From Miss Stanley to the Great Writing Lab in the Sky
Lou Kelly
If you’re fortunate enough to live as long as I have, you’ll discover that looking back -- and telling stories about the past -- is one of the rewards of old age. Our power of recall may not be as reliable as it used to be, and sometimes what we see is dimly defined. But when the fog lifts and the sun is shining, we can clearly see the places and the people who shaped our lives -- and our teaching if that’s what we used to do.
When I ask myself what hi-tech teachers of the 21st century need to hear from me, I remember this African proverb: When an old man [or woman] dies a library burns to the ground. Though I rejoice in the truth I hear in those words, I hope nobody here, or anywhere else, is expecting me to move up to the Black Angel Neighborhood anytime soon. In the wake of that inevitable event, however, I’ll open up the doors of my library and invite you to wander through an extensive collection of memories -- before they are consumed by the aging process.
Today, my story will take you through the development of the longest lasting Writing Lab in the country. This enduring institution did not begin with a faculty report submitted to a Dean. This safe haven for troubled writers was born in the heart of one woman -- in the kind and generous heart of Miss Carrie Stanley.
If Miss sounds politically incorrect to you, please let me confirm the correctness of my feminist roots. I was only 10 years old when Daddy moved us back to the farm community where all of his family lived. And pretty soon I noticed how married women were all known by their husband’s first names -- all except Granny Kate. Why did everybody call her Miss Kate Burgess when there was Miss Sam King, Miss Mick Sandifer, Miss Jessie King, and Miss Fred Barnett? Mama’s answer was clear and emphatic: "Granny Kate would never allow such a thing!"
Miss Stanley didn’t have a husband, and seemed blissfully happy without one. But it’s impossible for me to imagine how marriage vows could have diminished the identity of this proper but strong lady. Her work with under-prepared writers began while I was still in Epps High School down in northeast Louisiana. So at this point, I must rely on a little hearsay.
In 1930, there was no Writers Workshop or any other writing program at the University of Iowa. All the courses in the English Department were devoted primarily to the study of literature and literary criticism. The one required of all first year students was called literature and writing, but that meant writing assignments -- not writing instruction. It was assumed that everybody with a high school diploma would, or should, have the requisite skills for college level writing. But every year this assumption was questioned by teachers of the required course. While grading and correcting the first written assignment, their predicament -- and their obligation -- became clear. As I heard the story from one of these teachers, this discovery was not counted among the joys of reading and discussing great books. Graduate studies had provided no guidelines for dealing with confusing and undeveloped paragraphs with numerous spelling errors, incomplete and run-on sentences, and "bad" grammar. Nobody knows what happened in all those required classes on the day a set of papers was returned. According to my informant, some professors thought the literature sequence had to be interrupted for some instruction in the fundamentals of English grammar and usage. The urgent need for lessons in paragraph development must also be addressed.
All that would sound very familiar to anyone who was in my first English class at the University on the banks of beautiful Bayou Desiard. And when our professor was really displeased with the set of papers he was returning, he’d deliver a long illustrated lecture. From what I’ve heard, some Iowa professors relied on a similar instructional mode. First, they’d copy a paragraph from a student paper on the blackboard. And then, with the whole class looking on, they’d demonstrate the principles of unity, coherence and emphasis. They also put the most flagrant errors on display and showed how they could, and should, be corrected. Whether identified or anonymous, the students who had committed these grievous offenses must have felt humiliated as they sat there, wondering what their family and friends would say when they flunked out of college.
My story now takes a sharp turn to a more pleasant, more hopeful, scene. It’s an office in the basement of Jessup Hall. There we see Miss Stanley, talking with a student from one of her sections of the required literature course. When this one leaves, another one arrives. And so it goes, until she has talked with everyone whose first writing assignment indicated that they were sure to have trouble with all their writing assignments. Pretty soon, the good news spread to the upper levels of Jessup Hall: there was a most unusual teacher downstairs -- a remarkable woman who seemed to be enjoying students like the ones other teachers regarded as a troubling distraction, because they pulled the whole class away from the study of literature. It was, therefore, decided that a time for change had arrived. The first writing assignment would be given and graded early in the semester, and students with serious problems would be sent to the sections taught by this teacher who would welcome them. When her classes became too large, Miss Alma Hovey, her close friend and colleague, agreed for her classes to be added to this new way of teaching.
