Reflection
Throughout my semesters as a TA, I’ve learned that an important part of teaching is helping students to be empowered with their writing. It’s about personal voice, the significance of their opinion and perspective, and the validation of experience brought into their academic writing. My own vision of academic writing has changed throughout college and this experience, but most of all, I know that being a TA will inform other aspects of my life. And for me, it was important to pass this down to my students. The specific aspects of my TA experience that I will discuss are: engaging students in discussion, teaching writing as a process, and helping students develop their own voice and style.
ENGAGING DISCUSSION & WHY THIS SEMESTER WAS DIFFERENT
One of the biggest challenges this semester was how quiet our class was, which was different from last semester. They barely spoke, and it was discouraging as an instructor. I’m not complaining about the group and their lack of engagement (though our attendance has been great for most of the semester). A few weeks in, we realized that how we were running the class was not the best way to engage this group of students. What initiated this for me was that one of our students was focusing her semester-long research project on how schools are set up to favor extraverted students and learning styles. This way, we wanted to consider different learning styles in our classroom. To address this, I thought about the readings from last semester about leading class discussions. One of the suggestions I had was to have class discussions in a large circle. It worked well the first time we did it, which was a discussion about Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Looking back, the reading “Leading Scintillating, Stimulating, and Substantive Class Discussions” from Columbia University impacted how I approached this situation pedagogically. By situating the class in a circle, we were also able to help “build a sense of classroom community.” Additionally, when I prepared discussion questions or asked them in the moment, I would always try to ground them in the students’ experiences, which is another one of the suggestions from this article. This goal was more specific to me this semester than last, partly because we had a different group and I had more experience working with students. Additionally, this group of students needed us to approach them differently than the group last semester did.
WRITING AS A PROCESS, NOT A PRODUCT
Another goal of mine was to teach writing as a process, not a product. While this has been a perspective that I’ve been developing since I started working as a writing tutor, I have another opportunity to do so. In 388V, we discussed this perspective on writing with readings such as “Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product” by Donald Murray and John Bean’s chapter on “How Writing Is Related to Critical Thinking.” I pursued this with my lesson plan on narrowing topic ideas. For this lesson, I was also able to ground it in my own experiences with narrowing topics–from my English 101 class to my research project for the Writing Center. For me, it is also important to ground my examples and my advice in my own experiences, since I think it is more convincing. For example, I talked about how my topic in ENGL101 narrowed throughout the semester: I went from banned books, to banned books in schools, to banning Harry Potter in elementary schools. While all of the assignments in English 101 support teaching writing as a process, it is important to actually show it in practice. Also, I stressed how writing can often be an act of discovery (especially with revision), and that it helps understanding topics and the actual argument. Murray discusses this in his article. With my lesson plan on narrowing topics, I also was sure to hit on the Murray’s discussion of prewriting, writing, and rewriting. I did this by showing how narrowing your topic happens during the process of writing, and gave tips for prewriting to help with this as well. This also fits into considering writing as critical thinking, and that writing includes “a creative period of confusion and disorder” (Bean 18).
INDIVIDUAL VOICE
A reading that has greatly impacted me both as a teacher, writer, tutor, and person is Vershawn Young’s “Should Writers Use They Own English?” It’s important to validate students’ voices and experiences in the classroom and in their writing. Academic writing should not be inaccessible to some people because they use a different English than their professor–because there is no one standard for English. While this gets into linguistics, it’s something that must be considered and recognized in a composition classroom. As Young says, “We hear that background in they speech, and it’s often expressed in they writin’ too. It’s natural” (Young). Good writing has a voice and a purpose. It is not about sounding smart or “academic”–whatever that means. Related to this was the section in 388V last semester on Style and Error. One of the articles, “Analyzing Grammar Rants” by Kenneth Lindblom and Patricia Dunn explored the methods of grammar instruction in the classroom. These writers acknowledge that writing instruction is also about “helping students to understand the subtleties of language” and to “seek methods to help students develop rhetorical knowledge of audience and context” (Dunn 71). I tried to do this with my lesson plan about Writing Styles. I wanted to give students tools to help develop their voice and improve their writing–and the opportunity to make deliberate choices about their writing and changes they would make to sample sentences. In this way, I had them think about the audience and the context of writing to find more effective ways to communicate. Or, at least that was my goal. Making deliberate rhetorical choices with writing is how to develop good writing, not just correct comma placement or not forgetting an apostrophe. I developed this lesson plan last semester, but was able to consider it more thoroughly and effective this semester as I lead it again.
MY PHILOSOPHY AND HOW I'VE CHANGED
Finally, my style as a Teaching Assistant has developed over the past two semesters as a product of being a mentor to students. One of the most important things I can do as a TA is sharing my experience with my students, which is unique to being a Teaching Assistant. My role as a college student puts me on the same level as my students–just that I have more experience, and especially with writing. When I TA, I don’t think about what wisdom I can impart onto my students. I think about how my experiences have informed who I am today as a writer and what I can share with others. Compared to last semester, I’ve become a more confident and talkative TA, and believe I met my personal goal of offering my voice and experiences during class more. I’ve learned an incredible amount about teaching and writing, and would not be the writer or student I am today without this experience.
