DOCUMENT RESUMEED 370 133CS 214 346AUTHORIngham ZitaTITLEThe New Dire - PDF document

1 DOCUMENT RESUMEED 370 133CS 214 346AUTHO
DOCUMENT RESUMEED 370 133CS 214 346AUTHORIngham, ZitaTITLEThe New Director of Composition Composes Herself.PUB DATEMar 94NOTE14p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of theConference on College Composition and Communication(45th, Nashville, TN, March 16-19, 1994).PUB TYPESpeeches/Conference Papers (150)Viewpoints(Opinion/Position Papers, Essays, etc.)(120)EDRS PRICEMF01/PC01 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORSAdministrator Effectiveness; AdministratorResponsibility; *Cultural Context; Department Heads;Faculty Workload; *Higher Education; NontenuredFaculty; *Program Administration; Teaching Methods;*Writing InstructionIDENTIFIERSArkansas State University; *Faculty AttitudesABSTRACTA new director of composition at Arkansas StateUniversity explains how she has had to mentor herself, write andrevise herself, read herself into her new bewildering environment,and in short, make her job as easy as possible. Reading the newenvironment and understanding how faculty members fit into it may beone of the hardest aspects of a new position. If a dean asks newfaculty members to do what they do not believe in, well-timed fits ofanger and conditional acceptance may be effective, at least atArkansas State. The faculty member must learn to define and focus, toback out of certain matters, to.revise deadlines, to inconvenienceother people, and to let some things go. She must insist on choice inher own life. She must recognize that her greatest strength is t

2 hatshe does not really want the administ
hatshe does not really want the administrative position she has. Thebest advice to a pretenured person taking such a position as a firstjob is do not settle in, do not buy a house, do not let your kidsthink this is the last place they will ever live, think of the job astransitory because all jobs are. "Your own priorities come first"such as time for research, if that is needed in the quest for tenure,or the move to another institution. (TB)***********************************************************************Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be madefrom the original document.*********************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONOffice of Educational Research and improvementEDATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC)This document has been reproduced asreseived from the parson or organizationoriginating it17 Minor changes have been made to improvereproduction qualityPoints ot view or opinions stated in this docu-ment do not necessarily represent officialOE RI position or pohcyZita Ingham"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THISMATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTEDBYTO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCESINFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)."941eNew Director of Composition Composes HerselfThis is a personal essay. I came to Jonesboro, Arkansas inFall 1992 for a tenure track position in the Department ofEnglish and Philosophy, at Arkansas State University, a collegeof about 10,000 students. I came from the Unive

3 rsity of Arizona,where I had spent 10 ye
rsity of Arizona,where I had spent 10 years pursuing the master's degree inEnglish and a doctorate in rhetoric and composition. My positionincluded a one course (out of four) release to be "acting Direc-tor of Composition," because the faculty member in that positionwould be on sabbatical. I understood, even before I was hired,that I would be "Director of Composition" in my second year,because the present director wanted out, although she said thejob was easy,"nothing to it." At that time, we had no graduatestudents teaching and a Core of non-tenured but full timeinstructors to help with the composition courses. Most of our 40or so faculty teach, even now, freshman composition for two orthree of their four course load.This year, I am "Director of Composition." The department hasno fulltime instructors, and I supervise 10 parttimers and 15teaching graduate students. The job is not easy, although muchenergy, on my part, has gone into making it as easy as it can be,as a matter of my own survival. I'll tell you how.First, I mentor myself. I've done a lot of reading aboutmentoring in the field of composition, in higher education, and2 in business and management, and so I'm very certain about whatkinds of mentoring I want. The kind of mentoring I want formyself is imaginary. I have at least three imaginary mentors inmy head whom I call on constantly. One of them is Tilly Warnock,and in particular her presentation about four years ago-

