignments to have them do it regularly.
Hi Jessie!
ReplyDeleteI have super mixed feelings about the use of completely free writing, meaning the no prompt, just write for ten-minutes writing. I absolutely am behind free-writing, but I think I'm a bit skeptical as to whether or not students will actually write something without a prompt. What if a student chooses to doodle for 10 minutes? Does that count? I understand that student autonomy, ownership, and even a sense of freedom can be found in getting to write about what they want, in the style they want, and that it can help develop their confidence in putting words on paper... but I'm always skeptical as to whether or not they will actually participate as intended. Perhaps this is a flaw in my expectations as to what a free write should actually be. I like the idea of free writing being a way to convince students that they all can be writers.
Why wouldn't doodling count?
DeleteComing from a creative writing perspective, the things that happen which aren't "intended" are often the most interesting. Maybe that doodle is the best way for them to express whatever's knocking around in their head at the moment.
I like the idea of doodling for ten minutes, actually! I draw in margins all the time while I'm listening - I focus better when I have something to do with my hands. I think it would be really interesting to see what they came up with, especially because complex thoughts are often hard to articulate. I like the idea of branching out from just writing...and anyways, all written language started as little images representing sounds and just got simplified over time. But I'm also super into "guided writing" for a class like ENG 104 - if you tell them it can transfer into their project, they're more motivated to do it, I think.
DeleteThese were really helpful to think about. I think one of the biggest things for me is deciding whether or not I want extrinsic or intrinsic motivation or some combination of the two. I think for something more technical (like learning how to give CPR) where you are just acquiring knowledge and skills extrinsic motivation (like grades and social repercussion) are helpful but the more I teach the more I think it's important to foster intrinsic motivation in 103/104 because to me it's about critical thinking and reflexivity and I don't know if there's an authentic way to do that if you're purely extrinsically motivated. These are good ideas for implementing non-grade-based motivation.
ReplyDeleteJessie,
ReplyDeleteI resonated with what you were saying about motivated students putting on "an act." Call me a cynic, but as soon as Bower started expressing how much more motivated her students were and how much they now enjoyed writing, my first thought was, 'I call B.S.'
Of course, in anonymous evals (I don't know if these were), students have less motivation to suck up or say something was more beneficial or engaging than it was. But how often do we encounter students that are truly excited about what's taking place in a classroom, and not only that, they're willing to express that excitement?
While I liked her ideas about freewriting to help students get more comfortable with the act of writing (and I will likely implement these myself) I still struggle to believe the premise: that her students were SO much more motivated to write by the end of the course.
Shelbi,
DeleteYou’re definitely not the only cynic here. I’ve heard that 90% of succeeding in a class is learning the professor (which I’ve always cringed at), and I wondered if that played a part in what was going on here. Perhaps they saw that that was what Bower wanted and expected from them, so they outwardly conformed to that. They do say that “pretending” can lead to being in some cases (isn’t that called practicing?), so perhaps it’s not a totally bad thing if the effects were the same. I like to think that a good teacher can change someone’s outlook and motivation, but that seems idealistic and unrealistic sometimes. So I have mixed feelings.
I’ve always been somewhat skeptical about anonymous evals—how many students actually care enough to fill out one of those honestly?
-Jessie