Miss Stanley loved to tell the story. With a conspiratorial glint in her eyes, she’d say that was the beginning of a movement -- an underground movement that took over the basement of Jessup Hall.
I’m delighted to say I was there on the day this underground movement was given official status -- the day it became an important part of a new program called Communication Skills. For the first time, the English Department, in conjunction with the Speech Department, would require writing instruction for all first year students. Lots of teachers were needed, so lots of graduate assistants were hired. And somebody decided that my brand new MA degree plus one year of experience at a Junior College qualified me for a full-time appointment as a Temporary Instructor. In addition to teaching a class, I’d be in Miss Stanley’s Laboratory. Or, as she loved to say, labōrātōrium. By re-claiming the Medieval Latin meaning of the name she had chosen, she was announcing that the facility she was moving into would be a place where students would labor to become better writers, and teachers would labor to help them achieve that goal. True to that commitment, she never called it the Writing Lab. Over the years, most of us did. But I hope all of us will always remember what Miss Stanley was signifying when she chose labōrātōrium as the name of this place that was the seabed of the culture which brings us together today.
The first building for the Communication Skills Program would never win a design award from an association of architects. It looked like, indeed it was, two discarded World War II barracks, joined end-to-end by an addition that looked like an abandoned shed from an old Iowa farm. All together it was a block long, with the main offices on the Iowa Avenue end, and the Writing Lab way down a narrow hallway to Washington Street. All along the west side, we were hemmed in by the Crandic railroad tracks; and on the east, there was Old Armory, the historic ROTC building that gave this post-war structure a name: Old Armory Temporary. If Miss Stanley had any negative perceptions of this latest trend in University facilities, they were lost in the pleasure she took in having a place of her own -- above ground. Indeed, you could have thought she’d taken over the Pentacrest and occupied President Hancher’s office beneath the golden dome of Old Capitol.
On the first day of class, as the folks assigned to work under Miss Stanley’s supervision arrived, we started looking around for the teaching materials she’d expect us to use. To everybody’s surprise, we found no English handbooks, no grammar workbooks. Instead, our mentor gave each of us an 8 _ by 3 _ inch mimeographed handout. With this little slip of paper she was presenting the Attitude Sentence Outline she had been using for at least 15 years, "To help students learn how to write correct sentences and coherent paragraphs," she explained. Then, following similar steps, she’d helped them learn how to write a theme with two or three well-organized, well-developed paragraphs. Her cheerful enthusiasm made every word sound convincing and as I sat there wondering if I could do it, students came walking through the door. Miss Stanley greeted each person with a smile, a copy of the handout, and a promise: she’d be back to talk with each one of them in just a few minutes.
As everybody waited their turn, they seemed worried and uneasy. But when Miss Stanley sat down beside each one of them, when her gentle reassuring voice reached out to them, and her intense blue eyes invited them to listen, they didn’t need to tell us they were beginning to feel much better. Their body language said it for them. Briefly, but surely, she had captured their attention. And on the first day of the semester, she had shown all of us inexperienced teachers the first thing she wanted us to learn about teaching. She had demonstrated that teaching is interaction. Between teacher and student. Sitting side-by-side in a one-on-one conference.
We kept a polite distance from these initial interactive encounters, but the next day, as Miss Stanley talked with each student about the Attitude Sentence Outline, we listened in — eagerly -- because we’d need to respond -- immediately -- when any one had a question about the little handout. We must also be ready to help as they began working on their own outlines.
When Miss Stanley was not responding to a question from a student, or a teacher, she was watching every face for expressions that would tell her whether they were thinking or just staring at an empty page. As soon as she spotted an idle worker, she walked over, and with kind regard, spoke to this person whose mind she was trying to engage. That’s how Miss Stanley defined the guidelines which she expected all of us to follow. At the end of the first semester, I was still wondering if I’d ever be able to do it with such dignity and quiet effectiveness.
The end of spring semester was Pass-Out time in the Communication Skills Program -- the time when in-class themes must be written in every class to determine if students had developed the writing skills needed for the literature course, which was now a second year requirement. To ensure fairness and objectivity, each theme was read and evaluated, not by a student’s teacher, but by two other Skills teachers. Like all my colleagues, I saw the pass-out theme not only as a measure of my students’ writing skills, but also a measure of my teaching skills. When all my students passed the pass-out, I told myself I must be a good classroom teacher, but I felt less confident about my work in the Writing Lab.
