Beth Maxfield

As a new teaching assistant at a small university in the early 1980s, I was handed a textbook, a class roster, a room number, and the best wishes of my mentor. As I approached the classroom for the first time, I was filled with trepidation. What had I gotten myself into? How was I supposed to teach these students to write? The only experience I had to rely on was my own experiences in composition classes: freshman composition and advanced composition. I had been assigned a mentor by the English department, but this professor was also the mentor for every other teaching assistant in the department; he told us in our group preservice meeting that he only wanted to see our first examination and/or writing assignment. After that, we were on our own. This "preparation" left me feeling less than adequate as I entered the classroom for the first time as a writing teacher.

Fifteen years later in the late 1990s, most graduate programs in English have evolved to include some training in composition theory and the teaching of writing. In fact, Richard Fulkerson has asserted that "English students who hold teaching assistantships are receiving effective, sometimes extensive, training for teaching college writing" (3) and, more recently, Catherine Latterall has observed that "GTA education programs are doing more and are doing a better job" (7). I recently completed a project in which I compared the instructional practices of writing teachers at the secondary and post-secondary levels within a limited geographic region. As a part of this project, I explored the graduate program of a research university, a university at which only graduate students teach the first-year composition sequence. I looked at both the training program of graduate students and the practices those graduate students employ in the writing classroom. I would argue that the training program I discovered in this case study is indicative of a general trend among contemporary graduate programs and graduate students.

At this research university, a one-week preservice workshop is required of all graduate students; this workshop is planned and largely run by veteran teaching assistants, who lead "teams" of assistants through their tenure at the university. The workshop lasts 3 to 5 days when stipends are not available and 5 to 6 days when they are available, and teachers attend sessions for the better part of every day, 9-4:30. One six-year veteran of this program had the following remarks to make about the workshop:

The workshops are essential for first-year graduate students, especially since they must follow a required syllabus for the first 6 weeks of class. However, the returns diminish after several years, because the same topics are rehashed every year. Too, the money for stipends is always tight. [The program's director] had to fight hard for money to pay for training this year. The university wants excellent graduate teachers and effective writing instruction, but it doesn't want to spend $40,000 for a training program to achieve that goal. (Interview)

During this workshop, new graduate teachers are placed in groups; one experienced graduate teacher is assigned to lead each group and to mentor the newer assistants. These groups offer new teaching assistants an opportunity to discuss fears and problems with someone who has experience in the writing classroom but is a step below the full-time faculty in department hierarchy. Such a system has the advantage of bonding the graduate students while creating a venue for discussion without the intimidation many graduate students feel toward their professors.

Graduate teaching assistants in this program must also complete a course in theory and practice of writing instruction before entering the classroom, but one teacher who was interviewed observed that this course may contain little or no theory, depending on who teaches it. This observation, naturally, could be made about almost any training course. Furthermore, as is often the case, some graduate training takes place in the writing center. A considerable body of research points to the merits of tutoring as an excellent method by which graduate writing teachers learn to put theory into practice while learning about individual composing processes. Writing centers represent a valuable aspect of training because they can help theory and practice converge; they can help teachers "understand the practical implications of student-centered theory and [may make] them significantly more committed to practicing it in the classroom"( Cogil 80). Thus, it is not unusual that at a research university the writing center poses one avenue for teacher training.

If this university's training program for graduate writing teachers is similar to many others across the country and therefore indicative of current trends in graduate education in English, it would seem that new generations of writing teachers are wellversed in composition theory and how to apply it in the classroom. But is this scenario complete? Have modern composition theories, in fact, infiltrated the modern writing classroom, or are they are merely abstractions that sound good on paper? Once graduate students leave the theoretical seminars, the discussion groups, the mentors, the writing center, and enter their individual writing classrooms, how do they teach writing? Do they apply practices that align with current composition theory? Are they aware of what theoretical schools they are applying with any given practice? Has current-traditional rhetoric been in fact replaced in first-year writing classrooms? If so, by what theory or theories? The answers to these questions, we often like to assume--even assert--are yes. But all too often, they are not. All too often, the writing classroom is quite a different place from that which we envision as we train these teachers. As in our own classrooms, theory and practice are often at odds with one another, and they often collide. Many graduate writing teachers may find, upon serious reflection, that they profess an emphasis on process but evaluate with an emphasis on product, as noted by Appleman and Green. The project I conducted was guided by the ultimate purpose of surveying closely the realities of writing instruction in first-year writing classrooms in order to discover, in a limited manner, some of the ways writing is really taught today. An important part of the project was to determine whether contemporary theory is relevant to instructional practice in contemporary classrooms and, if so, to what extent. As composition scholars and teachers, seeking out the ways in which theory and practice diverge and finding ways to bridge the gap between the two should be an important part of our work.

