In their book The St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing, Cheryl Glenn, Melissa A. Goldthwaite and Robert Connors say individual conferences are a critical teaching strategy for several reasons. Conferences allow instructors to get to know their students and their individual writing processes better (69). It's not that instructors don't want to get to know students on a personal level, but our primary role is to help you with your writing. Most instructors I work with genuinely care about their students, but the best way we can show that we care is to help you achieve your personal and course goals. I want to be friendly, but let's face it, after this May most of you will not care what's posted on my Facebook. You'll move on to other classes and other instructors. And I'll move on to other students (granted, they may not ever be able to match up to this class).
While we're working together for the next ten weeks, it helps that I know as much about your writing, your processes, your frustrations, questions, and ideas as possible. Conferences let both you and me ask questions, discuss strengths and weaknesses of your work, plan for future work, and explain writing strategies that might help you.
Glenn et al suggest that the best use of conference time is in discussing a piece of student work. It gives us something concrete to talk about and to refer to (71). This is especially useful when we have a previous version of the work to look at too. I can use this comparison to point to choices that you've already made about your work that you might not even be aware of. Sometimes it takes another person to point out what's going on in your work. The best writers get lots of feedback from their editors, writing groups, and other writers and readers whom they respect. That's the kind of writing community I'm trying to create in our class.
The best conferences have a little bit of a plan, but are flexible enough to cover whatever ground the student needs. Glenn et al say its good for the instructor to have some scripted questions in mind, like "What is your purpose in this project?" and "What main ideas are you trying to get across?" and "What is frustrating you about it?" (71). These kinds of questions allow you to keep ownership of your own work. It's not my job to tell you what to write or how to write it. In fact, that kind of prescriptive teaching will almost guarantee poor projects and a student who can't write outside of class. I refer to myself as a writing coach or mentor. I make suggestions and throw out ideas, but what happens in your work is still up to you.
You may have noticed that I began my conference with you by outlining what I hoped to accomplish regarding Projects 1 and 2. I also had some notes about things I wanted to be sure and cover with each of you. But it's more important that you get what you need, which is why I tried to get you to talk too. Research shows that the more dialogic (both student and instructor talking) a conference is, the better the results.
If time allowed, I'd hold conferences after each project, but then we wouldn't get as much ground covered and, frankly, I'd be worn out. Students may look forward to conference week because it means only 30 minutes face-to-face with me versus 1.5 hours sitting in our lovely Lafollette basement classroom. I look forward to conferences because they are the few times in the semester when we can really focus on your work individually.
I'd like to hear what you have to say about you experience with conference this week. Good and bad. Did anything surprise you? Did you get the answers you needed? Or is it just time off that you are happy to have?
Works Cited
Glenn, Cheryl, Melissa A. Goldthwaite, and Robert Connors. The St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003. Print.
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