I still remember 2012 when I saw a bulletin board inviting students like myself to take a course titled, Theory & Practice of Tutoring Writing. I took the course and learned about the field of Rhetoric and Composition. After learning what pedagogy was along with some rhetorical strategies such as minimal margin marking, I began tutoring writing. This introduction to tutoring writing allowed me to think specifically about tutoring and its relationship to teaching. After two years of tutoring composition courses, I was very excited to begin teaching first year composition (FYC). From 2012 to the present, student-focused pedagogy is a concept I reflect on and advance. I learned, in this context, that there were many different ways to understand how writing worked and I have never forgotten how overwhelming learning about writing can be for both experienced and new writers. From these experiences, I began to develop what are now my three goals of teaching first year composition:
- Constitutive forms of genre should adapt to changing student populations
- Knowledge-making is largely a collaborative process
- Transparency, justice, and fairness are paramount for student success
Constitutive forms of genre should adapt to changing student populations
In my teaching experience, students tend to value writing in genres that invite their own processes of writing into account; however, introducing genre theory and its applications to them helps students realize they should write in their own voices in all genres. As such, an effective educator should create space for students to engage with each other and their writing through various genres that promote the advancement of students’ writing in ways that will be successful to them in other genres. I believe that understanding how genres function as a way to access rhetorical situations and its nuances strongly advocate and help students better successfully apply their rhetorical writing skills to various situations, particularly as student populations change over time.
As an illustration, I started teaching about genres from the assumption that most students would know what a college admissions essay is and how to write within its conventions; however, I quickly learned from student feedback that international students, who tend to be multilingual writers, have very different processes than other writers. So, I asked students what genres they engage with and the overwhelming majority said Tiktok. Now, I introduce students to genre theory from a multimodal perspective using Tiktok and other forms of social media. Through feedback surveys, students have reported that they better understand how genres function when including ones that match their interests, and I have seen a tremendous improvement in their writing in other genres as a result.
Knowledge-making is collaborative
I believe that knowledge-making is most productive when it’s collaborative in nature. I say this because collaboration is becoming increasingly important in an age where writing moves beyond traditional writing platforms and modalities. Oftentimes, this writing is collaborative in both academic and non-academic contexts and informs my teaching practices. For example, writing processes change as technology increasingly necessitates collaborative writing work. From myriad experiences working with student writers and their perceptions of the writing process, learning in the classroom occurs more frequently and improves over time when the classroom encourages social and collaborative activities. To this end, educators such as myself also learn from our students’ collaborative work either online or face-to-face. Student-driven pedagogy that effectively focuses on student learning includes activities and discussions in the classroom about why we write collaboratively and as a group.
More to this point, I used to only discuss how knowledge-making pertained to students, but as students conversed with one another, I realized that students model knowledge-making as a collaborative and iterative process. Discussing these concepts with students helps them understand the metacognitive move of writing processes and creating texts together. These student-led discussions helped me realize that thinking of collaboration as producing knowledge particularly in the classroom is applicable for both teachers and students in myriad contexts.
Transparency, fairness, and justice are paramount
Discussing transparency, fairness, and justice are absolute requirements for establishing an effective and consciously positive learning classroom. One way I engage these concepts is by talking and writing with students about current justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) issues outside of the classroom. I encourage all students to champion justice. At first, students aren’t sure what I mean by this, but after discussing and writing about personal moments in our lives that have affected our writing styles and identities, I share some of my own vignettes. Students are not required to disclose anything they feel is too personal, but I have noticed that connecting issues of power and marginalization to writing situations such as learning transfer and writing authority has resonated with students. For example, I ask students to write down the things that they think about when they hear words like fairness and justice. I then ask students to write down what they want these terms to mean in various contexts. This pedagogical move facilitates student reflection on how texts mediate activity in the real world and these practices bolster the learning outcomes for the course.
For example, a student recently sent me an email to inform me they had come out to their parents and friends as gay. They mentioned that my openness and honesty about LGBTQ+ rights for myself and others in the classroom allowed them to come out after their freshman year. It’s a wonderful feeling knowing that you helped students by being yourself and allowing them to fight for justice and fairness through transparency.
These pedagogical principles guide my teaching practices, and I intend to continuously draw from these goals and principled values in order to expand my pedagogical training and skills. I will also continue to reflect on how to better include principles of justice to structure a socially just and inclusive classroom that values honesty, fairness, and learns from students and their authentic selves. Without this, there can be no justice.
Justiss Wilder Burry 