Sara Erickson, MA, English, Northern Illinois University

erving as a teaching assistant is a common role for many English graduate students, and, beginning this semester, I was ready to accept this as part my educational journey.  Despite this awareness, as I looked ahead to beginning graduate school, I was more focused on my own education than on the thought of teaching.  My mind was filled with ideas for courses I would take and fears of intellectual inadequacy, rather than with lesson plans or teaching strategies.  As the school year began to approach and I received information about my teaching assignment for the semester, I started thinking about the fact that I would soon be teaching a class of my own.  My role as a teacher began to take on great importance for me shortly after the semester began.  Now, reflecting back on my first semester in graduate school, I believe that the most positive change I have recently had in my life is the addition of my role as a teacher.

       Before the semester began, I was unsure of what type of teacher I would eventually become.  As I anticipated becoming a teaching intern this semester, I thought back on teachers I remembered fondly.  Undoubtedly, part of the appeal of becoming a teacher was a chance to make an impact on other students' minds, just as these teachers had impacted me.  I remember my second grade teacher, Mrs. Rotter, because she invited me to stay after school to discuss books I had read.  I remember my seventh grade science teacher, Mrs. Vogel, because she patted my hand and encouraged me when I lost the student council election.  I remember my high school algebra teacher, Mrs. Oman, because she wrote me college letters of recommendation and told me that, even though I was good at math, I should major in English because that was what I loved.  I remember Professor Fuerch, my college Spanish professor, Professor Clemente, my French professor, and Professor Woods, my English professor because they helped me apply to graduate school, invited me to their houses to have dinner with their families, and wrote me letters of encouragement after I graduated.

       When I think of teachers and professors at all levels that have made an impression on me, I think of the duality of their roles in my life.  In elementary school teachers are supposed to be surrogate parents for us, someone to instruct us and also take care of us when our mothers are not there.  As we get older, the roles teachers play change.  Education itself moves to the forefront, and we try to fill our minds with facts, dates, and ideas as we prepare for high school and college.  We no longer need a mother, but we often need a confidant or counselor.  Seventh grade was a difficult time in my life, and, more than science or vocabulary, I needed someone to listen to me and tell me everything would be okay.  Ten years later I don't remember any of the terms I learned in Mrs. Vogel's class, but I still have the notes of encouragement she gave me tucked away in a drawer at home.

       In college, both the educational and personal impact of our teachers are brought to a higher level.  We start to work closely with professors in our chosen field, getting to know them as both instructors and as people.  My undergraduate university was a small, liberal arts college with under one thousand students, and I was, therefore, able to benefit from the close, personal attention of many of my professors.  As I began to contemplate my future, both my love for literature and my desire to share this love with others motivated me towards an eventual career as a college professor.  I wanted to become the kind of personal and academic mentor for others that my professors were for me.  However idealistic this opinion of teaching was, it was something I took with me as I began my job as a teaching intern.  Even as a first year teacher, I hoped to be available to my students on both an educational and a personal level.

       Although my personal experiences have shown that a teacher can maintain diverse roles in his or her relationship with students, Peter Elbow discusses possible conflicts with this duality.  In "Embracing Contraries in the Teaching Process," Elbow contemplates whether a balance can be found between our desire to have students "join us as members of a learning community" and "our commitment to knowledge and society" (55).  This article argues that, as teachers, we have conflicting loyalties in our relationship with our students.  As instructors, we have a deep love for English, which is why we have continued to study it.  We teach in order to work more closely with the literature and rhetoric we enjoy, hoping that a small part of our love will spill over onto our students.  In addition to this sharing of knowledge, however, we also have responsibilities: we must stay true to the rules and regulations of the English "community" that we celebrate.  Like any other community--hypothetical or otherwise--the English community has rules and regulations that must be followed; in order for our students to become a part of this community, they must be aware of and follow these rules, from comma splices to paragraph structure.  If we cannot find a balance between becoming peers in the English community and being grammarians for our students, we may have difficulty maintaining the excitement and energy needed to teach.

