Goals Impacted as a Teaching Assistant for the Beatles FSEM

As this semester concludes and my undergraduate career comes to an end, I want to take this time to reflect on the goals I set for myself in this independent study and how this experience has influenced them. When I began preparation for "The Pedagogy of Writing in the College Classroom through Music," which began well before the start of this semester, I had two main goals: to gain experience in teaching undergraduate students the skills in technology, speaking and especially in writing to succeed in college; and to develop an understanding in designing a working syllabus and student assignments.

As part of my observations, I attended each of the FSEM classes to watch Professor Rafferty's teaching methods and the students' responses. These observations were particularly beneficial as they allowed me to witness first-hand experiences I would not have access to through academic readings. I was able to witness particular methods which worked well in the classroom, such as the addition of music as an accompaniment to the course, and other elements of the class which didn't work as well, such as student participation in discussion, and discuss with Professor Rafferty ways to improve these methods. This allowed me to reflect critically on the classroom structure and teaching styles which I plan on using in the future as a professor of English and creative writing.

It was this interest in being a professor that inspired my independent study; when I mentioned my desire to teach at a university level to Professor Rafferty, he immediately put me to work in designing this new freshman seminar, "The Beatles in the 21st Century." The benefit of assisting my adviser in designing the syllabus and student assignments was phenomenal - how many undergraduate students are able to assist in organizing an undergraduate class? In addition to helping design the syllabus, and revising it for future use, I wrote an assignment sheet and accompanying grading rubric for the students, and graded four papers written by anonymous students to fully grasp the use of the grading rubric.

Looking back on these experiences, I have to say that my expectations were fulfilled. I developed a better understanding of roles of the professor within the classroom as an instructor and outside the classroom as a designer of the syllabus, assignments, and as a grader of the students work. I succeeded in completing these goals with a level of independence (thanks to Professor Rafferty) that I had not originally anticipated. However, I honestly did not expect to enjoy my independent study as much as I did, and I credit this to Professor Rafferty and to the students in the class. Professor Rafferty has been an amazing mentor throughout the duration of this class; he has always been open to any questions, concerns or new ideas I've suggested and really allowed me a sense of independence throughout my independent study. And I found it amazing to watch the students grow throughout their freshman seminar, from timid students who struggled to participate in class discussion to well-rounded first-year students who, by the end of the semester, were more vocal about their ideas and opinions and actively took a role in discussions, participation and the Beatles Rock Band. Assisting in the education of these first-year students was an amazing experience and I am looking forward to applying the skills I've learned in this independent study to teach an university in the future.  

The Seven Dynamics of Successful Teaching

One of the biggest trepidations of new professors is how to conduct a classroom of students and actually get them to meet the required goals in the course. The goal for many professors is walking the fine line between advocate and disciplinarian, much like Ted Mosby's predicament in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. In his collection of journals, What the Best College Teachers Do, history professor Ken Bains lists a number of successful practices used by college professors to help newbies from pulling a Ted Mosby.

The section I found most useful focused on how successful professors conducted class lectures and discussions. Because the most interaction shared between professors and their students occurs within the classroom, it is essential that these lectures grab the students' attention and focus them on the subject material. Bains lays out a plan for success in seven steps:

1) Create natural critical learning environment

This is an essential first step because you have one chance to make a first impression with students which will determine whether you have their attention for the remainder of the semester. The method Bains recommends using is posing questions to the students during discussion rather than giving an opinionated fifty-minute lecture. This practice is an excellent way to conduct the FSEM as it is a discussion-based class. Posing questions to the students not only challenges them to think critically on the subject, but also gives them the confidence that their opinions are valued in class discussions.

2) Get their attention and keep it

Obviously professors want to engage their students' attention through the subject material, but even in a class on the Beatles the professor needs to have a plan to keep the students focused on lecture material and participating in discussion. Many professors will begin with an anecdote or moment of interest in the required reading material.

3) Start with the students rather than discipline

One major error that professors can commit is placing the focus in the classroom on the subject and ignoring the needs of the students. Although the course subject is obviously essential in the classroom, it can be very easy to overlook the concerns and needs of the students in order to stay on schedule. Having a flexible syllabus which allows time for changes in scheduling allows for the professor to accommodate extra time for students who may not understand the material or need the extra time to prepare for an assignment.

