Re: The Personal

["Meg Larson" <mgl@tardis.svsu.edu>]

As a peer-mentor in the supplemental instuction program at my community
college alma mater, I worked in a developmental English class; mostly
students from low SES backgrounds.  The prof assigned the personal
experience essay, but with no provisos at all; her desire was to get the
students to write.  From what I was able to observe, these students took
her assignment to heart, and wrote about all kinds of personal things, and
the honesty and depth to which they described their experiences was truly
amazing--for the first time, they poured out what they were feeling,
knowing that, perhaps for the first time, someone was interested in their
stories.  The effect of this was that the students felt liberated, felt
free to tell their stories without fear of reprisals or judgement.  

None of the essays dealt with things that needed to be reported, but there
was an interesting case in this class.  A young inner city male wrote about
his life as a gang member, talked about all the illegal things he'd done,
etc, but the point of his essay was that he was tired of his lifestyle and
wanted to get out of it.  The prof met with him and they talked about
resources and ways to achieve his goal of getting out of the gangsta life. 
A few weeks later, we found out that he'd been arrested for a burglary
spree, and the class was so upset.  They'd formed their own little
community within the classroom, and the rest of the students took R's
arrest very very personally.  They were all pulling for R to "go straight"
and felt betrayed when he screwed up like this.  We spent almost a whole
week discussing this matter, and ways that the other students could deal
with it.  It was a very sobering experience for all of us.

The bottom line however was that R's experience further fueled the other
students' desires to succeed academically, and I think they did it in part
because R couldn't.

"Too many textbooks and discussions leave students free to make up their
minds about things"
                                  --- Mel Gabler, Texas textbook critic 

Meg Larson
Saginaw Valley State University
mgl@tardis.svsu.edu              

----------
> From: COBLENTZ@UHDVX3.DT.UH.EDU
> To: Multiple recipients of list <wcenter@ttacs6.ttu.edu>
> Subject: Re: The Personal
> Date: Thursday, March 20, 1997 9:34 PM
> 
> One of the provisos I always include in personal experience essay
assignments siis (that is)that if anyone confesses to an unreported crime,
I am obliged as
> a citizen to report it to the police.  Talk about chilling effects! This
> may seem to some of you gratuitously officious.  However, students do 
> confess in this essay to all kinds of outrageous behavior. The statement 
> opens the door to very opening discussions of audience and ethics. In the
> networked classroom this semester, it also led to a lively consideration
of
> how to cope with the apparent anonomity of that medium.  In fact, they
> discussed the possibility of a police bust of confessing deviants on
Ricki
> Lake, most of them wistfully.  
> 
> Linda Coblentz
> UH-Downtown
> coblentz@dt.uh.edu