1.

I am still a novice teacher; like a movie buff thrust suddenly into a title role, I am not sure just how to apply my experience now that my position has been (as it were) reversed. There are certain things I feel I do well: I expect the best from my students, and I have been able to elicit improvement from most of them. I have earned their respect--even though at times I feel I've lost their interest. I give numerous readerly comments on student papers, and I have made clear the reasons for these comments.

Yet still I often wonder about what can be accomplished in five weeks by a novice teacher and a group of freshmen, given the limited experience of both. To give them "Literature"--that, I am afraid, is both impossible and potentially counterproductive. Yet I believe that five weeks is enough time to give students a sharper critical sense of what goes unspoken in the productions of language, what is everywhere implied but nowhere stated. I believe this critical sense to be even more valuable than the sense of "literature" that was in the past the ostensible goal of Freshman English.

To this end, I have designed a course in which there is ample time to probe the stories in question, both through guided critique, in-class writing and responses, and small interactive reader/writer groups. I hope to give my students one or two basic tools with which to identify such material. In the same vein, I hope to assist them in seeing the presumptions of their own writing, even as they produce it.

I have no illusions about my preparedness for such a task; there are many other factors besides my own inexperience which tell against it. Yet I believe that, at the very least, I can do no worse than the inculcation of received ideas that has been the prior status quo at S.U. and countless other institutions. I know that my classroom is the only mediated small-group environment my students encounter in their first year. This gives me the desire as well as the energy to proceed as best I can, always encouraging their tentative steps even as I make my own hesitant way through the educational process. My one confidence, honed on my General-Essay experience, is that there is much more to my students (and myself) than either of us ever suspected.

2.

I find myself resisting the invitation to acquaint myself with the theoretical discourses of teaching English. I am not opposed to theory; quite the contrary. I feel that postmodern theory has brought about the most significant revitalization of English since its birth as a discipline. Yet when it comes to the teaching act, I find "theory" to be at a disadvantage. I fear that the notion of "problematizing" culture's discourses too often throws our own uncertainties onto students whose basic skills aren't even up to defending the status quo. I also suspect theory as a disguise for abandonment of practice. But let me be more specific.

Lately, everyone is talking about pedagogy. Lately, I have been encouraged to see my students as guinea pigs. Lately, I have been buried in a heap of journal articles, filled with "research" on pedagogical practices. My lifelong experience with alternative forms of education prompts me to question some of these widely-felt imperatives.

The discipline of English (as an element in an undergraduate education) seems to have been annexed by the "sciences" of linguistics and psychology. There is a tremendous pressure to "problematize" the commonplace practices of teaching English, and to replace humanistic notions about teaching with principles derived from "research" conducted on students by teachers. Yet this pseudo-scientific approach has a number of severe problems:

1. Science depends upon hypotheses formulated and tested in a situation of limited variables. Yet the classroom is the site of numerous uncontrollable variables (The temperament of the teacher, the socioeconomic backgrounds of the students, the inculcated practices of all previous teachers upon each student, the hour of the day, the length of the class period, etc.).

2. Leaving aside the issue of scientificity, the "research" conducted has been largely interested (as opposed to disinterested). Teachers, by reinforcing he kinds of behavior they sought to elicit, have in many cases demonstrated only that students, given the chance, will respond to positive reinforcement (be it explicit or implicit).

3. Despite the problematization of such fundamental processes as "reading," "writing," and "responding," far more deeply-seated pedagogical notions, such as letter-grades, the "teacher," and the "university" are retained without critique.

As opposed to these notions, I feel that college "English" is not a "Science" and will never become one. It is instead the site of a cultural discourse, an interaction that has the potential to re-inscribe culture's "received ideas," or (and this interests me far more) to call them into question.

What interests me, then, is not the so-called "research" (although as a form of dissemination of variant teaching practices it has some value), but rather the immediate issues of teaching practice. Why should a teacher be the source of authority? Why should not the very notion of "authority" be questioned?

