This week I'm reading drafts and writing exams and walking a fine line, a very fine line, between offering support to struggling students and propping up posers, between suggesting methods of approaching writing tasks and ramming students into narrow templates. How much help is too much?
I've always offered models and samples showing what I expect--sample essays, sample thesis statements for various types of prompts, sample Works Cited listings for common class readings. I've distributed sample exam questions and talked about how to respond to them, and sometimes those same questions end up on the exam. This fall I'm even trying out the They Say/I Say text in first-year writing and encouraging students to fit their ideas into handy templates. I want to give students every possible resource to help them succeed in my classes.
But sometimes this feels like hand-holding. Today a tough-love colleague told me providing sample papers or thesis statements or Works Cited listings is a bad idea because "they ought to know how to do this," and if they don't know, then too darn bad.
I sort of agree--I could come up with a long laundry list of things students ought to know how to do, starting with laundry and moving on through note-taking, critical thinking, and basic politeness. But the fact is that they can't, or some of them can't quite manage tackling these tasks without a little nudge in the right direction.
Sometimes a big nudge.
Sometimes a nudge that propels them right out the door.
But let's start with the little nudges first. My students who already know how to write a thesis or format a Works Cited or analyze literature can just go ahead and get to work, but I'm happy to spend a little extra time helping the others find their way, and if a model, sample, or template helps them shape their nebulous ideas into coherence, then I'll give them models, samples, and templates.
Baby steps, training wheels, too much hand-holding--I hear that, but I have my limits. When the time comes to take off the training wheels, I'm very happy to push them off, even if they crash. The challenge is in knowing just when to let go.
3 comments:
I think that creating a list of things they should know coming into a class is always a good idea. And I do agree that if they do not know those things then it is their responsibility to figure out how to learn them. Peer tutoring does often work in this situation. I also think that the minimal amount of hand holding that is done the better. Today I have found that students tend to be a bit more resourceful (if they wanna be) than those in the past. Often the biggest problem is self motivation on their part. I also have successfully had students write questions that they think would be reasonable to be on a test (one question per student) and then exchange them and answer them. I even once did a test this way. My two cents.
I used to have students write exam questions and I still do it sometimes in upper-level classes, but the last couple of times I asked first-year students to write questions, they were just dreadful, so vague and unfocused that they would be unlikely to produce any helpful discussion or response.
I do stuff where students write questions, and we talk through them as exam questions, and then revise, and then I do a final revision. I think it helps them study!
It seems to me that yes, it would be lovely if all our students knew everything before. But my students don't. And I'll be damned if I'm going to punish them because their HS wasn't great. So, if I want them to learn to do a works cited or whatever, I show them and have them practice. And then they learn. Or not. But at that point, it's their responsibility.
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