I had enjoyed working with all my students, especially the "volunteers" who seemed to be more motivated than the ones who were required to be in the Lab. But I had become increasingly aware of the uniformity I heard while reading everybody’s writing. They were all writing about personal attitudes, but it didn’t sound very personal. And pointing out the same kind of error, over and over again, was not much fun. Apparently, however, my hopes and expectations were too high. At the end of the semester, exam themes full of bland impersonal writing were given passing scores.
My reluctance to talk with Miss Stanley about my discontent can be traced to the question she asked an arrogant young professor at a faculty meeting. After sharing small bits of his vast knowledge of linguistics with us, he regaled us with harsh criticism of traditional grammar. When Miss Stanley asked him what he would teach our students, he had no answer. Neither could I say what I would teach if I didn’t have the Comm Skills syllabus and the attitude sentence outline.
At the end of my second year in the Lab, I could honestly say my students’ writing was not always disappointing. I could also say my heart was not set on a lifetime career in Old Armory Temporary. So I followed my spouse to Cortland, New York, the home of a State University.
When the Dean of Liberal Arts heard that I’d worked in the Iowa Writing Lab, he insisted that I start one for Cortland State -- as soon as possible. The classroom chosen for this endeavor had been closed ever since the Air Force Cadets left campus at the end of WW2. The enormous simulator where they’d trained for the Wild Blue Yonder was still there -- occupying most of the space. The first students arrived before it was removed. They came with papers they’d already written. And every one of them told me their teacher wanted me to help them "clean it up" before they handed it in. Obviously, Cortland State wanted a fix-it shop. Fix the misspelled words and "bad" grammar. Fix the fragments, the run-on sentences, the misplaced modifiers, and the split infinitives. I tried to do more of course, like pointing to unorganized, undeveloped paragraphs. We also talked about unsupported generalizations, and the deadwood that adds weight but no substance. These New Yorkers told me their teachers didn’t care about all that -- at least they didn’t correct it or give a lower grade for it. From the beginning, I knew this fix-it shop was not my kind of place. My biggest disappointment came after I helped a student with a paper that had impressive, but unclear, ideas. We "fixed it" by revising lots of unclear sentences. The next day, his teacher, who was the head of the English Department, told me not to bother with their sentences, because it was too messy and I’d only confuse them.
Students continued to drop by -- sometimes the day before a paper was due, sometimes only a couple of hours before class time. And I didn’t see them again until they needed another quick fix. At the end of a very unrewarding year, I decided that having babies would be more fun.
Ten years and three babies later, I needed a job. The one I found took me to the innermost circle of the inner city of our nation’s capital. That’s where I got my first close look at young folks who had been left behind -- in families and schools struggling to survive -- and by politicians at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Politicians who listened to powerful constituents instead of caring about the children of the poor.
Today, of course, our chief politician is giving a very big tax cut to a very few very rich people, all from the same corporations that gave his campaign 100 million dollars. Again, the children of the poor are being left behind -- this time with an empty slogan and standardized tests.
In my interview with Mr. Lofton, the principal of Dunbar High School, he didn’t ask about my English Education courses or my teaching experience. Instead, he told me the sad story of his school. When he was a student at Dunbar, and for years after he graduated from college and returned to become principal, this was, he said, "the best Negro high school on the East Coast." Hundreds of young folks had come up from the South and lived with a DC Auntie, so they could attend his school and get the good education they needed for going on to college. But that was before all the schools in Washington were integrated -- before DC Aunties could choose a school in a nicer part of town for their southern kinfolks.
That’s when Dunbar suffered a quick and, for Mr. Lofton, a devastating academic decline. This proud embittered man knew he could not save all his students from dropping out and joining the drop-outs who were already looking for excitement on the dangerous streets surrounding his school. He told me these streets were so unsafe that my children and I must always wait for the ROTC officers assigned to escort us from the auditorium to our car every time we attended a night-time event. And he told me that every student who had "college potential" must be identified -- as soon as possible -- so they could be placed in courses designed to prepare them for college. Because I’d been a college teacher, he gave me 2 literature classes for college-prep seniors, and another class for those who needed better grammar skills.
My colleagues in the English department were not as glad to see me as Mr. Lofton seemed to be. In fact, for two months the teachers’ lounge was my private lunchroom. They suspected that I was a spy, working underground for the all-white DC school board. At least that’s what I was told by the first teacher who decided I could be trusted.
