Cambridge, Mass.
Marsha A. Hayes peers over her gray-rimmed eyeglasses at a student's laptop to get a closer look at the essay on the computer screen. Her eyes narrow as she reads. The essay, written by another student in the expository-writing class, is next up for a critique by the class.
Some students argue that the essay does not contain enough information to support its thesis. Others say the thesis is not clear enough.
The professor chimes in with his own opinion. Ms. Hayes listens intently, stealing glances at the essay.
This is why she came to Harvard University.
Ms. Hayes, an associate professor of English composition and communications at Independence Community College, in southeastern Kansas, had wondered: Could writing be taught to students at the open-admissions institution the same way it was taught on the Ivy League campus?
She decided to find out. Together with the community college's library director, Marcel A.Q. LaFlamme, two other English professors, Brenda J. Sanchez and Matthew T. Hoven, and the dean of instruction, Peggy L. Forsberg, she made her way to Cambridge in October.
For two days, the group sat in on classes, met with students, and spoke with the directors of Harvard's writing program and writing center. Their plan to visit Lamont Library, the main undergraduate library on the campus, to learn how the university integrates library research instruction into freshman writing courses was thwarted when their contact at the library never showed up.
That seemed to be the only hiccup during their visit, which also included stops at local landmarks like Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage.
They also learned something about the culture at Harvard when their rush to make it to a class meeting of the freshman writing course, Expository 20, proved unnecessary. Undergraduate classes at Harvard always begin eight minutes after the posted time.
"When we were walking across the campus, I thought, This is the place where presidents have walked and the greatest minds this country has were produced," says Ms. Hayes, who is 59. "I felt honored to be there." Still, she came away with a renewed confidence in her own ability as an instructor and with the belief that aspects of Harvard's writing program could be adopted at her community college.
The idea for the Harvard excursion came to Ms. Hayes after Mr. LaFlamme, a Harvard graduate, gave a presentation to her class last spring about the library resources available.
"The students were impressed that he had a Harvard degree," she says. "I had very good students in that class. So, I told them, 'You could do that well.' But then I thought, Well, I don't know that. What is the difference?"
That got her thinking about a visit.
"Harvard is considered the best," she says. "So why not go learn from the best?"
She asked for help from Mr. LaFlamme, who still had contacts at the university. A few phone calls later, and with the blessings of Independence's president, Daniel Bain, Ms. Hayes and her colleagues were off to Cambridge.
The Pull of the Classroom'
Ms. Hayes's path to the professoriate took many detours before she landed at the rural community college. After earning a master's degree in English from Pittsburg State University, in Kansas, in 1974, she moved to New Mexico with her husband when he was assigned to Clovis Air Force Base.
She took on an adjunct position at nearby Eastern New Mexico University. Not feeling busy enough, she also took a civil-service test and became secretary to the fire chief at the air base, while continuing to teach.
Six months later, still restless—"I'm a worker," she says with a smile—she became a firefighter. Being outdoors appealed to her, and she liked the idea of showing people that a woman was capable of the job. (Ms. Hayes was born too late to benefit from Title IX, the federal law prohibiting discrimination against women in educational programs; she requires her composition classes to write a research paper on it.)
She held the firefighting job for almost two years, and still recalls the time she had to run underneath an F-111 with "hot brakes" and chock the wheels, hoping they would not explode or catch on fire.
"Actually, I liked it," she says. "I understand the addictive adrenaline rush emergency personnel love."
Ms. Hayes and her husband, David, who now works at an oil refinery, eventually made their way back to Kansas, where she taught middle- and high-school English. After the birth of their son, in 1976, Ms. Hayes became a rural mail carrier, the first woman to hold that job in Independence.
She retired in 2005. But the pull of the classroom remained strong, and she began teaching that fall at Independence Community College. "I like the students," she says. "That's what made me do it. I learn so much from them."
