Outsiders Within: Resolving Working-Class Experience within the Privileged Classroom
To be able to swim between discourses, to navigate the currents, means being able to communicate and bond with a variety of people. Moderating the academic discourse gets to the very essence of why education matters. If students can operate intellectually and socially on multiple levels, then they stand a greater chance of being able to communicate in numerous settings. Possessing an assortment of discourse styles and strategies is liberating; it means choosing which discourse to use. Using and being able to critique discourses becomes a source of power.
At my current institution, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, the challenges of discourse navigation are apparent. Our student body reflects a huge range of nationalities, economic classes, languages, genders, and academic experiences. Appropriately enough, we are also well equipped with composition theorists and teachers who can respond to the needs of students. As tutors we are in an interesting position; we are perhaps new to the discourse’s conflicts while negotiating our place within the University. We are expected to be good representatives of higher education, but also be able to relate to freshman. Our notions of discourse are developing, and so are our tutoring strategies.
Early on in the semester I tutored R, a young African-American man, who wrote a paper that was quite informal, almost conversational, and included a lot of rhetorical questions. His paper was well organized, and he clearly explained his ideas. I didn’t make his lack of SWE an issue because I felt that his essay was well written without it. I mentioned his work to the professor, and she said as long as he wrote complete sentences he didn’t have to use SWE. I felt relieved. However, later in the semester, I learned that he had withdrawn from the class because he failed to meet the expectations of Composition 101. His teacher claimed that he could not, in fact, write in complete sentences adequately, despite his perfect attendance and positive attitude. I had mixed emotions when I heard this because although I had only seen one of his essays, I felt he was an adequate freshman writer. Had I been too easy on him? Had his professor been too hard on him? While my initial reaction was disappointment that he withdrew, another part of me that recognized that withdrawing may have been the right choice for the student. If a student is new to a discourse, as R certainly was, then it can take some time and maybe several tries before the discourse “sticks.”
While I only met with R once, I worked with other students throughout the semester. M was in an English as a Second Language (ESL) class, having recently moved to the U.S. from Egypt. He was a hard worker, but very slow at revising his papers. There were a number of issues that came up due to the academic discourse he was used to using. For one thing, no matter how often we talked about staying on topic, his papers always seemed to spin off on tangents. These tangents were usually helpful in creating a more full picture, but they never really proved the point of his thesis. For example, the first paper of the semester was a personal essay based on the idea of border crossing. It took several weeks for M to hone his paper down into something that fulfilled the requirements of the assignment. I tried to emphasize the language of the assignment in order to help him find direction. I would say things like, “Okay, how is this a border?” or “How did you cross that border?” Yet his paper still contained long-winded stories, such as a tangent about crashing his car while on the way to school. It took many questions from me to determine that this was an important element to his paper, because without the ability to drive, he would not be able to attend class and cross his language border. The structure of the American essay was an extremely difficult concept for M. After five weeks and him asking me again for clarification of what a conclusion should be, I asked him what an essay in Egypt would look like. He said, “I would put my conclusion in the middle of the paper and use it to raise more questions. Then I would answer those questions in the rest of my paper.” I was torn ideologically. While I didn’t want to be a SWE enforcement officer, I also didn’t want to see more of his extremely off-topic papers. Furthermore, for him to come to an American university, trust me as a mentor of sorts, and leave an intro composition class not knowing the basics of SWE organization would be doing him a disservice. I was visibly stressed by the gap between M’s Egyptian style and the American style of composition. While I fretted for a moment, he looked at me and said, “Don’t worry. I can do this. I can learn this. It will be easy.”
This session was an “A-ha!” moment for me. While I personally struggled with imposing a form on M, he had already made peace with his new discourse. He wanted me to show him what an American professor expected. Working with M, I truly realized that multiple discourses can be reconciled. In no way did I shut out M’s other languages, alphabet, or discourses. In fact, in one session he showed me how to write my name in Arabic. In another session, while his class was reading the novel The Kite Runner, he showed me how the author had translated from Arabic to English. Because I appreciated his knowledge of Egyptian and Arabic, and because he yearned to understand English, we maintained a positive learning environment. No discourse was valued more than another; rather, M added to his already diverse discourse menu.
All of this theorizing leads us to more questions: what would a classroom that respects multiple discourses look like? What would the assignments look like? Would academic writing change? Would SWE be discarded, causing the English field to spiral into anarchy? First, college professors and students must have an explicit discussion about discourses. This may be uncomfortable for the participants—after all many students have been silenced and shamed in classrooms. However, I think it is important for the conversation to take place. Students would have the chance to participate and would probably be relieved that the subject came up. Second, the structure of class lessons must attempt to accommodate several discourse styles. For example, some female students have trouble entering into heated conversations where it seems like emotions are flaring. Similarly, students from other countries who are not used to debate or giving oral presentations may feel overwhelmed. While we, of course, want stimulating, provocative class discussions, we also want students to feel like they are in a safe space. After all, dramatic as it may sound, many students come to college having never been asked their opinion. I suppose that’s why we encounter so many freshmen who are astonished to learn that they can use “I” in a paper. Because these students don’t have the confidence to express themselves, we need to create situations where their input is encouraged. Small group work is a good way to make more voices heard. If the class breaks into groups and then reports back to the entire group, there is not only a greater chance that more students will speak, but students are also afforded the opportunity to be experts. They can report back to the class and feel a sense of ownership stemming from their knowledge and the chance to share it.