4) Seek commitments

Commitments? What commitments? This is what students will be asking midway through the semester unless they realize their goals early in the class. The professor can help students in this area by setting goals on the syllabus; however, this is just a beginning step. Engaging with students one on one (to the best of the professor's ability) is the best way to come up with individual commitments. Some students may have different goals than others, and it's good for the professor to know what they are striving towards to better help them through the course.

5) Help students outside of the classroom

Going off of one on one connections...being accessible to students in office hours is an absolute essential for professors. Conferences with students should be encouraged and for many students, it's better to meet in office hours to go over assignments and concerns about the class than through email.

6) Engage students in disciplinary thinking

Thinking outside the box is the primary goal of the FSEM. This allows students to develop their own ideas from alternative sources for better understanding and meta cognition. Encouraging first-year students to think outside the box will strengthen cognitive skills through college and afterwards in the corporate world. Not only will students who engage in disciplinary thinking develop stronger arguments and insights in college-level courses, but it will also give them a deeper interest in their classes and the subject material.

7) Create diverse learning experiences

This may be the final step, but it's just as vital as the earlier six steps in the teaching process. This method ties in with meta cognition, but rather than focusing on written studies and traditional learning situations, the students are put into alternative learning situations to further enhance the learning experience. One example of this which was used in The Beatles in the 21st Century FSEM was giving the students a chance to play the Beatles Rock Band as a culmination of their class. Not only was it a fun and relaxing way to end the FSEM, but it also allowed the students to take on the roles of the Beatles and learn more about the band by being in their shoes for a class.

Does Teaching Provide Insight into the Writing Process?

What do Zadie Smith, Brian Oliu and Colin Rafferty have in common (other than being successful, published writers)?

All three are professors of creative writing: Smith teaches fiction writing, and literary and cultural criticism at NYU; Oliu is a professor of poetry and the lyric essay (among other subjects) at the University of Alabama; and Rafferty teaches creative writing, specializing in nonfiction, at the University of Mary Washington.

With the number of writers emerging in the 2010's, a significant number are also teachers of some form of writing, whether it be journalism, creative writing or literary studies. Granted, writing is a difficult field to get into and even more difficult to make a living from. But the correlation between teaching and writing is definitely a close one. Which begs the question: does teaching make one a better writer, or vice versa?

Downs and Wardle address this connection in their journal "Re-imagining the Nature of FYC: Trends in Writing About Writing Pedagogies." Among the many trends mentioned in the article, the one I found to contain most interest is the "auto-ethnography" required of all first-year composition students.

Downs and Wardle describe this process as, "they talk-aloud and record themselves in a natural setting while writing a paper for a class. They then transcribe their own protocol and code it, using as a starting point a code the class invents together after reading studies by scholars...Coding categories might include “lexical revision,” “conceptual revision,” “writing without planning,” “re-reading,” and so on. The students might discuss the form their papers should take, debating whether the task is entirely writing-to-learn and thus can take the form of an informal reflection, or whether it is also a learning-to-write activity preparing them to write about research in a more formal way. The students draft their papers in the genres agreed appropriate by the class, read and respond to one another’s drafts in a structured workshop, and then revise for teacher feedback, which leads to grading in the end-of-semester portfolio."

This style of group-revision in writing not only provides students with the methods to workshop in a group, but also to teach other students methods of writing that they may be gifted in. I know from experience that I could bring an essay to workshop that wasn't working and another student will often give a suggestion that I had never considered. Or have what I think is the perfect underlying theme to a memoir piece and it takes a room of fellow students to convince me that the piece isn't working. And because they're my readers, they're probably right. These are both examples of students teaching other students how to compose a successful story, essay, poem, whatever the piece may be. These methods not only help students to improve their classmates' writing, but gives them the opportunity to learn from other methods used by their fellow students.

