Becoming a teacher and growing in this vocation has, for me, meant increasingly valuing student perspectives and voices. In high school and college, I approached literature and philosophy as a way to get to the root of human experience, to discover a piece of writing or a body of knowledge that would change my life forever. Although I still sometimes read and write as though I were searching for that magical linguistic formulation, I have discovered that this is not the most important motive behind my intellectual endeavors. I realize now that I am drawn to academic environments because of the human relationships that develop out of a mutual desire to understand a text together, to articulate an important idea, to share a moving experience.
The study of literature offers a unique opportunity for creating this kind of community. A teacher can and should help students access challenging works by suggesting fruitful questions to ask or important elements to track, and by structuring discussion around significant features of the text. Asking students to think, as they read, about the impediments to linguistic communication in Plato’s Symposium, or the difficulties the protagonist of Jane Eyre must overcome, or Wordsworth’s attempt to construct a new kind of reader in his preface to Lyrical Ballads, can create openings into texts that students may otherwise feel are impenetrable; however, the goal of such pedagogical moves should be to maximize student engagement rather than to promote the teacher’s reading. First-time readers have a special kind of authority on a text, and good instruction uses the freshness of their readings – in addition to the teacher’s expertise – to generate powerful questions, insights, and dialogue among students.
Writing assignments represent another vital source for community and learning. In writing-intensive courses, I emphasize collaboration throughout the writing process: teacher-student conferences, electronic discussion forums, and peer writing workshops provide rich opportunities for students not only to get advice on their essays, but also to share experiences and explore multiple perspectives. Encouraging students to share their writing with one another in academically responsible ways, such as presenting research proposals to the class and eliciting feedback from their peers, helps to create an environment in which dialogue can flourish. As I discovered in founding and advising a student-run literary magazine at a public high school, when students begin to see one another as readers and writers, they take greater enjoyment in and responsibility for their own learning.
Effective teachers help students develop academic identities, and this means more than helping them meet requirements and pass examinations: good instruction begins with an appreciation of each student’s situation. If students earn disappointing marks in the beginning of a course, for example, they need to know that they can still do well – and that I expect them to do well – by the end of the semester. I have learned to make it explicit in syllabi and in written and verbal responses to student writing that progress is an important factor in determining final grades. Emphasizing academic growth and communicating this emphasis reduces anxiety, puts students in a better position to learn, and demonstrates in yet another way that I value their perspectives and voices.
btzimmerman 