English 1000 - Instructor Guide

Section 3, Some Common Problems

Teaching English 1000 involves both the joys of working closely with students and the pains. This section explores some of the predictable pitfalls facing composition instructors. Please remember that the composition staff is available to help with these and with other, less predictable, problems.

3-1 The Assignment that Produces Distressingly High or Low Grades

Occasionally an assignment produces D and F papers from all but the strongest students in the class. The temptation to paper over the problem with a generous curve is strong, but to do so would send the dubious message that an average performance is always adequate, no matter how low the average. We recommend instead that the teacher be frank in evaluating the inadequate papers, and diffuse the effect by offering an adjustment to the way the semester grade is calculated. Sometimes the teacher can increase the weight assigned a second submission and eliminate the points assigned the first. Sometimes the teacher can double the weight given to the best paper of the semester and eliminate the grade from the worst paper. In such adjustments, the teacher needs to be careful not to rob the student who has succeeded on an assignment other students handled badly.

Instructors who find themselves giving A's to most of the papers submitted on an assignment may be suffering from euphoria (or experiencing it, at least: the suffering may fall to others). Before the papers are returned, they should look for a second opinion from a colleague or coordinator. In the past, some beginning instructors have given very high grades in September and discovered by November that inflated expectations and mathematical reality had painted them into a corner: students whom they viewed as weak writers would get A's and B's. A few have tried to correct for their early generosity by harsh grading on later papers, a practice that causes confusion and hard feelings. Our advice is to keep your standards at the same moderate level from the beginning of the semester to the end and to get second opinions from your colleagues or from the composition staff when you feel you may be losing your perspective on what "moderate" means.

3-2 The Uncooperative or Disruptive Student

Most freshmen at Missouri are almost distressingly polite in class. Some, however, come to the University spoiling for a fight with authority. Some come with problems that can lead to misunderstanding and friction: substance abuse problems, attention deficit disorder, or more serious personality disorders. Your method of dealing with these students will depend on so many factors, including your own personality, that we can hardly lay down firm rules. We can, however, offer rules of thumb.

If the student's behavior affects nothing but his or her own performance, your best strategy may be to focus on the performance and "outsource" the behavior. Tell the student that the failure to turn in work (or whatever) has obvious consequences in the class and ask if he or she has an analysis of why he or she is not performing. If the student volunteers an explanation, you might be able to refer him or her to the Counseling Center or the Learning Center. If the student doesn't volunteer an explanation, consider filing an Early Alert form, so that the more experienced advisors in the Dean's office can meet with the student.

If the student's behavior affects your own performance, the judgment may be more difficult. Sometimes the best strategy combines a direct discussion of the inappropriateness of the behavior with a refusal to be rankled:

As it turns out, James, I'm not the kind of instructor who lets a student's behavior affect the evaluation of the student's work. But if I were, how do you think that comment about my ears would affect your chances of succeeding in this class?

If the behavior affects the performance of other students in the class, you are professionally obliged to act. In many cases, a direct discussion of the damage the student is doing to others is enough to change the behavior. If a private discussion at your desk won't work, arrange a three-person meeting with the Director of Composition. In extreme cases, disruptive students can be administratively withdrawn from your class.

Occasionally a class turns mutinous. Their resentment of the teacher prevents them from taking instruction and usually results in shoddy work, which presents the teacher with an unhappy dilemma. Low grades will probably increase the discontent; high grades will probably increase the contempt. Instructors who find themselves in this situation too often go it alone, not wanting to expose what they feel is a personal failure. As a result, the Director of Composition learns about the difficulty only by reading the end-of-semester evaluations—too late to be useful. Experience tells us that mutiny may come unexpectedly in the classroom of a teacher with several semesters of high student evaluations. Experience also tells us that the composition staff can help diffuse the tension and the challenge to the instructor's authority. If you feel a class getting out of hand, therefore, talk to your observer or to the Director of Composition quickly.

3-3 Complaints, Grade Protests, Poor Evaluations

Roughly 1900 students take English 1000 per semester. Of these, perhaps 2-3% will complain about their teacher to the Director of Composition, the Arts and Science Dean's Office, or the Chair of the English Department. The most common complaints include inadequate or slow feedback on writing, absences on the instructor's part, canceled classes, lateness to class, favoritism, and discrimination based on race or sexual orientation. Occasionally students report sexual advances by their instructors or complain that they are being forced to study and write about material they find morally repugnant. Occasionally, the complaint about the teacher's conduct is really a stalking horse for a grade protest, but generally it is heartfelt. Heartfelt does not, of course, mean justified.

