I notice too often that I sneer at some of my students’ work, when it’s notably inane or inept. Most of us in the profession do this, I find, probably to remind ourselves how clever we’ve become since we were young and green. Fortunately, few of us indulge such bad manners in the guilty student’s presence, so perhaps this is a harmless species of vanity.
I read all of my students’ papers in private tutorials in my office, once per week, with 20 minutes each for short freshman essays, and 45 minutes to an hour in my fiction writing class. I began doing this 46 years go as a shavetail instructor at a big university, a factory lacking only the smoke, but with plenty of industrial-level noise. I adopted this desperate expedient one day after returning a stack of essays to my students, who glanced at the grades and stuffed the papers in their backpacks. I had spent twenty or thirty minutes reading and annotating each paper, but I saw that my efforts had been wasted. So for the past 46 years I’ve read (aloud) and marked each narrative or essay with the student looking on, making both written and oral comments, and allowing him or her to make explanations or ask questions. I haven’t read their works in advance, but after three or four years of teaching there are few surprises, and the students aren’t doing anything wrong that I haven’t seen a thousand times before. In tutorials, they cannot ignore my analysis of their work, though they may not choose to profit by it – I try to give them their money’s worth, whether they want it or not. These private tutorials take a lot of time, but with the next student at my door I can’t procrastinate between papers, and I’d much rather talk to students than just scribble on their pages. This forces me to use my daylight hours to full advantage between classes, and my evenings are often free. Some students like this personal attention, and others are terrified, especially at first. In another life long ago I taught a basic geology course for six years, as a voluntary overload, and I learned that students could accept criticism of their exams with no great suffering. But a personal essay or story from their own experience was an extension of themselves, and their sensitivity to their faults was much greater. Even their ideas in a critical essay or a research paper become a part of their identity, and to attack these can make them bleed. I’m not a sadist, and I don’t wish to batter or bruise the feelings of any student. With some of my colleagues I’m less considerate, but they’re grown-up folks with Ph.Ds who consider themselves my equals (at least), so they ought to have verbal weapons equal to my own.
In tutorial, when a student and I sit or stand side by side as I read his words aloud, I usually have to demonstrate how to improve the color or economy of a line by producing an alternative. He can then understand what I want and attempt his own revision, perhaps better than mine. Hundreds of such tutorials every year create a substantial discipline that improves the professor’s own writing. By showing others how to write better, we teach ourselves.
Very occasionally during one of my tutorials, a tender student will shed tears, which always makes me feel bad too. But it’s a waste of time trying to teach writing skills by making cryptic red marks in the margins of a paper – even if they read and ponder those remarks, which is seldom, they often don’t understand and they have no good opportunity to ask questions. Every year I see student essays annotated by other professors, and often I don’t understand the marginal comments, even when they’re legible. So after 46 years I persevere with these tutorials, despite occasional tears. I recall the sweet voice of my dear mother saying (or rather shouting), “The more you cry the less you’ll pee!” as she was whacking me with a stick. I hope that my former students will forgive any pain that I’ve inflicted.
-A.W. Johns
