Class in the Composition Classroom: Pedagogy and the Working Class - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607326175 ISBN 13: 9781607326175

Publisher: Utah State University Press, 2017

Synopsis

Class in the Composition Classroom considers what college writing instructors should know about their working-class students-their backgrounds, experiences, identities, learning styles, and skills-in order to support them in the classroom, across campus, and beyond. In this volume, contributors explore the nuanced and complex meaning of "working class" and the particular values these college writers bring to the classroom.

The real college experiences of veterans, rural Midwesterners, and trade unionists show that what it means to be working class is not obvious or easily definable. Resisting outdated characterizations of these students as underprepared and dispensing with a one-size-fits-all pedagogical approach, contributors address how region and education impact students, explore working-class pedagogy and the ways in which it can reify social class in teaching settings, and give voice to students' lived experiences.

As community colleges and universities seek more effective ways to serve working-class students, and as educators, parents, and politicians continue to emphasize the value of higher education for students of all financial and social backgrounds, conversations must take place among writing instructors and administrators about how best to serve and support working-class college writers. Class in the Composition Classroom will help writing instructors inside and outside the classroom prepare all their students for personal, academic, and professional communication.

Contributors: Aaron Barlow, ​Cori Brewster, ​Patrick Corbett, ​Harry Denny, Cassandra Dulin, ​Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, ​Mike Edwards, ​Rebecca Fraser, ​Brett Griffiths, ​Anna Knutson, ​Liberty Kohn, ​Nancy Mack, ​Holly Middleton, ​Robert Mundy, ​Missy Nieveen Phegley, ​Jacqueline Preston, ​James E. Romesburg, ​Edie-Marie Roper, Aubrey Schiavone, Christie Toth, ​Gail G. Verdi

About this title

About the Author

Genesea M. Carter is associate director of composition at Colorado State University. Her work has been published in Open Words: Access and English Studies, the Journal of Teaching Writing, and Composition Studies.

William H. Thelin is professor of English at the University of Akron, where he teaches courses on critical pedagogy, research methods, writing, and other subjects. He is the co-chair of the Working-Class Culture and Pedagogy Standing Group of the CCCC and is also active in Rhetoricians for Peace. He co-founded Open Words and has published in College English, College Composition and Communication, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Composition Studies, and other journals. He is the co-editor of Blundering for a Change: Errors and Expectations in Critical Pedagogy and author of Writing Without Formulas.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Class in the Composition Classroom

Pedagogy and the Working Class

By Genesea M. Carter, William H. Thelin

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2017 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-617-5

Contents

Introduction William H. Thelin and Genesea M. Carter, 
Part 1: The Working-Class Student's Region, Education, and Culture, 
1 Pedagogy at the Crossroads: Instructor Identity, Social Class Consciousness, and Reflective Teaching Practice Aubrey Schiavone and Anna V. Knutson, 
2 No Homo! Toward an Intersection of Sexuality and Masculinity for Working-Class Men Robert Mundy and Harry Denny, 
3 Implications of Redefining "Working Class" in the Urban Composition Classroom Aaron Barlow and Patrick Corbett, 
4 California Dreams: Working-Class Writers in the California State University System Cassandra Dulin, 
5 The Writing Space as Dialectical Space: Disrupting the Pedagogical Imperative to Prepare the "Underprepared" Jacqueline Preston, 
6 Changing Definitions of Work and Class in the Information Economy Edie-Marie Roper and Mike Edwards, 
Part 2: Pedagogy in the Composition Classroom, 
7 Telling Our Story: College Writing for Trade Unionists Rebecca Fraser, 
8 Emotional Labor as Imposters: Working-Class Literacy Narratives and Academic Identities Nancy Mack, 
9 We're All Middle Class? Students' Interpretation of Childhood Ethnographies to Reflect on Class Difference and Identity Liberty Kohn, 
10 Pedagogies of Interdependence: Revising the Alienation Narrative for Cultural Match Holly Middleton, 
11 Never and Forever Just Keep Coming Back Again: Class, Access, and Student Writing Performance Missy Nieveen Phegley, 
Part 3: What Our Students Say, 
12 Social Economies of Literacy in Rural Oregon: Accounting for Diverse Sponsorship Histories of Working-Class Students in and out of School Cori Brewster, 
13 Rethinking Class: Poverty, Pedagogy, and Two-Year College Writing Programs Brett Griffiths and Christie Toth, 
14 Retrograde Movements and the Educational Encounter: Working-Class Adults in First-Year Composition James E. Romesburg, 
15 "Being Part of Something Gave Me Purpose": How Community Membership Impacts First-Year Students' Sense of Self Genesea M. Carter, 
16 Literacy Development as Social Practice in the Lives of Four Working-Class Women Gail G. Verdi and Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, 
17 An Afterword to Class in the Composition Classroom: First-Year Writing as a Social Class Enterprise James T. Zebroski, 
Bibliography, 
About the Authors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

