students and stories: college composition students examine their world

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Glasgow] On: 20 December 2014, At: 00:24 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Language and Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rlae20 Students and stories: College composition students examine their world Margaret Murray a a Writing Center , Temple University , Philadelphia, PA, 19122, USA Published online: 04 Nov 2009. To cite this article: Margaret Murray (1989) Students and stories: College composition students examine their world, Language and Education, 3:1, 13-28, DOI: 10.1080/09500788909541245 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500788909541245 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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Page 1: Students and stories: College composition students examine their world

This article was downloaded by: [University of Glasgow]On: 20 December 2014, At: 00:24Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Language and EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rlae20

Students and stories: Collegecomposition students examinetheir worldMargaret Murray aa Writing Center , Temple University , Philadelphia, PA,19122, USAPublished online: 04 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Margaret Murray (1989) Students and stories: Collegecomposition students examine their world, Language and Education, 3:1, 13-28, DOI:10.1080/09500788909541245

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500788909541245

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information(the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor& Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warrantieswhatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purposeof the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are theopinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor& Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should beindependently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francisshall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs,expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arisingdirectly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expresslyforbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: Students and stories: College composition students examine their world

STUDENTS AND STORIES:COLLEGE COMPOSITION STUDENTS

EXAMINE THEIR WORLDMargaret Murray

Writing Center, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA

Abstract This article examines the student and teacher as storyteller in a univer-sity composition class. For purposes of this paper, a storyteller may be definedas a relater of anecdotes, recaller of tales, or a teller of stories. The students wereenrolled in what is considered a freshman composition class at a major Ivy LeagueAmerican university; however, this class was composed of some students whowere older than the normal eighteen year olds who generally comprise traditionalfreshman composition classes in the States. The methodology was three-tiered:(1) classroom observation and participation in which the researcher-teacher usedfield notes as well as a personal journal of observations; (2) interviews of severalstudents; and (3) a writing artifact in the form of a collaborative story that thestudents wrote at the end of the semester.

To implement this type of research the instructor suggested that the studentstake an anthropological approach to their own classroom, in an attempt tounderstand their world. Research conducted in this study as well as other studiesby the author, suggest that allowing students some freedom to tell their ownstories, encourages learning, stimulates bonding with both the teacher and theother students, and improves writing. A provocative analysis with regard tominority students also emerges from this study.

Introduction

This study looks at storytelling and storytellers in the classroom, although itbegan as an attempt to make the term empowerment operational. The concept ofempowering students shows up in the literature as praxis, liberatory curriculum,citizenship education (e.g. Freire, 1968; Elsasser & Fiore, 1983; Giroux, 1983),to name just a few of the terms used to talk about empowerment. To examine thisidea I collected data and attempted to study it from an interpretative perspective byintegrating ethnographic field notes, diaries, and student interviews as well as acollaborative piece completed by the students.

My procedure with regard to the field notes was to write up on the back of mylecture notes that which had transpired in the class. My concerns with the noteswere to get down as soon after a meeting as much of the classroom interaction aspossible. I put down how they responded to the lecture, the writing assignments,

0790-8318/89/01 0013-15$02.50/0 © 1989 Margaret MurrayLANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Vol. 3, No. 1, 1989

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14 LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION

and to each other and also how they answered in class. In order to gauge theirresponses I kept a check list of each student and some behaviour classificationsthat I hoped would tell me which students were engaged or disengaged. Thischeck list which is shown below, was set up to observe behaviours on a weeklybasis. I used this check list in the interviews that I did later, as well.

Engagement/Disengagement BehavioursAttends class on timeAttends classBrings in assignments on timeChallenging/questioning verbal behaviourAsks questions in classMakes statements in classTakes initiative in seeking out teacherAttends conferencesSilent in classSpeaks in classSpeaks to teacher after class

N-Never; S-Seldom; O-Often; T-Only when topic appeals; R-Rarely; H-Hardto judge; A-Always.

The diary of my feelings and experiences was less formal than the field notesand more haphazard and usually I wrote in it only when I felt that something'major' had happened in a session with the students, either in class or outside. Ikept these notes in a separate journal, or diary.

Because the term empowerment is so difficult to define, create a lexicon for,or make operational, I was forced to look at what was happening in and out ofthe classroom with the students in terms of engagement, not empowerment. Theterm, as it turns out, is not one used often in composition literature. It doesoccur, however, in the literature of critical pedagogy and critical ethnography.Simon & Dippo (1986: 6) use the term frequently to establish the link betweenthe ethnographer and the students researched, arguing that one engages in con-siderable social interaction with those whom data references.

