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January 20, 2005
The Complaint Department
Teaching is not just a performance for students; it does not rely solely on the teacher's talents and efforts; nor is it located solely in the connection between teacher and student. It requires setting--place--and equipment--technology. This is neither ancient Greece nor the European Middle Ages: my students do not follow me from place to place, to listen to my pearls of wisdom or to engage me in metaphysical dialectic. No, the year is 2005; I am a writing teacher; and to teach well, I need something beyond a cubbyhole crammed with desks. I do not drill my students in grammar. To teach them about writing, I need to be able to work with them in the environment in which writing now takes place: online. Instead, I have that crowded cubbyhole; several pockmarked blackboards on which one cannot make out what has been written; and an overhead projector that would have been the pride of a teacher in 1955. (This particular piece of equipment, in fact, probably was the pride of a 1955 teacher.)
What I need is space so that my students can move around and work in groups; I need overhead projection from a computer so that they can all simultaneously see a classmate's text and see it being revised before their eyes as the whole class considers the writer's options; and I need access to the Internet so that we can work with source texts. To teach writing without these things in 2005 is equivalent to a writing teacher in 1955 having to do without books, pencils, and paper. It is unbelievable to me that an expensive private university would make them available in such small quantity that teachers must quarrel with each other over these resources and that department-level administrators must endure the headaches of teachers' reasonable demands that cannot be met. Today I found myself actually having to make a case for the department's providing my own personal set of fresh overhead transparency markers, so that my students can write on those god damned plastic transparencies in class and we can put them on the 1955 projector and talk about writing. And of course they were glad to do it; transparency markers is something the department's budget actually can cover. For cryin out loud.
Do I sound angry? I am truly steamed. Because I'm an associate professor, I can usually successfully argue for better digs than I have this semester. And I have no shame in doing so. But this semester I failed. And my rage at having to teach with my hands tied my back is immense. Is it a rage at individuals, at my department? Not in the least. It is a rage at a university, an educational system, a culture, that does not recognize college writing instruction as anything beyond acculturation in linguistic norms and that therefore does not recognize the compelling need for every writing teacher, regardless of rank, all the time, to have the essential equipment for the valuable, essential task of teaching college students how to be better writers.
Posted by senioritis at January 20, 2005 08:15 PM
Comments
rage on, my friend. rage on.
Posted by: madeline at January 20, 2005 10:41 PM
Well, I have a complaint in the same vein. I just got a notice from a conference organizer that to have a VCR and TV for my presentation on a film my fellow presenters (who also need the set up) and I will have to pay $70 plus tax EACH to use the equipment. And this is in addition to the $100 plus dollars to register. Argh . . . what century is this!
Posted by: jenwingard at January 20, 2005 11:08 PM
Sounds like a scam, doesn't it?
Posted by: senioritis at January 21, 2005 11:01 AM
damn straight.
and it's so nice to hear you saying exactly the same things i've been saying about it--although it's a little disconcerting, too, only because i assume that because i'm new here & still a TA complaining in the halls (or the blogs) is about all i can do, whereas people are supposed to LISTEN to you.
on aim w/one of my last-semester students last night:
[xxxnamexxx]: we're in the basement of the physics bldg.... and it's smaller than my bedroom with waaay too many people in it
irishtexanteachr: oh, geez, i know that room. last time i was in there it was w/only 8 people, so it still worked okay.
irishtexanteachr: i'm in a long, narrow closet w/a long table in the middle on the 4th floor of bowne. it looks like that cingular? commercial w/the big thanksgiving family that keeps going from room to room.
[xxxnamexxx]: there's at least twice that in there now
[xxxnamexxx]: haha
irishtexanteachr: i'm up to 19 in mine.
irishtexanteachr: we don't have that many chairs.
[xxxnamexxx]: we do... God help us if we can get to them, though :)
irishtexanteachr: yeah, the OTHER class i teach is in one of those rooms. 15 chairs fit in it. it has 30.
[xxxnamexxx]: :)
[xxxnamexxx]: I just don't understand... there are SOOO many open rooms... and they just don't let us use them
irishtexanteachr: i know, i know.
irishtexanteachr: i have no idea where your tuition goes, but it's NOT to your classroom space.
irishtexanteachr: i think y'all should have your families call to complain about that far more often.
[xxxnamexxx]: yea
Posted by: tyratae at January 21, 2005 11:16 AM