Sample Interview

English Faculty Interview: An Interview with Kevin Brooks

by Cary Effertz

As part of our ongoing research into first year writing programs we, as individuals, are interviewing a member of our interest group. Coming from the English teachers interest group, I was hoping to gain some real insight about the perspective of the writing instructors, instead of just speculating. In order to broaden my knowledge about the way my interest group really feels, I chose a professor from the list we were given. Having heard him speak in class I felt that he would give me a frank, honest interview, without concern of his views being exposed or suspicions about hidden agendas within the interview.

Kevin Brooks is an assistant professor of English working on his fifth year at NDSU. His previous teaching experience came as a graduate student at the University of Calgary, where he received his Master of Arts, and at Iowa State University, where he went on to pursue his PhD. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Winnipeg, in his home province of Manitoba. The classes that he currently teaches here at NDSU include first year composition, practical writing, intermediate composition, advanced writing workshop and a variety of graduate courses. I interviewed Kevin on Tuesday, November 20 at his office in Minard Hall.

CE: You mentioned that you teach a first year composition class; do you enjoy teaching that class?

KB: To be honest not as much as I enjoy some of my upper level classes. Although I also taught one summer class, one of those four-week section classes, and it was probably as good of a class as I have ever taught… in terms of both what I did and in positive student response. I think the thing about the first year class is that it is just harder to predict. You know, you can get a really nice mix of students who are engaged and want to be there, and do good work. Or you can get a group who don’t want to be there, and its pretty low in their priorities. That is the thing that is a little bit scary about teaching the first year class, from the perspective of people that have choices to teach other classes. I can almost guarantee that my four hundred level writing workshop is going to be good every year, because they are English majors, they’re education majors, they want to write, they like to talk to each other, they know each other. There are just so many things that are going to contribute to a good class, where as you just don’t know with the first year class what kind of mix you are going to get.

CE: What do you think of the general requirements that we have here at NDSU?

KB: They are like most places, and I guess my position on the general requirements nationwide is that I think it is problematic. It requires every student, unless they can klep or AP out of it, to take a class. I think any time you tell students that they have to take a class you’re potentially creating a learning environment that is a little bit hostile.

The general requirements are a bit of a problem. It is tough on students, it is tough at this institution to staff the classes, I know you guys have been looking into that. And then when we do get them staffed we are relying on pretty inexperienced TA’s a lot of the time, or lecturers who are hired at the last minute. While those people do incredible jobs, they are really working up hill from day one. They haven’t even thought about teaching a class and then they walk in on August 28 and say, "okay I have to teach 2 or 3 or 4 of these classes, how am I going to do it?" I don’t know how anybody thinks that would consistently add up to a good learning experience.

CE: It seems like there is a sort of layout for teachers (of freshman comp) but it leaves leeway. What sort of student activities to you do that you think work best?

KB: Even within a fifty-minute class, I will try to do two or three different kinds of things. Just to keep the class moving and engaged. Often part of it will be an analysis and discussion of any reading if that is what we are using. You can (also) do some in class writing. I don’t know if you have encountered strategies like free writing or looping, there are a whole bunch of technical terms about that. Certainly peer responses at times when people have created drafts. Even just peer brainstorming earlier in the process is something that I do use and it doesn’t seem particularly artificial for people to get together and talk about what they are interested in. Typically with my classes I’ve got quite a bit of structure early on in the semester. Then as the semester goes on it gets a little looser in terms of starting to assign more involved projects. I’ll often later in the semester start to go to computer clusters more frequently and help students with their research. The part of our course that is probably a reasonable thing is our attempt to help the students navigate the technologies, to provide the information. Until the high schools have the same kind of access to technology that we do, I think that is probably still an important thing to do.

CE: I imagine that you are familiar with the Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing in the Disciplines, and Learning Teams programs…what ideas or strategies that are in these programs do you find most effective?