It was, of course, the fall of 1962, when James Meredith was walking south toward the state university in Oxford, Mississippi. After he announced that he intended to enroll in this segregated institution, he was confronted by angry white protesters. Assuming that Dunbar students would be concerned about this latest development in the civil rights movement, I mentioned it in a couple of classes. Nobody responded. I found this so disturbing I turned to Mr. Lofton, hoping he’d offer the personal counseling I needed. His response was not comforting. That very afternoon he’d be at a meeting with all the white principals in the city. "We’ll talk about the weather," he said, "and we’ll talk about the World Series, but we won’t talk about James Meredith."
There’s not enough time here for me to tell you all the ways this place, and these people, affected this white woman from the segregated south. So I’ll limit myself to what happened in my grammar class.
Trying to use the workbook recommended was an instant failure. While handing each student a copy on the first day of class, I could see by the looks on their faces that they didn’t need to be told how to use it. They’d seen the likes of this one in many of their English classes. They knew there’d be definitions and rules to memorize, and exercises to do, and at the end of each section, a test to take -- so the teacher would know how much grammar they’d learned. Repeating all that when they were juniors and seniors in high school was obviously boring for them and frustrating for me. I don’t remember what I asked them to do next, but I’ll never forget the day I asked what kind of grammar errors they heard every day -- in Dunbar hallways and on the streets of the neighborhood. Without hesitation they took over the long blackboards and, with much conferring with each other, filled up all that space. As they read it aloud, their proud expressive voices filled the room with the language they had been hearing and speaking all their lives -- including lots of delightful slang. That’s how class discussion, based on significant questions, replaced the workbook. I asked them to point out the differences between the language on the blackboard and the way teachers talk. And I asked them to ask, Why?
Finally, something important was happening in my grammar class: a white teacher was showing respect -- not only for these young people, but also for the dialect spoken in the place they called home.
With 5 classes, 5 days a week, plus a home room that was my biggest challenge, there was little time for reflection. But one day, I remembered Miss Stanley and the arrogant young professor. Though he had no answer when she asked what he would teach our students, I knew I was discovering an effective alternative to the grammar I’d learned from school books -- and from school teachers who said we’d all sound ignorant if we didn’t learn to speak proper English.
It was not easy to say goodbye to Dunbar and all the beautiful people who had profoundly re-shaped me and my teaching. Nothing could have kept me from returning for a second year -- except the 3 children who needed more of my time than they’d been getting.
After Dunbar, I was blessed with a second act in the old barracks down by the railroad tracks. It looked mighty familiar, even though fading pink shingles covered the exterior walls. Apparently though, somebody had decided this relic from WW2 had outlived its temporary status: concrete steps now led to the Writing Lab. And the Communication Skills Program was now called Rhetoric.
A distressing change hit me the day I met with Dick Braddock, the man who was now my boss. My teaching assignment included the remedial spelling class he had introduced and taught. As he sat there showing me the workbooks he could and couldn’t recommend, I wanted to remind him that I’d been hired to teach writing, not a bunch of spelling rules. Instead, I said my thank-you-sir as soon as possible and hurried down the hall, feeling demoted and demeaned -- and wondering what changes I’d find in the Writing Lab.
I’d heard that Deb Wilder, an ABD teaching assistant who had worked with Miss Stanley, took on the job when she retired. And, at the end of his second year, had moved on, fully confident, he’d said, that Cleo Martin, a full-time ABD instructor, should replace him, because she was the best teacher he’d ever known. She was also the best one-woman welcoming committee on campus. In Cleo’s comforting presence, I stopped thinking of my return to Iowa as a mistake. Sitting between her and a fresh pot of coffee in the staff room next to her office, it was easy to forget my troubles and extend my cup for a re-fill. This new Chairman of the Lab -- yes, chairman, not woman. In those days that’s the title that came with the job. This new Chairman was an impressive woman. While taking in her welcoming words, I started thinking that maybe she’d help me do something about the remedial spelling class our leader had bestowed upon me. After a couple of weeks of trial and error with the workbook that looked somewhat promising, I asked Cleo if I could bring my students to the Lab, where I could work with them one-on-one. If you know Cleo, you know what a master of listening she is, especially when somebody needs her support. My request was granted -- immediately. Moments later Dick Braddock agreed, and never again has remedial spelling been listed in our schedule of courses.