One significant finding of my survey was that modern composition theory is not of great interest to many graduate writing teachers. One graduate assistant teacher observed in a telephone interview that many of his colleagues at the research university "are blissfully ignorant" of theory; in fact, he said, "Not only is there no reflective writing going on in the classroom; there's no reflective teaching going on, either." He went on to explain that many of his colleagues simply do not have the time to think about how theory informs their practice. Quite simply, graduate writing teachers generally believe that they do not have the time for such reflection; rather, they are caught up in a race to juggle responsibilities and keep pace with the dual demands of being both a teacher and a student.

Despite these findings about theory, all of the graduate writing teachers surveyed said that formal training is necessary for one to become an effective writing teacher. And a third of them reported being first exposed in graduate school--probably because many of them have liberal arts undergraduate degrees. However, even liberal arts graduates are introduced to teaching methods in undergraduate school, albeit indirectly through their teachers' methods (a concept I will discuss later); their answers reflect their first formal instruction in methodology. Furthermore, research such as Arthur Applebee's suggests that all teachers tend to teach--at least in some ways--the way they were taught, and the responses reported here do not take that factor into account.Thus, several classroom instructional methods used by these graduate writing teachers do not appear to be guided by any specific theoretical foundation; rather, the results of my survey bear out my earlier observation that theory and practice often find themselves in direct opposition in what is presumably the most academic setting--the university. In fact, some of these conflicts may be found in areas that are commonly considered to be the most significant issues in modern composition studies:

PROCESS VS. PRODUCT

Although almost every theory and fashion of composition instruction currently espouses the process model of writing instruction over the product model, many of the graduate writing teachers I surveyed continue to evaluate papers with an emphasis on the final product--almost half of them proclaim they are product-oriented teachers of writing. The data show, however, that teachers with fewer years' experience seem to be more process-oriented than more experienced teachers; therefore, as the more experienced teachers retire, more process-oriented writing instruction may be expected. And this is in spite of the emphasis on process engendered by the portfolio program used by the research university. The final portfolio even includes "an appendix exhibiting the multiple draft, writing process the writer used in developing an essay"[sic] (Internet). This conflict may be the result of these writing teachers' efforts to achieve a balance between process and product, as Corbett has called for teachers to do. Such an assumption is a dangerous one to make, however. Training programs need to address directly these divergent ends and provide some practical means for achieving and supporting a balance between the two.

STRUCTURE OF WRITING ASSIGNMENTS

The graduate writing teachers in this survey are probably no different from many of their counterparts across the country; they like organizational structure in their students' papers. One example of this reliance on structure is the use of the modes of discourse as a primary framework for teaching writing. One assignment trend found in these writing classrooms is an emphasis on the modes as a primary method of writing instruction; 90 percent of respondents reported favoring modal essay assignments. The modes are usually associated with current-traditional rhetoric, but North connects them with what he calls lore (29). This difference in theoretical association presents some possibilities to explain the college teachers' use of the modes. For example, many of the textbooks from which these teachers teach writing are organized modally, and North claims that textbooks are the most widely disseminated form of written lore (30). This most obvious departure from contemporary composition theory is also one that deserves attention in composition theory courses. Faculty teaching these courses should address the controversy over the modal assignment, for only after entering this conversation can graduate writing teachers make informed decisions about the structure of their own classroom assignments.

REVISION

As may be expected, the word revision conjures a variety of meanings for this group of graduate writing instructors, and no meaning seems to be guided by one clearly delineated theoretical approach. The university's portfolio program relies on extensive revision by students, but one instructor remarked that the majority of students in this program do not treat revision any more seriously or learn any more from the process than students in a more traditional classroom do. He contended that most first-year composition students simply cannot or will not think reflectively about their writing. This observation implies that student attitudes about revision (i.e., that revision and editing are synonymous terms) are deep-seated and cannot be undone by one teacher, one course, one semester, or one year. The concept of revision as a complete rethinking and rewriting process is one that graduate writing teachers should be taught in their graduate seminars; as students, they should be encouraged to practice revision in this manner, not merely, as teachers, to impose it on their students.