Learning to Experiment
It's the students who were on her mind when she visited Harvard. At the writing center, Ms. Hayes, pushing back her shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair, picked up guides on English papers and on writing about psychology and history. A modest woman in both style and demeanor, she was quiet in the classes, but effusive later about the Harvard students' engagement in discussions and the teaching techniques she had seen.
In one class, students were asked to discuss Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices by speaking as if they were critics they had read in class. Ms. Hayes decided to experiment with the same method in her classroom.
She savors the prospect of offering themed composition courses like Harvard's Expository 20. Its premise is that writing and thinking are inseparably related, and that good thinking requires good writing.
Students spend most of their time on strategies of argument, discovering and arranging persuasive ideas and evidence through the process of drafting and revising essays on specified themes. Among those offered this year are "Being American," "The Moral Life," and "Reading Photographs."
Ms. Hayes will offer her own version of the course to her college's baseball players this spring. The theme will be "The Role of Sports in American Culture."
She acknowledges that her students are different from Harvard's. They enroll with various levels of preparation. A lot of them also have jobs and families, which cuts into studying time. When Ms. Hayes learned that one student had failed to show up at her 8 a.m. class because he couldn't get up in time, she arranged to give him wake-up calls.
Despite the challenges facing her students, she says, expectations of them should be no different from those at Harvard. She wants her students to learn the mechanics of good writing, but also to take away more.
"I want them to realize that what I'm teaching in class absolutely needs to move beyond the classroom," she says. "Questions should drive your life. Even if you don't have to write a paper, isn't it powerful to know what exists around you?"
She would also like to start a writing center similar to the one at Harvard, which offers students one-on-one conferences and is staffed by trained undergraduate tutors.
For now, Ms. Hayes continues to revel in the experience of her trip, thinking of ways to bring what she learned into her classroom and to the whole Independence campus.
She was so struck by the words carved above Harvard's Dexter Gate, she says, that she took snapshots of it. On the outside it reads, "Enter to Grow in Wisdom." As people leave the campus through the gate, they see, "Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind."
"I feel that is what I'm doing right now," she says. "This teaching thing is my way of giving back."
Comments
1. bajan - January 15, 2010 at 12:02 am
"Harvard is considered the best." Says who? What, exactly, is the evidence for considering the writing instructors at Harvard the best? Undoubtedly, Harvard (as well as other elite universities) receives some of the best students, but does that automatically make its composition instructors the best? This article is long on awe and short on specifics as well as replete with blanket statements, such as "the greatest minds this country has were produced." I wonder if those same professors at Harvard might also benefit from seeing the remarkable teaching that community college instructors demonstrate day in and day out.
2. jimlyttle - January 15, 2010 at 06:47 am
The entity that takes the most abuse from no-account observers is the best; it is that abuse that decides who is the best.
3. willfitzhugh - January 15, 2010 at 09:45 am
The Concord Review has published exemplary HS history research papers by students from 36 countries since 1987. Because they average 5,500 words, with endnotes and bibliography, the Harvard Expository Writing people have no interest in the journal. I am a Harvard graduate and I find it hard to fathom why writing for Harvard freshman continues to be dumbed down as it is at most other colleges.
Will Fitzhugh, www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
4. jch942 - January 15, 2010 at 09:47 am
bajan- I think you're all worked up over nothing. She's not saying that Harvard writing instructors are the best, she said "Harvard is considered the best" meaning the best school; even if you're not willing to allow that, most observers consider it "among the best" our country offers.
So she wanted to see if she could give her students the same sort of instruction they may receive at Harvard. Here is an article about a community college instructor trying to learn best practices from an elite university, and all you are concerned about is whether or not Harvard deserves the praise.
Chill.
