REBECCA WILTBERGER WIGGINS

WHERE MY TEACHING STARTS

Conflict, civility, and hospitality.  These are the terms that shape my syllabi and my classroom.  I believe they are all necessary components to undergraduate learning, but especially for learning in the writing and reading classroom.  Jane Tompkins, writing in response to Gerald Graff’s challenge to “teach the conflicts” has this to say about the undergraduate classroom: “In conducting exchanges with our fellow human beings, we need to learn how not to take offense at, how not to feel injured by, how not to take personally an apparent attack or slight by another person.”  She goes on to note that learning to “get used to” disagreeing is not about being hardened but about making room for those around us to struggle through their own conflicts without making it about ourselves.

HOSPITALITY

When I welcome my students into my class I give them some background on myself and my path to the front of the classroom.  I tell them that I teach because I love to see my students come alive to the joys of reading and writing.  I tell them that I teach because I believe that each student in my classroom is a unique expression of God’s image and my world is made bigger by knowing them.  And I tell them that our classroom is a place where our ideas about the way the world works will be challenged and that is good, because that is where learning happens.  Student responses to this introduction often translate into conversations during office hours about how their education and experience fit them for life outside the university.  Knowing that I am there for a purpose also helps my students engage with the class with more purpose themselves.

Henri Nouwen, in his book “Reaching Out,” discusses what it means to be hospitable in the classroom.  He argues that one cannot be hospitable if one is not willing to present to one’s guest the unambiguous presence of the self.  How can a guest (or student) wrestle with their fears and discoveries if they do not know where their host (or teacher) stands? he asks.  Because I desire for my students to work through the challenges of difficult material and contentious arguments, I seek to present myself unambiguously.  In presenting myself this way, I also challenge my students to be honest about themselves.  I believe that when we are willing to be present to each other in this way, we are on the path Tompkins asks us to follow—we are taking the first step to engaging with each other on a level that sees our differences and respects them enough to not take our disagreements as attacks.

CIVILITY

Jane Tompkins insistence that disagreement is not personal but is valuable and necessary is an idea that has shaped the way I try to conduct my classes on many levels.  Several assignments help shape the ethos of my classroom and help students share their convictions with their classmates opening and thoughtfully.  One effective assignment, the “This I Believe” speech, requires students to think carefully and critically about what motivates them in life and how they can effectively communicate it to their peers.  In one class, a student who attempted suicide in high school, and who now was an advocate for others who were contemplating or had attempted suicide, spoke passionately about the need to accept yourself.   Her honesty and bravery helped other students also share their struggles more openly with the class.  Both writing/speaking and listening together are necessary tools, I have found, to promoting civility in the classroom; and in the end, I think civility is what Tompkins is championing.

Civility requires respect for oneself and respect for the others around the table or across the row of desks.  Civility requires attentive listening and thoughtful response.  Civility requires knowing yourself and a willingness to learn about those around you.  One of the best tools I can give my students is the ability to hear a story that is uncomfortable without running away.  Niceness, or the need to put on a good face, might keep them in their seats, but civility rooted in respect and a willingness to care about the storyteller is the foundation for real learning.

DISCOVERY

Fear of failure paralyzes my students, both in the writing and the literature classroom.  My commitment to discovery in the classroom means that I must make opportunities to try new things and take risks that help to build my students' courage and diminishes the stigma of failure.  To help my students reignite their curiosity, the foundation of discovery, I take them into the campus archives and put them in front of a selection of curated objects that are alarming, strange, or otherwise attention-getting and walk them through some observation exercises.  Through a collection of maps, KKK moralistic tracts, senatorial correspondence, and yearbooks, the students have their presuppositions challenged and learn to be curious about things that they think they already know.

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Additionally, in assignment rubrics I routinely give higher value to less successful attempts to do something risky or challenging than the perfect execution of a simpler or safer project.  For instance, in my microtheme assignment in my Intro to Literature classes, I assign a higher value to thesis statements that attempt to make a complex argument that may be harder to prove even if the result is uneven, rather than those who write a technically perfect argument about an obvious observation about the text.  For strong students this gives them a chance to exercise their skills at a higher level and for weaker students, this gives them a chance to attempt something that seems beyond them without fear that it will unduly affect their grades.