In Maxine Cousin Hairston's essay "The Winds of Change," she outlines the traditional composition paradigm and then suggests an emerging paradigm (emerging in terms of 1982) and its features. The last feature of the paradigm is, for me, the most important: "It (the paradigm) stresses that writing teachers should be people who write."
This is something that I was glad Wendy Bishop speaks about. As an accomplished creative writer, Bishop also stresses the importance of writing teachers being writers themselves. This goes back to the generalized rule that teachers should practice what they preach, but I also think it contributes to a teacher's classroom ethos. Teachers should be constantly learning and improving their writing as they struggle to help their students improve. As Dr. Souder quoted in her blog this week, the best way to learn something is to write about it. Teachers should not only be educators of new learners, but life-long learners themsleves. Wendy Bishop was a proponent for bringing creative writing into the composition classroom. She constantly practiced her own creative writing and had much of her work published, so when she says that teachers can be writers too, she proves it.
Another of Hairston's features I found important was that the paradigm is based on "linguistic research into the composing process." This relates to the research Leki did into the testing of students as they entered the composition program. Her new way of testing was proven successful as they implemented in Tennessee and as Kimi tried it in her class, showing that research pays off. It helped her develop new ways of doing things that are beneficial to writing students.
Hairston's statement about writing teachers being writers themselves also struck me, but it also raises questions. What exactly does she mean? What are "writers"? Should writing teachers be published? Does it matter where they are published? Are they taking papers to conferences? What kinds of writing should they be doing? Should creative writing teachers teach research? Are we writers simply because we write? I also wonder how, given the hundreds of colleges that have comp courses, there could be enough "writers" to teach comp courses? I agree with you, Hairston, and Bishop, but I'm not sure it's possible to have every course taught by people who write-- unless we define what is a writer.
ReplyDeleteBeing the Devil's Advocate that I like to be, what if a writing teacher doesn't write? What if he or she is not confined to the typical rules of the canon? Is this something that can shake up the paradigm enough to force change that our pedagogy so desperately needs?
ReplyDeleteThis discourse about whether a teacher writes or should write is a very interesting one. I once asked that as I found I would much rather write than speak in front of people and try to tell them what I am saying is important for them. I am reminded of a book by Richard Hugo called "The Triggering Town" where he says first that no one can teach good writing. He goes on to say that ultimately a writing teacher is telling their students to write like them because you can't really escape your own idea of style and presentation or your own background of knowledge. The question is then, whether a teacher writes or not, how do you get a student to find their own voice? A teacher is evaluated every year based on the success of their students and their own published research. A creative writing professor is evaluated on the success of their publications. This all goes into how much they get paid. But for the students it matters more whether the teacher enabled them beyond the classroom. A teacher of writing may appreciate more when they enjoy writing themselves and perhaps that may really be the key to teaching writing.
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