Teaching Assessment of TA Experience
by Michael Buckhoff
Look Back at Teaching Journal
When I planned this course, I did it under certain assumptions. Namely in
approaching composition, I assumed that writing can be taught. And from that, I
assumed that writing should be viewed as a process not as an end product. So
each writing assignment was approached with the students doing the invention,
planning and drafting, middle draft peer review, final draft revision (based on
peer review response), and revised final draft (based on instructor response)
stages. Furthermore, I assumed that writing is a both a personal as well as a
social act. This assumption explains why I had different genres of writing
ranging from telling a story to taking a position. In addition, I had the more
personal individual response journal writing and independent in class writing
activities to the more socially oriented oral presentations, group discussions,
and peer reviews. Looking back at the teaching journal has been a learning
experience for me. It helps me to rethink what my assumptions are and decide if
I need to question my basis for making these assumptions in the first place. At
the same time, I must evaluate my strengths and weaknesses as a TA in English
101 by looking at how well I am able to implement theory into practice.
After working 10 weeks with 24 students I still maintain the assumptions that
writing can be taught. By making that statement I imply that I had students
learn in my class. For example, one student in revising her narration essay was
able to change her essay from being uninteresting and undramatic to interesting
and very dramatic. Initially, the student had a major rhetorical problem. The
story had importance to the writer but the writer was unable to convey the
importance of the wedding to the reader because the writer had focused on too
many different events. The inability to focus on a single important scene caused
the story to sprawl out over too much time. Consequently, the story lacked
suspense and tension. The reader was left to guess at the meaning and importance
of her and her sister’s relationship combined with the events that led up to
the wedding.. But after I gave her written comments as well as a conference in
my office, she was able to make successful changes in her revision. This time
she told the reader more about her relationship with her sister in order to
explain why it was so hard to let her go at the wedding. Then she focused the
remainder of her essay on the one single event of the wedding. She completely
rewrote this part of her essay and sequenced the narrative action slowing down
the wedding scene itself. This time the scene was much more dramatic to the
reader. In short, she learned to analyze the rhetorical situation successfully.
I have had many other students in the class who have had similar successes in
their essays as well.
These successful revisions are not because the student is a gifted writer or
because writing is a hit or miss cognitive activity, but because it can be
viewed and taught as a process. Most of the students who had problems with each
writing assignment had problems that were manifested in the invention stages of
their writing. So when I referred them back to the invention stage by making
them further explore the assignment, they were able to get more specific
information. This helped prevent the students from writing in generalities with
no specific examples for support. I still maintain and support the belief that
writing is and should be taught as a process.
Now I want to comment on some patterns of difficulties that I feel were
evident in the class. And indeed I found one major difficulty. The problem I had
was explaining to the students what I wanted them to do, and then having them do
it. In my class I had many tasks for the students to do such as journal reviews,
in-class essays, five essays, oral presentations, reading assignments, peer
reviews, and in class writings. Even though I had a detailed 12 page syllabus
and I went at great lengths to carefully and meticulously explain each
assignment in order to help students understand what they were supposed to do
and how to do it, I still had misunderstandings. So when the students handed in
the essays/or assignments, there were often times 5, 6, 7, or sometimes even
10-12 students who still were not doing it right. And in this group many of the
students would have different interpretations as to what they were supposed to
write about. My job of course is to reduce this problem as much as I can but I
fear that it is almost impossible to have complete understanding with all the
students. Each student has certain expectations as to what they should do. Some
of these students refused to do what was expected of them. As a result, they
would not revise their essay. Many of them were content to accept a C grade.
Nonetheless, I think I want to address the problem of the "honest few"
students in my class who for whatever reason were confused and misinterpreted my
assignments. Let’s go back to composition theory to analyze what we call
"task representation" in an effort to reduce these misinterpretations
and misunderstandings or at the very least explain why they exist between the
student and the instructor. Hopefully, from that point I can find some answers.
Theory to Practice (Task Representation)
How can the students understand what the task is at hand? Sometimes students
do not make the connection from stimulating class discussion to their writing. A
vital responsibility lies with me helping students in their transition from
group discussions to individual writing tasks. Linda Flower in her article
"The Role of Task Representation in Reading to Write" encourages
learners to read in order to write. In other words, a student will read thus
gaining an understanding of the task at hand; that of the awareness of the
rhetorical situation. The task calls for problem solving strategies in which the
writer constructs instead of chooses the different givens and constraints of a
writing situation. So in effect I act as a catalyst for enabling students to
gain the problem solving strategies needed for the "correct" task
representation understanding by exposing them to different rhetorical
strategies.