KB: I think that the general thrust of all those programs seems to be the right direction that we should be going. Writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines, what seems to make sense there is that students have a common content to write about. That’s one of the weaknesses of the first year class. There isn’t any clearly defined content unless the teacher decides, and if the teacher decides it can seem fairly arbitrary. If you are an agricultural major and you take a writing intensive class or writing in the disciplines class in agriculture, you are probably writing about subjects that you are interested in.

The learning teams seems to make a lot of sense in terms of the sort of open ended assignments. We have gotten to the point where we’ve got so much information potentially available to us that it helps a lot to be working in small groups. Obviously that is a whole dynamic that our education system hasn’t quite got figured out yet, how to teach collaboration. We say, "get in groups and do this work." Some students are really good at it, and some aren’t. I think that is part of what all classes need to start addressing more is what makes for good collaboration.

CE: With the same programs what do you see as drawbacks?

KB: The collaboration is still a challenge. The problem that we in English, who often initiate those kinds of programs, see is that we have to educate the people outside of English as to how to teach those classes. And that right there means workshops it means time commitment on our part to try to teach other professional teachers something that they probably didn’t get in their education. Not a big problem, ideally it can be overcome and it can be successful, but it definitely is a hurdle. In an institution like this that is generally understaffed, that’s hard to pull off.

The other related problem is getting it to sink in. I’d say even within English there is a pretty big split on how people teach writing. Those who have gone my career path it is just part of what we do. It is part of every class that we teach. For literature teachers theirs is more like a science model.

We can get the message out about how to teach writing. But then to make it stick, and to get people to put the time into it, that is our biggest hurdle.

CE: After having listened to you in class, I know that you are familiar with the ideas of the Abolitionists. I have to ask this question anyway…do you share any of their views?

KB: I would say philosophically I agree with the abolitionists’ position, but I also recognize that it is very hard to pull off in most institutional situations. I would always explore that option. I certainly tried to explore it here. I don’t think it is going to happen. If I moved to another institution, I would certainly initiate that conversation and see what people think about it. If people (schools) have really well thought out first year programs, really well trained TA’s, long term lecturers who they treat well and pay well, then I think a first year program can be a good thing. There just aren’t very many examples of that across the country.

From my conversation with Kevin I found a few main themes that keep popping up in each question. First and foremost I noticed that for a teacher he seems very concerned about the students. His concerns about forcing students to take a class and keeping his class engaged and interesting were two ideas that stuck out. This was a pleasant surprise, as we had not taken this into account in our other research. He also seems to be an advocate of group learning and collaboration. He referred to it as both a pro and a con to the WID, WAC, and Learning Teams programs. It seems, that he sees this as a necessity in the classroom, but one that academics have yet to entirely decipher. Increased use of groups and research on the subject could help to improve learning in English classes as well as in the entire university experience.

Kevin is also concerned with the quality of instruction that students receive. While he commends TA’s and lecturers for doing their best against a stacked deck, he also comments on our system’s inability to utilize these resourses in a method with consistent results. In his comments about abolitionists he uses the words "really well trained TA’s" and "long term lecturers" who are "treated well, and paid well". This leads me to believe we here at NDSU are lacking these well-trained and long-term resources, because of our own failure to train and treat them properly. His statements regarding NDSU as being "generally understaffed" substantiate this further. Perhaps changes need to be addressed in this area. Quality of instruction also seemed to also be what he saw as the main downfall of the WAC and WID programs. We as a group have considered this having been exposed to the ideas by Mary Munter in her article Whacking WAC so it did not come as a surprise. Furthermore, I expected his answer in the abolitionist question to be what it was. I still am a bit shocked though, that an English teacher would have these views. We as a group thought that job security would play more of a role in the answer to this question. I would imagine, however, that very few part time lecturers would share his view.

All together I think that my time spent speaking with Kevin Brooks was a success. His statements have helped to clarify some fuzzy topics, solidify earlier research, and bring new thoughts to the surface. I hope that we can take this new information and use it in pursuit of our ultimate goal, the creation of an improved first year writing program. Or in the philosophical beliefs of Kevin Brooks, perhaps the extinction of one.

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