One of the biggest challenges this semester was how quiet our class was, which was different from last semester. They barely spoke, and it was discouraging as an instructor. I’m not complaining about the group and their lack of engagement (though our attendance has been great for most of the semester). A few weeks in, we realized that how we were running the class was not the best way to engage this group of students. What initiated this for me was that one of our students was focusing her semester-long research project on how schools are set up to favor extraverted students and learning styles. This way, we wanted to consider different learning styles in our classroom. To address this, I thought about the readings from last semester about leading class discussions. One of the suggestions I had was to have class discussions in a large circle. It worked well the first time we did it, which was a discussion about Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Looking back, the reading “Leading Scintillating, Stimulating, and Substantive Class Discussions” from Columbia University impacted how I approached this situation pedagogically. By situating the class in a circle, we were also able to help “build a sense of classroom community.” Additionally, when I prepared discussion questions or asked them in the moment, I would always try to ground them in the students’ experiences, which is another one of the suggestions from this article. This goal was more specific to me this semester than last, partly because we had a different group and I had more experience working with students. Additionally, this group of students needed us to approach them differently than the group last semester did.
WRITING AS A PROCESS, NOT A PRODUCT
Another goal of mine was to teach writing as a process, not a product. While this has been a perspective that I’ve been developing since I started working as a writing tutor, I have another opportunity to do so. In 388V, we discussed this perspective on writing with readings such as “Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product” by Donald Murray and John Bean’s chapter on “How Writing Is Related to Critical Thinking.” I pursued this with my lesson plan on narrowing topic ideas. For this lesson, I was also able to ground it in my own experiences with narrowing topics–from my English 101 class to my research project for the Writing Center. For me, it is also important to ground my examples and my advice in my own experiences, since I think it is more convincing. For example, I talked about how my topic in ENGL101 narrowed throughout the semester: I went from banned books, to banned books in schools, to banning Harry Potter in elementary schools. While all of the assignments in English 101 support teaching writing as a process, it is important to actually show it in practice. Also, I stressed how writing can often be an act of discovery (especially with revision), and that it helps understanding topics and the actual argument. Murray discusses this in his article. With my lesson plan on narrowing topics, I also was sure to hit on the Murray’s discussion of prewriting, writing, and rewriting. I did this by showing how narrowing your topic happens during the process of writing, and gave tips for prewriting to help with this as well. This also fits into considering writing as critical thinking, and that writing includes “a creative period of confusion and disorder” (Bean 18).
INDIVIDUAL VOICE
A reading that has greatly impacted me both as a teacher, writer, tutor, and person is Vershawn Young’s “Should Writers Use They Own English?” It’s important to validate students’ voices and experiences in the classroom and in their writing. Academic writing should not be inaccessible to some people because they use a different English than their professor–because there is no one standard for English. While this gets into linguistics, it’s something that must be considered and recognized in a composition classroom. As Young says, “We hear that background in they speech, and it’s often expressed in they writin’ too. It’s natural” (Young). Good writing has a voice and a purpose. It is not about sounding smart or “academic”–whatever that means. Related to this was the section in 388V last semester on Style and Error. One of the articles, “Analyzing Grammar Rants” by Kenneth Lindblom and Patricia Dunn explored the methods of grammar instruction in the classroom. These writers acknowledge that writing instruction is also about “helping students to understand the subtleties of language” and to “seek methods to help students develop rhetorical knowledge of audience and context” (Dunn 71). I tried to do this with my lesson plan about Writing Styles. I wanted to give students tools to help develop their voice and improve their writing–and the opportunity to make deliberate choices about their writing and changes they would make to sample sentences. In this way, I had them think about the audience and the context of writing to find more effective ways to communicate. Or, at least that was my goal. Making deliberate rhetorical choices with writing is how to develop good writing, not just correct comma placement or not forgetting an apostrophe. I developed this lesson plan last semester, but was able to consider it more thoroughly and effective this semester as I lead it again.
MY PHILOSOPHY AND HOW I'VE CHANGED
Finally, my style as a Teaching Assistant has developed over the past two semesters as a product of being a mentor to students. One of the most important things I can do as a TA is sharing my experience with my students, which is unique to being a Teaching Assistant. My role as a college student puts me on the same level as my students–just that I have more experience, and especially with writing. When I TA, I don’t think about what wisdom I can impart onto my students. I think about how my experiences have informed who I am today as a writer and what I can share with others. Compared to last semester, I’ve become a more confident and talkative TA, and believe I met my personal goal of offering my voice and experiences during class more. I’ve learned an incredible amount about teaching and writing, and would not be the writer or student I am today without this experience.