But back to the question posed above: this is kind of asking which came first, the chicken or the egg. You can't force something that isn't already present (i.e. a talent in writing); and very often this talent doesn't need to be taught in a classroom. However, one of the best ways to learn a skill is through teaching it to another person. Which, as teachers of first-year composition and creative writing, these fore-mentioned authors know well.

Although teaching may not be an essential for being a writer, it certainly provides insight to other forms of writing and helps one improve based on styles seen in the classroom. And if one wishes to be a successful published writer, why not follow the example of those same authors (and teachers of writing) we all admire?

Process of Interpretation

While preparing my lesson plan for this week, I came across a quote in Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation describing John Lennon's first week at the art college in Liverpool. His tutor, Alfred Bollard, was an unconventional teacher who actually had no interest in formal lectures and held most of his lectures in Ye Cracke, a pub on Rice Street. Despite his unconventional methods, Bollard saw Lennon as a slacker; he never contributed to the discussion, didn't share his work and had the attitude of an "ill-at-ease Teddy Boy."

However, Bollard's opinion of young John Lennon changed greatly after finding the future Beatle's notebook in the pub. "Then one day in the lecture room I found this notebook full of caricatures - of myself, the other tutor's, the students - all done with descriptions and verse, and it was the wittiest thing I'd ever seen in my life. There was no name on it. It took me quite a while to find out that Lennon had done it.

"The next time student work was being put up and discussed, I brought out this notebook and held it up and we discussed the work in it. John had never expected anyone to look at it, let alone find it funny and brilliant. Afterward I told him, 'When I talk about interpretation, boy, this is the kind of thing I mean as well. This is the kind of thing I want you to be doing.'" (Norman, 41)

Teachers of first-year college students have a responsibility to educate their students in the principles of collegiate writing. But one thing that is often overlooked is the importance of allowing interpretation in the classroom.

In Wardle and Downs' followup to Writing About Writing, revised in 2012, the authors reiterate their reasoning which prompted their 2007 article Writing About Writing (WAW):

First-year writing should seek to "improve students' understanding of writing, rhetoric, language, and literacy in a course that is topically oriented to reading and writing as scholarly inquiry and encouraging more realistic understandings of writing" (553). Although we clarified, not very vigorously, that "there are a number of ways to institute" such a course (559), we described a particular way that we had been teaching to this purpose at the time with sufficient emphasis to drown out that ecumenical encouragement."

The first-year experience, or freshman seminar, is one of these different ways to introduce college students to the levels of writing, rhetoric, etc. expected by their university. It is also a form of interpretation, much like what Bollard expressed to Lennon when he told him, "This is the kind of thing I want you to be doing."

Interpretation isn't merely drawing caricatures in a sketchbook during lecture (and in fact, Lennon was very lucky that Bollard read his work as a form of interpretation), but rather teaching a subject through a new lens such as popular culture or re imagining a course in real life experiences. Which is in fact what Wardle and Downs have promoted through WAW.

"What we advocate for, and what remains stable in our own classrooms, is simply the underlying set of principles: engage students with the research and ideas of the field, using any means necessary and productive, in order to shift students' conceptions of writing, building declarative and procedural knowledge of writing with an eye toward transfer. That seems to be the heart of writing-about-writing: a basic belief that, as a field, we know some things and should teach them. This belief comes to be shared more broadly and stated more explicitly these days, including by scholars much more experienced than we." (Wardle and Downs)

The idea of interpretation applies more to the thought process than an actual skill, but these ideas can certainly be expanded into writing at the college level. An example of this works with argumentation: for the student's second written assignment, they wrote a review on one of the Beatles' media: a movie, book, cartoon or interview. In the review they had to argue as to whether or not this was a good example of the Beatles' work or it if reflected the Beatles in a truthful manner. This assignment allowed students to work with a nontraditional source of media and form a argument either for its success or its lack thereof.

The importance of the freshman seminar weighs not only on introducing first-year students to the expectations of college, but also allowing students to experiment outside the box of traditional education. After all, as educators we hope that students will apply what they learn in college to their post-education lives. Interpretation allows students to bring the gap between education and the professional world, through writing and other forms of expression.

Can First Year Composition Be Applied to Other Academic Courses?

