Student Writing as Classroom Text (SWACT) in Application

    The truth is that using student writing as classroom text (SWACT) is nothing new.  Sure, Bartholomae and Petroksy highlight it in Fact, Artifacts and Counterfacts by featuring in a published anthology of student autobiographies, and William Coles, in The Plural I, designs his entire curriculum on whole-class readings of weekly compositions, but this is nothing particularly novel.  After all, we’ve all had experiences with this methodology in more modest forms beginning with reading book reports aloud in fourth grade, for example. 
    What’s different and, I think, truly empowering is the integrated reading/writing approach to SWACT.  Reading Sally Smith’s book report of Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shovel offered few of the same benefits of such a program because the writing was not used to consciously model the advantages and/or disadvantages of such a text as exemplary to that genre.  In the B & P or Coles models, by contrast, the SWACT is included within a writing workshop context; the result is a meaningful motivation to revise, as well as a deeper grasp of audience, purpose and style because of the benefits of immediate feedback.  At the same time, readers hone their critical analysis, which contributes immediately to their own writing.
    By not discussing or writing Sally Smith’s book report, we miss a valuable opportunity to inspire an entire class through what Krashen calls a “meaningful” environment.  Krashen, quoted by Gee, explains that the best acquisition “happens in natural setting which are meaningful and functional . . .” (Gee, 539)  Thus, compared to the sometimes weak impact of the cold page of a book, a class full of your peers responding to your writing could impact a reader exponentially greater.  In fact, it might be argued that hearing, say, ten positive responses and ten negative freeform responses might feel like a more fair consensus than single peer response or even a teacher’s solitary commentary. 
    The meaningful aspect of SWACT cannot be over emphasized.  When students know they’re about to come under whole-class inspection, or that one day their “number” will come up, their focus and interest is heightened dramatically.  While this adds to the “fun” aspect of the class, ultimately this leads to increased student engagement.  And this engagement gives rise to a desire to succeed, paying attention, then, to elements that constitute good writing without ever being dictated from the teacher “the rules” of good writing.  As B & P write: “They begin to make decisions about what is interesting and what is banal, what passes as an idea and what does not, what forms of an argument work and what don’t.”  The social impact can be potentially electrifying because the stakes are high for avoiding disappointment, and for gaining positive “strokes”:  B & P point out that “the phrase makers and the idea people soon become centers of interest in each class.” (30)  SWACT makes the lesson “real” in a way that few other lessons can, outside of a workshop or laboratory setting.  By comparison, as Kutz et al point out, traditional writing instruction presents writing as as “an assemblage of structures and removes it from a socially constructed context.” (Kutz, Groden and Zamel, 30)   
    In terms of writing skills, SWACT pays off in spades.  As students learn to express their ideas and make their points through this process of public trial and error, they benefit chiefly because of their immediate comprehension of audience.  B & P note that students in a SWACT class learn how to “become (and imagine) both audience and participants in such a discussion.”  As critiqued writers gain instant understanding of the people they want to reach, those listening also develop as readers, sharpening their mental and oral skills of critique, moving beyond “yeah” toward “yeah” with substantial justification, using cues in the text. (31)  In this way, SWACT augments what Louise Rosenblatt calls “authorial writing,” that is, re-thinking a writing with the “virtual audience” in mind -- except that, in the case of SWACT, students are increasingly familiar with their audience, which helps them more precisely custom-fit their thoughts.
    A few possible obstacles might arise in implementing SWACT.  Some students, especially FYC students, could be intimidated by such a potentially embarrassing process.  Some deft maneuvering is in order if sensitive students’ feelings are to be spared.  While some students might be paralyzed by a whole-class critique, observers might fall silent, fearing that they might incur any harsh critiques themselves. How, then, to placate such fears and motivate discussion?
    In What Is “College-Level” Writing?, Sheridan Blau offers some ideas that might help.  He points out that, in our endeavor to initiate young writers to academic discourse, we might do more harm than good unless we take great care.   Ironically, he notes, where writers of academic articles already know their audience pretty well -- some of the audience personally, in fact -- FYC students usually have no such connection to audience.  Clearly, as we’ve seen, teaching SWACT is an ideal approach to overcoming this problem.  Still, in critiquing student papers, how do we avoid alienating people?  Blau’s suggestion is to read a model paper with an eye toward defining this genre first.  That is, imagining that we’re teaching a class of confused students, we imagine their questions.  For example, one might be, What’s an essay?  What are its parts?  What are its goals?  I would posit that using Blau’s “definition” discussion might be the ideal kick-off for a new SWACT writing classroom, putting many nerves at ease, beginning with a model and free discussion, then introducing critiques of student papers afterward.
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Student Writing as Classroom Text

      Few Composition methodologies have impressed me like the concept of using student writing as classroom texts. I love the organic, stripped-down, boot camp feeling I get from William Coles' The Plural I or Bartholomae and Petrosky's Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts. In the former, Coles uses no other outside texts, and chooses student papers from the previous week for whole-class case studies for what works, what doesn't, and for fuel for the revision factory, since all students are reminded through reading colleagues' papers of the need to revise to improve.

