bval1988

final draft paper 1

Beatriz Valdez

Essay 1

WC1044

Will You Take that With or Without the Teacher?

                As far back as I can remember I’ve always had the guidance and praise of teachers when it comes to writing. The teachers laid out a formula and I copied it. In order to get the grade necessary for the assignment, I needed to start out with an introduction. After that, I had to hit my reader over the head with the subject of the paper in the thesis. Next came the body of the paper, the so-called, “heart of the debate”. Finally, I restated my introduction and thesis, and BAM! I had a paper. All I had to do was take the formula, plug and chug my text into the formula, and voila, an essay, paper, etc. Easy enough, right? Well, what if someone introduced a radical new idea, something along the lines of a teacherless classroom? Can I even function without a teacher guiding my writing?

                Now that I am in college, there have been different thoughts and opinions about the teacher actually being in the classroom to assist students with writing. There are people like Bartholomae who argue for teachers in the classroom and there are also people like Elbow who argue for teachers to stay out of the way of students *gasp*. Honestly, the idea of a classroom without a teacher absolutely terrified me.

                In Writing with Teachers, Bartholomae argues for the presence of teachers in the classroom because, “…there is no writing without teachers. I think I would state this as a general truth…To hide the teacher is to hide the traces of power, tradition, and authority present in the scene of writing…” (63). For the most part, I can agree with Bartholomae about having teachers present in the classroom. In my experience, the tradition that teachers have taught me i.e., paragraph structure, the foundations of grammar have all helped me understand how I can effectively get ideas across to an audience. Without these basic principles I wouldn’t even be able to write this essay that you are reading. Another point that Bartholomae makes is that, “…academic writing is the real work of the academy…” (63). There is a certain amount of truth to this idea because all of the instruction that my teachers have given me is to prepare me to write for upper level classes. When I think about all the “pointless” ten paper essays I’ve had to write, it suddenly makes sense that it was for my own good. If I didn’t have a teacher guiding me along during the process, I wouldn’t even know how to start an essay, let alone finish one.

                Now imagine this: a classroom without a teacher. In one word: yikes. In Writing without Teachers, Elbow argues for this because, “…teachers can be more useful when it is clearer that they are not necessary. The teacherless class has been useful to me as a teacher because it is an ideal laboratory for learning with students and being useful to them in that way…” (10). Elbow is advocating the idea for teachers to become more like resources, rather than teachers. This idea can work in helping students write because it will allow students to make mistakes and learn from them, rather than being fearful of making a mistake and facing the consequences when learning is done in the more traditional way.  In my twenty years of life, it has been a rare moment when a teacher says, “Ok, go willy-nilly and write whatever you want. Oh, and don’t worry about the outcome, we’ll work together and see what’s up.” (I am exaggerating the language use here; none of my teachers have ever told me to ‘see what’s up’) I find myself struggling with this concept in college because I have never been given such freedom to write. Even as I write this essay, I find myself trying to follow the traditions that have been taught to me. For example, when I started out with this essay, I was very tempted to lay out my intro and tell people exactly what I was going to talk about and when. I was able to sneak that little habit in me by introducing Elbow and Bartholomae in the intro and talking about them in the said order. However, it’s not as “structured” as it would have been in high school, i.e, “In this essay, one will learn about…” I must apologize, because old habits die hard. Also, in high school, it was all about writing the perfect essay: the intro, thesis, body, and conclusion. In my first two years of college, it was all about perfecting the structure and changing the discourse to fit academic discourse. Now that I am in upper-level classes, my teachers are letting me play with words, grammar, and sentence structures to communicate with my audience. Still, I struggle with this new concept because I feel as though I don’t have the good ol’ safety net of a “formula”. Without a teacher, where is my net?

                 Will we ever get to see a teacherless classroom or will we continue with the presence of “power, tradition, and authority” present in writing? Both Bartholomae and Elbow present convincing arguments, but which is correct?  Should students go through 13 years of academic writing (12 in school and one in college) or should students be allowed write expressively and produce papers that don’t necessarily follow the traditions of writing for the academy? I think that students should learn the foundations and principles of writing first and foremost to establish the foundations upon which writing was founded on. Not only does this make a writer aware of what makes an effective paper, but the teacher will see to it that the students is ready to enter the world of academia by showing the student exactly how writing is done. By establishing these foundations in a student, the student will then decide how he/she wishes to write, whether it be in the tongue of the academic community or in his/her own style. The question of a teacher’s presence doesn’t have a clear cut answer because ultimately, it will be up to a teacher to decide if his/her presence is necessary in a classroom.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bartholomae, David. “Writing with Teachers: A Conversation with Peter Elbow.” College Composition and Communication. Ed. National Council of Teachers of English. 1995. 62-71 pp.

Elbow, Peter. Writing without Teachers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.