Structuring a Successful Composition Course

Thinking about how I would structure my classroom for a composition course creates a dilemma for me. I had a great experience in my high school composition courses. I really responded to how it was taught and made a personal connection to the work I was doing. Originally, I wanted to model my classroom after the one I had loved so much. The readings I have done concerning postmodern techniques being used in a composition course have also seemed very appealing to me, but present a different classroom experience. James Berlin claims “in teaching writing we are tacitly teaching a version of reality and the student’s place and mode of operation in it” (235). Without dealing with the forces students are contending with I would be indoctrinating them with my own ideology and not teaching them the tools to understand and work with these systems for themselves. The problem is how can I reconcile these two teaching styles to fit into my version of a productive and successful classroom?

The initial thing I would be concerned with when teaching a course such as this is how to get the students to want to do the work. I know that most kids do not want any part of schoolwork period, but how can I make the work interesting enough to get kids to at least have some kind of connection to their work? My first instinct would be to assign a short writing task with a few options for topics concerning the kids personal lives, family situations, or friends. James Sosnoski in his essay “Postmodern Teachers in Their Postmodern Classrooms: Socrates Begone!” attempts to create a series of writing assignments for his postmodern classroom. His first assignment would not be as concerned with the individuals issues, but he would have the students write about ...

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...for my teaching is to teach my students to understand themselves and how they fit into the systems that affect their lives in so many ways. How I am going to go about doing that I have not figured out quite yet.

Works Cited

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Althusser, Lenin 127-86.

Berlin, James A. “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories.” Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1997. 233-48.

Clifford, John. “The Subject in Discourse.” New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1991. 38-51.

Jarratt, Susan, A. “Feminism and Composition: The Case for Conflict.” New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1991. 105-123.

Sosnoski, James, J. “Postmodern Teachers in Their Postmodern Classrooms: SocratesBegone!” New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1991. 198-219.