When looking back at the history of American composition instruction, one discovers that the notion of writing instruction as remediation was present from the late 19th Century, when Harvard required incoming freshmen to take a writing course that would address weaknesses found in entrance exam essays (Connors, Berlin). Unfortunately, little exists in the archives about how the early teachers of these courses were trained, if they were at all.
The field of "basic writing," on the other hand, locates its beginning, as Deborah Mutnick recently noted, in the era since the 1960's, when non-white working-class students of various ethnicities and races entered higher education in greater numbers. In this more recent period, teacher training for basic writing has become a major area of concern for a number of constituencies: top-level administrators concerned about retention of students, writing program administrators and faculty, adjunct faculty, and graduate teachers with varying levels of experience who seek knowledge and need training that will benefit them in an incredibly tough job market. Students, another major stakeholder, are generally uninvolved in teacher training, and perhaps should be more often. Effective training of teaching assistants and other instructors for basic writing courses involves recognizing and working within the criss-cross of interests held by each "player" in order to meet the needs of students.
How do we approach teaching and training?
Since I'm writing now as a faculty member, I'll state right away my interest in getting those who think about teacher training for basic writing courses as a process of both engaging and dis-engaging one's own history as a writing student. What do I mean by this paradoxical statement? Sometimes, when talking to teachers in training, there is a tendency to fall back on the example provided by a favorite teacher or class in order to build an approach that will now work for us.
Of course it's great to remember and gain inspiration from excellent or heroic teachers. Mike Rose draws on such an experience in Lives on the Boundary when he recalls a committed teacher who took him seriously enough to discover that he was a misplaced vocational track student. Engagement with this kind of life-changing individual history can only make us better teachers. In a similar vein, remembering that we continue to learn, as writers, can also be a productive way to establish connections with students.
But what about the many idiosyncratic, non-systematic moments of learning that we all experience which are not necessarily reproducible in our own teaching of writing? In my case, I'll always remember my freshman humanities teacher who was so involved with our text for the day that he sometimes found himself in the corner, lecturing to the wall. I found his unconventionality quite appealing. But is this a method that I should adopt for my basic writing students? I don't think so. At least not without serious thought.
Or what about methods of learning that we were exposed to which have been shown to work only for some groups of students but not others? Increasing our odds of success with learners of all sorts (basic writers) should involve looking outside our experience and learning about what others have thought about and studied. Disengagement, then, from our own histories and a turn to researched methods is an equally important starting point for training. It is possible, and I'd argue, necessary, when training to teach basic writing both to hold on to meaningful strands of personal literacy history and also learn from researched methods and positions.
How should training be positioned within any one institution?
Approaches to teacher training in any one location will pragmatically involve interests and concerns of the faculty and instructors, administrators, and, most important, the students who will receive the instruction. Richard Miller has written about the need to recognize that we work within institutions with deep histories and administrative structures which writing teachers ignore at their own peril. Some will disagree with me, but I think it's important to try to join training, where possible, to administrative interests or initiatives. In a field that is often viewed by others within the academy with suspicion, training can function as cement that joins basic writing programs to larger, sometimes more permanent or powerful administrative structures.
Heads of basic writing programs, who are also administrators of sorts, need to take the lead and think carefully about what role training plays on campus. In our college, this has often meant pioneering training that other programs or departments might emulate, conducting at least part of the training through a formal course offered to all interested graduate students, whether teaching in our program or not, and involving other college groups in our training. All these efforts function not only as good training but also as ways to make basic writing more integral to a particular school's institutional structure.
I also recognize, of course, that different campus situations have more or less contentious relations with administrators, and this is something to discuss. It is the positioning within often contradictory institutional forces, always with an eye on program survival, that makes teacher training a complex piece of work. And one that immediately involves one's own political sensibilities.
How is training tied in with formation of community?
Teacher training works best when a community of basic writing teachers, with regular lines of communication and opportunities for sharing teaching strategies, successes, and frustrations, becomes part of the work landscape. I've learned from teachers that I work with that training is welcome as an ongoing part of doing the job rather than as a single how-to-run-the-dishwasher type training that might take place in a week-long pre-semester session. To this end, following up pre- or post-semester training with regular, informal meetings during the semesters provides our instructors a chance to develop as practicing teachers who talk to other practicing teachers. This is different, and often more effective, than gathering occasionally to read a common journal article or talk about a current method discovered at a conference. But these activities, too, might be fair game and provide a way to talk about what is actually working in our classes.
