When I applied to the Cal Poly Pomona Writing Center, I didn’t realize how unique of an experience it would be. While walking with fellow editor Jack and one of our professors today, our professor remarked, that there are two types of learning that go on in a classroom: student learning and professorial learning. Though it was not the first time I had ever heard a professor state that they learn from their students, it made me start to think about all that I have learned from the students that I tutor at the writing center. Although I could turn this into a catalog, and my following sentence could be something along the lines of: what I learn from my tutees is, I have something else in mind, something I hope is less painful. I want to share an experience I had while instructing a group tutoring session last week.
I only have four students in this particular group this quarter, but, luckily, all of these students are adamant to do well in their English class, so our discussions are never lacking. They constantly bombard me with questions on both content and grammar, asking about how to organize their paragraphs, or whether or not I think a comma should go here.
However, this past week was different. Rather than coming to the meeting in a mild panic filled with questions and uncertainty, they all came in empty handed, with nothing to do. They had turned in their final essays already and were assigned just to study for the final, two weeks from then. As silence fell over the room I decided I wanted to try something that I had been interesting in doing with them for a few weeks now. I began by asking the class if they ever write for fun, or in their free time. This question was met with a series of giggles and a few exclamations of: “writing is stupid.” I wasn’t surprised, and I wasn’t sad either. In fact, they responded exactly how I expected them to.
Following this question, I asked them if they had ever heard of free writing. Most of them had heard of it before, but they were unsure of exactly what it entailed. After I explained to them how free writing worked, I told them that we would free write for five minutes without stopping, and that I wanted them to focus on why they disliked writing so much, and where this “writing is stupid” strain of thinking originated.
And so they did...
After five minutes passed I asked the students to finish up their final sentence and then to stop writing. They had each produced about half a page of writing, some more and some less, attempting to explain their loathe for writing. I was surprised to see that most of these students blamed the teachers that they had had in the past. They revealed that when they were younger they actually enjoyed writing, but when they got into high school and college, and were constantly given papers back covered in read marks with little explanation and disrespectful remarks like “duh” or “are you serious?” on them, this love soon turned to hate. Furthermore, all of the students in the meeting that day were ESL (English as a Second Language) students, so they had to face even more challenges along their paths as writers.
Since, at this point, we had fifteen more minutes left of the meeting I decided to take this exercise one step further. I noticed that to my previous question they had all began their essays with a short thesis: “I hate writing because...” And their short paragraphs continued on similarly to how their in normal essays would. In an attempt to get them to break free from this style of writing, I wanted them to write a short narrative. I designed a scenario for them. I told them that the Earth had just stopped spinning, and since objects in motion have a tendency to stay in motion, they were now hurtling thousands of miles per hour at the nearest wall, but mid air they suddenly began to think about something, anything. I told them that I didn't want them to write: “While I was mid air flying at the wall because the Earth had just stopped spinning I thought...” I wanted them to, rather than saying I am thinking something, think on the page. I wanted them to write differently than before; I wanted them to forget about all of the inhibitions that they had about their writing and just pour their minds out on the pages. No stopping, no revision, no worries. And, this time, I would join them.
And so we wrote...
After five minutes had passed I, again, told them to finish up their sentences and stop their writing. I then asked the students to share what they had written by either reading it off the page or just summarizing what they had written. It was interesting to find that two of the students seemed to be able to accomplish this task the way I had asked. One student talked about her mom and asked her a question she had always wanted to ask her, but never did. Another student tried to recollect what the man sitting across from him at lunch had been wearing, eating, drinking, but was unable to remember any of these details. These two students remarked that the process felt liberating and that they just wrote whatever first came into their head, even if it took them away from the overall topic. Yet, the other two students were unable to break out of their known essay formatting process. Although these students did not start out by stating : “I would think...” they did start out by describing the situation, and then moved to describing their thoughts. They wrote: “I think about...” and so on. I asked them why they chose to write their paragraphs this way, compared to how I had asked them to and they stated that they did not know how. That this was the only way they knew how to write.
Well, if you got this far I want to thank you for reading this in its entirety. I have no huge conclusion or lesson that I want to elicit to students, tutors, or teachers. I merely wanted to share one of my experiences with you, and let you take what you want from it. If you do have any thoughts or comments about any of my blog, please leave them in the comments section below. I'd love to hear what you have to say.
Until next time,
Nick
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