On Teaching: Mediations and Invitations

by Susan Naomi Bernstein, English Department, Shippensberg University

In the Garden.

Developmental Writing, First Day Exercise: Metaphor

EXAMPLE: As a teacher I am a GARDENER because: I plant seeds. I nurture growing plants. I look for beautiful weeds. I root out weeds that choke off growth —but I am an organic gardener so I don’t use poisons. I remember always that the growth of plants is not completely dependent on me, but also on things I have no control over—like wind, rain, sunshine, bugs, and the mysteries and wonders of nature itself. Dr. Susan N. Bernstein

A STUDENT’S WRITING: I am ROCK because I am found all over the world. Even though in all parts of the world I am different. I am different all over the world because of the way I was formed and the environment I find myself in. Yet if people stumble across me and find me interesting I am removed from my environment and given to the highest bidder. LaTonya Bowden

In the Garden

This summer I gave up metaphor and became a gardener in the real world. Even though I was almost forty years old, I had never had my own garden before. Before I had worked in communal gardens or tended the gardens of family and friends. But never before had I dug through my own plot of rocky soil, never made the earth firm around my own seeds or annuals, never watered, weeded, and waited. I was surprised to find out how hard the earth was—and surprised too at how I had expected the earth to fall away easily at my gentle prodding. In fact, I could not be gentle after all— or nothing would grow. I would not even be able to dig deep enough to leave my seeds in the ground.

Then the drought came—the drought that we are still enduring as I write this. The mint has scorched edges, the small green tomatoes are not growing any larger—or changing color—and the sunflowers have not even begun to sprout up out of the ground. The backyard grass seems to be dead, although I read somewhere that it is only sleeping—that a good rain will revive it. I know that I had no idea of how hard it is to be a gardener, how hard it is to nurture difficult growth.

Still in the Garden.

I am a white middle class woman with a backyard and a garden, even if all the growth I see around me now is imperceptible, stifled by heat, by absent rain. I have to water my garden at dusk, under cover of early moonlight, in the cool part of the waning day— so the water won’t evaporate. I water what I cannot see growing in the last fading light before nightfall. I tend my garden in the half-dark searching for new metaphors, praying for patience, waiting for rain. I am a gardener and in the fall I will be a teacher again among students, planting more seeds and working toward growth among rocks and parched soil.

“But What Does It Mean To Be Student-centered?”

I play with extended metaphor here as a means of prewriting or invention—as a heuristic for imagining new metaphors—new realities—for teaching. I continue to be intrigued by the question so often asked in the pages of the Journal of Developmental Education—a question as well asked often at the conferences I have attended this past year, and clearly articulated by Phebe Baker as: “But what does it mean to be student-centered?” For Baker and others (Bill Baker and Tom Angelo, for instance) the answer seems to be creating non-judgmentalclassroom communities, where the level of trust and openness remains viable and strong. Bruce Watson and Max Eirich ask us to look closely at what was absent from our students’ previous educational experiences—and to fill in those gaps. Francie Blake focuses on the importance of considering multicultural issues in education, emphasizing the process of defining cultural identity. For Blake, such a process cannot be separated out from an understanding of the writing process. In this respect, student-centered means the necessity of building on strengths which students bring with them to our classrooms.

What all of these definitions seem to share is an immense commitment to students, to creating the most positive learning environment possible in the midst of what often appears to be an untenable situation. Nonetheless, in developmental education, we seem also to be asking a second question, lying just below the surface of our call for community and engage(or thirty or thirty-five weeks) can we have some kind of significant impact on the difficult circumstances faced by many of our students? Too often the answer is that one person cannot ameliorate the results of an economic system that deprives so many of our students of basic necessities that so many of us as middle-class teachers take for granted: adequate food, shelter, health care, and education. In that sense, I want to reframe my questions as: What is the purpose of developmental education? What are we, as teachers, attempting to achieve—and for whom?

Indeed, LaTonya Bowden, a native Philadelphian who was my student at a state university in rural central Pennsylvania, understood this dilemma quite well: “Yet if people stumble across me and find me interesting I am removed from my environment and given to the highest bidder.” In her final essay for the developmental writing course, LaTonya focused on her experiences with growing up in the Philadelphia public school system—and how she was able to survive in spite of the hazards she faced along the way. Yet LaTonya was careful not to attribute her success to the individual strivings of one student against the system, not to argue that with enough hard work and determination, anyone can make it. Rather, she chronicles how the same system which facilitated her struggle toward success proved absolutely devastating for her equally intelligent and gifted classmates who did not survive. As LaTonya told these stories in class as part of a rough draft workshop, students who had matriculated from rural Pennsylvania seemed both shaken and appalled. Rural public schools in Pennsylvania face their own problems, not unconnected to the situation in Philadelphia; nonetheless, the scale obviously seemed skewed. What rural students took for granted as basic necessities were seen as luxuries by LaTonya and her Philadelphia peers. “How can this happen?” asked one student. “We’re supposed to live in a democracy.”