The term, when used in composition, belongs to Berthoff (1983: 744) whereshe argues that the essence of effective teaching is the engagement by the teacherof the student. She claims that unless and until the mind of the learner is engagedno meaning will be made, no knowledge can be won. Based on the above examples,a working hypothesis began to evolve for me which seemed to be stating that inorder for students to learn or to become empowered or self-motivated, they firsthad to be engaged. I saw this engagement originally in terms of the student-teacherinteraction just as Berthoff did. However, as the study progressed it became clearthat students were engaging with each other, and were engaging with the curricu-lum and the texts used, and further that the hook for engagement was tellingtales, particularly secrets. I inadvertently stumbled on this by telling a tale aboutmyself as a teacher in a paper I had written and included in the course packabout a classroom failure (Murray, 1986).

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STUDENTS AND STORIES 15

They were intrigued by my story. What follows is a chronicle of engagementengendered in part by my chronicle of disaster.

Storytelling

The story of a class begins in the opening minutes of the first day of classroomactivity. Little research has been done on these opening minutes of the first day,but it is probably in these first few minutes that engagement begins to take place,for it is then that students size up the teacher and the teacher sizes up the class.The diary I kept about my feelings for that first day shows that I was nervous.I came in a few minutes after ten, the starting time of the class. (We meetMonday, Wednesday, Friday, for forty minutes.) I introduced myself and passedout the course syllabus after checking names off on the roster. The following isthe description of the course—Craft of Prose—which is essentially a freshmanEnglish composition course.

This course will examine writing at the university level through selectedprose readings, peer editing, student writings (both expressive and aca-demic), studies of American college life, and cultural Anthropology. Obser-vations of the college setting will be a mainstay of the course. Students willbe required to keep a journal that will follow along the lines of ethnographicfield notes. The purpose of the course will be to help students make senseof their world through observation, participation, reading, and writing.There will be three scheduled conferences, although students will be encour-aged to make other appointments for conferences throughout the semester.Ten assignments will be required, with eight of the graded papers beingrecorded.

Consider next my field notes for the first day of class which notes class activityrather than just my feelings.

Students seem nice. I am nervous. Last semester's class was so unresponsive.I talk about the course, what I am going to do, how I am going to proceed.I hand out the course guide and I talk a little about the works we will bereading, one of which is mine, which I wrote as a study of disengagementin the classroom, I tell them. Then I say, 'You will find out a secret aboutme when you buy the course pack.' They just stare. Then I say, we willwrite in this class, maybe twelve papers. Groans. We will not write aboutour summer vacations. Laughter. 'My summer,' I say, 'would make a veryboring essay. I sat in the sun and ate bon bons.' They laugh; they think Iam kidding. Class is forty minutes. A few students talk. One who does isa runner and he talks about how running is like writing in that you mustpay a price for anything you want to accomplish. (He will later write awonderful essay using payment as a metaphor where he says, 'the individualis the cashier here. He will pay for the bad times while collect for the goodones.') By the time all the paper work is done, roll taken, and all themanagement stuff is completed, class is over.

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The second class meeting is nice. We talk about grading and I tell the classthat I will grade but not record two essays. They are very interested in this. Iexplain that this will give them a chance to see how I grade, what I am lookingfor in a student essay, and they will have my comments to use as a guide for thelater papers that will be recorded. They like this idea. I also talk a little bit aboutthe class I taught last year. After five years teaching at an urban university, I wasasked to teach a course at the Ivy League school which is the subject of thisarticle. It was a teacher's dream come true, I tell this year's class, I thought Iwould be teaching the brightest, most creative kids in the entire world. Instead,I had a classroom full of students who didn't understand me, who I couldn'trelate to, and all in all the class wa^ a disaster.

After class, one student follows me out of class. She is an older student, andI can tell from her clothing that she is more punk rock than yuppie. She tells meshe has just returned from spending three years in Spain where she lived withher lover, a best-selling Spanish novelist. She is interested in Spanish grammarand literature. She has a lovely smile and walks with me out of the building andup the street, chatting all the way.

