Students show difficulties with college level writing. From the Indiana Statesman.

Hmm, it should say,
"Patrick Barcus, who
USED to be an
English instructor."

By Elizabeth Dawes

With difficulties in writing at ISU a growing concern ISU faculty attempts to trace the cause and think of what can be done to solve this.

The average SAT writing scores for ISU is 444. For 2011-2012 48.58 percent of first-time, first year freshmen scored between 400-499 on SAT writing out of a scale of 800. On a national level, the average SAT writing score for 2011 was 489.

Some ISU faculty view that admittance of students who are not adequately prepared may be a reason for the difficulties experienced with college writing.

“ISU cares only about numbers,” Patrick Barcus, English instructor, said. “Quality is not as important as quantity when it comes to enrollment here, which is why we have such a problem with retention. Many of our students come from school systems that are failing at the pedagogical level, and thus they produce unprepared students. ISU does not seem to care ... As far as ISU is concerned, if you have a pulse and a way to pay for tuition, you’re in.”

MORE.

Teach those cranes to migrate!

Here is another story from a required conference last spring.  In my state, legislators have decided that we spend too much money on developmental education.  So they came up with a great fix for that!  Just get rid of developmental education!  Wow!  Why didn't I think of that?  I guess that is why they get paid the big bucks, huh?  So, what's gonna happen to those folks who graduate high school with out the most basic of basic skills?  Well, this is what's gonna happen.  We are going to have to teach in a way that they can acquire those while in a college level composition course.  We are just going to to have to find a way, folks!

So......we Composition profs are really a bit nervous. I mean, how are we gonna teach Composition courses with maybe half, maybe all of the students not able to read and write at the college level---shit, at the 3rd grade level?  And of course, do it without lowering standards! That goes without saying, just ask any administrator!  And without lowering pass rates, either?  How we gonna pull shit like that off?

So, the administration saw that we needed a pep talk, bless their hearts. And they arranged for one, and we all had to come in for a day long Friday conference with said talker of pep so that we could be inspired to go out there and make miracles happen, by God!

So, this person who was there to inspire us to work miracles told us the story of the cranes.  You can actually read about it online!  See, what happened was that the cranes had no adult cranes to teach them to migrate.  Not enough of them were being born in the wild, so they had no mamas and papas to teach them how to fly across the country.  If they could not learn, they'd die out.  Here the performer/speaker paused for dramatic effect.  Did the scientists just give up because it was a bad situation?  Did they say, oh well, I am not a crane, so what can I do about it?  They need their parents to teach them to migrate, obviously!  NO! THEY DID NOT she said with passion and conviction.  NO, THEY FOUND A WAY.  They made a little fake mama crane out of a helicopter. They used balloons.  They knew they were not parent cranes, but they knew that it was all dependent on them to make up for that and teach the cranes anyway.

And this was supposed to inspire us.  And folks, this woman was good.  She was captivating.  I loved watching the video she showed us about those cranes and their cross country migration course.  Wow.  that's some cool stuff, and I got lunch to go with it.