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academic discipline, E, east carolina university, educational background, educational foundations, John Dawkins, Margaret Kuntz, pirate nation, research, rhetorical situations, rubrics, science
“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” ~ Malcolm Forbes
Dear QEP Counsel:
East Carolina University roughly supports about 30,000 people daily within its campus walls (Institutional Planning). With the collection of courses here at ECU—each with its own specified curriculum, its own organized syllabi, and your own unique adoption of the material as you teach—students learn, grow, and absorb the information you all provide about your subject(s) both through your teaching styles and their personal work ethic. As professors, doctors, librarians, and staff members here at ECU you obtain a different collection of students each semester every year, in a plethora of different class types and curriculum standards which you organize and prepare for each in your own ways, catering in most cases, if not all, to the student body.
Your students have come from different levels of education and are all assets to this campus community for immensely different reasons, but they have gathered here with a common goal in mind: to work and gain a better education through their experiences here. Universities like ECU pride themselves upon gathering the most diverse community of educators and students. Every single person, unique to the task they perform here is imperative to the clockwork of this Pirate-Nation.
With the welcoming embrace of all the differences that make up ECU’s educational system, students get excited about their learning when their past education is not examined and/or bundled together with their fellow students’ experiences. It is truly inexcusable and appalling for students to realize that our professors, understand that we all come from extremely different backgrounds and yet believe that we all have the same basic foundations in writing technique and appropriate style. Counsel, have any of you in your years of experience as students first and educators second ever had the same foundation teachings from one teacher to the next? Have you ever considered that among the vastly diverse student body here at ECU there is the possibility that not a single one of the students you work for and with has had the same educational foundation as their neighbor in any course of study, let alone writing? I am writing this letter to you today to urge you to step back and step into the shoes of your students, away from the comforts of your subject-concentrated classes, away from your field of study, and away from the notion that all pre-university level education is created equal. If your students are going to succeed in your classrooms and work environments, each of you must rid yourself of the idea that your students are on the same educational level, (in any discipline, especially writing), and you must adopt the notion of specific communication and true instruction.
A 2008 USA Today article titled, “If you can read this…” provided the disappointing statistic that “only a quarter of college graduates rate ‘proficient’ in literacy skills” making it very difficult for most people to be capable, much less competitive in their jobs when it came to “reading and writing” (If you can read this…” 8a). With the increased focus on writing and comprehension in every stage of education these days, this demoralizing research presents quite a shocking and disappointing national average that makes educators and current students alike question: how? What are any of us doing wrong to provide such a lack of competency among the work force? The article also stated that more and more “employers are struggling” with their incompetent employees whose “literacy levels [are so] low…[that it] impede[s] their progress on the job” everyday and continues to “[get] worse” (“If you can read this…” 8a). In understanding the dynamics between teachers of different subjects and their respective curriculums, it seems to be the case that most professors would blame his/her college or university’s English department for this lack of skill level. First and second year composition teachers could be under an enormous amount of ill-placed scrutiny if this were the case; professors across all fields of study would be very wrong to make such accusations, as it is just as much your fault as anyone of your English-teaching colleagues.
As an assembly of educators, all of you have the responsibility to ensure that your students have the same amount of preparation and practice with our reading and writing. Some of you may ask why it’s your personal responsibility within your science/history/math, 3-credit hour course to attest to my reading and writing skills when that should be covered in an English classroom—the answer is simple. Writing is a multi-dimensional, total encompassing form of communication necessary in every stage and every aspect of education. Nothing in education is as collective and cohesive, and nothing else is as necessary across every field as writing.
A history class has no need for a calculator. An Algebra class doesn’t require safety goggles. A chemistry class has no use for a world map. But all of these classes require at least one textbook and requires acute reading comprehension skills, as well as proficient writing capabilities ranging anywhere from simple fill in the blank test questions, to 15-20 page documented research proposals with full annotated bibliographies. Not to mention the fact that each course of study across every curriculum has its own style and unique qualities that help classify different textual works as ‘Scientific Journals’ versus ‘Historical summaries’ versus ‘Creative Writing.’
Professors outside of the English department cannot place the ridiculous pressure of our entire community’s writing skill across solely upon English professors. Yes, it is their field, however, you must recognize that it is in fact only a part of their curriculum, the same way it is a part of yours. In your “QEP: Vertical Writing Curriculum” proposal you proposed as a goal to better “[d]istribute and deliver writing instruction more strategically throughout students‘academic experiences at ECU” (QEP 1). Following this goal you stated that:
“Graduates who can write effectively for a variety of audiences, purposes, and situations will be better prepared to succeed in the global economy… [b]ecoming a better writer requires multiple, consistent opportunities to learn about, practice, and reflect on writing in various contexts and across all levels of the academy” (QEP 1).