I attempted to put this theory into practice when I allowed students to
critique each other's work. This was a legitimate effort on my part in relation
to Flower's theories on task representation in reading to write. As these
students read each others work, they began to construct the criteria by which
each student's represented writing task will be evaluated. As the students
continued to evaluate each others papers and had the chance to have it evaluated
by the me, they (most of the students were able to do at least an adequate job)
were able to construct a similar task representation. At the same time, students
were also analyzing the readings assigned for that specific writing genre and
were encouraged to analyze the successful heuristics continued therein by way of
keeping a weekly response journal. Flower suggests that the belief that the
image of the task will exactly resemble the image constructed by the instructor
is wishful thinking so maybe I had my hopes set too high when I did not have
complete understanding from all 24 of my students. What I hoped to achieve
through the above exercises I realize now was a minimization of the differences
of the task representations constructed by me and the students.
Assessment of the TA Seminar
I entered the TA Seminar on high recommendations given to me by Joel Harris.
He told me that it was a rewarding experience and that it helped his
professionalism as a composition instructor. He also said that it was hard work
but that it was worth it. I entered the TA seminar under those expectations. I
got what I expected and more. Dr. K stated in her syllabus that
the program is designed to increase your effectiveness as a teacher,
enhance your sense of professionalism and create an organized and supportive
setting in which you can discuss and explore pedagogical issues on a regular
basis with a faculty mentor, and exchange ideas with and receive feedback
from your colleagues.
The meetings, reading assignments, syllabus workshops, teaching journal, and
self study all helped me to grow and develop as an instructor. I especially
liked the practical approach used by Dr. K in making me question what and why I
was giving specific writing assignments in my classes. In every class that I
taught, I was encouraged to explain why I was doing what I was doing and
specifically how each assignment related to the overall objectives of the class.
Dr. K did not question my ideologies in composition theory; instead she helped
me to be organized and focused so as to teach an effective class by reminding me
of my stated objectives in my syllabus.
In the teaching journal as well as at the meetings, I was constantly reminded
on how I was organizing my classes so as to reach my objectives. I was able to
bring up problems that I was having in the class with Dr. K and the other TAs
and that helped immensely as I was able to find answers to my questions. The
appropriate focus on this TA program was pedagogical issues and not the
problematic and often times opposing theoretical issues of composition theory.
Pedagogical Issues
Meeting with Dr. White at two of the TA seminars as well as my participation
in the English 495 common midterm assessment has got me thinking more about
assessment. Specifically, I would like to strengthen the peer review assessments
in my class with the ultimate goal of teaching the student how to assess his/her
own writing. I wrote in my journal:
Professor White gave me an idea that I might try in my comp class. He
gave me some examples of essays that were taken in the past and they were
scored from one to six. I will have a workshop in which students (not
knowing the scores) will score the essays themselves. Then we will compare
their scores with the official scores and see how close they are. Then, we
can have an open class discussion on why each essay deserves of does not
deserve the score that it has received. Hopefully, the students can get a
better understanding of how an essay exam is scored.
I would like to have this workshop before the two in-class essays as well as
before each of the assigned papers. I got permission from my students to use
their papers and essay exams for future research and study, so perhaps I could
take examples of these essays as I scored them from 1 to 6 and discuss with
future students why I assigned these scores. Doing this will engage the students
in a metacognitive activity as well as help reduce the task representation
schema that may differ between the instructor and the student. In short, the
students become conscious of what makes good writing and as a result this will
help them construct a mental picture in their mind as how to evaluate it.
Suggested research for professional development
Metacognition (MC) and the composing process would be a nice start for
professional development. It would be interesting to study the MC used between
the beginning and the advanced writer. By attempting to consciously understand
the metacognition of writing, a student can have greater access to the
strategies and goals of writing. Are advanced writers better than beginning
writers because they have a greater access and a more conscious awareness of
these strategies and goals? The answer may lie in the protocol analysis.
Protocol analysis is when students consciously evaluate the strategies they use
when writing. The student talks into a tape recording all the conscious choices
that he/she is making beginning with the invention stage all the way to the
polished final draft stage of writing. The student actually does heuristics out
loud and records his/her progress. The student may then listen to the tape later
on for evaluation and for further generation of ideas. Students who do
"protocol analysis" may gain more of an understanding of the composing
process. The instructor could study the beginning and advanced writers by
listening to the individual recorded comments/responses to all stages of the
writing processes. Then an evaluation of strategies, goals, and heuristics made
by beginning writers could be compared to that of the more advanced writers.
Maybe that could give us some insight as instructors into the minds of the
students. This insight will at least tell us what the student is or is not
understanding about composition. But the problem is who has time to do such a
study while they are teaching the class at the same time?!?!