Questions of Democracy andEducation.

In the reading I’ve been doing lately on this subject, the word “democracy” occurs over and over again (Brookfield, Delpit, Shor). Yet “democracy” seems to have almost as many definitions—and nuances of definitions—as the term “student-centered.” Indeed, in the literature these terms are not unrelated. Delpit argues most eloquently against excluding developmental students from higher education, against regarding such students solely in terms of their deficits. She writes of a Native American student in this tenuous situation: “We cannot justifiably enlist exclusionary standards when the reason this student lacked the skills demanded was poor teaching at best and institutionalized racism at worst.” (38).

Nonetheless, Delpit cautions that “progressive” faculty may be equally misguided in claiming that: “We must fight cultural hegemony and fight the system by insisting that children be allowed to express themselves in their own language style. It is not they, the children, who must change, but the schools “(37, italics in the original). This position, Delpit suggests, seems advocated by middle-class professionals who have already internalized “the standards” necessary for success in school and elsewhere. While not calling for a return to “Skills and Drills,” Delpit argues for providing access to the tools which students need in order to survive. For teachers, Delpit offers, “The answer is to accept students but also take responsibility to teach them” (38, italics in the original).

But what does it mean to teach developmental students? Indeed, is it possible to create “safe houses” for our students (Pratt and Canagarajah) — while offering at the same time an intellectually challenging and academically stimulating environment? For me, such a question remains intertwined with the notion of student-centered teaching and the difficulties which result for students whose schooling has been inadequate. The question once again becomes reformulated in my mind as follows: How can teachers and students work together to foster a positive learning environment? Delpit succinctly describes the attitudes underlying thekind of environment which I envision. She writes: “...insistence on skills is not a negation of ...students’ intellect, as is often suggested by progressive forces, but an acknowledgment of it: “You know a lot; you can learn more. Do It Now!” (18).

Left unanswered here is the central question of all of our teaching and learning: “How do we Do It Now?” Obviously, there is no single answer to such a question—as well as to the question of “Why” it is imperative that we “ Do It Now”. Brookfield and Shor add a variety of suggestions for both how and why, from “participant learning portfolios” (Brookfield 102-6) to literacy exercises (Shor, Empowering Education 239-40). Both of these educators focus on the need to provide a clear sense of goals and expectations for the classroom. Yet at the same time, ample opportunity is given for students to actively negotiate how such goals might be achieved.

Shor reminds us of the messiness of this negotiation process, striving to model for students the realities of how the democratic process itself looks in action (When Students Have Power 16-21). Such critically active teaching remains necessary, Shor contends, in a society in which many students have not had access to the means of political and intellectual transformation (“Hegemony Never Sleeps”).

Invitations.

I would like to suggest yet another means of approaching the questions of how and why, and that is cooperative teaching across classrooms and across regions. I found the need for such work of crucial importance in my years at the Community College of Philadelphia, not only through involvement with the Practitioner Inquiry Project, but also in my work with Francie Blake and the ESL program. Professor Blake and I developed collaborative reading and writing projects for our developmental and ESL classrooms; students were able to communicate through letters and an occasional joint field trip. Since I have relocated to south central Pennsylvania, this work has continued through other means. For instance, Professor Blake and I discovered this past spring semester that our separate classes of developmental writing students had similar concerns regarding pre-college placement examinations. Both classes read and responded to the introduction of Ira Shor’s Empowering Education, a text which demonstrates how developmental students at his “low-budget college” dealt with this same issue (1-10). Students in our own classes exchanged letters with each other; since this project coincided with my spring break I was able to attend Professor Blake’s CAP 098/099 developmental reading and writing course in Philadelphia. During this class meeting, I read my students’ letters to Professor Blake’s students-and subsequently engaged in a very lively discussion with the students, Professor Blake, and Professor Tom Ott, (Director of Developmental Education at the Community College of Philadelphia) regarding, among other topics, the purposes of developmental English courses. I relayed this discussion to my own students, and distributed copies of letters which Professor Blake’s students had written. While this process sounds (and was!) chaotic, the experience of democratic education which ensued was exhilarating. Students in both classes were able to begin to understand the global nature of the issues involved in developmental education. That is, these students learned that their problems were not unique to their own situation, but rather were shared concerns across institutions and across regions. Students in my course subsequently wrote essays examining the processes and problems involved in placement in noncredit developmental courses, and certainly benefited from the insights of their peers in Philadelphia.