Field notes from the third class show that we talk about the rules for the classwhich they were to formulate as a class exercise. I had them break down intotwo groups roughly splitting the room in two. These two groups remainedoperative throughout the entire semester. Figure 1 shows each student's classroomposition.

The assignment today was to come up with rules. I left the room for twentyminutes. When I came back, each group had a list. The remainder of the classperiod was spent working in the large group trying to combine the two lists intoone set of rules for the class. Here are the rules which the students formulatedfor themselves.

Classroom Rules and Policies(a) Three excused absences—after that, the grade is dropped by a point.(b) Do not come to class late.(c) Each person was to find another person to pair up with who would be the

editor of their work in progress.(d) All assignments must/should be handed in on time.(e) Everything is open to negotiation.(f) Talking while others talk is not acceptable.

After several weeks with this group comprised of city dwellers as well asstudents from the Midwest, rural, and Western parts of the country, I foundmyself telling more and more personal academic stories, and my studentsresponded in kind. I tell them that I went to college as an adult, that it took menine years to get a degree and that I went to eleven undergraduate schools. Ibegin to wonder if telling tales and sharing secrets improves writing and if tellingthese tales and sharings encourages bonding.

Since I based most of my curriculum around the idea of the students doinganthropology by writing an ethnography, I told them that given the fact that a

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( M w ) | (M NWj (NW Mj ( M Wj

( M N W J ( F W ) ' ' F N W H

w

/^\ I(F NW) >

"^—-^ I F W I ( F w ) D

/ - v_y \ _ y i ^ B N |

TEACHER'S DESK

Arrow-indicates student moved to other group M-MaleBroken Circle-indicates students who moved about F-FemaleUnbroken Circle-indicates stationary students W-WhiteBroken Line-indicates natural division into two groups NW-Non White

Figure 1 Chart showing students' classroom position. "^

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18 LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION

writer's task is to make sense of her world and that you are all new to this worldof university, you might like to undertake an ethnographic study of this semester.I tell them I am doing research in this class because as a composition specialist Inot only teach but do classroom research as well. I will discuss my research withthem, I assure them, and they can ask me any questions they want. 'So, maybewe can all do an ethnography together.' I explain that the world they have comefrom is, in all probability, much different from the one that they will be spendingthe next several years in. We talk about cultures, what it is like to visit foreignplaces. The young woman returning from Spain, Jean, volunteers informationregarding living and travelling in foreign lands.

Later, in the first ungraded assignment, she uses this information to write anessay about arriving in Paris on Valentine's Day and how upset she was havingleft a boy-friend in the States. She writes:

I would probably still be in Paris if it wasn't for a friend of mine. I wasliving in Paris at the time, and the Easter vacation was nearing. This friendof mine asked me if I knew of the island, Ibiza? in Spain. I had never evenbeen to Spain let alone heard of Ibiza. He had some french (sic) friends whoown a house there and he wanted me to join him. He only had five or sixdays to spend there but he told me I would love them and could if I wantstay as long as time permitted. So I went. It seemed more interesting thanrunning around Greece with some college students.

Another student, a football player, Tom, discusses the fact that coming touniversity and being on the football team is different from playing football forhis high school team. 'The pressure here is terrible,' he says. 'And everybody isgood, not just one or two guys.' A young woman who is on a basketball scholarshiptells us that the life of a female athlete is different at this university than it is forthe males. We then begin a lively discussion of male and female roles in sports.

Before we have used up our entire forty minutes, I explain this on-goingassignment. I tell them:

Keep a diary or journal of things that interest you about school. Thingsthat upset you would be O.K. to put in there, too. You can start withmeals, clothes people wear, teachers you like or dislike. Whatever, I willnot grade or look at the field notes. I will, however, check twice during thesemester that you have been keeping one.

During the next several weeks, the students become concerned about doingthe field notes correctly, especially since their first graded and recorded essay istied into these field notes. The first paper that counts is a two-paragraph piecesummarising their field notes. They tell me they don't have anything to writeabout. They can't find anything interesting in what they are doing. We talk aboutwhat they could be looking at. I suggest they think about rules. What rulesoperate in the dining areas, for instance, or in the dorms. Each student finallywith much trepidation hands in the assignment as well as the field notes which Icheck off as having been recorded.