5. bajan - January 15, 2010 at 10:23 am
By saying that "Harvard is the best" and deciding to go there to "learn from the best" implies that writing instructors at Harvard are the best, in that professor's opinion. I am simply inquiring as to the validity of that statement and pointing out that such a naive assumption dismisses the very worthwhile teaching that takes place at other institutions. Not to make too much of an issue of it, it would be more accurate, I think, to claim that Harvard may be among the best, although an article that came out a few years ago questions the teaching of writing at elite institutions--http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Johnny-Cant-Write-Even/35918/. In response to the second poster's comment about "no-account observers," I suppose, after reading the article "Why Johnny Can't Write Even at Princeton," one of those "no-account observers" is Harvard itself. In any event, I am certainly not against learning from each other for the benefit of our students, and if the instructor in the article profited from her experiences at Harvard, so much the better. I am, however, "concerned" about sweeping assumptions.
6. jaxoncannery - January 15, 2010 at 10:51 am
bajan- interesting. the article you cite mentions how princeton and duke revamped their failing writing programs to be more like harvard's.
7. 11233028 - January 15, 2010 at 11:41 am
Maybe you could all benefit from a writing class that teaches proper capitalization.
Marcel is a dynamic person and the state of Kansas is lucky to have such an engaging young librarian!
8. janetnewhall - January 15, 2010 at 03:55 pm
bajan - While you are undoubtedly correct in your assertion that we have many qualified and delightful teachers teaching qualified, delightful students, I sense that you are bitter that Harvard is thought of so highly rather than constructive in your suggestion that there are additional places to look for help. Honestly, what is wrong with looking to Harvard--one of the world's oldest, most accomplished institutions--for some ideas? In a recent survey in Times Higher Education, Harvard University was ranked number 1 in the world, so the author of this article is not the only one to think it so. Could a Kansas community college afford to send a team around the country to every single institution that has good writing courses? Your nasty comments about Harvard sound more like jealous reverse-snobbery than useful commentary.
9. jkruark - January 15, 2010 at 04:07 pm
Just a small point of clarification: It's not the author of the article but the subject of the article who calls Harvard "the best."
10. bajan - January 15, 2010 at 08:26 pm
janetnewhall--Your response suffers from several misconceptions. First, I am not disputing that Harvard is one of the foremost universities in the world, and probably the best. What I have issue with is the blanket statement from the community college professor that "Harvard is considered the best," therefore implying that the writing instructors there are automatically the best. Such an implication, in my view, devalues writing instruction elsewhere. Second, nowhere did I suggest that a Kansas community college send its team to every other institution in the country with good writing programs. That would have been a ridiculous suggestion. Third, as I stated, I am not against learning from one another, and I am happy that the professor profited from her experiences at Harvard. Finally, the only nasty comment in this exchange is the one accusing me of "jealous reverse-snobbery."
11. raymondh - January 16, 2010 at 02:43 pm
Academics are just so darn petty. Why is that exactly? I myself am a Harvard graduate, I recently completed a PhD and I went to work for a global consulting firm. Every time I lamented about being in the consulting world and not in academe my colleagues at the firm would tell me, "here we don't bicker about the phrasing of a statement, or try to artifically inflate our importance by arguing over nothing-at-all like they do in academe, the academy is for the petty and lazy" - I don't agree with all of that, but mind you these were all Research-I PhD graduates. I often defend the academy, but reading these comments, I'm starting to wonder why it seems like academics never grow up and never mature. Is it because most of them have never actually worked in the "real-world" and don't have a clue what real life is really like? Someone please enlighten me.
12. 11213989 - January 17, 2010 at 03:55 pm
The career path of this teacher is fascinating. Perhaps it's easy to get sidetracked on the issue of Harvard as gold standard. Ideally, educators at all institutions would cross fertilize, for lack of a better term, in this way. A grad. school professor of mine used the phrase "brush minds."
