Outside the Circles

“Now class, I have passed out your text booklets and answer documents.
Do not open your test booklet until you are directed to do so. You will
have a series of 4 tests. They are timed. I will tell you when there is 5
minutes left on each test. When I say, “Pencils down,” you must
immediately put your pencil down. When you are finished with the test,
you may go back and check your answers on this test only. You may not
go to a previous section or work ahead. When you are finished, you may
sit quietly, put your head down, or read. You may not talk to anyone at
anytime during testing unless you have a question for me. If you have a
question, please raise your hand and I will come to your desk. Finally,
make sure all your answers are clearly marked by filling in the circles
completely and do not go outside the lines the circles as this may cause
the computer to mark your answers incorrect. Remember that any stray
lines outside the circles can make your answers incorrect. You may break
the seal on your test booklet.”

...and so, little Evan with underdeveloped fine motor skills has a meltdown, he is eight-
years-old. Later we ask, “Why doesn’t he like to write?”

The basic writing program at TAMU-Commerce is doing things differently

than the basic five paragraph formal research essay, it is engaging students by
developing their “My Story”s (yes, for all of you staunch grammarians I know the
plural of story is stories). This “My Story” allows the student to feel successful and
knowledgeable from the beginning, “I did find it refreshing to write about myself. At
least it is something I know about. It didn't take hours of research in the library, and
it didn't require me to create totally new characters and fictional plot lines. That
made writing it easier” (excerpt from Mandy’s WA2). Mandy goes on to write
regarding her experience with Bean,

The problem with academic prose is that it often hinders student writing with its
limited word choice, rigid structure and organization, and rule-governed
expectations. Their voices get lost in the jargon (48).
Which type of writing, then, personal or professional, is most beneficial to our
students? Bean argues that both are important and serve different functions.
Personal writing often helps students discover their voices, engage in their
writing, and have a personal investment in their papers (52). I found it
interesting, however, that most students are Sensors rather than feelers (unlike
their professors), and would rather have structured assignments. Bean argues that
we can get the “mixture of professional and personal writing” that we need in
our classrooms by using “three different categories of assignments:
(1) Nongraded exploratory writing
(2) Thesis-governed academic writing
(3) Essays written in other styles ad forms that stand against conventional
academic writing and create different ways of ‘seeing.’” (52) (Excerpt from
 Mandy’s post about Bean: The Great Debate: What the *&#% Do I Teach My
Students?)

As a former public school teacher and now a graduate student, I am not saying
that formality or standards do not have time and place. However, the question remains,
which should be focus, the grammar or the content? Mandy’s September 13 post reads

In Engaging Ideas, John Bean states: The writing-across-the-curriculum

movement. . . is largely a reaction against traditional writing instruction that
associates good writing primarily with grammatical accuracy and correctness, and
thus isolates writing instruction within English departments, the home of the
grammar experts. The problem with traditional writing instruction is that it leads
to a view of writing as a set of isolated skills unconnected to an authentic desire to
converse with interested readers about real ideas (15).”

Over the video for the week Mandy continues the conversation on writing, literacy, and
the disconnect students feel regarding academic writing versus their own compositions.

Also, students feel compelled to revise when the professor suggests doing so.
Most of the students in this study are under the impression that they must satisfy
their professors. In this process, students may lose their own message in their
paper, and cater to that of their professor (Kim’s comments on the video "Sh*t-
plus," "AWK," "Frag," and "Huh?": An Empirical Look at a Writing Program's
Commenting Practices”)

The concern over race and gender is also questioned in this video. One student
felt that cultural issues play an important role. For instance, a student might focus
in on idea that is of importance to him or her, which may create a clash between
the student and the professor depending on what the professor deems as
important. Among the ones interviewed:

-“72.5 of commenters in this study were white.” (Ibid)

On Dr. Adkin’s page there is a very compelling essay by Barbara Mellix regarding
growing up in the 1950’s and her academic experience with writing at the collegiate
level. She actually felt more inhibited writing about herself because of the devaluation of
African-American colloquial speech. However, when asked to write about others, she
could project her own experiences, as long as it was in the “language of others.”

For the most part, the remainder of the term was a period of adjustment, a time
of trying to find my bearing as a student in college composition class, to learn
to shut out my black English whenever I composed, and to prevent it from
creeping into my formulations; a time for trying to grasp the language of the
classroom and reproduce it in my prose; for trying to talk about myself in that
 language, reach others through it. Each experience of writing was like standing
naked and revealing my imperfection, my "otherness." And each new
assignment was another chance to make myself over in language, reshape
myself, make myself "better" in my rapidly changing image of a student in a
college composition class.

My concern was to use "appropriate" language, to sound as if I belonged in a

college classroom. But I felt separate from the language--as if it did not and
could not belong to me. I couldn't think, and feel genuinely in that language... .
I could not--in the process of composing--use the language of the old me, yet I
couldn't imagine myself in the language of "others."

However, Mellix did find her voice, albeit “FROM OUTSIDE, IN” the title of her
paper, in the verisimilitude of herself in others, and began writing “stronger, more
confident”

What caused these differences? I was, I believed, explaining other people's

thoughts and feelings, and I was free to move about in the language of "others"
so long as I was speaking of others. I was unaware that I was transforming into
my best classroom language my own thoughts and feelings about people whose
experiences and ways of speaking were in many ways similar to mine (6-7).

The choice remains ours as voices of the academy, the experts. Our choice
will either constrain our students to neatly fill in the circles or write outside the
circles.

Every morning I wake up and go for a run. As I run, I constantly scan the trees,
the houses, the people, the neighborhood for a story. I also use this time to think
about whatever stories I am currently writing. I plan out the plots, develop my
characters, think of places they could go and conversations they could have.
This planning continues through my shower and my one hour drive to
Commerce each morning. I do this so when I sit down to write, I already know
where I’m going. Of course I still do many other kinds of writing. I write for
class. I write essays, notes, blogs, etc., and I also still write for fun. I still read, a
lot more since I started graduate school, but I still read for fun also. I read for
knowledge. I read for fun. I read to write (Mandy WA2).