When a complaint comes to the Director of Composition's office, we will always inform you of it unless the student forbids us to. Typically we ask to meet with you as soon as convenient. We will discuss the complaint in as much detail as we can, though if the complainer wishes to have his or her identity protected, we may need to be circumspect. Some complaints, if valid, could result in an instructor's being removed from the classroom: of course, we never assume them to be valid until the instructor has a chance to answer them. The mere fact that students complain about your class shouldn't alarm you. We are not here to produce satisfied freshmen, but to educate. Education produces stress; stress produces complaints. Except when they point to truly unprofessional practice, we welcome complaints as an opportunity to see English 1000 from a fresh perspective.

Complaints about grading practices may result in a formal grade appeal, submitted via a form available in the composition office. Such appeals can only be submitted after the instructor submits the final grade. Instructors' grades are very rarely changed as a result of such an appeal. To get a grade changed the student must show that the assignment of the grade was "arbitrary and capricious" as defined by the University's academic regulations. As a practical matter, this means that the student must show that the grade was miscalculated or was assigned by standards other than stated in course materials. "The grading was easier in other sections" is never an adequate basis for a successful grade appeal.

Even instructors who have reason to congratulate themselves on jobs well done often receive disappointing student evaluations and worry needlessly that these evaluations may damage their reputations as teachers. In the composition office, we view student evaluations as very crude indicators of the quality of teaching. If a teacher gives average grades and gets average evaluations, the numbers are not taken to mean anything in particular. Ditto if the teacher gives high grades and receives high evaluations, or low grades and receives low evaluations: in the normal course of things evaluations mirror grades. When the evaluations are much higher or lower than we would expect from the grades given, we pay a bit more attention, thinking that the numbers may point to a teacher having unusual difficulty or unusual success. The qualitative comments are finally more useful to us than the numbers. We scan the evaluations for praise that might be quoted in letters of recommendation or for signs of unprofessional practice: missed classes, failure to return papers in a timely fashion, etc.

The way that the composition office uses evaluations is finally less important than the way the instructor uses them. The day you read your evaluations is often a good day to reconsider or reconfirm your classroom practices. Some instructors routinely set up appointments with their coordinator or with the Director of Composition to discuss evaluations.

3-4 The Student Who Must Have an A or a B

A surprising number of students will announce at some point in the semester that they "just have to have an A (or B) in this class." Perhaps this sentence appears in some book about succeeding in college. Perhaps students are putting you on notice, and the sentence is best translated as: "You know, this isn't Organic Chemistry or anything, I'm counting on you to deliver a little cushion for my GPA." The best response is probably to remind students that the average grade in composition is the same as the average grade in all freshmen classes (about a 2.7), and that the way to get that A or B is to turn in an above-average performance

Sometimes the A or B has a very specific—and pressing—meaning for students. For example, a Curator's Scholarship requires students to maintain at least a 3.25 GPA, with higher stipends for a 3.5 or 3.75; a Bright Flight Scholarship requires students to maintain a 2.0 GPA. A C in your class might be a factor in ending someone's career at the University. Unpleasant as this situation is, your professional obligation is to assign A's and B's to students who earn them rather than to students who need them.

Pre-journalism students often believe that they can't be admitted to the School of Journalism unless they get a B in English 1000. They are misinformed. They must either get a B in English 1000 or an adequate score on the Missouri College English Test, a multiple-choice examination on usage administered by the University Testing Service.

3-5 Plagiarism

Recent and painful experience with plagiarism prompted the Director of Composition to ask several experienced instructors what percentage of papers submitted by students in English 1000 were plagiarized. The low estimate was 10%, the consensus nearer 20%. One instructor whose assignments involved an above-average amount of research estimated 90% if she counted venial cases. Given that many cases of plagiarism go undetected and many others unreported, we might have to admit that one of the things we teach hundreds of students every year is how to plagiarize at the college level.

