Teaching college students for the first time and not knowing quite what to expect, I wanted to anticipate and counter all potential hazards before they became major problems. Consequently, as one potential problem I identified in the first few days of class, Graham was one of the students on whom I decided to keep an eye. It was not that he was overtly aggressive or blatantly opposed to class activities; rather, he appeared to offer something more threatening‹silent resistance. He usually sat with what I interpreted to be a constant look of skepticism on his face. As the days progressed, my impressions did not improve. As part of their first assignment, I asked the students to bring in four photocopies of their drafts for their peer groups to work on; Graham completely forgot his. When the students' final drafts were ready, I asked that they bring in enough copies for the entire class in order that we could produce a class magazine; Graham brought in twenty copies of his first draft. I read a poem in one class and had the students produce a free-writing response; Graham wrote about lunch and his girlfriend. When I scheduled class for the computer cluster, Graham was the only student who went to our normal classroom as usual and had to come find me later to discover where we had been. His mind simply did not seem to be with us on some occasions. First impressions did not bode well for the future.

With each successive incident that indicated a lack of communication between Graham and myself, I grew more concerned about him. I wondered if he had a learning disability: Why was it that he had difficulty understanding and carrying Out my instructions? Was it a lack of clarity on my part? Was it not enough for me to go over instructions orally and write them out on the board? Did I need to make sure that all instructions were typed out and distributed to every member of the class? But why did it seem to be a problem only Graham had when the majority of the class had no difficulty in bringing the correct assignment to class, or relocating when the occasion demanded?

When I did eventually receive his first paper, I thought that Graham might be one of my less able students. At that point, I resolved to determine what I needed to do to establish better communication between him and myself, and how I could begin to address his individual needs. I though that the first individual conference would be an excellent opportunity for me to begin to see him as more than just another face in the class. But I had no such luck. If anything, he was even more guarded in conference than he was in class. My questions elicited very short answers, and apart from the fact that we decided that I would from now on make sure that all instructions were written down in some form, and apart from my discovering that he did not like poetry, the meeting did not seem to have been at all productive. I felt more than ever that the gulf between us as student and teacher was enlarging. In fact, by the end of the conference with him I managed to come out feeling as if I was the one who was totally disorganized. Because at the time I was preoccupied in contemplating how to get round his wall of impregnability, I did not think to point out that he had been the only one to misinterpret or ignore my directions.

As a frustrated instructor working to avoid hostility, I tried to rationalize the meeting's events. The picture I began to construct of Graham's character was that of an aloof individual, who seemed to exist in his own private world and whose choice of information from the outside world was highly selective. If information did not suit him, or advantage him in any way, then he would ignore it. Hence, if my directions to the class did not strike him as being interesting or useful, he would simply tune out and not listen. Moreover, I felt that he was a self-centered being who would always try to exteriorize responsibility and would never admit to anything that was his own failing. Hence his belief that I was at fault in not making my instructions clear enough to him. So, end of round one‹advantage Graham.

For a time my attention was drawn away from Graham's particular needs to those of some of my other students, and he drifted along with the rest of the class without my noticing anything remarkable about his progress. He managed to hand in some assignments on time and I was pleased with the length and depth of his first few journal entries, but there was nothing to make me think that I was getting anywhere in the quest to understand him better. His next formal paper, however, greatly surprised me. I had assigned a number of readings on the value of education and had followed it up by asking them to write an intellectual autobiography. Most of the class wrote about their high school successes and their ambitions for college, and what keen students they were. Graham's was startlingly different, and refreshing. His second paragraph began:

To make things clear, I never considered myself an intellectual and never will in the future. I have always been an unmotivated student.. .. It was never the case that I hated school or even disliked it, it was simply that I was never inspired by my schooling.