WRITING PRACTICE

Both Corbett and Sizer have commented on the tendency of many writing teachers to spend too much classroom time talking about writing and too little time giving students the opportunity to write, but this does not seem to apply to the graduate writing teachers at this university. They have expressed the conviction that students must write often if they are to learn to write well. Every teacher in this survey indicated that she assigns some form of writing on a weekly basis at minimum, and many indicated that they have students write something every class period. The use of journals also points to teachers' interest in writing practice, but it also reflects the philosophy of the freshman writing program at this school. The university makes systematic use of journaling; all students in the freshman writing program are required to keep a journal, which is described as follows: "Through journal writing you will draft (1) responses to class activities, (2) summaries, observations, and questions about reading assignments, and (3) information pertinent to your longer writing assignments. In addition, you will write journal entries in class. An entry is generally one or two pages long"(Internet). Thus, the graduate writing teachers in this survey seem to have put into practice the philosophy that students learn to write best by practicing their writing. However, only if this dictate is reinforced with discussion and use of journals in graduate seminars and in the training program will the next generations of writing teachers understand the value and the theoretical underpinnings of journaling.

THE GAP BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE

The instructional gaps noted among these graduate writing teachers are often the result of a subtle but powerful gap, that between theory and practice. Daniel Dietrich has argued that today's teachers of composition are much like their counterparts in 1912, all too frequently basing their decisions about teaching methods and course content on personal intuition, trends, or tradition. However, where the teachers of sixty years ago had no research findings available to them, today's teachers can call upon any of the abundance of research findings that are now being disseminated. There are several possible reasons for this gap between theory and practice, and there are several ways training programs can be used to bridge the gap.

One aspect of theory and practice, alluded to earlier, has tremendous influence on how writing teachers teach their discipline. Because this aspect of theory is practice-based, it may be considered more a body of knowledge than a theory; Stephen North has labeled this type of knowledge "lore"(22). Lore is quite different from a clearly articulated theory with associated practices. Composition's lore is a unique combination of all manner of practices, knowledge, and literature and is as old as the teaching of writing. North defines lore as "the accumulated body of traditions, practices, and beliefs in terms of which Practitioners understand how writing is done, learned, and taught"(22). The term "practitioners" as used by North means, essentially, classroom teachers, writing lab or writing center consultants, and others whose main job is to teach writing--those people whose main mode of inquiry is their teaching of composition. For these people, lore is pragmatic, "concerned with what has worked, is working, or might work in teaching, doing, or learning writing," and it is "essentially experiential"(23) in nature.

According to North, lore takes three primary forms: ritual, writing, and talk. Rituals are "those patterns of practice which acquire what amounts to a ceremonial status, and which get passed along mostly by example"(29) and include the red pen for grading, the green gradebook, the use of modal assignments, and the codes used to respond to student papers. North explains the practical function of rituals as follows: "Writing and the teaching of writing are activities as complex as any human beings undertake. All of what is involved cannot be articulated, let alone codified. Thus, a great deal of what one knows must not only be held but passed on as ritual knowledge: Nobody could ever explain all that there is to know or do, so we simply do as those before us have done. It is the way"(30). Writing lore is included in some professional journals such as Exercise Exchange, Language Arts, and The Writing Instructor ( North 31-32); textbooks; lesson plans; syllabi; handouts; and even commentary on student papers. Talk is the most widely used, most powerful form that lore takes (32) and is shared in conference presentations, classroom lectures, conferences with students, even hallway, office, and faculty lounge conversations.

As a credible venue of knowledge, lore's value has diminished in the thirtyfive years since Albert Kitzhaber and Wayne Booth issued their famous calls for a new rhetoric; those calls in themselves devalued lore as a valid theoretical framework from which writing should be taught. North ironically states that lore "is now a second-class sort of knowledge, rapidly approaching the status of superstition--to be held or voiced only apologetically, with deference to the better, new knowledges"(328) created by scholars and researchers. Too, those who practice lore have come to be considered by many to be mere purveyors of knowledge rather than makers of knowledge ( North23).

However, if it is true that students learn to teach by example, then we who are already in the ranks have the opportunity to influence the next generations of writing teachers simply by what we do and do not do in the first-year writing classroom. Furthermore, since no theory was overtly demonstrated in my own survey, it may be that lore's ritual and talk forms are the most common methods by which teachers in that survey arrive at their instructional methodologies. Indeed, it may be that this tradition of teaching is by far the most powerful. As a colleague recently observed, the model students internalize from their own experiences--good or bad--is extremely difficult to displace when they become teachers. She offered an example from a recent methods class: "We spent all semester experiencing new, participatory, interactive ways of teaching writing and literature and of doing evaluation. On the final exam, when asked to explain how they would teach a given body of material (and they had choices), almost everyone reverted to the ways in which they had been taught"(Dobie). This observation illustrates the powerful influence of example on teacher practice. It also highlights the importance of attitude toward composition that faculty present to students, undergraduate and graduate. There are other reasons for student failure to transfer theory into practice, however. These reasons should be addressed if true reform in the composition classroom is to be achieved.