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STUDENTS AND STORIES 19

Doing Anthropology

The field note summaries are terrific. One about party life at university reads,'In looking over my field notes, I discovered that most of my entries were madeon weekends. Out of eleven entries, eight of them were written either on a Friday,Saturday or a Sunday. All of these eight entries have the same main theme—partying.' He continues by discussing the drinking habits of students by writingthat they put away the books and start consuming alcohol. He ends by comingto the conclusion that 'college students suppress their desire to "have fun" untilthose three short days at the end of every week.'

As directed, although he does make a conclusion, he does not at this time makeany judgements. They all like the idea of an ethnography being hypothesisgenerating and so they are content not to make claims about anything they aredoing.

Some of the field notes are non-specific. One student observed clothing. Hewas interested in all the different kinds of clothing and observed that femaleswear the more outlandish clothing. The men wear fairly standard styles. Thefemale athlete compares the dining-hall of the athletes to the dining-hall of thegeneral students. She feels that the athletes are more cohesive and there is lesspolarising by race. Races mix, and so do males and females, more readily in theathletic circles than on the general campus, she says.

I am pleased with their ethnographies and so are they for they feel as if theyare really 'doing anthropology'. We had talked in class about field notes and Itold them about an anthropologist I knew, who had spent two years on an islandin the South Pacific, doing anthropology. His field notes were observations, hesaid. He just filled one notebook after another with seemingly unrelated material.He didn't set out to look for anything special, he just observed and wrote aboutwhat he saw. This is field notes, and this is doing anthropology.

A few days later we come to my story in the course pack. I begin discussingmy essay by saying, 'In my first class teaching at this university, as I told you, Ihad expected to find the crime de la creme of the teaching world. Instead I got ahorrible class. They were abysmal!' I tell this class that I wrote a paper aboutwhat a mess it was and they would now read that paper for their next assignment.Their reactions were interesting. Again, from my field notes:

Students were angry at my paper. How can you make such judgementsabout a class of people, they say. (My thesis in that paper was, more orless, that upper-middle-class, capitalistic students are unimaginative anduncreative.) 'You say that all the students from here are upper-middle-classfrom capitalist families.' They are appalled that I could make such sweepinggeneralizations. So am I. 'O.K., I tell them. So I made a few mistakes.''Let's put down everything on the board that's wrong with this paper.'They put fifteen categories of errors on the board. I am surprised andpleased because it not only gives me feedback about what I can do to changemy own writing, but it tells me they are beginning to have a sense aboutwhat writing academic prose is all about. Here are some of their comments:

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Too preachy; too many citations; not enough examples from the research;too many big words ('Are you trying to impress your reader?'); too manyassumptions ('You make judgments not based on facts.').

The list seemed endless to me, but they had a ball.

Evaluations and Results

We were at mid-point when the students dissected my writing. We had met inclass by this time for about seven weeks. They had been steadily writing andwere being graded and recorded by this time and there was beginning to form asolid little core from each of the two larger groups they had been assigned to atthe third class. I had continued to have students break down into groups so theycould talk about their assignments or work on group projects (like the rule-making session). I also paired them off early on with a partner of their own choiceand so they sometimes worked in pairs within their group. By this time thestudents had met with me in conference. In addition, a number of students werewalking down the halls with me after class with their partners and other groupmembers. It seemed that students were engaging but not in ways I would haveexpected, for this engagement appeared to be with each other and with thecurriculum—not just with me.

Along with these engagement activities, I also noted that students who spokemost in class talked in the form of a story with roughly a beginning, middle, andend, and those other component parts that followed along the lines of the naturalnarratives described by Labov (1972). These oral or natural narratives evolvedwithout any prompting other than what was at the time unconscious role modellingby me as a storyteller in action. These narrative behaviours I categorised asengagement behaviours and I theorised that they helped in the forming of thesub-group, a small cadre of the students' own making. Interestingly enough thissub-group was not populated by members from just group 1 or 2 of the classroom,but split by students from both groups.

If you look at the seating chart (Figure 1) you will see that students hadoriginally been randomly assigned with 1 through 9 in group 1, and 10 through18 in the second group. The small group that formed consisted of students 2, 7,8, 9, 10, 13. I will call this group Ring I.

Sometimes students 3 and 4—two students who roomed together and were innursing school together—joined with the Ring I group. These two students alwayscame to class together and generally talked to each other and to me in class andout of class, but did not mingle with the other class members. When they talkedin class it too was in story form and they appeared to be members in goodstanding with the small coterie. Two other students, 5 and 6, were also marginalmembers of the sub-group, or what I am now calling Ring I. These students werefootball players and while very distant from me, they were not from the groupfor they talked in class often, telling football stories. This group, consisting ofstudents 3, 4, 5, and 6, I will call Ring II.

