My Baby Isn't Ugly. You Are.

On Friday when I went into the English office at 7:30am to print copies of the handouts and reading activity I had prepared on logical fallacies, the good ol' printer wouldn't work. Again. The screen told me to reboot, but the sign under the power switch said, "Do Not Turn Off Printer Here!" And seeing as how the sign was hand-written, likely by a secretary, and employed the use of an exclamation point (one of only a few that secretary is allotted for her lifetime), I left the office without my activity. Needless to say, I had to come up with another lesson plan on the spot. Rather panicked, and a lot annoyed, I decided to do an impromptu debate.

To be honest, I've heard several GA's talk about having classroom debate-like discussions about various topics (including the similarities between turkey farming and baseball, was it?), but I've always been a bit hesitant to try to plan a whole class period around debate or discussion of just one issue. I think this is because I don't trust my students to hold up their end of the bargain. Nor do I trust myself to be able to pull something out of nowhere to keep the class going if the students don't participate. As it turns out, though, both of the classes went extremely well, and the students were quite willing to enthusiastically hold up their end of the bargain.

In each class I suggested a few debate topics and let them choose; gave them a few minutes to brainstorm their opinions individually; split them up into groups, in which they discussed their arguments and anticipated counter arguments; then let the teams debate back and forth. Once I prompted the first team to provide an argument, I did nothing. It was really quite nice.

The first class debated whether everyone 14 and older convicted of crimes should be tried as adults. The debate started out as a polarized issue, but by the time it was over, the two sides were suggesting middle-ground arguments, stipulating conditions, and suggesting reform. Amazingly, the debate lent itself to a "teaching moment" when I was able to point out to the students that just as they had created non-polar positions in the debate, when they write their position papers, they need to consider that not all issues consist only of polarized positions. They seemed to understand better through the debate what I meant when I had earlier talked about taking positions that involved stipulations, conditions, or solutions rather than just "pro" or "con."

My second class was interesting for different reasons. This class would not choose a debate topic, so I quite naively suggested the topic "English 110 should/should not be required of all MSU students." The class was pretty evenly divided on the issue, and each side made excellent points. Unfortunately, though, the "against" side had more outspoken personalities and better debaters.

They said things like, "If the university really valued this class and saw a need for it, they would have 'real' teachers teaching it, not GAs (no offense to you Miss Beary)." and "Yeah, they're banking on ENG 110: pay the GAs next to nothing, and make all the students take the class. Money in their pockets." And "We already learned MLA and how to write in high school. This class just tests our ability to write too many papers in too little time."

While the "pro ENG 110" side had some good responses, it took everything inside of me to keep my mouth shut. I sat there on the desk feeling rather insulted and rather attacked. Before they started the debate I knew they would say all of those things, but I guess I didn't realize how difficult a time I would have not responding. When one of my students said, "Every single one of us on 'this side' already knows how to write papers without the teachers help," I wanted so badly to say, "And is that why most of you would have issues with comma splices, fragments, organization, audience awareness, and critical reasoning, eh?" But I didn't because, well, that just wouldn't be nice (or teacherly).

Later that night when I talked to a friend who has been teaching for several years and told her about assigning the debate prompt in my second class, she laughed and said, "And I'll bet the slaughtered you, huh? My classes slaughtered me too when I assigned that as a writing prompt. What's always surprising is the way we react internally. Isn't having your discipline, especially your class, criticized a little like somebody telling you your baby's ugly?" She's right. It is. She also pointed out that I had made a head nod to Marxism with that debate. And I guess I had.

All in all, I think Friday's classes rank among the best two or three class periods of the semester. Interesting how sometimes things we haven't planned go better than lessons we spend hours on. Perhaps in this case it is because I had to rely on the students and couldn't underestimate them.