Longer training sessions at the beginning and end of each year can also be effective when they stem from our teachers' classes and discussions, some of which have already been started in earlier small-group sessions or hallway discussions. In our program, training is almost always interactive, as often put together by graduate or adjunct volunteers as faculty that tackle concerns such as dealing with assignment sequences and reading strategies, grading student work, and making our classes inviting multicultural spaces for learning. When working out responses to such issues, creating an environment that recognizes the ways that teaching load, rank, identity issues, and power, generally, play a part is important for maintaining a sense that we are a group not only working toward the goal of good instruction but also a group that performs this work with differences.
How can training provide opportunities for professionalization?
Professionalization opportunities are also important to good teacher training approaches. Above I mentioned community -- I know that it's hard to create a local community in some cases because there is only one person teaching basic writing on campus or because other circumstances work against it. Luckily, this profession is one that welcomes people and provides community to many instructors of different academic ranks. Informing instructors of the Basic Writing Special Interest Group at 4C's, the listserv devoted to basic writing (CBW-L), and the journals in the field (JBW and BWe-journal, for starters) provide ways for folks to enter and become involved with the field on a level beyond the local campus. This discussion is another such venue. Of course, funding folks to go to conferences and learn more should also be part of training.
Closer to home, professionalization opportunities might include helping teachers appreciate and get credit for their expertise. We ask our teachers to document their teaching practices and other activities with a teaching portfolio that is read annually by supervisors. Innovative assignments, course syllabi, classroom observation letters, teaching philosophy statements, and other documented activities form the basis for the portfolio. Besides providing a good way to collect and document their work, instructors rely on their portfolios for job searches and setting new goals.
How does training participate in creating literacy conditions for instructors and students?
Complicating the picture of what to tackle on a micro level with teachers is our field's knowledge that whatever we end up doing participates in re-creating (or changing) educational conditions of students seeking to gain literacy that will help them in material ways. Training can function as a signal to teachers that a well-considered direction is being set by administrators, and that the training itself represents an effective first step.
How training is conducted (more democratic than top-down?) also sends signals about how consonant the process of taking any one direction may be with overall goals. Jeanne Gunner, in a 1999 WPA article called "Identity and Location: A Study of WPA Models, Memberships, and Agendas," raises the issue of program administrators needing to break out of the "insularity" of our own programs. Giving new instructors a sense that this field really does mean something in the larger debate about access and definition of education and literacy gives a sense of the importance of their project of teaching basic writing.
Possible Discussion Questions About Teacher Training
Facing Our Own Writing Student Pasts
What worked for us as students and why? What might be carried over?
Where can our past teachers and their methods be placed among possible approaches?
How did our own relative privilege, or lack of privilege, play a part in achieving success as writers/college students?
What beliefs about writing and literacy instruction have we developed through our own student experiences?
Training Within Institutional Structures
What do our campus administrators (at various levels) expect from the basic writing program or classes? How much of this kind of knowledge is available and visible?
What kind of training will improve overall instructional climate, not only for writing teachers but for all?
What alliances with the basic writing program are possible/desirable within the institution (Writing Center, Special Programs for 1st generation students, Writing Across the Curriculum initiatives, retention initiatives)?
Creating a Community of Basic Writing Instructors
How is training perceived by instructors? Do they have a stake in what happens?
What are the regular lines of communication established for the discussion of basic writing instruction on the campus (within the program and beyond)?
How are power differences among instructors acknowledged and managed?
Is there a central on-line location for basic writing instructors?
Do instructors have knowledge of, and support for entering, professional communities?
Organizing Training Sessions
What topics matter to instructors? What do they say they want to discuss?
What topics, if any, need to be included (Approaches to student error? Dialect issues?
Classroom workshop techniques? Approaches to reading for writing?
Accommodating students with disabilities? Teaching with available technology?)?
How are sessions organized and run? Who gains de facto expert status?
Viewing Training as Part of Larger Literacy Processes
How does the training on any campus contribute to current debates within the field?
How does the training on any campus contribute to current national/international literacy debates?
How does training value difference?
How can training extend to learning about larger literacy processes?
Professionalization
Do instructors have ways to see their work as valuable and themselves as experts?
What kind of mentoring channels exist?
Do research projects extend to non-tenure track faculty?
How can graduate students join the work of teaching basic writing to their graduate studies?
Berlin, James. Rhetoric and Reality. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1988.
Connors, Robert. Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.
Gunner, Jeanne. "Identity and Location: A Study of WPA Models, Memberships, and Agendas." Writing Program Administration 22.3 (Spring, 1999): 31-54.
Miller, Richard. As if Learning Mattered: Reforming Higher Education. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1998.
Mutnick, Deborah. "The Strategic Value of Basic Writing: An Analysis of the Current Moment." Journal of Basic Writing 19.1 (Spring, 2000): 69-83.
Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary. New York: Penguin, 1989.