PEDAGOGY AT THE CROSSROADS

Instructor Identity, Social Class Consciousness, and Reflective Teaching Practice

Aubrey Schiavone and Anna V. Knutson

While composition instructors are frequently encouraged to recognize the intersectional identities of their students, including social class identity, we assert in this chapter that it is equally critical to recognize the identities of composition instructors. Too often we assume instructors of college composition classes are universally middle- and upper-class individuals who must be attentive to the needs of their working-class students. While this, in many cases, may be true, we would like to make two related assertions: (1) socioeconomic diversity exists in the ranks of composition instructors, and by overlooking that, we miss a major puzzle piece central to our understanding of class in the composition classroom; and (2) regardless of socioeconomic status, instructors must be reflective about how their own social class background might influence their relationships with their students. In other words, we challenge all composition instructors to consider rigorously the role socioeconomic status plays in how they empathize (or, conversely, don't empathize) with their students.

As two teacher-scholars of writing who identify with working-class identity in varying ways, we believe reflections on the role of social class in our own teaching practice may provide a useful example for other composition instructors. We both recently transitioned from teaching at universities with high concentrations of working-class students, with whom we largely identified, to teaching at a more privileged institution with a low concentration of working-class students. In light of our assertion that composition instructors should reflect rigorously on the role of their own social class identity in their relationships with their students, we believe our transition into a more privileged institution provides a unique exigence for reflecting on how we interact with various student populations.

In this chapter, we explore the intersections of our identities and students' identities across specific classroom and institutional contexts in order to advocate for teaching practices that are at once reflective and contextually sensitive. We discuss the demographic profiles of three institutions, analyzing the contexts in which we have taught and presenting parallel trajectories of instructors who began teaching writing in universities particularly hospitable to working-class students before moving to Midwest University (MU), where the campus climate tends not to recognize or welcome working-class students. We then use student texts composed at these different institutions to reflect on the results of transferring our respective pedagogical approaches from one institution to the other. Ultimately, we advocate for pedagogies responsive to student demographics and for self-reflective teaching practices that view class-based tension as a potentially generative site of teaching and learning. We argue that these two goals — reflective teaching practice and contextually sensitive pedagogy — are linked: reflective teaching practice allows instructors to consider their own identities as well as how these identities may be enacted within the local conditions of particular institutions. As we argue for broader adoption of reflective teaching practices, we also demonstrate this practice throughout our chapter, reflecting on our own teaching and learning narratives.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

As teacher-scholars of writing, we recognize there is much work to be done in helping working-class students make connections between their experiences in higher education and their experiences in their home communities. We are particularly interested in helping students reflect on and value both these spheres of experience even though they are at times disparate and even conflicting. More specifically, we seek to learn from our students how they use the strengths they bring with them to their college environments even as those environments might overlook or discount working-class students' strengths. In essence, we view students as experts on their own identities, home communities, and attendant literacy practices, and we organize our pedagogical approaches so as to access and encourage that student expertise. Through narrative and reflective writing assignments, we hope to make space for students to reflect on and express their home literacies and to view those literacies as strengths that can aid them in their college experiences.