So far in these journals, I've examined the benefits of first year seminar and their impact on other academic and post curricular situations. In Wardle and Downs' "Teaching about Writing, Righting about Misconceptions," the authors examine one of the major disadvantages of first year composition: the inability to transfer this style of writing to other academic courses.

In theory, first year composition should be able to prepare any student for their area of study.  After all, every student needs to write at a collegiate level during their college career. However, just because a student is trained in collegiate writing doesn't mean these skills will transfer to other areas of study.

"Even when FYC courses do attempt to directly address the complexity of "academic discourse" they tend to operate on the assumptions with little empirical verification. Our field does not know what genres and tasks will help students in the myriad writing situations they will later find themselves. We do not know if writing essays on biology in English courses helps students write lab reports in biology courses. We do not know which genres or rhetorical strategies truly are universal in the academy, not how to help FYC recognize such universality." (Wardle and Downs, p. )

I spoke to two anthropology majors (class of 2015) about the impact their FSEM class had on their majors. The first student (Sarah) took "Cinderella and Harry Potter" (an examination of the progression of fantasy into the 21st century), which was taught by a professor from the English department. When asked if this particular class prepared her for the style of writing used in anthropology, the student said it did not. "It was really just a fun class," Sarah said. "I think it was more like an introduction to the college experience."

The second student (Shelby) took an FSEM taught by faculty from the Sociology department, "Media Images of Mothers," which examined various images of mothers seen in film and television. She also disagreed that this particular class taught her the style of writing needed in anthropology. "Every department writes differently,"  Shelby said.

The difficulty faced by Sarah and Shelby is not an uncommon struggle among college students. English collegiate-writing varies greatly from the styles required for anthropology, biology, and even history. Although the first-year experience is in many ways essential as an introduction to the "college experience," FYC can be distracting to the future biology major who needs to write lab reports, or to the future anthropology major who will need to record field work.

How can FYC be altered to accommodate non-English majors?

Many universities have divided their FSEMs by department to make the transition easier for students. The University of Mary Washington offers a variety of first-year experience courses, ranging from vampires in cinema (film studies) to the solving mysteries in math (mathematics). The benefit of taking a freshman experience tied directly to one's major is the probably that skills needed in upper-level courses will most likely be taught during the seminar. Oh course, this poses a problem for the undecided major, or for the future math major who chooses to take "The Idea of Cool" (an FSEM formerly taught under the English department) based on their interest in popular culture.

The end result is that while FYC can assist students in preparing for college-level writing in general, a 100-level class is the better way for students to learn the type of writing particular to their major.

Meta Moments in Collegiate Level Writing

In Laurie McMillan's review of Down and Wardle's "Writing about Writing", I hear a lot of the same reactions I've gathered from previous works read this semester, including: writing at a college level is essential for a student's college experience; collegiate writing puts composition scholar's skills to good use; learning collegiate-level writing not only improves student writing, but also language skills and the thought process. However, McMillan also to attention another essential component of the writing process and the college experience which often gets overlooked: "Meta Moments."

McMillan describes the presence of "Meta Moments" in Downs and Wardle's work as a feature set apart in a box from the rest of the text "appearing exactly as 'Meta Moments' should appear - in their own space, where a different kind of thinking can take place." (McMillan) The idea behind "Meta Moments" - thinking outside the box - is an important feature of metacognition, which is an essential part of the thought process and of the freshman experience. 

Ah, metacognition. Where would we be without it? I say this with complete seriousness because without the role of metacognition brilliant people would still be brilliant, but wouldn't change their thinking to reach a point beyond what their predecessors (world explorers, professors, scientists, etc.) had taught them. Metacognition - the awareness or analysis of one's own learning or thinking processes - is what differentiates each scholar individually. It is essentially thinking outside the box, applying personal experience, knowledge, and opinion to understand the thought more fully, and in the end, forming a unique conclusion to the problem.

My first recollection of a professor introducing students to metacognition occurred during a creative nonfiction class I took during my junior year of college. The class had just completed workshopping our first writing assignment and were preparing for the final revision. After handing back the graded papers, our professor pulled up YouTube and played the first seventeen takes of "Strawberry Fields Forever." 