13. gtkarn - January 17, 2010 at 05:31 pm
Those who've been teaching writing for some time will find little new here; it is sad when commonplaces about effective writing pedagogy are treated as breakthroughs or something special just because they exist at Harvard. The idea that Hayes had to go to Cambridge to be enlightened (as opposed to reading COLLEGE ENGLISH or the CCCC journal)is regrettable. And indeed, any professionally run College Writing Center (see Purdue's OWL on-line)will have materials helful to students, generated by local faculty sensitive to their students' special needs.
One more point: "She savors the prospect of offering themed composition courses like Harvard's Expository 20. Its premise is that writing and thinking are inseparably related, and that good thinking requires good writing."
This item, as I'm sure many know, is more complicated than it appears. While the mentioned "premise" has been a commonplace among compositionists for decades, the idea of a "themed course" is not without difficulties. It can happen that inadequately trained writing teachers, devoted to a trendy theme, can forget that writing instruction needs to be the central focus. The "theme" can take over and students left without explicit instruction in writing. Such course may "succeed" at places like Harvard because the entering students have reached a level of competence that diminishes the need for explicit writing instruction. At less selective schools, that may not be the case, so to uncritically map what Harvard does on to your own institution is not without its difficulties and special challenges.
14. gsall9 - January 18, 2010 at 09:16 pm
I was a librarian at Harvard for 7 years and I audited some courses. I can verify that the instructors at Harvard are no better than instructors at other institutions, and in many cases worse because their main focus in research and not teaching. And much of the undergraduate instruction is done by teaching assitants. I had much better professors at my liberal arts college where I was tuaght in small classes by professors who were mostly focused on teaching.
What makes Harvard a premier institution is not the teaching skills of the professors, but the high quality of research, the programs and schools, the large endowment, and the high caliber of students.
I now teach in a community college and the instructors are great compared to what I saw at Harvard.
15. 11232004 - January 19, 2010 at 12:57 pm
To raymondh, you are so, so correct. I have worked in the academy and the private sector with PhD's from Reseach I's...petty does not completely cover it. Petty and trite is so much closer. I saw arguements over petty and trite issues all the time, and the lack of perspective amazed me. While I was right on target for tenure at Big-Name Research I, I quit because I didn't want to become as trite as the people who worked there had become. The dedication to teaching and research was lost, and they had developed a keen dedication to winning ANY and EVERY argument, whether it was discourse, or whose mailbox was the first "slot."
16. flynnra1 - February 03, 2010 at 02:37 pm
The article states, "Ms. Hayes was born too late to benefit from Title IX," suggesting that she is too YOUNG for Title IX to have had an effect on her education. Should the article not say, instead, that Ms. Hayes did not benefit from Title IX because it went into effect after she graduated?
17. lightningwhittum - February 12, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Perhaps some of those reading the article do not realize the respect given to East coast, ivy league universities by those still dwelling in small Mid-Western towns. This trip was partly about perception. How do community college students perceive their education? The ability to look a student in the eye and say, "You have written a paper on the same level as those I read at Harvard," empowers that student in some strange intangible way.
A year ago, padding across the dining room floor of my rural, somewhat isolated home, I caught a line from the ever present TV dialogue. "Her pants are easier to get into than a Mid-Western community college. "Hahahahaha," roared the canned laughter. It really annoyed me and that was part of the motivation for the trip. Are community colleges now a sit-com joke?
The respect shown to me and my much younger colleagues, Matt Hoven and Brenda Sanchez, by Harvard instructors, tutors, and administrators gave me the gift of leaving Boston feeling good about my personal decision to teach and this respect strengthened my resolve to expect more from students. It is true, I was born too early to benefit from Title IX and it is also true I was born too long ago to gather all I need from browsing web pages and other virtual and electronic sources. I still needed the experience of walking on the beautiful campus and being in the moment in a special place. Is Harvard the best? If one thinks Harvard's ranking is the definitive point to be argued and discussed concerning the teaching of writing today, then they missed the point of the trip. All engaged teachers are continually looking for ways to evolve and improve. Marsha Hayes in Kansas