The Paperwork Revolution: A Manifesto for English Instructors

By Jean Reynolds

Jean Reynolds is a longtime English instructor, professional writer, editor and consultant who thinks a revolution is overdue: English instructors need to do less paperwork, and students need to do more learning. This provocative paper examines the power issues embedded in an activity most of us take for granted: grading student papers. Most English instructors, Reynolds says, spend endless hours editing and revising student papers. The inevitable results are exhaustion and burnout for instructors, and helplessness and confusion for students down the road when they're faced with workplace writing tasks. Reynolds believes that power issues are embedded within our traditional teaching models, with much of the knowledge and experience weighted heavily on the instructor's side. She advocates classroom practices that empower students to take ownership of their learning under the guidance of instructors who act as coaches and resources rather than paperwork machines.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jean Reynolds
• Release date: Jan 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311418128

Jean Reynolds

Dr. Jean Reynolds is Professor Emerita at Polk State College in Winter Haven, Florida, where she taught English for over 30 years. She is the author of eleven books, including three books about writing, and she is co-author (with the late Mary Mariani) of "Police Talk" (Pearson). She has taught basic education to inmates and served as a consultant on communications and problem-solving skills to staff in Florida's Department of Corrections. At Polk State College she has taught report writing classes for recruits and advanced report writing and FTO classes for police and correctional officers. Jean Reynolds holds a doctorate in English from the University of South Florida and is an internationally recognized Shaw scholar. She is the author of "Pygmalion's Wordplay: The Postmodern Shaw," and the co-editor of "Shaw and Feminisms: Onstage and Off," both published by the University Press of Florida. She is an accomplished ballroom dancer. She and her husband, garden writer Charles J. Reynolds, live in Florida, where they enjoy reading and traveling.

Book preview

The Paperwork Revolution

A Manifesto for English Instructors

by Jean Reynolds, Ph.D.

Polk State College

Winter Haven, Florida

www.WritewithJean.com

Copyright 2015 Jean Reynolds

The Maple Leaf Press

Smashwords Edition

View a free PowerPoint called Easing the Paperwork Load at http://www.slideshare.net/ballroom16/easingthe-paperworkload

The Paperwork Revolution

Those of us who teach English are committed to passing on the immense power of language. It is both a great privilege and an immense responsibility. But teaching English doesn’t always feel that way. Some of what we do—especially the long hours we spend grading student papers—can feel tedious and futile. All too often students’ revisions show little improvement, and subsequent assignments demonstrate that our pleadings about spelling, fragments, and comma splices have fallen on deaf ears.

Worse, some students fail to connect with what we’re trying so hard to do for them. (I vividly remember the dread I used to feel when instructors handed back my own corrected essays.)

The uncomfortable truth is that instructors have power over students, no matter how hard we try to be encouraging and helpful. Brooke K. Horvath sums up the fears of many instructors when she warns that students may be alienated, antagonized, by our thought-heavy marginalia and terminal remarks (243).

Similarly Gary R. Hafer, author of Embracing Writing: Ways to Teach Reluctant Writers in Any College Course, notes that many students see us as authority figures rather than guides and helpers. At best, he writes, "students