One more thread related to @joshua_r_eyler's thread on resilient instruction. This is particularly about "scaffolding" and how I had to really re-think what I'd learned/internalized.
I'd been taught that it was necessary for first-year writing assignments to be sequenced and scaffolded, that is they build one to the other, adding skills/knowledge in one assignment that would then be used/reinforced/added on to in the next.
I have no idea if that was a good notion of scaffolding, but the reality is that I came of age when very little attention was paid to building the pedagogical practices of college writing instructors. It was catch as catch can.
As I learned it, scaffolding/sequencing was both a way to build competencies bit by bit, e.g., First students learn to accurately summarize a source's argument, then they can also respond with an argument of their own (they say/I say).
Great in theory, but there's obvious complications when a student doesn't get it on the first assignment and then has to do it again on the second assignment. In theory, this can work, as they get another bite at that skill, but over a semester's sequence, this starts to crumble.
The proof of my failure with sequencing/scaffolding was always the culminating research paper, where everything I thought students had "learned" (summary, response, argument, analysis, sourcing), often seemed to disappear almost entirely.
A big part of the problem was the nature of the research paper itself (another subject entirely), but it was also a problem of scaffolding and sequencing. I had, in theory, prepared students for the challenge, but it hadn't happened. Why not?
Why not is because my scaffold wasn't a scaffold. It was more like I was having students build a Jenga Tower over the course of the semester, only they didn't even have all the blocks, so it was more like a Jenga Tower, mid-game when there's a bunch of holes.
The reality is that there's always going to be a bunch of holes. Not every student starts in the same place. Not everything is learned on schedule. Some things are harder for some students than others. We can't expect the knowledge/skill to be there on an on-time basis.
The scaffolding/sequencing I employed assumed a linear progression of learning to write. There was tolerance for difference, but not much, and students who fell outside the tolerance would see their Jenga towers fall.
Add in the disruption of cancelled class because of a hurricane and now every student's Jenga tower is missing blocks, and yet the demands of the sequence require us to plow ahead anyway. This is the opposite of a resilient approach.
This is how I got to using a framework of the "writer's practice" the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of writers. Every single experience would involve some (or all) parts of the writer's practice.
The writer's practice is organic, not mechanical. It has room for infinite growth and can grow in all directions. It tolerates different types of growth so it doesn't matter if students are in different places. Student's also are not punished grade-wise for those differences.
Building the writer's practice is what I do, every day, as a writer myself, so why wouldn't I want students doing the same. I do the exact same work as my students, hopefully under as close to the same conditions as possible (authentic audience/genuine purpose, etc).
So when an experience is missed because of absence or disruption, rather than having the tower collapse, you merely plug back in with another writing experience. They are remixable and repeatable. All of them build the practice.
If you think about it, writing itself is the ultimate in resilient practice. You have to keep going back to it day-after-day, tolerating setbacks and frustration. There is no terminal competency, no matter how good you are. I think that's the most awesome thing about writing.
Why would I deny students access to the most awesome thing about writing, its resiliency, its challenge, the way it works as a vehicle for teaching oneself and knowing oneself?
Anyway, we can do this. The challenges of the pandemic reveal the necessity of this kind of change, but the need was always there.
