M. said he couldn't sleep nights. He would stay up late--some nights going out, some nights reading or watching TV, some nights writing in his journal. He would sleep all morning, occasionally arriving late to my 11:30 Studio 1, or sleeping right through it. When he came to class, he sat at the far end of the table and kept fairly quiet. M. usually looked as if he would rather be back in his bed. In discussion, he would respond hesitantly and only when called on. The only in-class activities he seemed to enjoy -- and engage in -- were the small workshop groups. The students' first formal paper was a personal narrative. M. decided to write about his experiences as a lifeguard in Wildwood, New Jersey. His narrative was one of the longer ones, and it was the most difficult to read. Entitled "Birdman," it began,
M.'s narrative was filled with spelling errors, misused words, awkward phrases and broken constructions. When he read his paper in class, the other students were confused.
These students could neither follow M.'s narrative nor understand his language. They felt that he could improve his paper by avoiding large or unnecessary words and confusing sentences, and by using a dictionary to avoid misspelling and misusing words.
Based on my observations from class, I thought that M. had taken his workshop group seriously. He had eagerly offered suggestions to the other students, and had listened to their comments. I told the students that I expected them to revise their narratives before turning them in, yet M.'s finished narrative was unchanged from the draft he had read in class. Why hadn't he revised? Had he chosen to ignore their criticism? Was he just lazy? Or was there another reason?
When I read his paper, I decided to concentrate on the first page. I marked all the points where his meaning was unclear. I circled spelling errors and obscure phrases. I peppered the page with questions. By the time I was finished, I had written more on the first page than M. had. When I returned his paper in conference, M. seemed surprised by all my scribblings. I explained to him my difficulties and told him what I had done. Then we began to go through his first paragraph line by line.
When I pointed out all the spelling errors, he tried to excuse himself by saying that he had always been a bad speller. When I pointed out that some of the words he'd used didn't mean what he'd thought they meant, M. became a little defensive, and began to explain what he had meant to say. I interrupted him and told him that his reader wouldn't be able to hear his excuses and explanations; his reader had only the text to go by. "What did you mean by this?" I asked, indicating a phrase. When he explained, I found that his intended meaning had either been lost behind the words, compacted beyond recognition, or left out entirely. What he said he had meant to write was clearer than what he had actually written. I asked him why he hadn't written that instead. M. explained that he wanted to be creative. He wanted to force the readers to make sense of the text for themselves. I told him that this was an admirable ambition but that his readers could not understand him. In this case, what good was creativity? Why should readers struggle through an unfathomable text? M. frowned.
"What's this all about?" I asked, and he began to tell me. His narrative was about his summer experiences: working as a lifeguard, observing the people, passing time with his girlfriend, getting in a fight, earning the nickname of "Birdman," and so on. He stopped himself, saying, "So much happened." At this point he realized that he was trying to write about too many things. We decided that he should choose one idea from "Birdman" and write about that.
I encouraged M. to avoid words that were large or unnecessary by writing in plainer language. I asked him whose writing he like to read, and he told me he liked Hemingway. I began to read from his narrative, and then asked, "Would Hemingway write a sentence like this?" He laughed and shook his head.
M. agreed to finish a revision before Thanksgiving. After the conference, I thought that I had a better sense of M. as a writer. It seemed to me that he had just needed to be convinced to revise, and I felt I had done that. I looked forward to reading his revised narrative.
I didn't receive M.'s narrative until the end of the semester. It was entitled "King Dog" and, although it focused on one idea from the first narrative, it included none of the original text. "King Dog" was not a revision, but an entirely new essay.
This text was as opaque as his original narrative. It was not a piece of finished, formal writing. When I read M.'s journal, I discovered that "King Dog" had been written in a single sitting. It was a first draft. In fact, all of the essays he completed for the course were written in single drafts.
So was M. merely lazy? When I looked at the effort that he put into his journal, I didn't think so. He made his journal more personal than did any of the other students. In addition to the required sections, he had sections for his poems, a personal diary, and lists of new vocabulary words. He wrote in his journal regularly and at length. So the problem wasn't laziness.
I remembered he had said in conference that he wanted to be creative. But what did he mean by "creative?" In a journal entry he wrote that "creative writing flows wild and is spiritual...and spontaneous. Thoughts flow." His writing resembles what Linda Flower calls "Writer-Based Prose" (College English, Vol. 41, No. 1). Flower believes that "effective writers do not simply express their thoughts but transform them." M. had thoughts in his head and he expressed them in writing. Later, when he read the text, he could understand what he had written only because he had written it. Since M. wrote to express himself, rather than to transform private thought into a public text, the readers were left outside the written text. It was as if they had overheard him talking to himself in a language they did not understand.
Most of what the students wrote in first drafts and journals was "Writer-Based Prose." In the studio, I referred to this kind of prose as informal or rough writing. I emphasized rough writing as an early step in the writing process; the step in which writers could catch themselves thinking. I expected the students to work at transforming their rough, informal, and private writing into a text that was finished, formal, and public. I expected the students to revise. M. did not revise.
To M., revision is not writing. He sees writing as a creative, wild, spontaneous, out-flowing act of self-expression. Revising is neither creative, wild, nor spontaneous; it was tedious and dull. I had included workshop groups and written peer reviews in the studio on the assumption that the students would use these activities as the basis for revision. M. was willing to offer suggestions for revision to the other students, but he did not think that revision was necessary in his case. Because he did not revise, he was not engaging fully with these activities, so inevitably they were not useful to him.
As I read through M.'s final portfolio, it occurred to me that he needed to learn --that I should have taught him -- that revision is a necessary part of the writing process; it is what makes writing a process and not merely an act. Until the end of the semester, I did not realize that I might need to convince some students of the necessity of revision. M. needed to be convinced, but his preconceived notions about writing prevented him from listening. Although M. claimed to want to be a writer, he didn't think that writing required much work. When the students and I suggested that he needed to revise his writing, he chose to ignore our comments in order to avoid what he viewed as tedious and unnecessary work. In this sense, M. was lazy.
How should I handle resistant students like M.? As a teacher, I expect the students to engage in the studio. In turn, it is my responsibility to plan activities that will be useful to the students. In order for the studio to succeed, students who do not find an activity useful need to inform me of this problem. It is then my decision either to redesign that activity, or to convince the student of its worth. Unfortunately, some students do not bring their questions out into the open, but instead resist quietly. As a new teacher, I have not yet developed the ability to identify every type of resistance. I didn't identify the extent of M.'s resistance until the end of the course, and so could not teach him. In order to teach effectively, I need to learn to identify the types of resistance, and to encourage students to express their resistance openly. By responding directly to students' resistance, I can allow students to create their own studio, which will better meet their individual needs as writers.