ERRRRRRRR

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. In the past three weeks, my Comp I classes have gone to shit. And it’s not because I’ve been gone so much either. It’s partly my approach to the classes. It’s partly the students’ overall apathy.

I approach my Comp I class as not only preparation for the BST prompt in the winter but also as a warm up for Comp II. Basically I want them to write A LOT in A LOT of different ways.

To pass the BST test, students have to write a clear, well supported personal essay. If you have ever read any of my writing, you know this is right down my damn alley. So initially we write a boat load of personal essays. But I soon tire of mundane example test topics, like “Write about an influential person” or “Write about the ideal job for you” or “Write about an important choice you had to make” and so on. I think the students tire of these topics too.

So after we do several descriptive and narrative essays, I move on to what I call the “epiphany/rite of passage” essay. This is basically a combination of the descriptive and narrative essays. Nothing fancy. My real purpose here is to get the kids thinking more about their lives.

To help them think about epiphanies, we talk about examples from our lives. Then I show them a graph of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development. Whenever we struggle to learn something, according to Vygotsky, we eventually (with the help of someone else or simply through repetition and our own rationale) will have a breakthrough and learn a new skill. And there is an epiphany. Any one who has ever played a video game will now what I’m talking about. Then we brainstorm ideas of when we had an epiphany while learning something. What amazes me is that students never, I mean never, write about something they learned in school. This should piss me off, but it doesn’t. Rather it gives me hope. What I mean by that is that kids are learning outside of school! To me, that’s more amazing than them learning in school. I just have to find a way to make them bring that learning inside school and apply it to my class.

Next we go over other types of epiphanies - learning to push themselves, learning that childhood ends, learning about death, and so on until we have a wealth of examples and drafts.

For rites of passage we read several essays dealing with rites of passage (though I don’t use that term right away). Then we talk about the changes inherent in each one. Then we talk about similar changes we’ve gone through. Next I talk about stories they have read in other classes (Doris Lessing's’ “Through the Tunnel” comes to mind). Finally, we talk about rites of passage and how we go through them, and we look around at our culture and see if we can’t come up with lists of rites of passage that we go through.

After a few days of discussion and writing epiphanies and rites of passage, I ask them to choose one of their rough drafts to start crafting into a final draft. I don’t want them to just write about the event; I want them to start analyzing the epiphanies or rites of passage. Then I want them to start looking for nw epiphanies or rites of passage coming up in their lives.

But here is where it’s tricky. The difficult part is to add analysis and reflection to their narratives. Too often I get narratives about when a student realized Santa wasn’t real. But I want them to analyze it through the lens of an epiphany. I want them to focus on that specific moment of realization, that moment when the light bulb flashes over their head and they say “A HA!” Getting them to focus on that instant and expanding that with their thoughts and reflections into a page or so of writing is not easy. Instead of just telling me the story of how they realized Santa wasn't’ real, I want them to analyze it. What factors lead them to that conclusion? How did it hit them? How did they react? How did it change them? What other childhoold 'myths' are out there? What other lies are we told to make us happy?

Of course, a few students will notice that their epiphany has suddenly become part of their rite of passage - eureka! Yes. I’m pleased. So what’s the difference? Is there one? How will they tackle this in their essay?

For the rite of passage (let’s again use the Santa example), most will just resort back to a simple narrative (don’t get me wrong - I love simple narratives - if there is even such a thing as a simple narrative - hmmm, maybe I’m having an epiphany or is it a rite of passage? Oh hell, I gotta get on with it) reporting the event. I want them to reflect back on their rite of passage and show me how it changes them and ultimatley marks a change in their life. Most will get this idea, but they formulate it as a tacked on conclusion to the narrative. The real trick is to embed the reflection/analysis in the essay. Or better yet, just show the reader so clearly how their event is a rite of passage that they don’t need to reflect.

But so few accomplish any of this. They want to turn it in and get it over with. So I'm left with a half page rendering of a great epiphany or rite of passage. They could all be so much more (and I'm talking both about my students and their essays!). But how to show them how to do this? No. I've done that. How to get them to do it? That's what I want to know.

Another example - I have students do a personality collage. Then I have them write an analysis of their collage. I want them to evaluate what the collage reveals about them. Why did they put those things on their collage? What do those things reveal about them? Hopefully, they will realize they aren’t as unoriginal and simple as they seem to think they are. Maybe even they’ll have an epiphany and realize something new about themselves or their beliefs.

I just read through a stack today. Most were littered with grammatical errors. I usually don’t fret about such things (I’ll go to my grave taking error filled prose that says something interesting over error free drivel), but many errors were so blatant they made reading the essays difficult. Worse yet, they never analyzed. Some didn’t even describe their collages. (Here is a sample. These are the first two sentences of one collage analysis (and it doesn't get better, gulp) - judge for yourself -- “I’ve have always loved to play sports and didn’t matter what it was, because I’ve always liked to be a active type of person. I have always had a dream and that was to go to college and to succeed my goal in life.” Where to start with that? What have we been studying all quarter? This is after five weeks of grammar work and writing and writing and writing and editing and editing and editing). I guess the only way to really combat this is to slow the course down. Way down. Way, way, way down. If I had a week to work on revising this piece, we could make some progress. This student is a nice guy. He has interesting things to say. He has a goal. He has experiences to draw from. But how much time do I have to devote to one student? What about the students who did well on their collages (there were a few)? What about the glazed look sophomores get when you know they are tired of their topics and want to move on. What happens when you get that glazed look when you know they know you know they are tired of their topics and want to move on when you want them to do some deep revision and editing?

These are just some examples of what I fail miserably at in my Comp classes. So few get it. I’m starting to wonder if I just shouldn’t stop trying to beat a dead horse. If I should just come up with a list of 30 personal essay topics and have them write. Then they can choose ten to submit at the end of the quarter. Forget the higher order thinking skills.

I won’t do this, of course. I’ll keep pounding my head against the wall. Or like good old Sisyphus, gather up that rock and start up the mountain all over again.