By Shannon Hervey
This summer, John Peterson and Erik Ellis worked as a team to teach two sections of PWR 1A, “Introduction to Writing at Stanford,” which is geared toward incoming freshmen athletes. While this course does not take the place of the PWR 1 writing requirement, it does serve as a bridge from high school writing to college writing and research. In an effort to cultivate and practice research and composition skills, these student athletes took their experience as team collaborators on the field/court into the classroom and worked together to flex and grow their intellectual muscles of inquiry, source collection and analysis, and brainstorming toward research implications. Below, John and Erik discuss poignant learning moments, favorite activities, challenges faced, and lessons learned from student athletes.
PWR: Can you describe a learning moment you experienced this summer? What about this summer teaching experience supported your growth as an educator?
JOHN: As part of our planning process, Erik took my research proposal assignment from last year, which I call a “Literature Preview,” and reworked it so that each writer would be writing a detailed memo to the class. It was brilliant! The students had fun following the more technical formatting, so it didn’t feel like writing an essay. Also, since the class would be serving as the audience, or “The Summer PWR 1a Class Committee on Preliminary Research,” everybody took part in articulating the goals and expectations of the assignment. They took the format that Erik and I had worked on together and rewrote some new guidelines to better fit what they expected to read. Mostly they wanted some sections to have a longer word count so they could stretch out more, but at the same time, they knew that a committee reading this very practical document would want compact writing that was clearly broken down into scannable subsections. The way they changed it helped me see how, for some students, detailed formatting guidelines can lead to more creative responses. Since the assignment was a very preliminary research discussion –something that would be like scaffolding for the TiC—it was liberating for writers not to have to compose highly eloquent and theoretical discussions. We didn’t have enough revision time for that.
ERIK: John and I had a cross-section peer review for part of students’ Lit. Preview. I brought Post-Its of different colors—green for students to jot down some praise for what was working well, and yellow to note some things to work on. As the workshop got underway, I realized that students were not only perfectly capable of discussing their drafts without this framing, but were eager to dive into these conversations. So I would say I learned, or was reminded, that it’s often best to go with the flow of classroom energy and not insist on your original plans.
PWR: Can you describe your favorite activity with your students this summer? What felt productive?
JOHN: I really liked the first time we went around the table as a “committee,” with each writer taking a turn to explain their research question and describe in detail one of their most useful sources so far. They stepped right into their roles as professional colleagues attempting to engage the committee. They pushed each other with good humor and high expectations, a level of teamwork that I recognize in athletes who work together outside the classroom as well.
ERIK: It was great to workshop volunteers’ drafts of short assignments collectively as a class. We could all analyze and praise what was working well and brainstorm ideas for moving forward. I’m convinced that everyone benefits from these workshops, which offer a different, more communal form of peer review.
I also enjoyed seeing Citizen Kane with a few students who took me up on my offer to experience the classic vibe of the Stanford Theatre during a little field trip.
PWR: What was the greatest challenge you faced as a teacher of writing this summer?
JOHN: These folks are super busy. They are enrolled in one other class, AND they are doing workouts every morning before our class. Most days, they do weight training again in the afternoon. It takes a little time to know what their limits are. And then, just as you get a sense of it, many of the students have started to adjust to the heavy load and have worked out a schedule they’re comfortable with. Everybody is arriving at that place at a different time. It’s similar to how you have to get a feel for people’s schedules during the year, but the time frame is much more condensed.
ERIK: I’m so used to helping students develop RBAs that I had to adjust to the more modest but still challenging and worthwhile goal of helping students develop their research projects up to a point—but not as far as an essay. I was relieved when students seemed fine with this. Rather than feeling as if they hadn’t seen a project through to completion, they seemed pleased with their new research skills and psyched about future research projects—a good outcome, I’d say.
PWR: If you had to write a metaphor or an analogy for your experience teaching your specific summer class, what would it be?
JOHN: It’s really fun to work with people who are used to working with coaches. That “coaching” metaphor is often used by writing teachers or tutors to describe their work. In this case, these are all top athletes who have been working with coaches all through high school and even earlier. They understand why it’s helpful to have a coach – and why coaches challenge them to go outside their comfort zones. That collaborative learning environment pushes me to try new things too.
ERIK: I felt like I was helping students sketch with a small set of brush pens, versus fine-tuning masterpieces with a giant assortment of colored pencils. This summer I’ve been drawing photos of musicians for a personal deck of playing cards. As a non-artist, I’m actually proud of my meticulous attempt to capture Bill Evans sitting at the piano. But that drawing required many shades of colored pencil and took forever to complete—the proverbial RBA of the deck. Meanwhile, I drew the lead singer of Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever pretty quickly with brush pens. In PWR 1a, students worked hard and accomplished a lot, essentially working with brush pens to capture their scholarly conversations and emerging ideas in broader strokes.