Professor Linda Fellag and I initiated a very different kind of cooperative learning project for our students during the 1996 Fall Semester. Her ESL students and my first-year development writing students at our two campuses became “pen pals,” exchanging several letters regarding college life and cultural differences. Again, the process was messy, but instructive. In the rural region where I teach, some students have little access to information about urban life and diverse cultures. What access there is tends to be limited to sensationalized images portrayed by the media. However those images can be mitigated by the exchanges I have described above. Similarly, students from Philadelphia who have been relocated to rural Pennsylvania for their schooling have an opportunity to share their experiences with peers in the city.

Moreover, as I discovered in my visit to Professor Blake’s class last spring, such exchanges also may alleviate the misconceptions that urbanites have about rural life—misconceptions which I readily confess to carrying with me when I moved back to central Pennsylvania last year. In this sense, I remain disconcerted by the oppositions which continue to perpetuate stereotyped views of urban rural life. In Pennsylvania, these oppositions carry significant consequences in terms of funding for such urban needs as public education and public transportation, and rural concerns such as family farms. Urban and rural communities are ultimately interlinked, although the connections seem hidden in our daily lack of communication with each other. After collaborating with Professor Blake, Professor Fellag and our students, I stand convinced that creating opportunities for dialogue seems an important step in breaking down the barriers that exist between our regions.

More Invitations.

With this concern in mind, I would like to invite my readers to work with me in creating opportunities for collaborating among our developmental and ESL classrooms. While letter writing projects have worked well in the past, I look forward to imagining even more possibilities. Such possibilities could include (but need not be limited to) joint writing or reading projects, field trips, and sharing of resources among students working on similar paper topics. I welcome the extended conversations among students and teachers that such collaboration would provide—and invite interested colleagues to write (c/o the English Department/Shippensburg University/Shippensburg, PA 17257) or e-mail (snbern@ark.ship.edu) with suggestions and ideas. I look forward to hearing from you.

Back to the Garden: A Final Meditation.

I miss communal gardening. I remember a happy afternoon in Philadelphia planting annuals with neighbors in front of our cooperative apartment complex. Also I remember walking home one afternoon, weeks later, looking at the annuals in their blue and red and yellow bloom, thinking how together we had planted color back into a world paved over with concrete and macadam. In Philadelphia I looked to welcome nature growing up wherever I could find it—and looked forward as well to finding always what I least expected. It is the thrill of continual surprise that shapes my work as a gardener—the promise of one small blossom in a summer of endless heat, and shimmering days without the hope of rain.n

References

Angelo, Thomas A. “Nationwide Transformation: Colleges and Universities Shift from ” Teaching Factories’ to Learning Communities.” The National Teaching and Learning Forum 6.1 (1996) n.p. Rpt. in Journal of Developmental Education, 2.3 (1997). 3-5.

Baker, Bill. “Centering.” Journal of Developmental Education. 2.3 (1997). 11.

Baker, Phebe. “Student-Teacher Dialogue Needs No Dividing Line.” Journal of Developmental Education. 2.3 (1997). 6+.

Blake, Francie. “Identity, Community, and the Curriculum: A Call for Multiculturalism in the Classroom.” Journal of Developmental Education. 2.2 (1997). 3-7.

Bowden, LaTonya. “As a Student I Am Rock.”14 January 1997. Shippensburg University.

Brookfield, Stephen D. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers, 1995.

Canagarajah, A. Suresh. “Safe Houses in the Contact Zone: Coping Strategies of African American Students in the Academy.”CCC4 8.2(1997). 173-96.

Delpit, Lisa. Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: The New Press, 1995.

Eirich, Max. “Way Do we Call Them ‘Developmental’?” Journal of Developmental Education. 2.3. (1997). 2.

Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession 91. New York: MLA, 1991. 33-40.

Shor, IRA. Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992. I am indebted to Professor Beverly Butler, director of the Shippensburg University Learning Assistance Center, who uses a similar activity in tutor-training programs.

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Last Updated: Thursday, January 22, 1998