       Each of the roles that we fill as teachers of English require certain skills, according to Elbow, who divides these skills into two separate categories: the ones intended "to help students learn more" (58) and those that serve the "knowledge, culture, and institutions" of English (59).  On the one hand, we are advocates for our students, in an effort to form that friendly relationship we have had as students in the past.  Contrarily, we are also advocating knowledge itself, attempting to stay true to the rules and structure of what we are trying to teach.  Throughout my first semester of teaching, I have had the opportunity--in fact the need--to practice each of these differing skills outlined by Elbow.

       The first role I played for my students was the latter: the "gatekeeper" of knowledge, the person of authority in front of the room.  Despite the difficulty of this, I tried to remain firm and strong in my beliefs at the beginning of the semester, insisting on the maintenance of the standards outlined by the syllabus.  Because of my age and inexperience, I was determined to emphasize these rules clearly and repeatedly at first, until I felt they had become ingrained in the minds of the students.  Elbow believes that "we should insist on standards that are high," not only in the sense of the daily rules of the course, such as attendance, but also in the rules of writing itself (59).  I really wasn't able to confront these writing standards and explain them to my class until the beginning of October, when they received their first letter grade.  Although the job of assigning grades to students fits very much into this gatekeeper role, I found it the easiest to tackle this responsibility by mixing it with a more pro-student attitude.  It has been my experience that Elbow's division of our roles as teachers do fit into two distinct categories, but, in practice, they cannot exist alone.

       At the beginning of the semester I had the opportunity early on to establish a more pro-student relationship with my class.  The first drafts of the students' papers received grades of Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory, the emphasis not on the grade itself but on my comments themselves.  Elbow notes that as we comment on drafts, we act "as it were lawyers for the defense, explicitly trying to help students do better against the judge and prosecuting attorney when it comes to the 'trial' of testing and grading" (59).  Evaluating the first drafts of the papers allowed me to act as this kind of advocate, giving comments as a gatekeeper would, correcting grammar and raising questions of consistency and structure, but also letting me focus on topic and theme, offering suggestions without the pressure of a grade.  In these drafts students freely expressed their ideas and experimented with structures that may have been difficult for them because they knew that these experimentations would not negatively affect their grades.

       The comments I made on these drafts were, therefore, received positively because students saw them as positive suggestions, rather than a list of errors that lowered their grades.  My suggestions were just suggestions meant to try and improve my students' papers, rather than to criticize them for work that didn't meet my standards.  With the first drafts, I had shown my students that I was on their side, "showing them that the perplexity or ignorance they reveal[ed] to [me] will not be used against them," as Elbow says (59).  The Satisfactory/ Unsatisfactory grading of drafts was the preparation a way to prepare my students for the "trial" of grading the revisions of these papers, preparation for my assuming the role of "judge."

       Assigning grades for the first time in my English 103 class was when all of my various attitudes about teaching came together.  Giving grades was, and still is now, a terrifying experience for me because of the power associated with it.  I wanted to maintain the friendly, caring relationship I had established with many of my students through their first drafts, but I also had to become a gatekeeper, someone who would, with the mark of a pen, influence a student's grade, and--on a wider scale--his or her college grade point average.  I was moving toward, as Elbow describes, being "critical-minded" and looking "at students and student performances with a skeptical eye" (59).  I labored extensively over these first graded papers, sincerely wanting all of my students to succeed and merit a grade with which they would be happy.  In the end, however, I knew that my ultimate responsibility in giving grades was to the structure and quality of a well-written English paper.  No matter how nice and caring the student was, no matter how often he or she volunteered in class or said "hi" to me in the hallway, I was grading the merits of his or her paper most of all.

