Friday, May 23, 2008
Where did the "strengths on which to build" come from?
Given that Wilson Nelson frequently blames WTC students' previous teachers for crushing their writing spirits and "forcing them into a downward spiral" (197) shouldn't those same instructors get at least some credit for the positive things that occurred in the writers' experiences before the WTC: the "strengths on which to build" (208) and "hidden skills" (192) that the WTC's student-lead methods are able to bring out? If the "slope" (204) of Carmen's learning curve was just stretched out further over time, isn't her previous instruction vindicated somewhat (just as her work in the first semester of the WTC is credited) by her eventual success?
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3 comments:
I agree Karen. If teachers deserve blame they also deserve praise, which is missing here.
I also wondered how to deal with it when the learning curve is hard to see. Nelson points out that they didn't see Carmen's learning until well after she was done with that first experience with the WTC (if not the second as well). How can we tell which students are just moving slowly and which ones are not moving at all in the moment? Should we be worried about such judgment calls?
In the last chapter Nelson includes the belief “that grammar and mechanics are ‘basics’ writers must master before writing well” as one of the assumptions that teachers need to question (252-253). As you suggest, though, it does seem that in many of the cases described in her book it was the existence of latent grammatical and mechanical facility that made breakthroughs possible.
If the class sizes were large at this school it's possible Carmen might have had difficulty no matter what methods were used by the instructor. She needed more attention and time than the instructor could provide.
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