To remember Cleo that year in the Lab is to hear her reassuring voice and resonant laughter as she joined in the lively conversations emanating from the room where I first asked for her support. In that room, Cleo assured me that I was returning to the Lab I already knew. She said Deb Wilder had made only one change: he’d added a workbook. And throwing that workbook out was the only change she’d made. I soon learned that such modesty was typical whenever Cleo talked of her accomplishments. It was obvious that the attitude sentence outline was still a dominant feature of Lab instruction. But instead of Miss Stanley’s tiny mimeographed handout, her model outline was written on the chalkboard behind a teacher’s lectern. And facing that lectern, there were neat rows of classroom chairs. If students were hearing about that outline in this corner of the Lab, a striking change had indeed occurred; a more traditional structure had been imposed on the casual interpersonal approach I remembered.
On the first day of class, when Cleo stood, tall and confident, behind that lectern, she looked and sounded like a person of authority, designated by a higher authority to tell Lab students what they needed to do before the next theme exam. And on the days scheduled for lectures throughout the semester, she presented these how-to instructions:
Each of these lectures included a lot more detailed information than it’s possible to give in a one—on—one conference when the Lab hour must be divided among several students. The follow-up assignment was clearly related to the lecture, and designed to reinforce the how-to instructions. To insure every student’s success on every assignment, they were given four distinct steps to follow. First, of course, they must write what the assignment asked them to write, and second, they must ask their teacher to check the first drafts of all their work. The third step sounded even more important: they must correct the errors and make the other changes their teacher had suggested. And finally, they must again ask their teacher to check their work. If they didn’t receive a hearty well-done, steps 3 and 4 had to be repeated.
Waiting for my students to complete steps 1 and 3, always made me feel a little anxious. Maybe I’d forgotten to say something nice before pointing out their errors. Or maybe I’d failed to see something in their writing which I could praise. And now, they were hiding from me in the silence of the long rows of heavy oak carrels that occupied most of the Lab. More likely, I told myself, they’re not writing, but taking a nap.
One fact was clear and certain: the lecture sequence had not accelerated the speed of this slow-moving, two-hour course. Instead of waiting -- sometimes through most of the hour -- I felt like intervening. And I did. But no matter what Lab teachers did, some of our students rarely, if ever, succeeded in climbing all those steps before the next lecture -- and the next assignment -- were scheduled. But there were lots of smiling faces in the Lab on the day most of them learned that they had passed the pass-out.
Looking back at the end of that semester, I gladly acknowledged that the lectures had been thorough and explicit. Far more impressive, however, was the example Cleo had set, for experienced as well as inexperienced teachers, as she listened and responded to her students in one-on-one conferences. This mode of teaching and learning was still the most impressive and effective feature of the Writing Lab.
When Dick Braddock asked if I’d like to be in charge of the Lab, I knew he expected me to say yes, and so I did. Then he gave me some choices. If I wished to make a few improvements, he’d requisition whatever I needed. With no hesitation, I asked that the dingy walls and ceiling be brightened up with some white paint. For the color accent needed, I went to a storeroom in the Art Building and selected a dozen prints and paintings by MFA graduates. And, to create a more spacious look, the heavy oak carrels and long tables were rearranged.
Please forgive the digression, but if you’re thinking a house-proud woman, or a would-be interior decorator, had not made the appropriate transition from home to workplace, you may be right. But please check pp. 20 through 23, Section 4A of the August 5th New York Times. Educators and architects have done some research which supports the claim that space, and light, and color, AND the distance between teachers and their students all influence learning. "The goal", they say," is to make the [classroom] less institutional and more like home.
Now, back to the Writing Lab with the refreshing new look, and two stacks of theme booklets. A little stack, and another one about three times higher. Across the Rhetoric Program, lots of people had failed the pass-out theme, and very few of them had registered for the required Lab course. I wondered where all the others had gone.
Some of them were probably at some other school, where they hoped the writing requirement wouldn’t be as demanding as Rhetoric. And I hoped somebody was helping them become better writers.
But what was happening to all the others? Had they given up their hopes of getting a college degree? And how did their parents feel about the dream they once dreamed of having a college graduate in the family?
