Transferable Literacy
Last week, a colleague and I got into a slightly heated debate about a grade on her student’s paper. The instructor wanted to reduce the student’s grade on a paper draft by a full letter grade because she the student was unable to change the spacing between lines in her paper. Unfortunately, the debate was less about the pedagogical approach to such a grade reduction and more about the instructor’s approach to helping this student–and the rest of her class–acquire the literacy they need to adapt their paper to a specific format. The problem, as I see it, was two fold. First, the instructor did not recognize the teachable moment that happened upon her. Second, as with many new instructors, she had a few misguided notions about the literacies we should be teaching in our First-Year Composition classes. Last week, I made this a teachable moment for her; now, I make this a teachable moment for the rest of the world.
Teachable Moments
Before I delve too far into teaching, let me step back a second and explain the idea of a teachable moment. I had not heard this term before I began my doctoral studies, so I’m sure there are still quite a few teachers out there with no idea what a teachable moment entails. A teachable moment occurs when an instructor happens upon a moment or an event when she realizes that instead of chastising or penalizing students, she can take the opportunity as a chance to teach the students something that will help them in their lives–be it educational or personal. Let me give you an example.
A few semesters back, I told my students that I would add the course deadlines to the calendar on Blackboard. This, I rationalized, would mean there was no way they could pull the old “I didn’t know it was due” excuse. Over the weekend, I spent hours carefully loading each deadline–papers, blogs, peer writing days, etc–into the Blackboard calendar. I even put a free participation grade on the calendar for the following class period. It was simple enough–all the students had to do was speak to me before class and tell me they saw the opportunity. Class started the following week and not a student even mentioned the assignment. I gave them until the beginning of the following class period. Then, I caved and asked if anybody wanted to take the offer. They looked at me completely perplexed. Then, one timid student in the back raised her hand and said:
We don’t know how to get to the calendar on Blackboard.
My first instinct was to scold my students for not speaking up ahead of time. But then, I realized that if I scolded them, I was missing out on an opportunity to provide them with this needed literacy. This, is a teaching moment.
Teaching moments are a great way to increase your students’ literacies, especially the e-literacies. We all take for granted, from time to time, that our students automatically know how to accomplish tasks on a computer. But when we stumble upon a skill they do not have, we stumble upon e-literacy teaching moments. It took me approximately five minutes to show my students how to access the Blackboard calendar and add the calendar to their Blackboard homepage. Now, once the calendar is on the homepage, the students don’t have to think about checking a calendar again in their academic career. All events entered into any class calendar are automatically loaded to the homepage calendar. So, at first, it seems like a useless literacy. But once the calendar was in place, my students began tinkering in the settings feature that allowed them to access the calendar. Immediately, they started changing the colors and layout of their Blackboard homepage. This, I knew, was a literacy they would remember. So, what does this have to do with teaching literacies?
Teaching General, not Specific Literacies
I use the Blackboard example because it demonstrates a need to teach our students a general literacy. In the long run, my lesson aided students in my class, but the lesson applied to any class they took that involved a Blackboard component. In core classes, we have to prepare students for the academic world. So, if we are going to prepare students, we have to make sure they understand how to apply what they learn in the classroom to their other classes.
In First-Year Composition, we teach students to research and write. We teach them to use the MLA handbook to appropriately format and cite their papers. Unfortunately, we also get a large amount of negative feedback from other departments about the use of MLA instead of APA, Chicago, Tarabian, or other style manuals that specific departments use. I’ve heard the argument that “X style manual should be used in classes where a majority of the students have declared X major” enough to know that even other departments don’t understand why MLA is our manual of choice. Yes, I realize that many of our students will have to learn another style manual. But that is why we don’t require students to memorize the MLA manual.
Teaching Adaptation
The literacy that we teach composition students is not an MLA literacy; it is a style manual literacy. If I teach a student how to distinguish between a scholarly journal and a magazine, this is a literacy she will carry into each subsequent class. The rules for types of works don’t change; what changes is the manner in which the student cites the publication. Yes, we require citations in First-Year Composition and yes, we require these in MLA. This is to help the students demonstrate more than just an ability to use MLA appropriately. If students can appropriately cite works using MLA, then I know I have given them the literacy to transfer MLA citation into other style manuals by finding the appropriate citation style and using the manual to appropriately write the citation.
Too many core class instructors want to emphasize their discipline’s specific features. This is not just the teaching of a specific style manual, but the teaching of a specific discourse, a specific way of thinking, or even a specific approach to studying for a test. In the grand scheme of things, I believe this is where we tend to fail students. We cannot make every student in our core classes decide to major in our discipline–and I should think we wouldn’t want all the students in our discipline. So why, then, are we so ethnocentric about our way being right. Why are we so hesitant to teach students skills that can be adapted to any class in any discipline? I’ve heard many professors telling me their students were not taught to write in composition. I have to agree with the professors; we don’t teach students to write in composition. That is a skill they should pick up in their K-12 education. Our job, if we do it properly, is to teach students to write in a specific discipline. But we don’t teach students to write to their major discipline in composition (WAC and WID programs do, but that’s another ballgame). We teach (or should be teaching) students to step into a discourse, analyze the key features, and write to that discipline. This is a transferable literacy. A student may write on global warming in composition and become a psychology major. If I don’t teach a specific transferable literacy–the discourse analysis–then my student will not be a “good writer” in her psychology classes.
Final Thoughts
If you teach core classes, think about how you’re teaching them and what specific literacies you teach your students. These are not always e-literacies, but they can be valuable literacies for future educational growth. If you teach something centered around your major, look at how you can turn this specific literacy into a more global literacy. And don’t be frustrated if your students don’t immediately pick up the literacy; sometimes it takes time.
