Elbow and My Crisis of Teacher-Self

I agree with Elbow. After reading Writing Without Teachers I wasn't sure I would ever actually say that. Not that I agreed with all his ideas in the book, but by the time we were done discussing "cooking" and "growing" in 791 I was ready to cook that book and feed it to the pig farm. After reading this article I am once again reminded of my silliness in judging a scholar by only one piece of work. This article, written some ten (twelve?) years after Writing is significantly more thought through, more informed, and all around, seems to present a deeper understanding of the writing process.

I especially enjoy the way he looks at the different aspects of academic discourse. This is a problem I have dealt with since I began teaching. What do I teach my students? Especially when what I am supposed to be teaching them isn't one, easily definable thing, but a nebulous rhetorical idea? Elbow, it seemed, took that question on with research, theory, and thoughtfulness, and he offered some incredibly interesting and useful theoretical considerations to the reader.

I know no one cares if I found the article fun or not, but I did. It spoke to my nerdy soul.

"There are plenty of instances of people who know a lot about engines or writing but don't know the professional discourse of engineering or composition" (Elbow, 137). This is just so heartening to hear from a respected scholar and see acknowledged in a published article. Most teachers understand that use of language is not necessarily indicative of intelligence (I think, or I hope) but many of us, caught in the trap of knowing our students' intelligence will be judged by others must find away to empower them with language, while not devaluing what they have to say. Compound that with, as Elbow say, "everybody does better at metacognition and metadiscourse if he or she can use ordinary language" (149) and you are left with the paradox of needing them to speak as they know how, so that you can teach them to speak as they must. How is such a thing possible?

I carry significant anxiety about what I have managed to teach my students and whether or not I have screwed them for the rest of their academic careers. Was what I taught them right (write)? Will they be able to write papers for other classes and pass? Can they pass the university administered tests? Will they get a job? Was I hard enough? Was I confusing? Did I contradict myself? Elbow seems plagued also by these same questions and his article has, therefore, stemmed from that (it appears). For that reason I appreciate his observations and will hopefully find away to incorporate them into my own teaching pedagogy/theory. But what if I've already screwed up too much? This is the problem with theory that raises good questions. You can't help, I don't think, but feel as if you might be one of those "teachers" alluded to who do the students more harm them good.

I knew I should have stuck with teaching music. Nobody actually cares how well you strike the triangle.