Anxiety & affect: solidifying empathic pedagogys place in the academic sphere

Meaghan A. Kelly ENGL 801 Dr. Mary Jo Reiff 31 October 2012

Disappointment, Anxiety, & Fear: The Instructor

Recent book reviewer for Composition Studies textbooks and research describes the recent turn in the environment of Writing Programs A field characterized by a general sadness that the field has become materially impoverished, subsumed with a political simulation that has crowded out what I consider the poetic real: desire, beauty, joy, drama, sadness, and loss... My lingering sense...is of a field that reads all the same books and shares the same notion of what counts as professional knowledge (Geoffrey Sirc Qtd. in Micciche PAGE NUMBER) Pressure in the workplace and poor economic conditions have forced us to forgo the aesthetic value of reading and writing How can we take risks in deviating from the academically-focused mindset of our profession and feel secure about retaining our positions?

Academic opposition: James Berlin & David Bartholomae

In the name of empowering the individual...[personal writing] can lead to the marginalizing of the individuals who would resist a dehumanizing society, rendering them ineffective through their isolation. This rhetoric also is easily co-opted by the agencies of corporate capitalism, appropriated and distorted in the service of the mystifications of bourgeois individualism (Berlin Qtd. in Risky Writing 24) Not only non-academic, but instructors who employ pedagogical techniques involving personal writing and empathic teaching have been demonized as doing a disservice to their students.

Disappointment, Anxiety, & Fear: The Student

Emotionally charged language and action has been demonized by the media and the educational system: if any kind of passionate emotion is expressed in school, it is immediately seen as an outburst or alarming. One might turn to our discourse about students resistance to our pedagogies, but resistance seems far too mild a word... besides, our field borrowed the concept of resistance from psychoanalysts, for whom the term designates a certain repressive refusal of the truths of unconscious desire as they threaten to manifest themselves during the process of analysis. Again, resistance is hardly the word for what is not, after all, a pattern of repression but an explosion of rage (Johnson 624). However, we all know that passion and excitement, even anger, can be the catalyst for our students best work. Ask yourself, why am I in graduate school? This causes students to hold back in the classroom, as they are subconsciously afraid to exhibit a passion for their studies.

Empathic Teaching
Based on self-disclosure and personal writing within the Composition Classroom

I have learned from more than thirty years of classroom experience the importance of listening attentively to my students and encouraging them to listen attentively to each other. Heinz Kohut, who wrote more extensively on the subject than anyone else, observes that empathy is an investigative tool that allows us to increase our understanding of other people. Empathy enables us to glimpse others thoughts and feelings and create strong relationships (Empathic Teaching 95)
An instrumental part of critical thinking and analysis (102) How would we (as instructors) benefit from Empathic Pedagogy? (aka a PersonCentered Approach) Teachers using Empathic Pedagogy have more positive self-concepts than lowlevel teachers, are more self-disclosing to their students, respond more to students feelings, give more praise, are more responsive to students ideas, and lecture less often (Rogers Qtd. in Empathic Teaching 100)

Academics tend to be suspicious of empathy, believing that it is a sentimental, inauthentic, and touchy-feely concept. Empathy is seldom discussed in undergraduate or graduate literature courses, and relatively few articles and books have been published on the subject, especially in composition studies (Empathic Teaching 113) The emphasis here is on how classroom self-disclosure can lead to a students heightened awareness of themselves and their classmates... making a difference in a students life means respecting difference--hence, guarding against the temptation to make that student into a disciple or protege. One recalls Nietzsches warning here: One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. Respecting boundaries between

Resistance to Empathic Pedagogy

Application: The SelfDisclosure Classroom

If you are interested in Empathic Pedagogy and creating a classroom based on self-disclosure, I encourage you to a.) get tenure ASAP, and b.) pick up any book by Jeffrey Berman, specifically, Empathic Teaching and Risky Writing. Grading the course: Pass/Fail Rating the degree of self-disclosure Choosing not to disclose Anonymity & pen names Painful writing: Self-disclosure and emotional intelligence Becoming at risk Traumatic art The teachers responsibility The cringe factor Legal responsibilities & how to have a legally secure self-disclosure classroom

Application: The First Classroom Experience

Reducing Fear and Resistance by Attacking Myths by Rodney Simard 1) Writing is a talent that only some people possess, and although others may attempt to learn how to do it well, they never will succeed. 2) Writing in the classroom has no real practical application in the outside world 3) The key to good writing is learning all the rules- if you do that, you cant go wrong 4) There are too many styles and versions of writing that any amateur will ever be able to properly use (or will have to use, for that matter) 5) There is no room for personal or creative aspects in composition. As long as it sounds generic and run-of-the-mill, it will be right 6) Books and teachers will give you step-by-step instructions to write: if you follow them, youll write well 7) Youll have to learn the type of writing your boss or other teacher will want you to use, so anything you learn now is useless 8) If your elementary or high school writing background is weak, the writing required in college or a job environment will be too much for you to handle. Its necessary to consider our students preconceived notions and attitudes toward writing before we can even begin to create an atmosphere of comfortability and work toward improving their writing. Students must be aware of their own attitudes before we can help them approach their own writing. An open, honest dialogue in a workshop setting outright discussing and dispelling these

Works Cited

Allen, Michael. "Writing Away from Fear: Mina Shaughnessy and the Uses of Authority." College English April 41.8 (1980): 857-67. JSTOR. Web. 20 Oct. 2012.Berman, Jeffrey. Empathic Teaching: Education for Life. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2004. Print.--. "Empathy, Trauma, and Forgiveness: Classroom Implications." Empathic Teaching: Education for Life. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2004. 95-137. Print.--. "Introduction: Making a Difference in Students Lives." Empathic Teaching: Education for Life. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2004. 1-35. Print.Berman, Jeffrey. "Risky Writing: Theoretical and Practical Implications." Risky Writing: Self-Disclosure and Self-Transformation in the Classroom. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2001. 21-71. Print. Chandler, Sally. "Fear, Teaching Composition, and Students' Discursive Choices: Re-Thinking Connections Between Emotions and College Student Writing."Composition Studies Fall 35.2 (2007): 53-70. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Oct. 2012.Downs, Douglas, and Elizabeth Wardle. "Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)envisioning "First-Year Composition" as "Introduction to Writing Studies"" College Composition and Communication June 58.4 (2007): 552-84. JSTOR. Web. 20 Oct. 2012.Harris, Judith. "Re-Writing the Subject: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Creative Writing and Composition Pedagogy." College English November 64.2 (2001): 175-204. JSTOR. Web. 19 Oct. 2012. Johnson, T. R. "School Sucks." College Composition and Communication June 52.4 (2001): 620-50. JSTOR. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. Micciche, Laura R. "More Than a Feeling: Disappointment and WPA Work." College English March 64.4 (2002): 432-58. JSTOR. Web. 29 Oct. 2012. Simard, Rodney. "Reducing Fear and Resistance by Attacking the Myths." College Teaching Summer 33.3 (1985): 101-07. JSTOR. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.