Barclay Barrios | Teaching Writing as a Public Practice

Barclay Barrios

Teaching is profoundly important to me.  Not only am I invested in the growth of my students, but teaching is also an important intellectual and creative outlet for me.  For example, I never teach the same syllabus twice; revision is an integral part of my teaching style.  I always modify each class based on the lessons learned from prior semesters, thus creating new challenges for both my students and myself.  It is this interplay between my intellectual growth and that of my students that keeps me excited about the project of teaching writing in all its forms.

I want my students to excel in school, but I also want them to take what they learn in my classroom and apply it elsewhere, and so my goal as an instructor is to create an environment where students can practice and develop literate skills that expand beyond the classroom.  This vision of teaching is deeply influenced by Kurt Spellmeyer and Richard E. Miller’s notion of the “action horizon.”  An action horizon pedagogy imagines students as political actors in the public sphere, and it trains students both to examine the problems that will face them as citizens and to engage in conversations around those problems through their writing.  Eschewing an exclusive focus on either the content and rhetorical forms of texts or on what the texts can reveal about authors’ or readers’ perspectives and subject positions, my teaching aims to empower students to connect ideas across readings in ways that help them stake a position for themselves in relation to important national and global concerns such as terrorism and biotechnology.

This philosophy of teaching is reflected in my recent textbook, Emerging: Contemporary Readings for Writers.  Because students enter diverse disciplines, I chose to include readings from across the fields of knowledge located both inside and outside the academy.  Political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, and art are some of the disciplines one might expect to find in such a collection, but Emerging also includes readings from diplomacy, public health, psychology, business, technology, and law. Each concerns emerging contemporary issues, such as globalization (in both its economic and political dimensions), the impact of technology (from Wikipedia to brain science), and the dilemmas of ethics (including genetic engineering and the relations between religion and foreign politics).  One of my philosophical tenets in this reader is that students need to be prepared to deal with these issues in their careers and in their lives and, to do so, they need not information about the issues per se (since such information will always change) but an ability to think critically in relation to these local and global concerns.  

In my own teaching that focus on the world outside the classroom begins with close attention to text inside the classroom.  I assign difficult readings, such as the Dalai Lama’s essay on ethics and emerging biotechnologies, in order to challenge students to develop complexity in their own thinking.  I often use small group work assignments to enable students to develop collaborative skills in decoding these texts.  This use of group work also shifts my position in the classroom—literally.  Working in groups of three or four encourages students to turn to their peers rather than to me for the answers to the questions being asked, even as it prompts them to ask each other questions of their own about the texts.  I also design group work to move students towards the paper assignments.  My assignments do not ask students to make an argument, if an argument is understood to be an absolute position to be won or lost.  Instead, I ask students to form a project in their papers.  In contrast to the combative stance encoded in the notion of an “argument,” a project represents what a student wants to achieve in a paper, the contribution she or he wants to make to the issues of the texts.  This dialogic impulse is extended into peer revision, which not only echoes the collaborative spirit of the classroom, but also prepares students for the kinds of writing they will be asked to do in their future careers.  When the students are doing peer revision, I let them know that every piece of my own writing goes through this process as well, and it is the same process they will use in the workplace.  Through these various strategies, the classroom becomes a learning community in which each student has both a stake and a contribution.

That sense of the community—both inside and outside of the classroom—was made profoundly real for me last semester, when I taught ENG 4020 Composing Advocacy.  The goal of the class was to teach students to use visual and written communication to advocate for a selected cause, to teach them how to change the world through their writing.  The students in the course were extremely enthusiastic and I was impressed early on with the range of advocacy projects: everything from promoting a local band to raising awareness about bone cancer.  As we worked through these projects over the course of the semester, I was privileged to see students engaging the world through their writing.  One student, for example, created a visually rich and informative presentation about the benefits of creative expression in recovering from eating disorders; she has since created a website about her cause in order to continue the advocacy.  And that student is not alone.  What most surprised and delighted me most about the class is the fact that many of these students have continued their projects even now that the class is over.  It’s the first time I’ve ever had students continue to write and engage the world after a grade has been given.

I’m fortunate that I’m able to share experiences such as these and my general experiences with undergraduate education through my work as Director of Writing Programs.  Each year, I train, supervise, and mentor over fifty Graduate Teaching Assistants, all of whom teach the core courses ENC 1101 and 1102.  I find this work immensely rewarding since it provides me an opportunity not only to shape a new generation of teachers but, through them, to influence the educational experience of just nearly every first year student here at FAU.  In “teaching the teachers” I hope to communicate not simply my vision of writing instruction here at FAU but, more importantly, my love and passion for teaching.

Throughout all my classes—whether undergraduate or graduate—I remain committed to the centrality of the writing process in undergraduate education because I feel that writing is a key mode of practicing critical reading and thinking, promoting collaboration, and engaging with local and larger communities.  I feel that my teaching reflects this belief.