reflections on teaching a new course and writing identities

This semester I'm teaching a newly designed course that has never been taught before at my university (or at least, to undergraduates). We've created a new Topics in Rhetoric course, and I'm teaching the first iteration on "Voice" (the title of the course, thanks to my mentor, is "Why Voice Matters"). Briefly, I'm asking students to consider the idea of voice both as a stylistic metaphor that is often associated with a writer's presence and emotional pull, as well as a rhetorical strategy for compelling others to act or being heard in public discourse. We're working through a number of modes: stylistic analysis, reflective multimodal projects that interrogate their identity as a writer and their writing "voice(s)," examinations of "voice" across genres and media, and consideration of how different social and political movements have used "voice."

I'm excited by this course and grateful that my department gives PhD students the opportunity to do this kind of teaching work. But I've been reminded that this is also not easy, striking out on my own, into an independent place far from the curricular directives of a cohesive FYC program. Although we're only in the fourth week of the semester, this class has already been a surprise, challenge, and experience for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I've only taught on the quarter system up until this point, and planning for 15 weeks feels like an entirely different experience than planning for 10. It's not just that I have five more weeks to "fill," but that I can sense there's a different rhythm to be had under semesters that I'm not yet familiar with. I want to give the course a sense of ebb and flow, room to breathe (this last analogy always reminds me of the baseball announcers like Philly's beloved Harry Kalaas who know/knew how to let a game breathe, and let silences and slow moments into their narration of the game).

A quarter was a sprint; a semester feels like, well not a marathon, but perhaps a 5k or a 5 miler.

Although this is a 2000-level course (and one I originally started to conceptualize for an audience of second- or third-year students), it's also been designated as a freshman seminar this semester, which means that I'm constantly navigating tensions and boundaries: how much "first-year comp" do I bring into this course, to help students succeed with their writing in this first semester of their college career?  And how do I balance the needs of students who have come into this class with a background in rhetoric with the needs of students who are encountering these ideas for the first time? Between students who think of themselves "as writers" and students who are uncomfortable with that idea—took this course because they're asked to take a freshman seminar their first year and thought the course description sounded interesting? And last, how do I balance the nebulous quality of this concept that I value with a need for some less tentative findings—without overloading them with writing aimed for scholarly audiences in their first college semester?

Also—and I'm aware that this sounds incredibly ridiculous—it's felt like hard work, re-acquainting myself with the classroom needs of first-year students. I've spent the past year (literally—fall, winter, spring, and summer of 2011–2012) teaching intermediate composition, which in my experience seems to have enrolled roughly 50% sophomores, 25-40% juniors, and 10-25% seniors. The first quarter teaching upperclassmen last year felt strange and unsure, and now I feel the same way about my readjustment back to the first-year classroom this semester. (On the one hand, like I said, I feel ridiculous saying this; on the other, Mike Rose recently reminded us in an IHE piece about the particular literacy needs of first-year students, which makes me think there's something to this feeling.)

I spent a lot of time designing this course this summer. And, when I did, I think that I pictured students who wanted freedom, to be let loose to write about themselves in a way that they'd like to. And so the first assignment I asked them to work on two weeks ago was a very open-to-interpretation piece that asked them to write a "snapshot" of themselves as writers. (This assignment is actually taken just about word-for-word from our awesome new undergraduate writing journal, Queen City Writers.) It asked them to talk about themselves as writers, their writing lives, the struggles and joys of writing, and the nature of "the writing life" from their subject position as a first-year student, biology major, whtever. About half or fewer of my students seemed to really enjoy writing this essay and found a lot to say, and the other half either downright disliked it or felt lost.

Talking with a friend tonight at dinner, I started to wonder if part of the challenge of the assignment lies in the values implied by declaring oneself "a writer." I, for instance, haven't called myself "a runner" since I routinely logged 6, 9, or—very occasionally—13 miles a week, back when I worked full-time in Philly and ran at the gym on my lunch breaks to escape my office cube. When I talk about it now, I tell people that "I run," not that I am a runner. In fact, in a recent email, I went out of my way to clarify expectations—"I hear you're a runner!" she said—because I was uncomfortable with the possibility that I wouldn't live up to her expectations about my appearance, seriousness, and/or prowess.

I think this negotiation of my identity as a runner is related to the ways in which some of my students are negotiating their identities as writers. Some may not have spent much time reflecting on their identity as a writer; others may, in no uncertain terms, have decided that they are not writers, that writing is simply something they have to do but not part of who they are. And some may own this identity as a writer, but feel a keen self-consciousness about their writing as a result. And I think it's a conversation that's worth having together in class, as we revise these pieces of writing.

I hope to open up conversation by sharing my running experiences/identity, and also by posing questions like the following: What is a writer, or what makes one a writer? What does it mean to take ownership of an identity as a writer, what kinds of assumptions does it invite? How do we look at others differently when they declare themselves to be writers? How do our identities as writers (or as NOT writers) shape our relationships to the process of writing?

On a related note, I saw a great, thought-provoking video that considers these questions this past summer, at the CWPA workshop in Albuquerque: "Who is a Writer: What Writers Tell Us." It's a featured video in the CWPA's National Conversation on Writing project, by Darsie Bowden (who incidentally, has written a provocative book on voice that I've discussed in a past post) and Pete Vandenberg and produced by Linda Adler-Kassner and Dominic DelliCarpini. I recommend it for any other instructors looking to open up conversations about literacies and writing identities.

Here's to the evolution of my class....