Working-Class Students

Existing literature recognizes working-class students' experiences as distinct from those of their upper- and middle-class peers. For example, literacy learning can be especially fraught for working-class students who may perceive that they cannot successfully draw from their home literacies in new educational environments. Since perceptions of dissimilarities between domains of learning may prevent students from transferring knowledge across learning environments, these students may resist drawing on literacies from their home discourses in the context of college writing. We use narrative and reflective writing to position our composition classrooms as spaces in which all students, including working-class students, can feel safe to reflect on their shifting identities and literacies. These narrative and reflective assignments offer us opportunities as teachers to read and listen empathetically and to learn from our students' expertise about their own social class experiences rather than making assumptions based in our own limited perceptions of students' social class identities. Furthermore, these types of assignments provide instructors with opportunities to critically reflect on their own positionality in the classroom, particularly as it pertains to their own social class identities.

Narrative Writing

Since working-class students in first-year composition courses are often making sense of their own shifting identities, as well as the influence of higher education on those identities, narrative writing may offer a means of supporting these students' identity development. The potential for narrative writing to combine expressivist and cultural studies approaches to teaching writing may be particularly relevant to working-class students. For example, Nancy Mack's multigenre folklore writing assignment, David Seitz's work memoir project, and Donna LeCourt's literacy autobiographies all combine narrative and reflective elements to better support working-class students. These kinds of narrative assignments allow working-class students to make sense of the identity marker of working class itself. In addition, working-class people often use narrative to articulate their own experiences with work, the very experiences that label them working class. As writing teachers, we value narrative writing for its potential to help working-class students make sense of these experiences; additionally, we value the ways in which narrative writing can allow teachers to encounter students' own meaning-making processes concerning social class rather than imposing our perceptions or understandings of social class differences in the classroom.

Important to note is that narrative is often perceived by working-class people as a way to articulate differences in individual experiences, values, and identity without necessarily challenging collective or group values. This potential for narrative to allow difference within sameness might be especially powerful for working-class students moving between home and academic literacies because, as Seitz articulates, these students "require conviction, rather than critical uncertainty, to face the odds against them." Because narrative and reflective writing pedagogies invite students to bring fraught moments of identity (re)construction into the writing classroom, they may offer working-class students opportunities to develop and express such conviction. Where teacher practice is concerned, narrative and reflective assignments create opportunities for teachers, regardless of their social class identities, to perform empathy, "listen respectfully," and better understand their students. With these benefits in mind, we have developed assignments that encourage students to write their own narratives that may help them reflect on their developing identities.

Reflection

Our discussion of reflection in this chapter is twofold: we are interested in reflective assignments in the composition classroom as well as teachers' uses of reflection to improve their pedagogical practices. As previous scholarship has suggested, reflection might be a powerful site of identity formation for students as well as teachers. Because reflection may allow learners to reflect on their experiences while engaging with an audience, and because it entails setting goals and evaluating whether these goals are met, reflection provides insight into both learning and teaching. In addition, by providing space for individuals to explore their identities as members of multiple communities, reflection can allow both teachers and students to engage with socioeconomic difference at the individual, classroom, and institutional levels.

However, along with the benefits it may offer teachers and students, reflection may also pose risks. When educational institutions require students to reflect on their own abilities, we must be conscious of how students' social and educational experiences might influence these assessments. Namely, students may under- or overestimate their abilities in ways that reproduce inequities, which may present a particularly high risk for marginalized students such as working-class students. In addition, reflection may become standardized through programmatic requirements, thus defanging it of its honesty and possibly its capacity for identity formation. Even with these risks, there is great potential for reward in terms of creating a space where students and teachers can explore the relationship between their identities and institutional spaces in which they operate. In the case of working-class college students, reflection, if designed and scaffolded purposefully, can create a space for students to reflect on the connections and conflicts between their incoming literacies and those valued in their new institutional contexts. Furthermore, for teachers, reflection may offer a window into students' identities, learning experiences, and the intersections of these, thus providing opportunities for instructors to (1) better understand students from a wide variety of backgrounds and (2) explore the ways in which they relate to students from a wide variety of backgrounds. As a result, reflection might be a particularly fruitful pedagogical practice for instructors seeking to understand the role of social class in their classrooms.