Here was an honesty I had not expected from him; it was not simply that he confessed to being an unmotivated student but that he was independent-minded enough not to grind out a paper containing an account of his life history as he thought his teacher would want to hear it. If I had been in his place, I would have had second thoughts about letting any teacher or instructor know that I was indifferent to the values she or he must hold sacred--not if I wanted a good grade. This one paper gave me a new insight into how Graham's mind operated, and at the same time helped me begin to generate the list of questions I was to contemplate before the semester was out.

One point that the paper revealed was that Graham did have it within him to be a good student and a good writer. It was obvious that the assignment was one that had grabbed his attention in some way; not only did he write it with sincerity, but the quality of his writing had vastly improved from the last, more stilted examples I had seen, and he had incorporated issues raised by the reading as many of his classmates had not. The fact that he was not apparently grade-oriented was also all to the good as far as the assignment was concerned, for I had hoped to make my students aware that education is more than being granted an A, B, C, or D at the end of a semester. In a journal entry he wrote:

. . . .one must assert oneself in order to gain an education. . . . One must claim an education. I am all in favor of abolishing the grading system, [Sic.] I think that too many students, including myself, strive for a higher grade rather than a higher education. . . . Motivation plays a key role in the gradeless system.

So it was clear that he was aware of the value of education; but it would seem that he found it difficult to maintain a strong enough interest to make that value his own.

It now appeared that in his past papers Graham had been uninspired about the topics; if he was uninterested then he would not put in the effort. In this respect the problem of motivation was not Graham's alone, for it was an uphill struggle for me to keep the attention of the entire class whenever we had to cover the more mundane writing issues, such as problems with grammar, or when the readings were less than scintillating. But what about Graham in particular? At least with the majority of the class if what we did was not too enthralling they would comply anyway, even if somewhat grudgingly. But it became increasingly obvious that if Graham did not see the point of a task he would find a way of avoiding it. The issue of peer groups was a particularly sticky one; Graham never did participate fully in those. Sometimes he would be absent from class on workshop days, or he would sit for as long as possible on his own before being shunted off to join his group, and even then he would often work entirely on his own within the group. On one occasion the two other students he was working with sat and worked together on papers while he sat two feet away without joining in their collaboration. Observing them at the time I did not believe that the situation was caused by a clash of personalities. In other instances, such as when he was asked to work in a pair, Graham was more inclined to participate, but his critiques were never lengthy.

As far as his entire interaction with the rest of the class was concerned, I could never ascertain exactly how he and his peers held each other in regard He would never enter into friendly conversation with anyone as the others would while waiting for class to start. There was never a certain group towards which he would orientate at any time. The students in my class were on the whole very comfortable with one another, and everyone seemed to make friends with everyone else, apart from one or two quieter and less extrovert individuals, Graham being one. He certainly kept very much to himself. In class discussion I rarely heard him speak up, and when I sat in on small group discussion he never seemed to involve himself much in dialogue with other students; any remarks he made on those occasions were always directed to me.

It was hard for me to judge how the other students regarded Graham. They definitely were not hostile towards him, and if I were forced to hazard a guess I would say that a majority of them were of the same opinion as I was: that he was on the periphery of things because he wanted to be there and not because he was designated by the group in some way as a social outcast. In his autobiography Graham confessed himself to be a socialite. He chose to write an ethnography on a highly social and very close group of Hispanic students at Syracuse. In this choice of study Graham put himself in the position of having to become a member of the group. His finished paper showed that he had been successful in becoming close to a number of individuals within the group. So, Graham obviously appeared to be someone who could fit in where and when he wanted to.

On occasion he certainly managed to surprise me with his social skills. One instance of this unexpected aspect of Graham's personality was the last formal paper presentation in class. The assignment demanded that the students select a famous or well-known personage of past or present and argue for his or her remaining presence in a lifeboat/balloon equipped only for two survivors. Graham's assumed character of Elvis Presley managed to give the most convincing and entertaining argument of the week -- he was voted a unanimous success. So it was definitely not the case that he could not charm his classmates when he wanted to be popular.