"As you can hear, the Beatles could have stopped after Take Eight or so and still have an impressive song worthy of an A-side. But they kept experimenting and polishing until they reached Take Seventeen, which is what you hear on the Magical Mystery Tour album. " the professor told us. "This is what I want you to do when revising your essays. Even when the essay looks perfect, keep working at it. It could be the difference between Take Eight and Take Seventeen."

Another form of metacognition is using a figure of contemporary culture as a vehicle to obtain academic knowledge. The University of Mary Washington provides several freshman seminars to introduce first-year students to the college environment through the lens of Harry Potter, Dracula or the Beatles to name a few. These platforms of focus successfully teach freshmen the basic elements of writing, public speaking and technology through learning about a topic of interest. It's almost, as I've heard students say on occasion, taking a class that doesn't feel like a class.

In "The Beatles in the 21st Century" FSEM, students learn the basic skills of collegiate-level writing, technology and speaking through reviewing a Beatles' movie or book and presenting an argument proving why their favorite Beatles' song is the best, to name a few. The benefit of this style of metacognition is allowing students to learn new skills in an area that they are passionate about, and through these assignments form conclusions on their favorite music, book or movies that they may never have considered before. 

How to Reach Realistic Expectations in the Classroom

As teachers, we have certain expectations we want students to achieve. These are often the driving force behind each task we assign to the student. In FSEM 100L1: the Beatles in the 21st Century, the students' first written assignment instructed them how to gather secondary field information through interviews with two separate generations of Beatles' fans. The first oral assignment taught them how to form a successful argument through the correct use of ethos, pathos and logos, as well as giving each student what might be his or her first experience in public speaking.

These goals are absolutely necessary for a student to succeed in the college environment and in the professional workplace. However, other small goals are just as important as public argumentation and field research. For example, class participation. Expressing opinions in the classroom may seem like a given, or even not that important, but a student who offers a perspective relative to the subject will most likely continue this practice outside of the classroom, whereas students who don't participate as regularly are less likely to share opinions and ideas within the professional workplace.

Now, there are exceptions to every rule. Many students choose not to speak up in class due to a shy nature. Other students are wary of the classroom atmosphere, either through fear of their opinions being shot down or being unsure whether their opinion would be considered relevant material. Personally, I fall into both categories. As an introvert, I often test the waters, as it were, during the first several weeks of classes. I take into account the professor's demeanor, the personalities of the different students and the class expectations. I usually won't speak out in class until after I feel comfortable with the classroom setting, and this process can take a while, anywhere from the first two weeks to halfway through the semester.

I have great sympathy for students struggling to find the courage to speak up and participate in class, but there is one type of student who frustrates me, and many teachers and professors, greatly: the one who simply doesn't care. All teachers experience this student at one time or another. They show up on the first day and sometimes won't be back until the first test of the semester. They choose the seat furthest from the professor and avoid eye contact during discussion ("if I don't look at him, he won't call on me" style). This student is not only doing themselves a disservice, but it's frustrating for the professor who sees the student's potential, and how much opportunity is just going past them without the student's apparent notice.

I've found that the most effective way to encourage class participation is through the use of participation cards. Each time a student contributes to the discussion in class, he or she writes down the date (and sometimes the topic) on an index card and turns it into the professor at the conclusion of class. This method is particularly effective with placing the responsibility of participation on the student. If she or he doesn't meet the standards of class participation, well, the card's in their hands.

I mentioned earlier the underlying motivations of each writing/oral assignment. In her blog Bits, Elizabeth Wardle describes the expectations behind the writing assignments she gives her students: 1) Readers and writers observe what is in the text; 2) Writing requires revision and can never be entirely perfect; 3) Using writing knowledge in disparate contexts requires careful reflection. These expectations are set for upperclassmen as opposed to first-year students, but the precedent still holds true. Good student writing requires lots of revision, and an awareness of the audience's interpretation of the piece. The sooner these rules can be instilled in the minds of first-year students, the sooner they will reach their full potential as college-level writers.