       I made the responsibility of grading less intimidating for myself by again combining it with other, more pro-student activities.  I wanted to make my students as active a part as possible in the grading process, especially at this early point in the semester when they did not yet know what type of grader I would be (just as I, in fact, did not know what kind of grader I would turn out to be, this being my first teaching experience).  Before the students wrote the revised draft of their first paper, they participated in peer response workshops in class.  These reviews gave students more feedback to help with revising their papers, but it also served another purpose in my mind.  Analyzing and judging the qualities of another's paper gives each student a teacher-like role in that he or she is responsible for deciding whether certain aspects of the paper fit both the criteria of the paper's assignment and the criteria of a clear, well-organized paper.

       In her book Teaching in Progress: Theories, Practices, and Scenarios, Josephine Tarvers agrees with giving students this kind of power over each other's papers. According to Tarvers, peer response workshops "force writers to examine the impact each of their rhetorical choices has on a community" (155).  In critiquing one of their classmates' papers, students think about the choices they have made in their own papers and how those decisions may be perceived by an outsider reader.  Peer response workshops shift a student's focus form writer-centered to reader-centered writing for the first time.

       From the beginning of the semester, I wanted to make sure my students knew that they were in fact presenting their papers as members of a writing community--the community of our classroom.  From reading excerpts from student papers aloud to classroom discussions fed by everyone's participation, I was successfully able to make my students feel comfortable bringing their ideas and questions to the group for feedback.  If a student was not able to understand how to write clear transitions from my examples in class and instead found the concept more easily explained by a fellow student, then I had succeeded in creating a learning community in my classroom.  The feedback that I later received from my students about the importance of peer response workshops has been overwhelmingly positive for both the writers and the readers of the papers.  The writers received additional comments to help them in revisions, while the readers for a moment took on the role of teacher, analyzing the merits of a paper itself.

       The second way I attempted to involve my class in the grading process before the first grades were assigned was to develop a grading heuristic as an entire group.  I felt that encouraging my students to take an active role in developing a criteria for graded papers was important because, again, it would take all of the power away from me as the teacher, and make it a more community-centered activity.  Before I assigned grades to student work, I wanted to make sure the students knew what criteria these grades would reflect.  As a class we discussed several published grading heuristics, including the one Tarvers describes in her book (163-4).  We added and deleted materials from these other lists as class members saw fit, making the heuristic something that was distinctive to our class itself.

       Students also discussed what made up average, above average, and below average writing as preparation for receiving their first grades on their writing.  Tarvers notes the positive results of involving students in the determination of grading criteria, believing that "when students are involved in setting these standards, you'll find that disputes over grades are less frequent, and that students will honestly assess for you what grades their efforts ought to receive" (164).  There are no hidden surprises when graded papers are returned because students are able to match my comments with the criteria described on our heuristic under the letter grade they have received.

       Finally, I had my students assess their own writing before handing in a revised copy of their paper.  In addition to their portfolio materials, I asked students to include one or two paragraphs explaining what changes they had made to their paper during the revision process, what advice they took from others, what proofreading, addition, or rearranging they had done.  I asked students to carefully evaluate for me what they felt they were able to accomplish in revising their papers and what they may have felt was difficult.

       After giving my students the opportunity to share for a while my role as teacher and evaluator, it was ultimately my turn to assign them grades.  I felt more comfortable doing this knowing that the grading criteria I was following was not a mystery to my students, but the pressure of grades themselves could still be overwhelming.  By October, I felt comfortable with my students, and we had had many wonderful classroom discussions.  My students were not afraid to contact me with questions and concerns, and I was particularly pleased with the open and comfortable atmosphere of my classroom.  I feared that once I had given the students their first grades the friendly learning environment that I had established with my class would change, and that they would see me solely as the gatekeeper of their grades.

       Although this fear was on my mind as I graded my first set of papers, I accepted the necessity of my role as gatekeeper.  Sometimes, as teachers, we must "not get attached to students or take their part or share their views of things," as Elbow advises (59); otherwise, we will not be able to unbiasedly assign grades to them.  However, much I want to be a caring listener that shares a community with my students, I must stay true to my role as their writing instructor, letting them know how their writing measures up with the standards set by the writing community as a whole.