My responsibility to the ones who had chosen to try again was clear: to make sure they would succeed this time, even though they’d failed the last time. Cleo knew I’d give my best to maintaining the high standard she had set for the lectures, even though the first one evoked memories of the students in my grammar class at Dunbar. Talking to them about the essential grammatical components of an attitude sentence, asking them to understand subject, linking verb, predicate nominative, and dependent clause would have provoked very negative attitudes.
While I was still considering possible alternatives, my first Lab class arrived — 170 of them, scheduled at 5 hours a day on 2 consecutive days. Everybody looked unhappy to be there. And I recalled all the unhappy Lab students I’d worked with over three long years. After two full semesters of Rhetoric, their pass-out themes had not measured up to the standards set by the Program. The Writing Lab was their punishment. Two hours a week for a full semester -- in the slums of an affluent campus. They were now the poor folks in a rich intellectual community. From behind the teacher’s lectern, I could see their disappointment and anger -- in their glum and tense faces, and in their rigid bodies. I could feel their hostility coming at me. Without doubt, a re-cycled lecture would not fall on the ears of active listeners. Neither would their minds be engaged by the follow-up assignment. Struggling with that assignment for the rest of the hour, and another hour two days later, would surely be counter-productive. For all these reasons, I canceled the first lecture.
Rather than asking these troubled students to sit still and listen to me, I decided to listen to them. I asked them to tell me -- on paper -- what they were thinking and how they were feeling about being sent to the Lab. I urged them to forget about organization, and every other category on the Rhetoric Program’s rating sheet. This assignment would not be corrected or graded. And Lab teachers would not be offended if it took their favorite cuss words to say what they thought about the exam theme they’d failed. Just talk to us on paper, I told them. Just tell us what’s going on inside your own head, right now.
Given that freedom, being told, for a happy change, to simply write about what they were thinking and feeling, they did not sit there staring at an empty page. As soon as I stopped talking, they picked up their pens and pencils and started writing.
Reading those papers was a happy experience. Not only for me, but also for the teaching assistants who read the ones written at the hours they were teaching. In contrast to the theme exams these students had failed, there was no straying from the subject in these papers, no confusing ambiguous sentences. Their attitudes toward their Rhetoric classes came through clearly and forcefully as their words flowed onto the page, with ease if not grace. And the feelings they expressed sounded honest, because the moments of experience they cited sounded convincingly authentic. But even more important, the voice of a unique human being and the force of a personality came through in almost every paper. Because: the assignment coincided with the purpose for speaking out that was seething inside them; they had something to say, and they had not been told to make their thoughts and feelings fit prescribed models of organization and correctness.
The freedom that released that kind of writing would not last. All of them would again face the pass-out exam at the end of the semester. They wanted us to teach them how to put together a product labeled theme -- a product that would pass inspection. So they would not be required to spend another semester in the Lab.
If you’ve read "One-on-One Iowa City Style" in Carol’s seminar, or mine, you’ve already heard that part of my story, as well as what followed that decisive moment. But I’ve never recorded the mix of certainty and doubt I lived through that year and for several more years. The lectures and follow-up assignments based on the Attitude Sentence Outline were recommended by the Rhetoric Program as the Lab teacher’s how-to guide. And nobody was ready to consider the possibilities I saw in asking students to talk on paper. Writing was not talking. And a clearly focused, logical outline must come first. I was caught in a balancing act -- between the tried and true lectures and the expressive power of the first writing. I was told that starting off with an easy assignment sounded like good psychology, but that kind of writing would never pass the theme exam.
Thirty-five years later, of course, opposing voices can be countered by reputable scholars whose research clearly shows that writing is process. And it’s comforting to cite James Britton, because asking students to begin by talking on paper is consistent with the results of his widely accepted research on the development of writing abilities.
After deleting the grammar lesson from the first lecture, I combined it with the next one, and the how-to instructions and assignments continued. But I couldn’t resist giving students an opportunity to respond whenever I thought of another set of questions, or a current situation, that would further their understanding of writing as a personal interaction between themselves and their readers. To make up the time given to our conferences about these writings, we opened the Lab for a couple of nights near the end of every semester, so everybody could do a practice run for the 2-hour, 500-word theme exam. Time after time, nearly everybody’s final performance was given the ratings needed to fulfill the Rhetoric requirement. And before long, nobody noticed -- or cared about -- the changes going on in the Lab.
