From: IACDES@ASUACAD.BITNET (David E. Schwalm)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Subject: Standardizing Composition Classes
Date: 28 Dec 92 16:02:04 GMT
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I certainly appreciate Bill Condon's comments, and I have often entertained
the impulse to give over, because of the part-timer issue more than anything
else. (I'm also discovering from this year's "official" administrative gig
that I am not paid enough as a WPA.) But down to cases. The problems we face
in our program at ASU are not unique, and the likelihood that the funding we
need in order to develop a solid composition faculty to serve as the
intellectual core of our program is very low. Nationally, higher education is
in for a dose of reduced funding, Clinton notwithstanding. WPAs have to be
thinking about programs for lean times. A number of places have eliminated
their composition programs, not a solution I would choose. Others have reduced
the requirements, a strategy chosen by my colleagues in Flagstaff but not one
that we are ready for yet at ASU. Both strategies address staffing problems,
workload problems, class size issues; but neither does much to make students
better writers. What I'm trying to do is to figure out how to help students
learn to write by mobilizing the resources that we have in the most effective
way--effective for students and effective for teachers. The teaching power of
our tenure track faculty is exhausted by the demands of the graduate program
(and its not a rich menu of courses) and the English major (again, offerings
are limited). I have, more or less at my disposal, 89 TAs and a varying number
of adjunct faculty. And the comp program has the complex task of providing a
good writing program for first year students (and a menu of sophomore and
junior courses as well) and (and this is important) providing TAs (and to some
extent adjunct faculty) with training that will help them become a full part
of the profession. THat is, TAs need to learn something about teaching, about
the use of time WRT teaching and scholarship, about the realities of academic
professional life. And they need to do this while they are providing good
writing instruction to our students--on-the-job training. Another reality is
that TAships are a form of financial aid for the support of our grad students,
and the TA selection committee has to balance out applicants' potential as
teachers and pressures from grad faculty to support this or that applicant.
Since we have 5 or 6 applicants for every available position, we tend to wind
up with a pretty good bunch of new TAs each semester, but they are not all
dedicated to rhetoric and composition--most only have a vague idea of what
teaching writing is all about (the only model they have is their own freshman
comp course, and many of them placed out). In the group of new TAs, I usually
get a couple with some teaching experience either in high school or in other
composition programs. But I also have novices who are so anxious about
teaching that they go into the john and blow chunks before each class. The
rest are spread out between these poles, the majority falling toward the
anxious end of the range. Enter the standard syllabus. Novice instructors,
faced with the task of teaching while learning to teach, need an anxiety
reducer. They have nothing; they need something. To them, the first day of
class looks like a precipice, a plunge into the abyss. The standard syllabus
provides them with a framework; it sets a pace; it sets some due dates; it
sets up a work structure for both instructor and student; it points toward
some effective classroom activities; it embodies the goals of the program; it
incorporates theories and methods of teaching writing that TAs will be working
with in the TA seminar. More than anything, it gives our instructors an
initial point of reference in their development as teachers. At first, it may
be a crutch or life raft; it may become the backbone of the instructor's own
approach; it may become an approach to be rejected (when the instructor is
capable of making a case against the syllabus and for another approach); it
maybecome the approach the instructor embraces (when the instructor knows
enough to see the strengths and weaknesses of the approach). THe syllabus and
the instruction that goes with it are designed to help TAs become effective
AND EFFICIENT teachers of composition, so that they will not develop work
habits that will almost guarantee that they will never get tenure. In any
case, it is my sense that the standard syllabus helps to ensure that our
students get a decent (and sometimes excellent) composition course. I also
think that it gives our novice instructors a really good start on the teaching
of writing, helping them to develop confidence and expertise. And yes, I will
acknowledge that it constrains some instructors. In a few cases, the
constraint is positively bad; in other cases, the instructors probably ought
to be constrained (I'm ducking already). One final note: the standard syllabus
is not simply imposed; I argue for it. This has gone on long enough,

-- David E. Schwalm, Assoc. Provost for Academic Programs
___Arizona State University West
___4701 West Thunderbird Rd.
___Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100___(602) 543-4500
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