       Assigning grades is the ultimate responsibility I have as a teacher of writing, and I have found that it is a role that most students accept.  Students are trained to see their teachers as people of authority; it is a role that, without saying or doing anything we as teachers are assigned.  At the beginning of the semester, I tried to wear down the traditional view of a teacher's role that my students may have held in their minds.  Most of the classes first-year students take at a larger university are lecture classes with hundreds of students in them, making English 103 the only class many of the students have that provides any sort of personal attention.  One of my first roles as a teacher was to discount the myths that college instructors were unapproachable and distant.  I wanted to make sure that my students felt like their English classroom was one where they each had a distinct voice and could actively participate.  As it became time for the students to see me in the more traditional role of grader, I wanted to keep these ideas fresh in my students' minds to achieve a balance between my roles as a teacher.

       The scheduling of this semester worked out so that I able to hold personal conferences with each of my students the week after their first graded paper was due.  These conferences provided an opportunity for me to maintain a balance between Elbow's roles of helping my students learn and staying loyal to high writing standards.  I could personally discuss with my students exactly why I gave them the grades I did, using the grading heuristic our class had discussed to show them where their papers fit in with those standards.  My students asked me a number of questions about their writing and about how to improve their grades.  I maintained my role as a teacher, mixing the power I had over their grades with an understanding and compassionate ear.  I've found that it is not so much the role of gatekeeper itself that intimidates students, but the confusion of the processes behind it.  If students honestly understand why I've given the grades I have, they will be more understanding of my role as a grader.

       During these conferences, I was also able to increase my other role in the lives of some of these students--the role of listener.  I began each conference discussing grades and paper revisions, but after those questions were answered, many students shared with me other information about their lives as first-year students.  They expressed pleasure or anxiety over their grades in other courses, often wishing they could talk one-on-one with their other professors.  Several students confided in me how difficult beginning college was for them, even mentioning loved ones they had left at home.  I was very pleased with the outcome of these conferences because I feel that I was able to become more comfortable with my varying roles as a teacher.  I was able to re-emphasize my role as gatekeeper of grades by discussing my grading standards with my students, and I was also able to explain my reasons for giving the grades I did.  These conferences also allowed for a non-academic conversation to begin with many students, and I feel as if they are now more comfortable approaching me with both academic and non-academic matters.

       It is difficult to form a lasting relationship with students with whom we will have contact for only one semester; the professors with whom I am friends were my instructors for several semesters or were my academic advisors.  Despite the brevity of my contact with my English 103 students this semester, I feel it is possible to be available to them outside of giving them assignments and correcting their sentence structure.  The first semester of college can be a scary and overwhelming experience for many first-year students, and I believe that it is my job as an instructor not only to prepare my students for college-level writing, but to help them make the transition to college itself.  Few, if any, of my students will take another English class beyond those required of them, and they probably will not remember the grammar exercises we did or the Common Culture readings we've discussed.  What I hope they do remember is the open community-centered environment of our classroom.  I hope they remember asking questions as well as answering questions, taking an active role in their own education.

       It is overly-optimistic for me to think this early in my teaching career that my students will even remember my name after they have graduated and moved on from Northern Illinois, but I will certainly remember them and the dynamic of my first classroom.  Teaching has become a central focus of my life as a graduate student because sharing my love for writing, albeit in small ways, with my students has reaffirmed in my mind that this is what I want to do with the rest of my life.  As Peter Elbow explains, "the teacher who is really in love with Yeats or with poetry will push harder, and yet be more tolerant of students' difficulties because his love provides the serenity he needs in teaching" (64).  My love of writing will help me as I continue to develop my goals and motives for teaching, and as I continue to redefine the many roles I will play as a teacher.
 

Works Cited
Elbow, Peter (2000).  "Embracing contraries in the teaching process." The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook.  Ed. Edward P. J. Corbett, Nancy Meyers, and Gary Tate.  Oxford: Oxford UP, pp.  54-65.

Tarvers, Josephine Koster.  Teaching in Progress: Theories, Practices, and Scenarios. New York: Longman, 1998.