Write Along Side of Them

Two things often slip my mind when teaching a writing intensive research course:

1. That students refuse to believe that writing is a process and overestimate their ability to pull off a project in the final hour, illness and
2. That when I’m writing I know the lure of the same delusions.

For the past three years, ed I have address both of these issues. I force myself to engage in the same research process that I assign for my students, doctor doing it right alongside of them.

An Occasion for Composition

In our capstone course, students choose their own topics, formulate a research question, gather research, develop a thesis, and write a final paper. They work through ten assignments that keep them moving toward the final goal, and as they move forward so do I [except when I don’t.]

The steps in the process are taken from the 7^th and 8^th Edition of Turabian’s A Manual for Writers. During my dissertation, the 6^th Edition was a constant guide for getting footnotes and bibliographic materials in proper order. When I saw the 7^th Edition as a professor, I was pleased to see that the whole first half of the edition outlines a process designed to address my students’ needs. Rather than repeat their work, I’ll point you to the table of contents to acquaint yourself with the steps of the process.

What’s the Value?

So what is the value of writing along side of my students?

1. While some of the steps are things I automatically work out in my head, forcing myself to write them out slows down my own process and clarifies what I am expecting of the students. Writing reminds me of how much or how little I am demanding of my students during a given assignment period. An added bonus is that doing the process in a written form often yields greater clarity and insight for me as a writer. For example, I slow down to answer explicitly the same question they must: Why would anyone care about this research?

2. My process like theirs goes in fits and starts and missed starts. I find myself frustrated in my writing process just as they do.

In the past, I shared anecdotes to express the predictability of this phenomenon for all writers. However, the students really believe it when rather than chuckling about that month stuck in MarioKart during my dissertation, I instead talk of the seduction that lured me from my writing last night! I am not remembering the frustration of formulating a new concept just out of my reach, I vent that specific frustration in real time.

3. In the midst of a busy teaching load that parallels the busy lives of the students, I often encounter the same stewardship of time issues when they do. Facing it along side of them makes me more compassionate as a teacher and more accountable as a writer.

4. Scholarship too often is a lonely enterprise with long stretches of solitary work. I want my students to work collaboratively with others. By entering into this process and listening to their feedback of my work while also offering with their colleagues feedback for their own writing, we experience in flesh and blood the benefits of joint work.

5. I am able to share with them the specific demands my editor has put on me. Actual style sheets that I am seeking to follow carry more weight than those randomly pulled off the internet.

6. After doing this for three years, I have three sets of sample assignments, each different from the others, that the students can look at when they are trying to understand what is required of them at a particular phase in the process. This year I realized that saving the best student exemplars of the process enriches this treasury even more.

7. The most positive comment on evaluations of my writing intensive courses is appreciation that I was with them throughout the process. They love the shared quest on a journey with so many set backs and revelations. They experienced a sense of professor/student solidarity that is too rare for undergraduates.

8. This process benefits me as a writer and teacher as well. In the midst of a busy teaching load it forces me to work on projects that would otherwise be buried under piles of assessment reports until the summer.

9. As an author in a developing field (Performance Criticism of the Bible, see biblicalperformancecriticism.org), my students alert me to times when my writing assumes too much that my audience may not already know. The students get me to move more slowly, explain myself clearly, and thus write well for a larger audience.

10. The companionship that comes with this process is as much a gift for me as it is for the students. The shared journey with young apprentices in the art of theology helps me to ask new questions and to reach out for help from those whose wisdom might otherwise have been neglected.

A final suggestion.

When I first engaged in this process, I gave myself permission to say to the students, “I am beginning this process with you, but at that point in the semester when I need to be spending more time giving you feedback, I may have to let my own process lie dormant until summer comes. However, for the moment, I am in it with you.”

With each year, I have made it further along in the process with them. This year I made it to my penultimate draft of an article slated for publication next spring.

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