A clear definition of plagiarism may help you deal with problems that arise in your class. We consider plagiarism to mean any use of a source (including another student's work) that would allow a stranger reading the work to assume incorrectly that the language, ideas, or organization are original. The plagiarism exists regardless of the intent of the writer. The student who claims that the near-identity of a passage in his paper with a passage in a source is an accident caused by a quirky memory is not claiming that he or she has not plagiarized, but that the plagiarism was inadvertent. The student who claims that the failure to use quotation marks was not caused by a desire to deceive, but by ignorance of the rules, is admitting the plagiarism, but denying that it is an instance of academic dishonesty. Plagiarizing, like speeding, is an objective violation of a standard. It doesn't necessarily imply dishonesty.

Plagiarism is, of course, always a bad writing practice, and we require all composition teachers to offer instruction on how to avoid it as part of their class. We also assume that they will lower the grades of plagiarized work because it is ipso facto badly written. Wholesale plagiarism is such a bad writing practice that we assume instructors will assign an F whenever they detect it and will re-explain the principles involved. More venial plagiarism (e.g., ambiguity about how far "up" a parenthetical citation applies) might have only a trivial effect on the grade and might only require instruction on fine points of technique.

Having taken the plagiarism into account in grading and having offered appropriate instruction, the instructor has done as much as he or she can do unilaterally. We don't think the instructor should attempt to decide alone whether each instance of plagiarism is also an instance of deliberate academic dishonesty. Unpleasantness of this sort falls to administrators. Therefore, we ask all instructors to report to the Director of Composition all instances of plagiarism in which they see any possible intention to deceive. The DOC and instructor can then consider the case and determine the best course of action. For pertinent administrative procedures, see the MU Faculty Handbook, Article VI (available on line).

3-6 Problematic Relationships with Students

Romance looms large in everyone's imagination, so we will dispose of it at once. Both law and university policy make it clear that "unwanted sexual advances" toward a person over whom you have authority (as a supervisor or as a teacher) constitute sexual harassment. Debates about what we mean by unwanted and what we mean by advances will presumably occupy lawyers for decades. Meanwhile, good sense indicates what professional ethics demand: don't date your students; avoid even the appearance of dating your students. If you find yourself smitten, give no sign of the attraction either to the student or to others in the class. If you find that a student with whom you have a prior romantic attachment has enrolled in your section, talk with the Director of Composition about having the student transferred to another section. You needn't say why you request the transfer; you can even lie about it. The Director will arrange the transfer, ask no questions, and keep the matter confidential. Only when the student has ceased once and for all to be your student may you send your valentine.

Some of the difficulties raised by romance are raised in a less interesting form by all forms of intimacy between teacher and student. Instructors who would never date students will sometimes single out one or two members of a class as particular friends, seeing them socially and trading observations on the personalities of other class members. Such favoritism raises reasonable concerns about the ability of the instructor to assign grades based solely on academic merit.

A strong repulsion, like a strong attraction, can compromise the professional relationship between a student and a teacher. If you find yourself hoping that a student won't succeed in your class, you are obviously in a dicey ethical position and should discuss the matter with someone on the composition staff.

3-7 Breaches of Confidentiality

Under federal law, we are not allowed to discuss the quality of a student's academic work with anyone but the student, persons the student has authorized us to talk with, and persons with whom such communication serves a legitimate educational purpose (including, for instance, deans, directors of composition, and coordinators). We are not allowed to discuss a student's progress with his or her parents until the student authorizes the talk. Certainly we are not allowed to discuss the quality of a student's work with other students.

If we interpret these prohibitions too broadly, we find ourselves in an awkward position as composition teachers. One of our best instructional tools is the photocopied student paper handed out to the class for discussion. The discussion must necessarily involve comments on the quality of the work: why discuss an introduction unless we can discuss ways in which it works and ways in which it doesn't? Such discussion can hardly be anonymous: our classes are small, we use peer review, often we want the writer to join in the discussion fully.

Our solution to this dilemma is to say that while you have no right to discuss the overall quality of a student's performance with other students, you have a right to discuss particular qualities of his or her work as part of your instructional scheme. Under no circumstances should you tell one class member another class member's grade (on a given assignment or overall). Under no circumstances should you give an unauthorized person a general assessment of a student's academic work. On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with discussing with the class the particular strengths and weaknesses of a particular piece of writing.

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