Taking Risks as a Teacher

Excerpted (pp. 107-111) from Teaching (As) Composing Vivian Zamel

Achieving Against the Odds: How Academics Become Teachers of Diverse Students
Esther Kingston-Mann and Tim Sieber, Eds.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001

At around the same time that Sabena's remark raised these concerns, the discipline of composition studies, much like the field of language acquisition, was experiencing what has since come to be viewed as a paradigm shift. In both of these disciplines researchers were interrogating the extent to which the product orientation of language and writing classrooms reflected and took into account the actual processes involved in the acquisition of language and literacy. Language and discourse had been fragmented into its basic components and structures, but this, it came to be recognized, had little to do with what we actually do when we use language and with what we actually need in order to acquire it. Curricular approaches had been designed on the basis of how language could be broken down rather than on the basis of how each of us, in genuine attempts to use language and in contexts that support these attempts, builds our own language/literacy repertoire.

It was in this context that I began to take risks with making my classroom a site of inquiry, and to investigate the writing processes and experiences of the ESL students in my composition courses. This research became the basis for my later scholarship and utterly transformed my teaching since it draws so heavily on what students have taught me. What I discovered during these investigations allowed me to understand the struggles that students were experiencing as they tried to put pen to paper in a language that they were still in the process of acquiring. One graduate student, an English teacher from Vietnam, captures the struggle she experiences, this despite how accomplished a writer she so obviously is:

Writing has always been excruciating to me. I often start my writing process with a given topic in mind, and think about what I know and am able to say about it, usually not much apart from my emotional reactions. Then I'll do some reading, take notes, and feel miserable for not being able to sit down and write something, even a few words. I keep procrastinating--the hardest part for me is to put words on paper, and organize ideas and arguments. I often wonder why both professional and amateur writers are obsessed with getting the words right. Even Hemingway admitted such obsession. I would stop in the middle of a sentence to look up in the dictionary for the spelling of a word, or the uses of another to choose the one I think most appropriate, most meaningful. What also seems to be problematic to me is when I have so much to say about a topic or theme that I can't put my thoughts in order. They all get messed up and tumble in my head like the snowballs in a powerful nor'eastern storm! Then I tend to shun the drudgery of sorting out my ideas, put them into words and organize them in paper.

Many students in my classes have shared similar accounts, which, in turn, have contributed to my thinking and learning about teaching. As I continued to attend to what these accounts revealed, I began to experiment. Gradually I came to see that once I gave students multiple opportunities to use writing to think through their ideas, to offer their interpretations, to take risks with language, and to engage with the issues we were studying, they could begin to see writing and the use of English in more positive and productive ways. For example, they began to appreciate what all of us who write understand about writing, that writing is messy and unruly, and that it is useful not only for recording what we already know and think but that it generates ideas and language. Although they are still in the process of acquiring English, these students began to use written language as a means for exploring their ideas, discovering, in the very process of doing so, what they want to say. As some of them put it,

Unless you write about something, you can't find out exactly what you know about it. I don't even know what I'm thinking sometimes, but I'm finding out by writing. At the beginning I have some order in mind, but I don't really know what's going to happen.

Along with understanding how writing provides students with a powerful way to construct meaning for themselves, I have come to see that their ongoing struggles with the English language do not necessarily preclude this process from getting under way. Students speak of the importance of focusing on their ideas and of finding strategies for dealing with the challenges of writing in English:

If I have an idea, but I don't have the words, I write in Chinese so I don't lose it. Language is not the big problem. Most of the difficulty is how to put the ideas together. I may write a word in Portuguese, but I know I'll find it later. It doesn't affect my writing in stopping me. Sometimes it helps to have two languages because you can write it down in another language and get on with your ideas without stopping. You have another way to say it.

Students may even come to see writing in English as beneficial, as liberating, giving them, in those situations where they are encouraged to use writing to engage and grapple with course material, a sense of freedom and accomplishment:

Personally, I love writing in English...I much prefer writing in English than in my native language. I feel very rhythmical when writing in English. Writing in English is great. I feel comfortable and free. I grew up in Vietnam. I still remember I had no choice and no way to write a paper. I couldn't write what I thought and saw in society.

These discoveries about students' experiences with writing in English, made when these students felt safe to use language to make meaning, have led me to other investigations of students' experiences in courses across the curriculum.5 Again, what is revealed is the essential relationship between student engagement and learning. When the goal of instruction is to transmit and cover course content, when students are left out of the process of constructing knowledge, when pedagogical approaches do not take into account what students already know and the ways in which they are making sense of the course material, there is little opportunity for students to see this course in relationship to themselves. The process of learning is thus undermined. Martha, a former student in one of my composition courses who had found in writing a particularly powerful way for both reflecting on her learning and acquiring English attests to her experience in a course that seemingly did little to draw her in, to make her "visible." Her frustration and disappointment are palpable:

I only heard dates and facts. Facts, dates. I reacted by sitting quiet and feeling very frustrated. I did not feel like sharing any of my opinions...The lectures were missing the combination of creativity of my classmates' reflections. I started to lose the grounded self I carried with me from my ESL class experiences. I tried several times to become visible during the lectures by letting out my voice. But I found myself lost because the lectures were without writing ... I remember that silent students in the classroom started to feel like a normal part of the lecture. Many times two or three words were my contributions in class. They were replacing the long and sometimes unclear sentences that previously in my ESL class were disentangled to reveal a powerful thought...My writing started to experience a metamorphosis because I was only copying dates and facts from the blackboard. There was not a drop of motivation to enjoy my journey of learning. I felt illiterate at the end of that semester. I did not learn a single new word.

In stark contrast to this discouraging situation is the following account, written by Motoko, another former student, who is commenting here about the first day in an introductory philosophy course:

The first day of the course, the professor gave us an ungraded paper assignment. The subject was about our image toward philosophy. On the second day, he posed the same question to the class, and started to call on the students from the front row. Since I was sitting in the left corner of the front row, he called on me by verifying my first name. I was nervous to speak up in front of everybody whom I had yet known, but because I already organized my idea and image toward philosophy last night in my assignment, though it was far from the fluent English, I somehow managed to bring my self to the end. After I finished, the professor briefly summarized what I just said by using more sophisticated and philosophical sounding words. Then he raised two important issues from my statement and wrote them down on the blackboard. I felt so delighted. I felt I was included. I felt my existence was affirmed.

The reason why I was and still am hesitated to raise my voice in the classroom is because I am always intimidated by two big worries which are "Will everybody be able to understand what I say" and "Does my idea is important enough to be raised?" Most of the time these two ideas envelop my mind so that I cannot release my words, especially when I sense that the class circumstance is neither comfortable nor worthy enough to take a risk. But this time, the professor displayed very warm and sensitive conduct before me. Perhaps that was really trivial matter for other people, but because I was always worried about my English deficiency, even such a small matter became a big deal in my mind. A kind of hope was gradually growing in my mind and I sensed that something urged me to take future chances in the class. I felt fortunate to take this course.

Much is revealed here about the kind of pedagogy that makes it possible for students to be included and heard, even when their own struggles and fears often lead to self-censorship, as is the case with this student. Using writing as a source for exploring, in a safe way, the subject matter of the course, the teacher was able to build on Motoko's "image toward philosophy." Drawing on and validating her attempt at understanding, the teacher offered language and concepts, seemingly new to this student, that probably complicated and enriched her initial understanding. Importantly, this process allowed Motoko to take the kinds of risk that are critical for learning and gave her to believe that she could take "future chances" of this sort.

Go to menu