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STUDENTS AND STORIES 21

Student 1, a black male, floated between groups and seemed in the beginningto be a member of the sub-group. (I will discuss him later when I write aboutthe interviews.) Students 11 and 12, both black, were hostile, rarely talking inclass at all. Eleven consistently came in late, did not hand in papers, and did nottalk in class to anyone. Student 12 watched everything very carefully. Twelve,however, did become a member of the sub-group in a very strange way. I willcall these three black students Ring III.

The fourth ring consisted of five students, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18. Thesestudents were black, oriental, oriental, hispanic, and black-hispanic. These fivestudents did talk in class, but not in story form. They answered questions, didnot volunteer comments, did not improve their writing, and stayed very muchon the fringe of the class. They seemed to engage with me, on a one-to-one basis.I got the feeling they liked me: they talked with me if they had a problem; theyvisited me in my office, but their discourse continued to be of the ask a question,receive an answer, referential type. Their writing did not improve at all. Onestudent, a male oriental, student 15, was by far the best writer in the class.However, as good as he was, his writing did not improve. He eventually askedme to write him a letter of recommendation for a transfer to Brown University'sEnglish Department.

The phenomenon beginning to emerge was that of a set of concentric rings ofstudents arranged by their storytelling abilities. Those storytellers in the centralring (2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13) talked the most, worked closest together, and ultimatelydid the most work on the collaborative paper. All of these students were white,upper-middle-class students, male and female mixed. My judgement about theirupper-middle-class status came from their clothing, their Anglo-Saxon heritage,and their matriculating college within the university—three of the students werefrom the university's Business School and three were from the College of Artsand Sciences. Ring II consisted of those students 3, 4, 5, 6 who also told stories,but who were paired off with themselves, being either football players or nursingstudents. They too could be called white, middle to upper-middle-class studentsbased on the criteria given above, whose college affiliation was, in addition toNursing, Business and Arts and Sciences. The third ring were those three blackstudents who each in their own way engaged, and did so by telling stories, eitherin fact or in absentia. They are each individualistic and engaged in ways that Iwill discuss in some detail. The fourth ring consisted of a racially disparate groupof students, both male and female, from disparate colleges within the University.Their engagement was the least obvious of all groups. In fact, I would say theydid not engage at all except in the very limited interaction they had with me.

Let me now talk about one of the black male students from Ring III. Edward(student 12) rarely interacted with anyone but the two other black students andhis writing initially was not very good. He did not talk to me either, but hewatched me carefully. After handing back his field note summary exercise, heasked me if he could talk with me after class. We sat on a bench in the lobby ofthe building that housed our class and I again read his field note summary andthen he offered me his field notes themselves. I read them and told him I thoughtthey were very provocative.

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22 LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION

He had written all about social engagements on campus and what colourclothing people wore. He saw a correlation between clothing colour and events.He also listened for sounds at social events. As we sat and looked together at hisnotes, I made suggestions for follow-up observation and commented about certainsections. He seemed very pleased that I would go over his notes with him, andindeed, I was pleased to do so.

My diary entries for the week after that encounter are as follows:

Edward (student 12) much more receptive in class. He is talking more doesnot raise hand, just blurts out answers and often in disagreement with me.Yet his points are so valid. When we were talking about rules (after aclassroom discussion of tacit rules and regulations in society in general andin our class in particular He observed that the class does not really beginuntil I take roll which I do either silently counting heads or sometimesverbally. He said, 'When you finish roll you close the book and your facechanges and we all know when to stop talking.' I had not realized this. Hewent on, 'and you begin by saying, "O.K."' The entire class agreed thatthis was so. His conversation stated what is the rule for students to stoptalking among themselves. And it is just as Edward mentioned. Once Ibegin my lecture and officially start the class, I don't generally allow side-talking.

Edward never did come to see me again (in fact he missed the conferences Ihad scheduled for him giving no excuse for his absences) yet his behaviour inclass was more involved and he contributed to the group activities in a way thathe had not done before. He was also accepted by the sub-group in that theylistened to what he had to say and built discussions off his discourse. The otherstudent mentioned above, student 11, did not respond to me, the class or thecurriculum in any way. He was totally disengaged throughout the entire semester.

