Encountering Difference

In eighth grade, I was asked to present to the class a short story that I had written.  The story was about an alien who lived among us, intent on the destruction of our world--some combination of pod people and Marvin the Martian, I think.  Yet the alien, over the course of the story learns that he likes it here on earth, in the middle of the small, sleepy town where I grew up.  And so he decides to settle down, instead of destroying this beautiful place.

I stood in front of my classmates and read this story proudly.  And after I'd stumbled my way through to the end, my classmates had the chance to respond.

"What kind of story was that?" asked the classmate who would be the best man at my wedding some 15 years later.  "Where are all of the details?  What did the alien look like?  Where was he living?  Why did he want to stay here?"  I stood there just listening, shocked, and before I could think of anything to say, my teacher decided to move on to the next story. 

I was angry, indignant, embarrassed.  To me, the answers to these silly questions were self-apparent--even if I didn't write them into the story itself.  It never even occurred to me that my audience wouldn't know the answers to these questions.  Why did I even have to think about audience any way?  When I returned to my seat, I'm sure that I slouched down, crossed my arms and pouted.  I never read that story again.

It wasn't until much later in my life that I realized that this moment was an important lesson in audience awareness.  Because from that moment on, I did think about audience in ways that made me a much more effective writer.  I had more lessons to learn about audience, but from that moment on, I realized that I needed to write as if someone else was reading, even if no one ever would.

This moment was a moment when I was forced to encounter a perspective outside my system of writing knowledge, and I had a choice: dismiss that perspective or change my system of knowlege to fit with this new information about how one should write.  Fortunately, this was a lesson that I took to heart, albeit grudgingly.  From that moment on, I envisioned writing tasks differently than I had done before, and the way that I wrote began to change accordingly.

This experience and others throughout my life have shown me that truly meaningful learning experiences are about more than the "nuts and bolts" of any given subject.  Instead, meaningful learning experiences force use to reexamine entire knowledge systems, in ways that reshape the entire way we approach understanding the subject.  And when these meaningful learning experiences can be created, the "nuts and bolts" seem to take care of themselves.  For this reason, I have shaped my teaching to create meaningful learning experiences--ones that make students rethink the way that they understand writing--by creating a learning context designed to provide students with calculated encounters with difference.

Thus, my pedagogical approaches are designed to disrupt normalcy in students' expectations of the learning process.  They turn the attention away from learning content and toward a reflective practice of examining one's understanding of writing, so that a new perspective can be formed through the critical examination of one's own knowledge systems.

"Difference" plays a critical role in this process.  By difference I mean any experience that is strange or unexpected, anything that does not fit with one's current knowledge system.  This can include any number of ideas, activities, encounters, or experiences.  Under ideal conditions, difference provides us with a reason to reexamine our entire knowlege system in order to accommodate these strange and unexpected experiences.

Note well, though, that encounters with difference are not always pleasant and do not always result in the kind of learning that we hope to create.  At times, we embrace difference, use it to rethink our own systems of knowledge.  At other times, we close down when we encounter difference.  We stick to what we know and dismiss those things that are strange and new.  This occurs when we become more attached to the system of knowledge than we do the act of learning.  Thus, to create effective pedagogical experiences--experiences that students are willing to openly consider without extreme resistance--some level of planning, some calculation, must go into the kind of difference used to effect learning. 

And here is where my role as the teacher enters the picture. As a teacher, I serve as a catalyst to the changes that I hope students are making. By shaping the type and direction of the differences built into a course, I can help to guide the process of critical reflection that leads to meaningful learning.  Yet, I must also avoid designing encounters with difference that will cause students to solidify their knowlege systems against a perceived threat, instead of modifying them to deal with new knowlege.  I do this by forming an understanding of students' knowledge systems as the course progresses.  At times and when it's appropriate, I will introduce new ideas or experiences designed to help students critically examine their knowledge systems.  

Albert Einstein once said that, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  Learning is the moment when you realize you must try something different.   Just as I was forced to reinterpret my understanding of the writing process in response to the perspective of another, so too must my students adjust their understanding in the face of their classmates' perspectives and use them to reflect on their own understanding of writing.  For this reason, I use class discussion as one way to create difference.  Through class discussions, students themselves put forth different ideas and opinions that will from time-to-time lead to the kind of reflective examination of self associated with meaningful learning experiences.

In these exchanges, students have a chance to explore ideas within the context of a specific community, showcase the distance and proximity of their ideas from others', and push the boundaries of their knowledge systems in response to the difference they encounter through class activities. 

Creating calculated encounters with difference is a balancing act, one that requires perception and diligence on my part as a teacher.  Yet, when it works, I find that students have meaningful learning experiences, that leave a lasting impression.  I find that when I have done my job, students will say to me during class or in my student evaluations that entering the class they hated writing but now they actually enjoy writing--the ultimate compliment to me.  Other students will write in assigned reflective documents that when they entered the class they didn't think that they would learn anything, "but, boy was I wrong!"  Comments like this indicate that students are rethinking their basic perspective on writing in a way that will be beneficial to their continued growth as a writer and a learner.  And this revision of their knowledge systems has a lasting impression on the way that the student will approach writing tasks in the future.