English 101 as I’m experiencing it now is dramatically different from my English 101 course as an undergrad, which was essentially a literature survey, more on how to think about reading than how to think about writing. I have been considering this shift in my own expectations as well as the expectations of my students.

In grading Project 1, it was surprising to me how many students constructed their narratives like an argumentative paper despite having had several discussions in class and via Canvas explaining why that would not fit the criteria of the project. They just couldn’t break their habits. The expectation they had throughout their previous schooling was that there was a specific idea of what college writing was and that they shouldn’t break from that mold. It’s an expectation I’ve yet to see them fully shake.

Considering English 101 in that sense, it’s a challenge to students’ ingrained notion of what an English class is and should be. It’s a shift in focus, an expansion of how, what, and why we study. That has been an interesting experience for me to witness these first few weeks. Is that the point? I don’t know but it’s at least an interesting byproduct.

I want to consider this challenge to expectations in terms of Crowley. In the last section of “A Personal Essay,” Crowley asks us to acknowledge the gap between what we want and what is. She writes:

But we should then think hard about the gap that exists between our desires and our ability to implement them by means of three to six hours of required composition instruction. In short, we should stop hoping or wishing or assuming that Freshman English accomplishes the mighty goals we set for it in our professional imaginations.

My initial response to this assessment is: so what? Do we have any guarantee that a student of any introductory course (or at any level for that matter) will take away what we hope? I can think back to a number of courses I took and even succeeded in of which I only vaguely retain any of the course matter. I can also think back to several courses that changed my idea of what I wanted to study and how I wanted to do so.

We could take Crowley’s proposal and cut the requirement or we could embrace the diversity of attitudes, identities, and goals coming into our classroom and encourage students to get what they want from it, even if that’s just a passing grade. We have the opportunity, then, to be surprised at who learns what and if we’re open to that, I think the students can find some surprise in that, too. And I think at some level that’s what we are doing.