I understood this passage to mean that every teacher (despite their class’s relevancy to English/writing-courses they teach) will be held responsible for creating strong, capable writers across the disciplines. “Many literacy faculty have…classes of students from a number of disciplines [and/]or students just beginning to consider what it means to be an academic reader and writer” (Johns 505). While it is chiefly the English department’s job to enhance students’ writing and teach us how to achieve compositional success at a college level, it is not their responsibility to teach us how to write a historical/scientific essay in a style that is appropriate for its field. That is where it becomes your responsibility as a history/science professor.
Your primary role as individual professors, staff and faculty members, researchers, and graduate and doctoral students within the great collection of diverse academics is to first and foremost expose us, your students, to the world of knowledge specific to your field, and then to help us explore that field in close detail by assigning written-based coursework that allows us to demonstrate the style and writing capacity necessary to your profession. My analytical Business and Finance teacher cannot teach me how to write a creative personal narrative. My British Literature professor cannot teach me how to write an organized, to-the-point scientific essay final for my biology class. Each teacher who is willing to assign an essay in any curriculum, must be ready to have a specific rubric organized with the requirements for the assignment prior to the first draft, and must also be willing to give examples of writing in that discipline. The rubric or any other “…scoring tool that lists the criteria…[ of the assignment including] purpose, organization,” (Finley 1) style and tone, formatting requirements, content, audience, length, academic support (sources information), appropriate thesis, and other teacher and/or course specific requirements.
Don’t assume as non-English teaching professors that your students know exactly what you are looking for simply because you think we’ve been taught it in an English class before. Every teacher has their own requirements and specific ways to display assignments and students have had to mold themselves to each grade in different ways. Be ready as “[p]rofessors…to teach a model for the kind of writing [you] expect” (Kantz 73). Students by status alone are flexible, (or rather we should learn to be due to the constantly changing models and formats we follow from classroom to classroom), but we still need direction. It is very important that teachers understand that of all the different professors a single student has ever had in their educational background, they have had that many different set of guidelines and assignment requirements; every teacher is different and therefore specificity is essential in every assignment given. What each professor presents as classroom tasks aren’t necessarily difficult to do, they just need to be done differently, according to that teacher’s rubric, personal preferences, and also what type of class they are teaching.
Teach us how to write like scientists, historians, novelists, and mathematical geniuses and then let us pick our forte just as you have. Don’t leave it all up to the English professors, who drill grammar and technique into us. Yes, those elements are inarguably important to our writing, but what you should learn to stress to us is that they are not everything—they are simply the tools, “the ‘mechanics’ of writing” (Dawkins 140) that help us convey our research and personal ideas to you. Then with the broad capacities you will learn to present to us to write in any discipline allows us to become the next generation of writers who can convey almost anything we deem necessary, to any audience, in many different styles, formats, and genres, proving then that your classroom assignments helped us grow in diversity and efficiency.
You are going to be successful with the QEP program if you are specific with your students and if you assume the role as a fellow writing teacher with every single one of your colleagues and continue to bring your own twist to your subject while helping students understand the stylistic differences across all parts of the university. Teach us how to learn from everything we do; don’t just teach us how to learn everything you do.
To ensure that every member of your student body succeeds in this new program, you must ensure first that every member of your faculty and staff have a deep foundation of understanding of the program; its goals, its guidelines, and its total purpose for being in place: your students.
Bibliography
Dawkins, John. “Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool.” Writing about Writing: A College Reader. Leasa Burton. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 139-154. Print.
Finley, Todd B. “Can Rubrics Inspire?.” Edutopia. The George Lucas Educational Foundation, 11 Jan. 2012. Web. 11 Jan. 2012.
“If you can read this . ..” News, USA Today 9 July 2008: Middle Search Plus. Web. 9 Feb. 2012.
“Institutional Planning, Assessment & Research.” Academic Affairs. East Carolina University, 3 Jan. 2012. Web. 13 Feb. 2012.
Johns, Ann M. “Discourse Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity.” Writing about Writing: A College Reader. Leasa Burton. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 498-518. Print.
Kantz, Margaret. “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively.” Writing about Writing: A College Reader. Leasa Burton. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 67-85. Print.
“QEP: The Vertical Writing Curriculum: Integrating and Aligning Writing Instruction at ECU.” Writing and Style. WordPress.com, 21 Feb. 2012. Web. 21 Feb. 2012.
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Posted by Nicole Chirico | Filed under QEP Project
“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” ~ Malcolm Forbes
Classroom Promises 