So, I was reading Tobin Lad's "Process Pedagogy" last night, when I came to a realization: we (profs/teachers) want to teach process writing, and they (our 110 students) don't want that. I looked back over the diagnostic essay that I gave my students last week, at the part about 'expectations for the class', and realized that all of them expected, and sort of wanted, to be taught how to write the form-perfect essay.
How do we overcome that? I, personally, am an advocated of writing as a process. But I also realize that the student and the teacher kinda have to be on the same page of what's being taught and learned. (This is not to say that I am the only teacher in the classroom, but that is a discussion for another time).
And now it becomes a much bigger issue that "are they understanding what I'm teaching", because they are only listening for how to write 'correctly', and I am only teaching how to write 'from the heart'.
Food for thought....
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I think part of the problem is simply that they think that's the goal of writing...that they've been being graded on that all along.
I think what's important to get across is that formally and mechanically perfect papers can be bad. Tell them that a paper that doesn't assert a clear point isn't eligible for a B. Even if it is good on the level of the sentence or paragraph.
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