First, many graduate writing teachers who responded to this survey seem to be uninterested in current composition theory in part because they generally do not see it as having any real or practical application in the classroom. Hashimoto has noted that it's a telling fact that most of the famous people in "composition studies" are famous not because they are good teachers (although some of them might be), but because they advocate popular or accepted visions of the writing "process" or have staked out territories and become "experts" on a respectable aspect of theory or history of rhetoric. . . . [But] we sometimes forget that this knowledge ought to make us better teachers. (15-16)

Perhaps one issue those involved with training graduate writing teachers need to address, then, is how to make theory more practical and less abstract. Another reason theory and practice remain separate for a number of graduate teachers of first-year composition is that they have little time to think reflectively about the scholarship they are required to read for classes, for they must balance the roles of student and teacher. This balance is often a tenuous one at best, and almost inevitably one role or the other is given short shrift at any given time. The issues of relevance and accessibility of theoretical research should be addressed by the those who train graduate writing teachers so that more of them make the time to inform themselves on the diverse theoretical and practical perspectives.

A second, more important, problem is the focus of most graduate programs in English. Many of these programs still spend more time teaching their students how to do research than how to teach the various aspects of the discipline. This is one characteristic of the graduate curriculum that should be altered. Therefore, I maintain, as Harold A. Hellwig did at the annual NCTE meeting in 1992, that graduate programs in English should focus specifically on the teaching of writing--and literature--and not merely research methods of these disciplines, for almost all of these master and doctoral candidates will spend a much more substantial portion of their careers teaching, not conducting research.

To achieve that end, the administrators of graduate programs in English should begin to rethink their aims and purposes for those programs. As the job market shrinks and educational economic pressures increase, graduate programs in English are, more than ever, obligated to serve their graduate students, their institutions, the profession, and the society in general well--the overwhelming ethical reasons for doing so aside. The MLA Committee on Professional Employment recently prepared and released a guide for evaluating graduate programs in English; among the guidelines suggested for departments are several that directly affect the way graduate writing teachers learn to teach composition to undergraduates.

5.1.1.1 How are teaching assistants introduced to, prepared for, and supported in their assignments? Does the department offer . . . seminars in appropriate areas, such as the teaching of composition? If so, how effective are they? Do faculty members actively and consistently provide teaching assistants ongoing the ongoing supervision and support that allow teaching assistantships to be vital parts of graduate students' education? How often are teaching assistants more or less left on their own to sink or swim? (1182)

The question regarding the effectiveness of graduate seminars emphasizes the need for English departments not only to offer these classes but also to evaluate them and to modify them when and where necessary. Just as first-year composition teachers must realize they don't teach in a vacuum and that they must open themselves to new practices, so must the trainers of new composition teachers realize their parallel obligation to these new teachers.

5.1.1.4 What opportunities do graduate students have to talk about, practice, and receive comment on activities like leading discussions, lecturing, constructing a syllabus, creating assignments, reading and responding to student writing, having students discuss and edit class work in groups and teaching with audiovisual and computer-based materials? Are graduate students informed of the obligations and rights that inhere in the institutional and professional position of the classroom teacher? (1182)

These questions deal with practical aspects of teaching writing, but they allude back to the questions about leaving graduate students to "sink or swim" and they foreshadow the questions about models and messages faculty send graduate writing teachers. New teachers of composition must see how theory informs each of these mundane details that do not occur inside the writing classroom, and they can do so in a much better fashion through discussion and individual attempts to mesh theory and practice in these media.

5.1.1.8 What models and messages about teaching do the faculty members demonstrate in their teaching, directly in graduate seminars and indirectly in their participation in the department's undergraduate program? (1183)

This final area is a most important one. How much of what students do when autonomous in the classroom is resistance to their graduate programs', their seminar professors', and/or their training supervisors' beliefs about composition theory and its application in the classroom? Do we teach them to think independently and form their own teaching style? Do we want to indoctrinate or educate our graduate students? The latter allows for differences of opinion and fosters dialogue among those differences. As Nancy Welch has argued, "When the voices of other Institutions and Inclinations are banned [either implicitly or explicitly] in a seminar room, it becomes virtually impossible for participants to doubt and debate, question and revise, and find ways of working within a culture without being dominated and enslaved by it"(400). If only one perspective prevails, students learn only to follow that path, or they are forced to resist or to subvert that path in any number of ways. When one single "correct" theory and methodology are imposed on graduate writing teachers, the opportunity is lost to teach the reflection, questioning, and discovery that is so important to both graduate and undergraduate writing and to education in general. After all, each of us has a particular set of assumptions, "historically situated and politically informed ways of constructing and understanding teaching and learning"( Welch 399). These assumptions have merit; they cannot be dismissed out of hand because they are "wrong" or simply not in vogue at the moment.