Here then was Graham, an independent-minded student, and every inch an individualist, who chose when and how he wanted to participate in class activities. He would socialize and interact with whom he wanted, and he would not put in the time and energy on an assignment or an activity if he did not have an interest in it. From his autobiography and his journal there was the suggestion that if he was to find a subject in the academic world that interested him then he would pursue it with intensity. How could I maintain his interest enough to convince him that education could be exciting for him? Yet I had to think of my class as a whole and to consider the course I had planned. Was the material stimulating enough to encourage a high degree of motivation from everyone? Would changing my syllabus appear to be a compromise of my position as a teacher by pandering completely to the tastes of the students?

I looked over my course plan, thought about the issue in a general sense and not just as it related to Graham's particular predilections and decided that in some instances hard and tedious work is necessary and that there was enough creative freedom in what I had originally planned theoretically to suit the majority of tastes. I would just have to risk being seen as the teacher who assigns "boring" work on occasion. I would rather be a bore and have my students learn something I considered useful than have them do work that always motivates them and have them learn nothing very much at all. As far as Graham was concerned, however, I just had to hope that he would find some interest in what was planned for the course. I'm thankful to say that he did.

The turning point of the class for Graham appeared, as far as I can tell, to be the ethnography project. Initially the ethnography project appeared daunting to everyone, but once the students began to pinpoint a particular group to study, most of them found it stimulating and challenging. In conference with me later, Graham informed me that he enjoyed the ethnography assignment because it involved a good deal of freedom of choice; he was not forced to work on a topic someone else had set for him. Likewise with the lifeboat-balloon debate, and surprisingly enough, his journal writing, the freedom of choice actually seemed to stimulate him. With particular reference to the journal, whereas many students did not fully appreciate having to work on these, Graham enjoyed the freedom of being able to write primarily for himself rather than for the teacher.

Perhaps the most important question to address is what to do in general with a student like Graham in the classroom. How is it best to accommodate the independent minded and creative student who needs something challenging to work on and who will carry on in his own sweet way regardless of the teacher's directions if those directions don't strike him as being beneficial? Graham, for example, did not find the peer editing sessions particularly helpful, and avoided them as much as possible; but in a similar situation with other students should instructors be more watchful and hound them to participate to a greater degree than I did with Graham? Do instructors have the right to force a student to do such an activity in the first place?

It is not every student's pleasure to have his or her work on display. At the beginning of the semester some individuals were very nervous and upset at having people other than the teacher read their work and although Graham was not one of those who came to see me about his concerns it may have been that part of the problem was just that. He did tell me that in regard to class discussion he did not like to add to the conversation unless he had clear opinions about what was being discussed and had formulated exactly what he wanted to say. Although he did not criticize the peer groups directly, by his reluctant efforts to participate it was clear that they did not altogether suit him. It may have been that I advocated the use of peer groups so much that he might have believed it to be an unwise move to come out m blatant opposition to what was apparently something of great value to the teacher. A strong possibility, as shown by his desire for exactitude of expression in his speech, is that he did not care to have his rough, unfinished, and imprecisely written drafts on view to all and sundry. Do we the instructors have a right to put students on the spot like this?

The ethos of the studio class is on group collaboration whether it be on joint projects or on peer editing. Where does an independent-minded and independently social being like Graham fit in? Should we try to make him fit, like pushing the round peg into the square hole? My conclusion in this particular situation was that, yes, I should push, but not to the extent that it was detrimental for either him or me. As instructors we have to wield our authority with care. Impose too little authority and the students try to introduce anarchy; impose too much, and they squirm under what they see as tyranny to the point that rebellion may be reached. I could have made a fuss whenever I saw that Graham was not participating as I wanted him to, but that may have caused greater resistance both in him and in the rest of the class if the students saw that I was constantly picking on him. What I did once I was aware of his antipathy was to ask him quietly if he understood what he had to do and to leave it at that. In this way I was maintaining my authority in the classroom by letting him know that I had not let him off the hook, and at the same time I was not being the heavy-handed teacher, but allowed him some freedom by not pursuing him relentlessly.