CONTEXTS OF RESEARCH

In this section, we use Carnegie classifications, student demographic data, and institutional mission statements to contextualize our three sites of research: Midwest University (MU) (where we both currently teach), East Coast University (EU) (where Aubrey began her teaching career), and the University of the Southwest (SU) (where Anna began her teaching career). These demographic snapshots offer a sense of the overall campus culture at each institution, and we emphasize that both EU and SU seem to have campus cultures that support working-class students more so than MU's does. Although there are several initiatives currently being developed at MU intended to support first-generation college students and transfer students, many of whom are working class, the climate of the institution tends to privilege the experiences, needs, and values of middle- and upper-class students. These varying campus climates presented important implications for us as we sought to teach varied populations of students at different institutions. Campus climate also provided us with opportunities to think carefully about the implications of social class differences in our classrooms, and we reflect on these opportunities in the analyses that follow.

Midwest University

MU is classified as a large, four-year, primarily residential, public research university with very high research activity and lower rates of transfer-in. MU is also classified as "more selective," whereas SU and EU are both classified as "selective." Working-class students' experiences of isolation or exclusion from campus culture tend to be intensified or heightened at more selective, elite institutions, where populations of working-class students tend to be less concentrated and often less vocal. In addition, individual students might identify themselves as working class, or be identified by institutions as such, according to complex and varied factors including education, income, financial-aid eligibility, work, lifestyle, and familial differences. For example, at MU in 2013, only 13 percent of the total first-year student population identified their parents as having "no college" or "some college" as opposed to the 87 percent of the total first-year student population that identified one or both their parents as having a bachelor's degree. These low percentages stand in marked contrast to nationwide 2012 CIRP data in which approximately 40 percent of first-year students at public universities report that their parents have some or no college. In addition, data for MU students' family income reveals working-class student populations to be in the minority at that institution. For example, in 2012, 63.1 percent of first-year students' parents earned $100,000 or more per year and 22.7 percent of first-year students' parents earned $250,000 or more per year; these percentages for parents' income are far above national averages, confirming that the MU student population is overwhelmingly upper-middle and upper class. In the sections that follow, we reflect on how the presence of this kind of wealth and privilege on campus influenced our awareness of social class dynamics in our classrooms.

Along with these student demographics, MU's mission statement also offers some indication of the campus culture of that institution, which might in some cases be alienating to working-class college students. This mission informs much of the campus culture students perceive through their interactions with administrators, faculty, staff, and peers at the university. The mission states that the university's goal is "to serve the people of [this state] and the world through preeminence in creating, communicating, preserving and applying knowledge, art and academic values, and in developing leaders and citizens who will challenge the present and enrich the future." While references to serving "the world" and the "preeminence" of the university might seem far reaching, at MU this mission is a perceivable part of the daily culture of the university.

In addition, MU's mission names its primary activities as "research and creativity, education, and service." Unfortunately, these primary activities offer little indication of the everyday experiences of working-class students on campus. Even when working-class students are interested in activities the university explicitly values, such as research and creativity, they are also interested, out of necessity, in activities the university does not value outright, such as succeeding academically, surviving financially, finding spaces of social support on campus, developing professionally, and preparing to give back to their communities of origin. MU also identifies as a strength its "tradition of balance between academic decentralization with strong central support for governance, infrastructure, and services." However, this decentralization can manifest as the isolation of resources in particular departments or offices, and working-class students often lack access to resources or expertise in how to navigate this division of services. This is not to say all working-class students feel isolated at all times at the university; instead, the university's mission offers an indication of the overall campus climate working-class students regularly encounter and may respond to in a variety of ways. Similarly, this mission statement offers some indication of teacher positionality and the climate in which teachers at this university pursue their various teaching goals. As writing instructors deeply invested in supporting working-class students, the campus climate implied by the university's mission statement gave us pause as we wondered how best to acknowledge social class dynamics, including our own and students' social class identities, in our classrooms.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1607326175
• ISBN 13: 9781607326175
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 370
• Editor: Carter Genesea M., Thelin William H.