Like other campuses all across the country, Iowa felt the impact of student protests against the Vietnam War. Weeks before the end of that spring semester, there were day-long rallies on the Pentacrest and all-night vigils on the steps of Old Capitol. When violence was predicted, President Boyd moved his office from this historic building to Jessup Hall. Then the "outside agitators" arrived with a plan for getting headlines. In the dead of night, they torched Old Armory Temporary. But one of them must have seen the sign on my office door which declared me to be Another Mother for Peace. Both floors of the old shack went up in smoke -- everything was destroyed -- except the Writing Lab. I thought it looked sorta proud and defiant as it stood there, all alone.
Finally, after 20 years, the Rhetoric Program was re-located -- in the English Philosophy Building -- on the right side of the railroad tracks. The Lab’s new home was the biggest room on the first floor, with a clear view of the Iowa River.
Though unpredicted, another significant change occurred a few months after the fire. When protesters got their headlines, thousands of frightened students left the university for the safety of home. All classes were canceled, full credit and final grades were given for the work already completed, and there was no time for the theme exam. Before the end of the next semester, it was discontinued because, we were told, it was no longer valid or reliable. The announcement did not explain how this decision was reached, and I was too happy to ask.
Instead of sending people to the Lab after Rhetoric, they could now come before Rhetoric -- if a teacher or academic advisor recommended, or a coach of their sports team demanded, that they sign up. Students could come to the Lab while taking Rhetoric, or transfer from class to Lab anytime their writing indicated they needed to do so. Anybody attending our University could "volunteer" for 2 hours a week any time during the semester.
110 EPB -- That’s where my seminar became the mainstay of the Writing Lab, and Lab teachers became a community of learners, laboring together to sustain and enhance a program in which writing was honored -- not only as an academic discipline but also as a personal achievement.
Whenever I think of that room, I see vivid, clearly etched images of the seminar students who returned to the Lab as TA’s, year after year, to work with people from farms and small towns, upscale suburbs, decaying inner cities, and other diverse places and cultures. Because English was a second language for many of our students, we heard many "foreign accents" in 110 EPB. Even more frequently, we heard the dialect of English that still sounds unfamiliar to some folks in the Midwest. In fact, all varieties of English were welcome in our Writing Lab.
We asked everybody to begin by responding to the same series of invitations-to-write. And that writing became a dialogue with the Lab teacher who engaged each writer with questions that served a dual purpose: to keep the dialogues going and to help every person become a better writer. For example:
After engaging their writers in these Q and A dialogues, TA’s addressed their errors by helping them set up, and use, a Copyreading Guide. (If you want to know more about this process, please see the article on copyreading in the October, 1974 issue of CCC. I would also recommend a review of some of the studies on social dialects, especially William Labov’s.)
The Lab teacher’s response to a student’s writing was frequently a copy of a short essay or story -- or a poem -- that confirmed or clarified the student’s own experience. The need for more reading, and reading instruction, became increasingly apparent, so we set up a 6-hour course -- 4 hours in a reading class and 2 follow-up hours in the Writing Lab. Without doubt, the TA’s who taught this class deserved the Excellence in Teaching awards they won, and a much bigger honorarium than the $1000 they received.
If the College had included Lab teachers in this recognition of outstanding teaching, I would have nominated at least one person every year, because it would have been easy to show that very few if any professors worked with students more diligently, or more successfully, than the TA’s in 110 EPB did. Laboring in this labōrātōrium was never easy. But my TA’s commitment was unwavering. As I watched and listened to them, year after year, I often thought their motivation must derive from a sense of ethical obligation — not only to their students, but also to each other. Whenever one teacher’s on-the-job frustration or disappointment seemed overwhelming, whenever anyone of them needed the support that no one but a colleague could provide, a full measure of support was provided. In our weekly seminar, they responded to each other’s writing, and told us about the progress some of their writers were making and the problems others were encountering. And they went on talking -- in brief conversations in quiet corners of the Lab while all their students were busy, and in longer one-on-one or small group sessions before opening time and after closing time. We were, in word and deed, a community of learners intent on helping students become better writers, and intent on helping each other become more competent and creative writing teachers.
When I join Miss Stanley in that great Writing Lab in the Sky, I’ll tell her how my TA’s helped me maintain the proud tradition of the underground movement she started before they were born. And she’ll smile down upon them as they carry on her concept of teaching as interaction. Between teacher and student. In a one-on-one conference.