4 at-the--University of Arizona's Spring C
at-the--University of Arizona's Spring Conference on English, whichsnedelivered the semester before she accepted the position of direc-tor of composition there. From that talk I learned to see revi-sion as a form of grace, the manifestation of hope, in writingbut more importantly in living-. Revising L'r writing in school isilluminating, but the concept plays an evenmore important partin our lives, in the ways we revise ourselves fromone day, oneminute, to the next. I believe Tilly will forgiveme if she neversaid any of this. As I said, these mentors are imaginary.The next year, bell hooks visited the university, and shetold us, a group of hot-shot whiney tough-girl graduate students,that it is not enough to "come to voice," you need to know why.bell hooks put intention back into my work, as Tilly had edited-1-the personal into it: I saw that what was most important was howmy work expressed my life.That year, the year I finished my Ph.Tafter manyunsuccessfL1 job interviews, I consulted a therapist ata psychicfair, if tou can call paying someone $10 to siton a foldingchair at the Ramada Inn and watchyou cry a consultation. Thiswoman, a Jungian from San Diego with the biggest head I've everseen on a human being, told me three extremely important things.One, she said, these people to whom you've been talkingare3 deceitful; they give me the creeps, she said. Two, when you sitthere talking to them, imagine them as trees, as whatever,

5 youthink is most beautiful, as different
youthink is most beautiful, as different kinds of trees, sycamores,aspens, junipers. Three, sne told me I would get a job, and sheactually told me where. She revised me (I let her) as confidentbut quite detached, as living still in a natural world (what everthat is), a stance that has gotten me where I am today.This gives you an idea of my personal mythology: I thinkabout these women, and other people (foronce told me "There's room for all of uswhich perks me up when I'm feeling odd);heard them say all the time. My personalinstance Tom Miller, whoin this field," a mottoI think about what Imythology is one way Iwrite myself into my work. How I do my job dependson my personalmythology.It also depends on how good at reading I am. I begin with theassumption that my reading of the expectations others have formedefine my opportunities for improving writingon our campus.Several audiences have expectations for my performance:undergraduate and graduate students, colleagues in the departmentand in other departments, the department chair, the dean andother administrators. When I arrived on campus,my expectationsincluded improving opportunities for writing campus-wide. At theend of my first year, I saw my purpose as improvement in thefreshman composition program--improved teaching and improvedopportunities for writing practice by students. Now, in the mid-dle of my second year, I see my purpose as seeking to improvewriting instruction in my

6 classes and the classes of thoseI super
classes and the classes of thoseI supervise--a marked diminishment of territory, butnow the ter-ritory is one I can almost totally control. I feelmore sqccess-ful, and I hope I can build on that.The hardest thing about being a new director of compositionis learning how to read the situations aroundme. I spent myfirst few months at Arkansas State University readingmy placethere, reading myself into the place. In the spring ofmy firstyear, a crisis hit: the dean announced he wanted to form a basicskills center outside the English Department. At that time,mostof my time was being spent revising the pre-freshman compositioncourse in the department: planning it for the various populationswho would eventually teach it (gas, parttimers, faculty, antiqueand otherwise)--in general, garnering support fora proces,z-basedcourse rather than the grammar-based course we had in place. As Iread (and read) the situation, the dean wants to have the stu-dents who are most at risk for staying in school be taught by GAsbecause that would be far cheaper than the present situation. He-even wants the Center to be supervised by a GA, and not a veryexperienced ,one, because we don't havea Ph.D. progran. The Cen-ter will remove from our department, during their firstyearanyway, those students whom the full professors complain mostabout, whom many tenured professors simply refuse to teach. Iseethe Center as a way of managing students, undergraduate andgrad

7 -uate, and not necessarily as a way of i
-uate, and not necessarily as a way of improving opportunities forwriting.I quickly revised my reading: improvement in writinginstruction--what I wanted most to be part of atASU--was not a5 priority at all. I wasn't hired to doa good job; I was hired todo this job. First, I resigned. I wrote a one-sentencememo ofresignation as director of composition tomy department chair. Iwrote that I trusted that my tenure-track position would not bejeopardized, given the fact that Iwas not hired expressly forthe position of director of composition, but at that point,Ididn't particularly care. I keep that fileon my computer evennow. I thought of Tilly, of bell hooks, and the psychic fairlady, revised myself and took a stand and imaginedthe dean as awillow stump, always sprouting but not visiblyof much use toanyone.I stayed home, not answering the phone, for twodays, exceptfor class and office hours. The department chair,a lovely butslightly tilted fir tree ofa man, sent the assistant chair--thepost oak who had picked me up at the airport formy campusvisit--to my house to see if Iwas all right. I was very fine.That was the happiest week I had my firstyear. Eventually I wentto see the chair, who asked wouldn't I pleasehelp with the grad--uate students; what did I need that would helpme do that job? Iagreed to continue, making it clear thatI would always needTuesdays and Thursdays free formy research work, that I wasoverworked, that I thought th

