A Pedagogy of Kindness
Cate Denial recounts her beginnings as a teacher, and how her start greatly differs from her present. Implementing kindness in the classroom is the catalyst for this change. She was taught there are two distinct sides in education: the student and the teacher. I was taught that, too. Each and every time I grade with the professor I work with, the question of “do you think that’s their own words?” always comes up without fail. Because of being asked that question so often, I started to expect this cheating nature, despite it not actually being a problem at all. I could not say with certainty if any of the students, across four sections, used any outside source. And why should be hellbent on proving it? What I should have been looking for instead was understanding of the subject matter, and overall growth in the student.
From that, I have grown a certain empathy that I did not have before. Despite my being an undergraduate student a year ago, I found that I was hard on the students I was assisting because I held them to the insane standards I held myself to, which were perpetuated by past instructors who did not teach with kindness. It’s kind of like a generational cycle; instructors who are not kind most likely had instructors who were not kind to them. The most important thing is to break that cycle, and be the teacher that you wish you had, which, if I had to guess, is someone kind.
Love in the Time of Peer Review
For a short period of time during my undergraduate career, I avoided peer review at all costs. This was due to a weird mixup that I never got to the bottom to. In one of my English courses, the very first assignment we completed, an essay about the short story “Eveline” by james Joyce, had to go through the peer review process first. I was paired with someone I knew, but not very well. I gave her great feedback, if I may say so. At this time, I truly cherished peer reviewing; I liked reading my peers’ work and talking about it with them. I suppose, now, that many others do not feel this same way.
The person I was paired with barely gave me any feedback. She told me it was, “really good,”… and that was it. When I went to turn in my paper on BlackBoard, the plagiarism detected found my paper was 100% stolen. Even the heading, which included my name, obviously.
Now, I can’t say for sure if this student stole my paper. She stopped coming to class after the fourth week, so it is plausible. But this experience really turned me off from peer reviewing because I thought anyone and everyone would steal my ideas. I got over this fear with some intense exposure therapy (that being I was forced to do it in other classes). Brito’s article made me this of this experience, and remember that we need to treat others’ writing with kindness and respect. We should communicate what we loved about it, and what we didn’t. We shouldn’t go into peer review thinking something will be good or bad, but rather with an open mind and an awareness that both parties have the opportunity to grow.
Assessing Scholarly Multimedia
Cheryl Ball discusses her exploration of grading multimodal work. As someone who often relies on multimodality in my creative work, I can see where an instructor might be hesitant when it comes to grading: how do you grade something outside of the box we’re so used to?
To answer this as harmlessly as possible, a rhetorical standpoint would be the most helpful. At first, I thought an expressivist take would be the way to go. Though, after reading this quote from Kress, my thinking quickly shifted: “Design is the servant of rhetoric—or, to put it differently: the political and social interests of the rhetor are the generative origin and shaping influence for the semiotic arrangements of the designer.” Thus, it’s all about the creator’s intentions, and what they want the reader to get from their work. So, it’s rhetorical at heart.
How can we create one rubric that takes into account every sort of thinking process each student underwent, and how that thinking process came to fruition? Ball breaks down her specific cumulative assignments for the project and how those assignments translated into six criteria: creativity, conceptual core, research/credibility, form/content, audience, timelines. These are worthy components and a great reflection of the rhetorical approach students were expected to embark. Though, this inquiry into how to grade such. projects lends itself to a bigger conversation: how are we choosing how to grade anything?
If I were Ball, I would simply take the approach Dr. Friend takes with our final projects for this class: individual meetings to track progress and give specialized feedback. I fear that even without hardcore guidelines within a rubric like Ball provides, it still either boxes students in or pushes them out entirely. Yes, meeting with students and supervising projects that are very different from each other on an individual basis is time-consuming, but I feel that we must invest this time wisely when it comes to rhetorical projects such as this one that requires so much creativity and personality. Giving students the time of day, so to speak, in situations like this, is kind and worth it.
So, Let’s Stop Killing Each Other
Inoue’s article made me think back to my World Englishes class I took last semester. In this class, I developed this odd dislike, not necessarily hatred, towards English — like a bad taste in your mouth that you can’t seem to get rid of until the next day. What this article affirmed for me is that English is not a constant in the equation of life, but rather a dependent variable. There are an infinite number of ways to engage with and use the English language. We, as a society, especially in the U.S., do not hold space for this; we assess people, within the walls of schools and beyond, based on how they use English.
Going back to Yancey’s threshold idea that writers bring their own histories and experiences to the table, this idea can be applied to the usage of English, too. Not every person who uses English today has direct ancestral connections to those who spawned English… I know that I do not. As a first generation American, I recognize the fallbacks English has when people whose histories do not coincide with hegemonic Euro-centric ideals try to integrate English into their cultured lives. I have seen it firsthand. Though, this issue doesn’t just stem from having roots in other lands. It stems from the expectation that all humans have an innate sense to squeeze themselves into the most popular box. This is not compassionate nor kind — this is dehumanizing. This is oppression at the root of how we connect with one another.
So, we have to accept that English looks different for everyone, and that is more than fine. Once we get past this, hopefully we will stop killing each other and start listening to one another.
Inoue touched on this in the article, but if it seems like killing each other over English seems out of proportion…
It isn’t.
Check out this article about the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon, which is happening right now:
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