Interviews

My procedure with the student interview followed along the lines employed byworking journalists, which was my field prior to Education. I asked five studentsto visit with me in my office to discuss the class and to talk about the termempowerment which had been the subject of a number of lessons as well as areading assignment (you need to remember that I was still at this time doingresearch on empowerment, not engagement). I saw five students. I took Greggshorthand notes of these interviews and then transcribed the material myself onthe typewriter.

The interviews had been suggested after we read my article (Murray, 1986)and engaged in classroom discussions based on that article. I told the class thatI was looking at empowerment in learning and if any of them would like to talkto me about it, I would be very pleased and it would be helpful to my research.

This is the schedule of the students I saw:

Student 2 3rd October 1985 13th November 1985 6th December 1985Student 10 3rd October 1985 5th December 1985

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STUDENTS AND STORIES 23

Student 13 3rd October 1985 6th December 1985Student 9 3rd October 1985Student 1 16th October 1985 16th December 1985

The procedure went as outlined above. I begin by saying I wanted to know whatthey thought about empowerment in the classroom. The first interview went likethis:

T: What does empowerment mean to you?S2: Well, control of your own learning, sort of.T: You mean you're in charge?S2: I'm doing it.T : So. (laughter)S2: It's in the grading. I need my feedback.T: How is that empowerment?S2: If you didn't grade, the power is in the text. Ultimately the feedback

is how we learn.Another interview followed along the same lines:

T: S, what did you think of B today in class? (The situation in class thatday was that a student took over the class in my absence. I hadarranged for the students to work together, without me, to discuss thecollaborative piece they had decided to do based on the field notes. Iwill discuss this later.)

S10: He tried to be teacher. No one raised their hand or asked questions.T: So what did he do?S10: He asked questions. Still nobody talked.T: Then. . .?S10: He called on people individually. He just went up and down the row

asking what are you going to write on. He went up and down therows. He sat behind the teacher's desk. He pretended to get out hisattendance sheet.

These interviews show two things. One, that the students did have some ideaof empowerment. At least student 2 did. Second that student 13, who I called Bin the transcript acted in behalf of his own empowerment in the class by takingcharge when no one else wanted to. (However, student 10, the interviewee, didnot feel very empowered by B taking over the class.) The most important aspectof these events is not what was said, but what took place. These students felt freeto talk to me and to volunteer their time to come to my office. These were onlytwo of ten interviews plus many informal conversations I had with the studentsduring the semester. What came out of all this, out of class interaction, was thatthose students who did engage with me and with each other out of class broughtthat same informality and personal interaction in to the class and formed this sub-group which helped members of the class to engage.

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Collaborative Work

About 15th November, the class handed in two sets of field-note summariesand we talked about what we might do with them. I suggested that they mightwant to work together on something, some joint piecet to see if maybe the schoolpaper would be interested in publishing their work. I got this idea from the workof Elsasser & Fiore (1983) who had done similar work with adult learners in theBahamas. So my students set about creating a joint project. By this time theyworked well together, or at least the sub-group worked well together. They spokeopenly in class with each other, responded to each other, not just to me, andoperated pretty much on their own. They decided to set up a schedule of howthey wanted to work together on this project. Over the next few weeks they metafter class and worked on the collaborative piece which they tentatively called 'ALook at the Ivies'. They tied their field notes into the concept of a spy sent froma publishing house who was doing a book on what it's really like to go to an IvyLeague college.

By this time the students were truly engaged with the curriculum and the textthat they were creating on their own. Their involvement with me consisted ofclassroom time and conference time as well as the time spent with me in interviews,but essentially they engaged together as a class or after class.

So the sub-group took over this collaborative writing task. Those students whohad been the most vocal and the most apt to tell stories in the class about whateverwere the students who took over the job of creating a joint piece of writing. I didagree to giving them all—the entire class—an A for this work and that thecompletion of the paper would stand for their final paper in the class. Since Iknew that this class would finish the semester having written fourteen papers(including the collaborative piece), kept a journal, and executed a number ofwriting projects that were not graded, they would still be evaluated enough timesso that I could let them go on this last piece. It made sense to me as a researcher,for I would see what happens when students are in charge of their own learningand make decisions about that learning in the class. I also felt as a teacher thatsince they were actively enjoying the task of writing, were learning to worktogether, and were as a class becoming actively engaged in learning, that mydecision about the grade had sound pedagogical underpinnings. Also there wasvery little absenteeism and since they wrote a lot their grades improved.