By the end of the semester Graham's participation and involvement in the class did improve. He was more willing to voice his opinion in class discussion and he did appear to enjoy some of the assignments. This change, however, may well have been the result of my having asked him to participate in my case study. I am not sure to what extent Graham did appreciate the ethos of the writing studio, which was to work on and improve writing skills by all the self-reflection and group collaboration. When asked what expectations he had of 105 at the beginning of the semester, Graham wrote that he hoped he would be able to do a great deal of reading; at the end of the semester when asked for his assessment of the class, he said that he had not been able to read as much as he had wanted. Somehow I think he had distinct notions of what 105 should be, and I never managed to convince him about my notions of 105. When all is said and done, I wonder to what extent I did manage to reach him, or at least, to what extent he would admit that I had.

Graham's case, although unique to him in some ways, does illustrate certain issues of concern with other students, namely those who are less inclined towards participating in the studio environment for one reason or another. Having considered some of the questions stimulated by his presence in class, I have tried to alter my policies accordingly. The first point, and one which I find is by no means a small issue, is the question of what to do with students who are less than interested in a writing class and are present because it is a requirement for them. Allied to this question is what to do with those students who want to be creative and who become quickly turned off by dull or tedious assignments and exercises. Faced this semester with an especially resistant class, I have become even more aware of the pressure students can exert on the instructor. Confronted with ten or more apathetic individuals who loudly voice their dissatisfaction with the grades assigned them, it would be easy to compromise by making the course less challenging, lowering the standards for grading, and allowing the students to breeze through. An additional pressure to compromise, if a small one, is the consideration that student evaluations are examined by the Writing Program directors, and that the students have the opportunity to portray us in a bad light if they so want.

After some deliberation, I have decided that I will not compromise my standards, and that I will just have to risk receiving bad evaluations. Although it is impossible to avoid the dull and tedious altogether, and while I would never want to become the entertainer," I do concede that there is the need to design my class with spice enough to make learning an enjoyable experience. I like to be as creative as I can myself, so my writing studio need not then be torture for any of us. As long as I do not give the class entirely over to the pursuit of pleasure, but ensure that there is an educational purpose to everything we do, then we should have the best of both worlds. More and more I have come to appreciate the value of having a topic of inquiry or a project as approaches to teaching writing skills rather than simply focusing upon the skills themselves. The latter approach would lead to the writing class being a sentence of hard labor (pun intended).

In regard to the needs of the independent individual in the classroom I have considered how best to conduct group activity. I will not allow students off the hook completely, in that I will ask them initially to work in groups when required with the philosophy that it is not possible to know what an experience is like unless it is attempted. But if individuals continue to be uncomfortable with group work (and their reluctance is not that they are simply too lazy), then I will try to provide the opportunity for individual work within groups. After trying out various methods of conducting workshops, for example, I will allow the students to decide for themselves how they want to continue them. The alternatives will be to work in threesomes or to work individually where I will try to give them some assistance myself. I can foresee some possible problems with this "free for all," but I will try it for one occasion at least.

Where I have decided that individuals need certain freedom within the peer editing system, I also believe that I need to consider individual freedom in group projects. Not everyone works well in collaboration. For instance, when the teacher selects groups and forces people to work together personalities can clash. When students work with friends, friendship itself can get in the way of production, as shared outside interests divert their attention, or worse, as usually covert petty rivalries suddenly manifest themselves. And of course, some individuals simply prefer working on their own. Our studio classes are writing studios after all and are not designed to increase interpersonal skills. What is perhaps necessary when planning a group activity is to view the class as having mixed abilities and interests, and to incorporate as much flexibility as possible. Collaboration could be designed to involve a number of roles which allow students to work on their own, in pairs, in threes, or in larger groups. Planning such collaboration may demand more of the instructor in time and preparation, but it may be worth the effort to have a class that is more satisfied, and more satisfying.