Why not enfranchise the student to be maker of her own education? What meaning can such a distant abstraction as a letter-grade have? Is a letter grade an objective standard, or instead (as I feel from my own experience) a mask for the lack of any objective standard?

From the time I entered the Friends' School (my high school) in Cleveland, Ohio, until I received my B.A. in 1983, I never received a letter grade. Throughout that time, I addressed my teachers by their first names. Only in classes in the sciences did I sit and passively receive a lecture; in all other classrooms I sat in a circle with my teacher and other students; lectures took place, but my appearance at them was never supposed to constitute the whole of "learning." At Goddard College, in Plainfield, Vermont, I worked with teachers in the oldest of pedagogical forms: the seminar/symposium. My teachers were quiet, unpretentious, and treated me as their human equal, making no show of their superior knowledge. Rather than calling upon me to rise to their level, they came to mine, and gave me guidance in locating my own voice. They took me on a journey, not (as is the habit in most universities today) blindfolded and handcuffed in the trunk of a car, but with eyes open, as partners in the ancient discourses of something (Art, Philosophy, Hermeneutics) they knew to be greater than either of us. I was not presumed to be uninterested; in fact they taught nothing if they did not teach the fact that I was implicated in every discourse I participated in. They taught me to be suspicious of too-strong convictions, to be comfortable with the uncertainties of the world, and even to mistrust comfort. And they taught me to love learning.

This is the kind of teaching that counts for me. Its first principle is that of our fundamental equality as human beings. Knowledge does not make one "better," than others; it does not give one the right to choose for another. In the scientific model of teaching, the teacher takes the role of Scientist, the Father, the One-who-knows; the students, as subjects of an experiment, are even less than children--they become mere things. In the latter-day structuralist model, there are only discourses and codes; people are spoken by language and not vice-versa. Once again, the human being is reduced to a null value, a mere place-holder. I find these views of minimal value to the business of teaching. For teaching is a human activity; we can be aware of its implications (ideology, semantics) without necessarily teaching those implications as a substitute for the teaching of practice itself. I do not wish to rehearse the old humanistic notion of education, but rather to, having cleared the air, return to the open discussion of the symposium, freshly cognizant of our own limitations (which, if nothing else, constitute our humanity).

3.

In all my teaching, the most difficult task is not to take up the discourse of mastery. I know now that even when I invite students to present their own questions and concerns about a story (and place these on the board), I am still liable to construct a model that is both an appropriation of their ideas and (by its seeming "ease"), a subtle condescension. A difficult story (such as "The Yellow Wallpaper" proved to be for my students) often elicits confused silence in answer to my customary query "What struck you about this story?" Too often I fill that silence up with my own interpretations; I am unable to bear the tension, even if (in the abstract) such tension seems productive. To counter this tendency, I have recently borrowed an idea from Steve Thorley; I now ask each student to write a question (anonymously) on a small slip of paper; I collect these and put six or seven of them up on the board. I then go through them one by one, throwing them back to the students. Since each
question has an author, I almost always get at least one interested response; since the questions are peer-generated, they are usually far less intimidating than my, own (even if my own might have been very nearly identical).

This process takes place each Monday; on Wednesdays my students and I develop a few new ideas, or pursue those that still seem puzzling. We then write brief (1-2 paragraph) responses, which can take the form of anything from a letter (from one character to another, or to the author) to a brief critique. These papers are brought back to the small groups on Fridays, where every student has time to read their response, and other students can offer their reactions. I make this as non-threatening a situation as possible; if the student wishes not to read, they may simply make a brief oral statement. As there are two groups in each section, I spend half of the period with each; so far I've been pleasantly surprised by the extent to which the group I'm not with gets right down to business.

This, to date, has been my experience of teaching. It has been unpredictable, unmanageable. And, at the same time, it has been the most rewarding experience of my life.