8 e dean shouldbe asking me what toplan fo
e dean shouldbe asking me what toplan for the writing program, and thatI was no sucker. Iexplained my concerns to the/dean irseveral long meetings, and Icontinue to registermy uneasiness with our programs.Fortunately, I don't quite feel alone inall of this: my counter-part in the Math department,a pre-tenured supervisor of 20 new6 GAs who teach College Algebra, is in a similar situation.Whenlast saw him, he said, let's get out of this businessthey(meaning the administration) want it all done rightbut theydon't want to pay for it. He has agreed to directthe algebraprogram for one year only, stipulating that he could quit it if-he didn't like the work. The dean's center has not yet material-ized because he doesn't have theresources, and he has nowrevised his plan into that ofa tutoring and advising center, nota separate department. So at Arkansas State, anyway, well-timedfits of anger and conditional acceptance of administrativeworkseem to be useful strategies.If I can't act from a place ofpower within the institution,I can't show my students how to do that. Ifmy choice is betweennot being able to do that and keepingmy job, then I can't dothis job. My most important audience,my principal constituentsare the undergraduates, especially the undergraduates who don'twrite very well, who don't have the choicesI've had so that Icould be here, where I can insiston having choices. Lessons forbeing a good parent reverberate throughmy work;

9 perhaps youheard one of them on your way
perhaps youheard one of them on your way to this conference:"Passengerstraveling with small children shouldsecure their own oxygen'masks first, then secure the child's mask."Showing people howto have choices in their writing and in theirlives ia my job.Not all of my self-composing involves howI fit into thelarger landscape of the campus. SometimesI define myself againstother faculty. In September of thisyear, my first year as7 "Director of Composition," I woke up worried about everything inthe middle of the night and wrote in my journal.Journal entry 9/21/92:lingering tensions1) the people on the department composition committee havemistaken me for someone with the time and resources of a director.of comp. They want a lot done, all by me.2) they also mistake me for someone who cares about all thisdepartmental history; for instance, who won't participate inexchange grading because of something someoneago, exactly why we don't have a grade appealelse did 10 yearsprocess, whowith whose wife so don't invite them to dinner oa the sameI must try not to make enemies of these people who want toall this sad history on me; after all, it's the main thinghave to offer. I don't want to share their history becausedon't want to become one of then, and I would like to makenaivete work for me.3) many faculty seem stuck, in some fundamental way. Theywant to use textooks that are ten years old--if the textbookcommittee tries to leave one of those

10 off the list, they call andwhine about i
off the list, they call andwhine about it, not even having the sense to justgo to the book-store and order it themselves. They can spout off about processwith the best of us, but they still want a handbook with lots ofgrammar exercises in it. And they want new solutions to old prob-lems, like plagiarism, but my solutions don't fit their antiqueways, which translates as a failure of my ideas.4) What I really don't like is having to support and promotethings I don't believe in, here, like this tired old version ofsleptnight.unloadtheymy8 freshman composition, the exploitation of GAs, the pretense thata MA or a Ph.D. in English is a good idea for most students in myclasses5) What I also really don't like is being charged to dorhings--improve writing instruction, for instance--and then notbeing given the help to do that but feeling I'll fail if I don't.But I can see that I won't fail. I'll just end up like all theother grownups here. Withdrawn.Tensions come from how I write myself against the communitybeyond the university, too.Journal entry 2/20/93:As far as the administration goes,well, there is some big secret party goingon all the time.Unlike some colleagues, I don't want to get invited to it,I justwish they'd stop partying at theexpense of the students who wantto learn. If the faculty and the students could get theirownparty going, together, there might be some hope here.Here in theDelta region, it's quite easy to see how socia

