Download PDFRedistributing Care Work Pedagogically
I argue that one partial answer lies in teaching strategies that redistribute care work among students. Here, I follow Ritter (2012) in seeking pedagogical solutions to the labor problem in composition. Ritter proposes that “we re-examine our base affection for the highly intimate, labor-intensive pedagogy that has been embraced as the core of first-year writing” (2012, p. 413). By advocating for teaching strategies that make less care work for GSIs, I do not mean to imply that we should stop fighting for fair pay and better benefits. These struggles, often waged via graduate student unions (Marburger, 2019), must continue. However, I believe that our efforts for labor justice have overlooked our caring workload.
There are, of course, barriers to simply doing less care work. Like contingent faculty, GSIs lack autonomy over our teaching, as Bartlett explains: “graduate student labor is further feminized by its subordination to a curriculum designed, theorized, and dictated by the department’s composition expert” (2003, p. 272). GSIs experience pressure to adhere to pedagogical “best practices,” even when such practices directly contribute to our overwork (Ritter, 2012). My current writing program, for example, has a strict attendance policy that requires me to check in with students who miss class and regularly update WPAs on attendance. While I do not think that GSIs should necessarily have full authority over our teaching—a move which would increase, not decrease, our workload—we should have the ability to design course policies that work better for us.
Perhaps a larger obstacle to redistributing care work pedagogically lies in GSIs’ emotional attachment to high-care teaching. If the care-intensive work of teaching writing often feels good, it feels bad to say that we don’t want to care as much. However, as feminist compositionists (Evans, 2017; Schell, 1998) remind us, these feelings serve to discipline us and keep us working. I personally address these emotions by reminding myself of the larger structures underlying the outsourcing of care to composition, including institutional and departmental histories and neoliberal austerity policies, as well as the capitalist system that causes both undergraduate and graduate students to face mental health crises, financial strain, and isolation. In the words of feminist theorist Heather Berg (2014): “these debts are not ours” (p. 162-163). Further, remembering that care work can and does uphold white supremacy, we must move away from viewing care as an unqualified good. Ultimately, I console myself with the understanding that the practices I recommend below redistribute care, not eliminate it. In this way, my classes continue to support students’ wellbeing and development as writers, while also better supporting my own wellbeing.
Engaging students in learning how to care for one another as writers and as people is more valuable than having care come solely from us as teachers. While it may seem ironic to ask first-year students—who face a high level of stress—to care for one another, community-based care has historical roots in marginalized communities as a tactic for weathering and resisting systems of domination (currie, 2022; currie & Hubrig, 2022; Day et al., 2021). Here, I do not intend to equate classroom-based care among students to grassroots care among oppressed groups, but to show that individuals who may appear to have little capacity to care can do so in a collective. To provide a starting point for this pedagogical redesign, I offer three strategies I have used to redistribute care in my own teaching. These practices, importantly, are not new; what I add is a framing that allows us to view them as methods for redistributing care work and therefore promoting labor justice for GSIs.
Put Students in Peer Groups
Multiple teacher-scholars in writing studies (currie, 2022; currie & Hubrig, 2022; Day et al., 2021) have found that putting students in the same groups throughout the semester helps encourage them to support one another, leaving less care work to fall on GSIs. For example, sarah madoka currie places students in teams “to promote camaraderie and to create alternate avenues of support” (currie & Hubrig, 2022, p. 137). Zanders similarly asks students to meet regularly in teams to conduct peer review, complete in-class projects, and “check in with each other” (Day et al., 2021, p. 394). When students have a set of peers whom they know and can easily get in contact with, it makes it more likely that they might ask each other for help, rather than always turning to the teacher. Stable peer groups may also alleviate some of the fear and worry that comes with peer response (currie & Hubrig, 2022, p. 142), creating less emotional labor for GSIs. Ideally, students should receive credit for this community-building work (currie, 2022) so that it replaces, rather than adds to, the work they already do for class.
This semester, I am experimenting with putting students in regular teams for the first time. My students are assigned to groups of four or five, which I use for in-class activities and peer response. I had groupmates exchange contact information on the first day of class so that they could get in touch with each other if they have questions or need assistance. Although it is too soon to tell how these groups will work out, I already spend less time lesson planning and structuring peer response since I don’t have to continuously assign students to different groups. Unlike in previous semesters, my current students actually know each other’s names because they work with each other every class period. Ultimately, as Zanders explains, we “can’t force folks to care, but [we] can make it convenient and natural” (Day et al., 2021, p. 393).
Center Peer Response
Perhaps the most time-consuming aspect of GSIs’ care work is responding to student writing. We can reduce the amount of time and emotional labor we expend on feedback, while still ensuring that students receive valuable commentary on their writing, by “positioning the ‘work’ of process and review more squarely in the hands of students” (Ritter, 2012, p. 414). While conventional writing studies wisdom holds as sacred the value of instructor feedback, recent research (Melzer, 2020) has demonstrated that students learn as much, if not more, from peer feedback. Centering peer response allows GSIs to de-center our own feedback. Rather than relying only on us for evaluations of their writing and suggestions for revision, students can come to rely on one another.
I have prioritized peer response in varying ways across institutional contexts. My MA institution allowed me a high level of freedom in structuring peer response. Before every major assignment, I distributed a survey to students asking for their preferences on who they wanted feedback from and at what stage in their writing process. Crucially, I imposed limitations on how much feedback I would provide; just as I asked students to share their needs with me, I shared with them that I had a limited capacity to respond to their writing, and that they could help each other through peer response. In practice, this meant that for a writing assignment with three scaffolded steps, students could get feedback from me on one step, and they would do peer response for the other two. My current institution advises a more structured approach to feedback via the “instructor-led peer conference,” in which “a teacher meets with a small group of students … to discuss students’ drafts” (Ching, 2014, p. 15). While I did not choose this method, I find that it lessens the time I spend on feedback because I prepare a few points for each conference, knowing that students will come prepared with their own feedback. I also give students more responsibility for response by asking them to send our group two to three questions that they would like us to discuss. This way, I spend less time responding while also tailoring my comments to what students find most important.
Schedule Time for Rest
Finally, I aim to redistribute care in my teaching by building time for rest—for me and for students—into the course. When possible, I create opportunities for students to care for each other so that I can take a step back from providing support. This most commonly looks like workshop days that offer students a dedicated time and space to work on upcoming assignments. Giving students time to work on projects in class is a common pedagogical practice; however, I place a special emphasis on encouraging students to help each other out, which might look like asking a peer to answer a question about the prompt, discuss how to approach the assignment, or read over a portion of a draft. I still assist students, but they learn that they can also turn to each other for help. Occasionally, I also schedule rest by making class asynchronous. Zanders recommends asking students to “meet virtually to complete activities during class time” on their own (Day et al., 2021, p. 393). Assigning students independent work that they can complete online or in groups outside of the classroom allows GSIs to take a breather while students continue learning. Students, however, deserve rest too. When we do peer conferences, students’ only responsibility for that week is coming to one conference. I also adopt currie and Hubrig’s (2022) practice of pairing regular check-in surveys for students with “flexible” course documents (p. 133). I leave flex time in my course schedule so that, in the very likely case we as a class decide to take a day or two for rest, students still have enough time to complete the required assignments. Creating time for rest is an act of care, but one that rejects, rather than upholds, the overwork of GSIs.