Teaching first-year composition (FYC) only reinforces my view that dedicated teacher-scholars from the field of composition, with a current and deep understanding of the field, should be given preference in hiring at universities and should be compensated well for their specialty.
My composition sections have 24 to 27 students each, with a four-section teaching load. I have 108 or more papers (counting revisions) to grade every few weeks. To truly help students improve writing would include discussions with the students, not mere marks on their papers, but individual or group conferences are difficult to schedule. This workload is precisely the sort of problem composition scholars have attempted to address in their literature.
I am not a composition scholar. I am a rhetorician, and more specifically I am interested in visual design, narratives, and economics. Yes, I need to integrate my work into the classes I teach, and I do what I can to broaden “composition” within my classroom.
The composition requirement — which I did not experience as an undergraduate — seems reasonable to me, especially for first-generation students learning to navigate higher education. The course teaches as much about academic culture as it does writing. It’s a shared experience and a way to ease into this strange community of scholars.
I am struggling, for many reasons, including learning on the job. The workload is crushing me, because I want to provide individualized guidance to each student. I resist the “grammar, spelling, and mechanics” of many syllabi, yet I also now have a greater appreciation for how rigid syllabi became entrenched. How do you grade 100 or more papers? By skimming quickly. The math is insane:
108 papers x 20 minutes each = 36 hours of grading
108 paper x 30 minutes each = 54 hours of grading
I spend the equivalent of a full-time job most weeks simply grading papers and providing feedback. Yes, I tried automating some tasks, but papers should be read and graded based on their ideas. You should be having a discussion with students, not correcting them with a red pen (or Word’s revision mode) to highlight errors. FYC should be about support and encouragement, not gatekeeping.
Students deserve my best efforts, and probably more than what I can provide. I offer office hours, online chats, and email availability. I want these young people to do well in my class and beyond.
Composition experts would do much better than I am doing. Not just because they would lack my insecurity, though that must help, but because they surely know some tricks and methods for teaching so many students. I’ve tried voice responses, for example. The learning management system revealed only half listened to my thoughts. I’m sure that’s a similar percentage as those who read comments, too.
If we are going to require a course, any course, it should have the best possible pedagogical underpinnings. There should be scholar-teachers on faculty to help keep the courses aligned with best practices, reflecting current scholarship.
Experts should be well-compensated and well-regarded.
That won’t happen. I’m one among an army of temporary and part-time instructors for this course at the university. There were over 50 sections listed in the course catalog. To ensure similarity of outcomes, syllabi must share some elements. The uniformity and rigidity that emerges is a result of the university model: low-cost adjuncts teaching crowded sections.
I admit, with some shame, that I feel lousy after each day. I’m not giving students the learning experiences I would want. I’m doing the best I can in a deeply flawed system.