11 l systems have keptso many people so poo
l systems have keptso many people so poor. The people who run the town run theschoo., and the media of exchange are social and economic favors,not merit attached to any standards of what is good for individu-als and for the community. The town owns this school, and it's tothe advantage of the people who run the town andthe universityto keep my students stupid. Who would work in the Hush Puppiesfactory, who will work parttime at Walmart forno benefits yearafter year if my students really succeed ata good college educa-tion? The money we put into the librarycopy machines, at a9 profit of about 500% per page, supports the football team. It'sbeen worth coming here, to see how all this works, so clearly.I read and write myself into a more and more comfortableplace here as time goes one. An entry from less fall is a littleless frantic, perhaps even dangerously comfortable.Journal entry 10/12/93:I'm sure the only WPA I can be--theonly Professor of English I can be--is the one that's me, trans-formed, whom I haven't met yet. It's curious that I am thinkingof this just as I realize what burnout would be, in this situa-tion: the physical realization that this is all so much busywork,even what we think of as most important--curriculum decisions,hiring decisions. The classroom I can still take most seriously--it's the most peaceful place on campus for me. Doing one thing ata time, there.el. So I need to learn to define and focus. I backed o

12 ut ofthe honors course on public discour
ut ofthe honors course on public discourse. I revise all my deadlines.I inconvenience other people. I let some things go.I'm a teacher: I compose myself by telling other people whatto do. The insistence on choice in my life comes from my firstreal job, in which I spent every Friday for a year in the base-ment of a VA Hospital killing rabbits with a quick chop to theback of their skulls. That has set the tone for my work ininstitutions. My greatest strength in this position is that Idon't really want this position. My personality is certainly con-10 trolling enough for writing program administration, my educationand experiences have certainly prepared me for that, but T havenever wanted to do the academy's work for itself in so obviousand direct a manner. I never would have applied for a WPA posi-tion; the thrill_of power, of such public attention, is wasted on_someone like me. The problem of hiring younger, "new" faculty asWPAs is not just their inexperience in furthering the causes ofcomposition and rhetoric, not political threats to them based ontheir actions, but how the institution uses the fact that manynew WPA's, I suspect, have fewer choices than I do, need thesejobs more, and must acquiesce to that dynalac. The problem for anew WPA is how much such "positions" cost.My advice to a pretenured person taking on such a position ina first job would be: don't settle in, don't buy a house, don'tlet your kids think this is the la

13 st place they'll ever live.Your advantag
st place they'll ever live.Your advantage will come from the fact that the department andthe administration really need someone to fill this slot. Yourown priorities come first: time for research if you need that inyour quest for tenure or your move to another institution,renegotiation of duties, a graduate student to assist you--whatever you really need you'd better get or move on. It alsohelps to keep in mind Robert Boice's "Hard-Easy Rule," too:"achieving hard goals is almost always rewarded, failing to makeeasy goals is almost always punished.... Restated, excellingat easy tasks such as teaching brings few rewards; failing atdifficult tasks like scholarly writing brings few punishments"(":). Those are his perceptions of what is hard and what is easy,11 but you get the idea. Don't fail at what those in power regard aseasy, whatever that may be in your case, and succeed in one ortwo things they perceive as difficult. The tenure process is nota mystery, especially at the "second-rate" schools where most ofus are (that's just one of the things I like so much about beingat a second-rate school); start talking to everyone who has justgotten tenure or who is going up and compare what you're doing towhat they did. Revise your priorities, strip away what doesn'twork, don't try to be friends with everyone. Think of the job astransitory, because all jobs are.I don't feel defeated, after all these months--more likeexperienced, poised on

14 the edge of something, but what?Journal
the edge of something, but what?Journal Entry 3/9/94:Tommy Toombs stopped me in the halltoday. [A former student of mine, he's a non-traditional studentwho barely passed my sophomore lit course but, as a preacher inthe making, was an invaluable resource to the class for hisexplanations of Biblical references]. He wanted to know if I'm..teaching "Functional Writing" (a junior level remedial writingcourse) in the Fall. "I need help," he said, "somebody has aot toteach me how to write before I leave this place--I'm going on tothe seminary and that's all they do there, make you write."Of course, teaching Brother Toombs to write also involveschanging the ways he thinks about writing--that it's not something you get--and the teaching of writing--that it's notsome-thing someone does to you. He's ready, but canwe rise to the1 2 occasion? I can't do it uinglehandedly, and that's the point ofhaving a writinq program. I responded to his anxiety not as ateacher but as a WPA, not even one in the making: I advised himabout all the classes that might be helpful, how to use the writ-ing lab now and later, how to start keeping a journal. I advisedhim to consider taking freshman composition again (after a lapseof about 10 years). Sometimes it can be useful, I said.34 ReferencesBoice, Robert. To Improve the Academy: Resources for Student,Faculty. and institutional Development. Profession'', andOrganizational Development Network in Higher Educatio