They began the joint report, writing as if one person, as follows:

Last August I was given the plans for my next assignment. In all previousassignments, I had always enrolled in one of the Ivy Leagues for a semesterto spy on campus behavior. My observations of these Ivy League schoolsusually I included academic related incidents as well as non-academic. Afterthe semester was over, I would report my findings to the publication, 'Lifeat the Ivies', which was a college review book.

The sub-group (Ring I and II with some help from two members of Ring III)did complete this joint work. To do this they met together without me threetimes and met twice with me in my office to discuss their progress. They related

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to me that they talked on the phone and met for coffee with members of the sub-group.

Their collaborative piece included information on studying, partying, sports,library activities, and the clothing students wore and gender roles. For example:

I was able to observe students' behavior outside of class at the TennisPavillion, an indoor tennis center with eight courts. There are understoodrules of behavior which apply to tennis courts, but many people here donot follow these rules. Although girls behave properly, competitive guys donot follow the established etiquette of the tennis court. These competitiveplayers tended to scream, use profanity, and argue about points, causingdisturbances to neighboring courts. The guys knew that they were notbehaving up to society's expectations, but they did not seem to care. Insteadthey seemed to purposely behave like this using their behavior to pumpthem up to motivate them to win the match. I am not sure if this is valuableinformation pertaining to students at X University, but it may be interestingto people who enjoy playing tennis and are curious about behavior on tenniscourts.

Conclusions

Three issues seem to have emerged from this research. The first is that tellingtales enabled engagement to take place among the students, between teacher andstudents, students and texts, and students with each other. The second thing isthat those students so engaged were 'insiders' so to speak. They shared a commonheritage of both class and college. Third, whether, and to what degree, the'outsiders' engaged was influenced by teacher-student interaction, nottext-student or student to student.

Further, there are some negative aspects to the idea of telling stories and thisshowed up in my class. It centred on what I call the silencing of minority students.In addition to the minority students mentioned above in Ring IV, there were twoblack females who, while not members of the sub-group, did speak up somewhatin class, caused no problems for me, the instructor, and did acceptable work.The one male student I already mentioned who did not engage with anyone wasblack and did not do well in my class. Ostensibly, he did not do well because hedid not talk—or tell stories (absence of voice). He did not talk and he did notinteract. He was silenced, perhaps by himself.

According to Fine (1987), silencing signifies a terror of words, a fear of talk.Fine argues that there are a number of reasons why students are silenced, whytheir stories aren't told. My student (11), who I will call Charlie, muted his ownvoice to a level that made it impossible for him to succeed in my class. Thesecond black male Edward (12) did speak, not to me, but to the other membersof the class. If you recall, he was the student who asked me to read his field notesand who after finding acceptance by me in those field notes opened up in classand did seem to be a member of the sub-group. This further negates the notionthat engagement must be with the teacher. It also makes me wonder if 'outsiders'

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don't need to first start with teacher-student interaction of some kind before theycan then interact with the other students. Though he seemed to use that oneinteraction as a 'motivator' which gave him permission to engage with the class,he never did interact with me again. The third black male in the class is student1, who I will call Bill. Bill was an open, outspoken student who initially seemedto like me very much and who I felt very comfortable with, both in class and inour sessions outside of class. He was a very verbal and mobile student and movedfor reasons not readily apparent to me from one side of the room to the other.As I watched his movements (he would come in one day and sit on the one sideand then on the next sit on the other side) I began to suspect they were generatedby affiliation needs, for he gravitated toward the two black students who alwayssat in the back of the room in the same place each day beside each other.

Bill came into my office a few days after classes ended. Ostensibly he came tocheck on his grades and especially his final paper. We sat in my office—I wasvery busy and so a little edgy—and he was chatting about this and that. Becausethis was not a formal interview I was not taking notes. (However, I did soimmediately after he left my office.) He said, apropos of nothing, 'You seem likea sensitive person.'

T: I think I am.SI: Are you into psychic experiences?T: What do you mean?SI: Do you see auras or anything like that? Are you a healer?T: I see auras, but I'm not a healer.SI: Can we close the door?

