THE STRUGGLE TO KEEP STUDENTS ENGAGED: HOW I REVAMP COMP 1

Everyone has to take them and no one loves it, composition sequences. Every American university has a version of this as a graduation requirement and we all suffer through them to get our degree. In my undergrad at the University of Kentucky, I took WRD 110 and 111, which fall under the umbrella of RCWS (Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies), and is very similar to UMass Boston’s ENGL 101 and 102. Each semester was drastically different, in my experience, because it mattered what kind of teaching fellow or “baby professor” that you had. For both classes, I had a Women’s and Gender Studies teaching fellow, but they approached the classes in very different ways from each other; my first semester was brutal and the professor had absolutely no mercy or empathy towards our class, even with it being fall 2020. I received my first bad grade (a C) and had the worst experience communicating with that professor; however, my second semester, I had an amazing and kind professor who took the time to repeat things and explain them in multiple ways, so that we all could hear it in a way that made sense. I was able to feel so comfortable and confident in his class that the 101 A that I got was a natural reflection of the growth that my professor encouraged. Why do I bother to preface this conversation with my story, you might wonder? Because the rhetorical move of relating to your audience is a critical part of being an effective rhetor. 

Being a “baby professor” myself now, I center the power of multimodal texts and the importance of rhetorical awareness in my composition classes (both last and this semester). By using movies, music, poetry, podcasts, and short stories, I have had and continue to have students engage with media of all kinds to scaffold off their prior knowledge of rhetoric (sometimes better know as word choice) and genre; in both Teaching of Composition and Teaching of Literature, the ability to expand and reshape prior knowledge was heavily emphasized and I took that approach very seriously. 

I begin every class by playing music and just chatting with my students, where I invite them to suggest songs and tell me about their musical interests. I then ask them to tell me something good going on in their lives; it can be something as small as “I slept well last night” or something profound like “I got the job I applied for.” We then transition into whatever discussion or activity I have planned for that day, but it’s those moment of connection between their personal lives and my class that I hope opens them up to the idea that rhetoric is everywhere and they have the power to, as Lloyd Bitzer says, “alter reality” when they use it effectively.  

In every assignment, I encourage students to explore their personal interests and experiences to the highest extent because being an effective rhetor means knowing how to make connections between your exigence (something Bitzer refers to as “an imperfection marked by urgency”), audience, and purpose/intention, while being constrained. In practice, this looks like me asking my students to contribute to my syllabus, so that they can influence how we think rhetorically in our class; last semester my students chose to examine Interstellar and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Some key pieces that I had chosen were: Halloweentown, Wednesday (episode 1), Hocus Pocus, Miracle on 34th Street, National Treasure, “girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, “Wants” by Grace Paley, and “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar. This semester, my students have chosen: Dead Poets Society, “Money” by Pink Floyd, “Snow on the Beach” by Taylor Swift ft. Lana del Ray, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the original Alice in Wonderland. After receiving some feedback from my students last semester, I shifted my focus away from movies not available for free and I am now using Kanopy, which is free to every UMB student or teacher. New or different media for this semester is: The Disaster Artist, Moonlight, Fierce Fairytales by Nikita Gill, Folklore by Taylor Swift, Twisters: the album by Various Artists, Ladybird, “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar, Serenity, “I sing the body electric” by Walt Whitman, “The Second Coming” by W. B. Yeats, and “What are the dangers of a single story?” by Chimamanda Adichie. 

By having students add to the media I’ve already chosen, I’m able to give them a small amount of authority over what they are required to do, while I manipulate it to fit the goals of the composition department. In their major writing assignments (Project one and the Midterm), I give my students free reign over the piece of media they write or compose about, but they do have to get it approved by me; this give and take with who has authority in my class has allowed growth not just from my students, but I’ve also grown as an instructor and writer from witnessing my students make connections or see the through line of our content. The importance of having a balance of theory and artifact texts is nothing new, but the way I have gone about my class has been unique to my passions for inclusivity of media and critical thinking. If my students can walk away from my class having expanded their rhetorical awareness and been exposed to new writing skills from practicing with multimodal texts, then I have won this teaching game. 

I write this article not just to brag about how fun I think my class is, but to also encourage the RCWS field to not reject the media that students consume AND for students to recognize the rhetoric all around them. Platforms like TikTok, TED Talk, and Poetry Foundation are all great examples of digital archives that enable digital literacy, but more importantly require multimodal literacy to fully understand the pieces of media. Pieces of literature such as books, paintings, and short stories or poetry collections are examples of tangible works that teach visual literacy, but also are multimodal texts that explore the intricacies of the human experience. All art forms are multimodal and can be examined rhetorically, you just have to be bold enough to explore and then teach others how to explore them. Join me, either as a teacher or as a student, in expanding the definition of literacy and just be curious; allow the power of composition in all its forms to call you to action and for you to begin thinking rhetorically about the world around you. I promise that this new way of thinking is not scary, stupid, or crazy, but rather it makes a lot of sense when you stop to think about it. 

So the next time you interact with the world around you, take a two second mental pause and consider how and why something occurs; that’s all it takes to begin thinking rhetorically. (Use this article as practice if you want :)