Enacting the interaction:
As a teacher and a scholar,
reading this article is challenging.
And, I never considered myself to be highly proficient in either
profession – just average. But, when
reading papers from students I tutor I like to think, at least, that I know how to read them. In other words, I feel I understand students’
responses on papers enough by using the guidelines of school assignments they’re
given as a basis for my reasoning. So,
when I read in this article about how as writing teachers we must misconstrue the
message in a student’s paper in order to jump-start students in re-translating their
meaning in them I can’t help thinking that we place them in an uncomfortable
environment – for both of us. Whether
it’s true that some teachers complicate the process by advertently or
inadvertently project their flaws or insecurities on to them, these burgeoning
writers, in most cases I would argue, are making themselves vulnerable enough
to criticism by writing in an environment that may already be rife with angst. Therefore, it is difficult to figure how far
to go in challenging a student’s writing.
I don’t know.
But, let’s see…
Monday evening, I tried
attempting this process of misreading in a student’s writing – a seventh
grader. The assignment was to talk about
a career they wanted and to express what they thought it would take in order to
achieve his goal. I gave him five
minutes to answer the prompt as much as possible without stopping. He pumped out like five or six sentences, and
then gave it to me. After reviewing it, I asked him, “What do you mean when you
say in your paper, ‘I know I have to go to a good school in order to get a good
job or else I’ll get low pay?’ I mean,
don’t you think you can manage to achieve your goal by going to any regular
institution proficient in banking”? He
said, “Well, you can’t just go to regular school. You have to go to an important school…one
where it costs a lot of money to get in.”
Afterwards, I retorted by saying, “but don’t you think you can achieve
your career at any other school? Can’t
you go to a regular school – as you say – and be successful?” He said sharply, “Maybe…maybe not. But I want to get hired to do the job and
going to an important school helps your chances to get there.”
I digested what he said and took
a minute to understand his response.
Afterwards, I felt a little guilty because I underestimated this kid’s
rationale. He, obviously, had a strong
sense of how some of the socio-economical factors prevalent in today’s society play
an active role in success. It was the
pronouncement of the old adage: “It ain’t what you know, it’s who you
know.” He understood the possibility that
good grades may not be enough to accomplish what he wanted. Instead, he felt it would take the networking
of people who knew important people to galvanize his future as a banker. At age twelve, he clearly explained his
reasoning for making the decisions he’d make when placed in the position of
achieving his dream – being a banker.
My point is that at some point,
in our profession, we have to extend certain kids “a line of intellectual credit”. The article is right in making the assertion
that interaction between teacher and student for purposes of development, but how
much subjectivity do we allow in our objective world and how well would they
co-exist? Sure, it’s all about this
semi-symbiotic relationship between teacher and student - it’s all about the
exchange and interaction between the two that develops our critical skills in
being good teachers and students. But, for me as being both entities – WHERE IS
THE LINE?
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