By this time I became attentive, the student closed the door and said that hewished he had done better in my class, that he wished his writing had improved.'In fact,' he said, 'I wish you had told me early what I needed to do to improvemy writing.' (This is further evidence for the idea that teacher-student interactionis necessary first for 'outsider' students.) Somewhat defensively I said that I hadtold him. I had said that he was a good, strong writer with a definitive style butthat he was too abstract and that he purposefully obfuscated. We talked aboutthis in conference, I reminded him.

I decided to take a risk then, and I said, 'I thought somewhere around themiddle of the semester you disengaged. You started coming in late and jumpingfrom one seat and one side of the room to the other. What was that all about?'

SI: I was mad at you.T: Why?SI: Do you remember the day in class when you told Jane and I to stop

talking?T: Yes, I remember. I said if you two want to talk go out in the hall.

You had been side-talking all morning and it had been going on forseveral days. Yes, I remember.

SI: Well, I was upset. I didn't like how you did that.

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I said I was sorry there in my office and that I had known something hadhappened between us. I didn't know where or how on a conscious level, but Ioften wondered whether to approach him about it or not and unfortunatelydecided not to, to just let it be.

I was very much tempted to ask him if race had had anything to do with it,for it was toward the two other black students he went when things started to goawry between us. I did not do so. However, it is my belief that race played apart in this student's disengagement and in the other student's muted voice. Fine(1987) tells the story of how one student responds to a curriculum that does notsuit her needs. She relates the story of Patrice, a young black female, in 11thgrade, who says nothing all day in school. She sits perfectly mute. No need tocoerce her into silence. She often wears her coat in class. Sometimes she lays herhead on her desk. She never disrupts. Never disobeys. Never speaks. And isnever identified as a problem . . . . Is she so filled with anger, she fears to speak?Or so filled with depression she knows not what to say? The research Fine didin a New York public school ironically corresponds to the field notes of anotherone of my students in the Craft of Prose.

This student, Adele, is one whose black voice, while not silenced, had takenon the characteristics of institutional voice. She never wrote anything that showedany of her personality. Her stories were bland stories of the kind she 'thought' Iwanted, as she told me in conference. While she did 'B' work in my class, shedid not join or actively participate in the Ring I group. Her individuality emergedonly in her field notes where she talked about the 'nerds'. These students thatAdele identified are the kids everyone loved to hate. 'They sit in class and neverspeak. Their appearance as well as their silence sets them apart from the rest ofthe class. Their eccentric attire and weird behaviors were a turn off to most.'Adele doesn't identify these students as black or white. She only identifies themas different and that difference is aroused by their silence, their lack of storytelling.Perhaps the black student, 11, felt set apart and so did not speak.

What conclusions I have concur with Fine. It is important that researchexamines whom silencing protects, especially if those students are protectingthemselves. I see that there are answers contained in storytelling and that if ateacher can get to the basic stories students will engage and empower themselves,especially if they are allowed to tell their stories. And especially if a teacherengages with 'outside' students in such a way that it gives them perhaps permissionto then engage with the other students.

I think important work needs to be done on the aspect of telling stories in aclassroom. While this research contains information about telling stories it is reallyabout the empowerment of students, the giving of voice to students' tales evenif, particularly if, they are not the stories of the institution. For instance, Landau(1984: 263) argues that scientific theories are essentially narratives. Anythingwhich can be arranged in a sequence or related can be narrated. Landau agreeswith the position taken by narratologists, which is that since humans love to tellstories, narrative is an appropriate form of scientific hypothesis.

I too believe humans love to tell stories, and I suspect we have to tell stories.If this is the case, it is important to listen to the stories not only that the studentstell in class but the stories that the classroom itself tells.

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References

Berthoff, A.E. (1983) Is teaching still possible? Writing, meaning, and higher level reason-ing. College English 46, 743-55.

Elsasser, N. and Fiore, K. (1982) 'Strangers no more': A liberatory literacy curriculum.College English 44, 115-28.

Fine, M. (1987) Silencing in public schools. Language Arts 64, 157-74.Freire, P. (1968) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press.Giroux, H. A. (1983) Theory & Resistence in Education. Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey.Labov, W. (1972) Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press.Landau, M. (1984) Human evolution as narrative. American Scientist 72, 262-8.Murray, M. (1986) The radicalization of a teacher.Simon, R. and Dippo, D. (1986) On critical ethnographic work. Anthropology and Education

Quarterly 17, 195-202.

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