Most college instructors aspire to help in a winning narrative about democracy. This narrative is called the Story of Upward Mobility.
No matter what your background, you can go to college and climb the social-economic ladder, make a better life for you and your family.
Most college instructors that I know want to be part of that story. That’s why they got into teaching, and I consider myself to be in that camp.
However, recent community college statistics are challenging this optimistic story of democracy.
We read that in the latest study by the Institute for Higher Education, Leadership & Policy at Cal State Sacramento that only 30% of California community college students are transferring or getting their degrees.
That means in a class of 30 students, only 9 of my students in my freshman composition class English 1A are going to transfer or graduate.
My experience supports this. In the beginning of the semester, I’ll have 32 students. Typically by the end of the semester, I’ll have 22. That means about 30 percent of the students dropped freshman composition.
In this context, I need to give you some good news, some bad news, and some advice to increase your probability of transferring or graduating.
Here’s the Good News (9 Points)
The good news is that my students are smart.
They know how to argue, both verbally and in written form. They appear well practiced in the art of argumentation.
They also know how to sustain an argument for a full length 6-page research paper.
They also understand counterargument, the idea that they should present their opponents’ views to show their readers that they have considered both sides of an argument before presenting their informed opinion.
They understand how to organize a college research paper.
They can learn the research paper format for citing sources.
They can learn how to differentiate credible from bogus research.
They can learn how to discern between an opinion based on mindless habit from an informed opinion.
They can tell the difference between a smart, committed instructor and one who’s phoning it in. My students have very strong BS radar, which is very important for survival in the real world.
Now for the Bad News (9 points if you include punctuation)
About 80 percent of my freshman composition students have severe grammar deficits. I mean severe. Imagine 12 years of neglect, apathy, and learned helplessness from kindergarten through high school, and you’ll be able to imagine how severe these grammar deficits are.
Imagine surviving in the real world is like entering a martial arts tournament. You’ve spent 12 years in the educational system in a state of neglect, apathy, and learned helplessness, and suddenly you’re asked to compete in a martial arts tournament against a bunch of purple belts.
If waking up to this fact doesn’t strike you with anxiety and panic, nothing will.
Not only do my students have severe grammar deficits, they find it difficult to understand the grammar lessons, and when they do understand the grammar lessons, they have an even more difficult time applying the lesson to their own writing.
The same goes with punctuation. I can go over punctuation rules over and over, and many of my students will repeat the same punctuation mistakes over and over.
Here’s more bad news: My students have a difficult time writing nice, clear, accurate sentences.
It strains them to put their thoughts on paper with perfect sentences.
Here’s more bad news: When I ask my students how many of them proofread their papers, only about 10% raise their hands.
Here’s more bad news: Even if more of my students wanted to proofread their essays, they don’t have a baseline of grammar and writing skills to know how to proofread their essays.
Here’s more bad news: It’s hard in one sixteen-week semester to make up for twelve wasted years of school. It’s like a martial arts instructor trying to get his client to move from a white to a purple belt in four months for a fighting tournament. Time becomes a huge factor in success and failure.
Here’s more bad news: A grammar and writing problem is an upward mobility problem. The more challenged a student is with grammar the more she is at risk for not passing my class and moving up the educational and career ladder.
As college instructors, most of us aspire to help our students climb the educational and career ladder.
As English instructors, our specific challenge for helping our students climb the ladder is grammar and writing.
We’re like martial arts instructors. We hand out belts that indicate what level of competence a student has achieved. The higher the belt the higher the ladder the student goes.
But with grammar and writing deficits that are the result of 12 years of neglect, we can’t perform miracles.
What can be done?
If I were a student, here’s 5 things I would do:
One, Reinforce your instructor’s lesson with self-study.
When I studied jiu-jitsu with Jener Gracie 13 years ago, I noticed something. The once a week lesson was worthless unless I showed up several days a week to spar with other students.
Having a lesson from your instructor is not an end; it’s a beginning.
You can reinforce your instructors’ writing lessons by looking up the same exercises in other books, the Internet, and YouTube videos. I’ve had students tell me I didn’t understand the math instructor’s calculus lesson, so I studied it on YouTube and now I get it.
Number Two, read like a glutton. Nothing makes you smarter faster than reading. Many people who read voraciously become autodidactic, which means self-taught. You have to be a self starter.
Malcolm X was a voracious reader and described as being autodidactic. He read thousands of books in prison, and people who debated him said he had the knowledge of a professor with several PhDs.
Develop daily reading habits.
Sitting alone in a quiet place and living inside your imagination through the reading of a book is one of the highest actions humans have ever known.
That’s a tough sell. We’re conditioned to constantly move like sharks and multi-task, but that kind of life doesn’t make us smarter. It compromises us.
And this leads me to the second thing I would do:
Three, I’d get rid of the Energy Vampires in my life.
Life is full of Energy Vampires.
You could spend a whole day reading Amazon and other reviews of digital cameras. You could burn a day on the Internet easily.
You could burn a whole day texting and gossiping with friends.
Speaking of friends, some people you associate with from high school may not be on your college track. They may not be as mature as you. They may be in the Life Is a Big Party phase of their lives.
Most likely they’re Energy Vampires. You need to cut your ties from them. It may be cruel, but it’s the only way for you to survive.
The more Energy Vampires you identity and get rid from your life, the more you’ll be able to focus on the getting more knowledge, getting more independent, and getting more advanced in your climb up the educational ladder.
The fourth thing I’d do is ask your instructor questions. Every semester, I get students who wait for everyone to leave the classroom and they ask me a question about grammar, or research, or writing, and I say, “That’s an amazing question. The whole class should have heard it because they all would have benefited.”
And the student says, “Really? I thought the question was so stupid the other students would think I was lame.”
Imagine how many students I have who never ask anything because they’re too embarrassed.
Always ask questions because you can never have enough clarity. Being clear on what’s expected will reduce your anxieties, and reduced anxieties will enhance your school performance.
Finally, number five: Appreciate details.
Within a week, I know who the 3 A students will be in my class. They pay attention to details more than the other students. It’s their attention to detail that separates them from the other students.
Failure to pay attention to details is a leading source of our failures and embarrassments in life.
This applies to me. When I don’t screw the peanut butter lid evenly on the peanut butter jar, I hear about it from my wife.
“Who screws the lid on the jar like that? What are you a caveman?”
Once I gave an entire lecture with my shirt inside out and didn’t know until a student whispered it to me after class.
When you pay attention to details in a writing class, you turn in a clean manuscript with correct pagination, MLA format, and precise language.
Some of you will act on these 5 things, and you will be far more likely to achieve success and in all your college classes.
The stakes are high. We’re talking about your upward mobility, your independence, and your maturity. I wish you all the best. Thank you.
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