       In Bartholomae and Petrosky's model, student autobiographies are revised, edited, compiled and actually published in a hardcopy volume; this anthology of autobiographies, then, becomes the classroom text for the ensuing unit, as students read and write about student writing, student thinking and student lives. I suspect the student-text-as-publication resonates with me especially because I first learned to love writing through my contributions to my school newspapers.  Tough though it may be, students gain a great sense of identity knowing their work is being read, critiqued and possibly admired.
      More important, this raises the potential for students to take their own work more seriously both in style and content; the group reading and assessment provides powerful whole-group reflection that, conceivably, can be received as more palatable and informative than, say, a single student's feedback during peer review, or than even a teacher's solitary response. Nowadays, many colleges benefit from campus websites like iLearn, and most students have some access to the Internet, so blogs can simplify the process of publishing student work for the benefit of the writing class. 

      As exciting as this teaching method is, since I've never taught such a class myself, I'm curious What does it look like?, that is, beyond Coles, Bartholomae and Petrosky. What kinds sorts of writing themes work best? Are there any applications beside Coles' model of reading and discussing, or B & P's publication, or this class' blogs?
      My initial reading list is:

The Plural I, William Coles

Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts, Bartholomae,David and Petrosky, Anthony

"STUDENTS’ TEXTS BEYOND THE CLASSROOM:Young Scholars in Writing’s Challenges to College Writing Instruction" (pp. 118-128) From:Teaching With Student Texts
Doug Downs
University Press of Colorado, Utah State University Press (December 2010)


INQUIRY, COLLABORATION, AND REFLECTION IN THE STUDENT (TEXT)-CENTERED MULTIMODAL WRITING COURSE" (pp. 200-209)
From:Teaching With Student Texts
Scott L. Rogers
University Press of Colorado, Utah State University Press (December 2010)


"EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY:The Kairos of Teaching with Student Texts" (pp. 229-242)
From:Teaching With Student Texts
Rolf Norgaard
University Press of Colorado, Utah State University Press (December 2010)


"STUDENTS WRITE TO STUDENTS ABOUT WRITING" (pp. 88-95)
From:Teaching With Student Texts
Laurie McMillan
University Press of Colorado, Utah State University Press (December 2010)

The Pleasure Principle

    Revisiting Marguerite Helmers’ introduction to her Intexts compendium of reading pedagogy, I’m reminded of the separate, but unequal, approach so many English departments share for Comp vs. Lit., and the need to consider both sides of the divide in order to serve our students best.  Traditionally, our educational methodology teaches reading and writing separately, as Bleich notes, which treats reading as “overdetermined and pedestrian.” (5)  The chief question, as Young and Fulwiler posit, is whether we focus on the text or on the reader. (7)  This discussion gave rise to Lindemann and Tate’s debates, where the former argued that there was “no place for literature in first-year composition,” while the latter bemoaned curricula deprived of reading “an entire body of excellent writing,” along with the implied writing benefits this cultivates in first-year readers. (7-8)
    After nearly two years of immersion in SFSU’s largely Lindemannian perspective, it’s not difficult to support it.  Emphasizing the reader generally means reading shorter works by authors in the field -- or, like William Coles, ignoring all such works and favoring the reading of student work as class text.  This is because, given the limited time for homework and class discussion, reading longer works usually means less time to study critical aspects of writing.  By contrast, in a class focusing on students, student attitude and technique are the primary concern.  Unlike many students in literature courses, these writing students, it’s hoped, develop a consciousness for purpose, audience, genre and stance, and they become cognizant of the transactional triad of the reader, the writer and the text.  The student-centered classroom teaches students explicitly authorial reading (Rosenblatt) and social-justice reading or reading the world (Freire).  In addition to creating an arguably more relevant and, therefore, interesting learning environment, this approach actually offers the perspective of reading and writing as tools of empowerment to re-think, if not revolutionize, the world.  All of this develops agency in student reading, which strengthens student writing; at the same time, an emphasis on writing develops strong reading skills, as Rosenblatt asserts.
    By contrast, the Tatian view, where classroom focus is on the text, can be seen to offer crucial benefits that the other approach omits.  Chief among these is the pleasure that can come from reading literature; even Freire says that a good reading includes strong emotions.  If, like Freire, we sincerely want to help students read the world, and if such a reading is “full of feelings, of emotions, of tastes,” (Helmers) then at some point we need to help ensure that our students truly connect with their reading. (10)  Unfortunately, composition studies, with its movement away from expressivism toward what Helmers calls a “Marxist-based cultural criticism,” has provided little or no consideration for the importance of reading for enjoyment, since this is considered “soft.” (14)  For teachers moving in the opposite direction, the classroom can be an unfortunate “contact zone” where students think of reading as pleasurable, while instructors “expect interrogation.” (18)  Lynn Schwartz laments that books, in the context of the classroom, lose their “magic” when they become texts, and what was always fun becomes drudgery.  (19)
    In my teaching, I will definitely try to make reading enjoyable for my students.  Tate and others maintain this is next to impossible when students read only short works, but I’m not convinced; nor am I certain that reading entire bodies of longer works is, in itself, enjoyable since so much depends on the quality of the writing, the degree to which it activates student schema, the atmosphere of the classroom and the enthusiasm and skill of the instructor to make the reading come alive.  Even, with all this, so much hinges on the students individually and the schemata they bring to the work. 
    At some point in the term, I would love to have students read some piece of aesthetic literature, even if it’s only a poem or a short story.  Call it a personal bias -- I love fiction because, at its most powerful, it can ignite emotions in ways that the most brilliant intellectual work cannot.  Sure, some might say that, as we move closer toward the affective, even if some students connect very deeply, other students may not relate at all.  Therefore, choosing such materials requires extreme care and thoughtfulness.  Most important for me, however, is not that my students enjoy themselves per se, though that would be great, but that their joy could lead to increased engagement, and this engagement to increased agency and commitment to learn.