ASSAY: A JOURNAL OF NONFICTION STUDIES
11.1

Jennifer Stewart

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Six-Word Memoirs as Programmatic and Pedagogical Reflection 

Fall 2024 Spotlight:
​Six Word Memoirs as Assessment
Sometimes it feels like knowing if the work I do as a Writing Program Administrator (WPA) is successful is just vibes. Yes, I keep up with recent administrative and pedagogical movements in scholarship and at conferences. Yes, I collect assessment data for our classes. Yes, I continuously observe faculty to shape and hone the work of the program. Yes, I train, guide, and evaluate graduate teaching assistants (GTAs). But for me, much of the teaching and WPA work I do is inspired by formal and informal discussions with peers and colleagues about the work we do; this project is no different. I’d read the Composition Studies six-word memoir piece, and when Kim mentioned using it with her GTAs, something sparked.  I was already working on institutional ethnographic work in our program, studying my teaching observations, and considering preparing materials to submit for a CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence. I believed asking GTAs to compose six-word memoirs about their pedagogical experiences would be an excellent way to get more data about the functioning of my program and would foster their own pedagogical reflection. While this piece will detail how this project developed and what I discovered about the program, my GTAs, and myself in Fall 2023, this project is still a work-in-progress, so I will also describe the data collection and implementation changes I plan to make as I move forward with the six-word memoir project in 2024.


Institutional Context

The Composition Program at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga consists of three first-year writing classes. For the purposes of this piece, I’m focusing on the two first semester equivalent courses, ENGL 1010 (Rhetoric and Composition I) and ENGL 1011 (Rhetoric and Composition I with Tutorials). ENGL 1010 and ENGL 1011 have the same course outcomes, required major assignments, and textbook. The key difference between the two courses is that ENGL 1011 is 4 credit hours to ENGL 1010’s 3 credit hours; that one credit hour is a 75-minute tutorial class, most often taught by GTAs.

In the UTC Composition Program, we normally have six to eight GTAs a year who work in the program; we offer them two scaffolded opportunities to teach in first-year writing courses. In their first semester, first-year GTAs enroll in Teaching College Writing, are assigned four tutorial sections, and are paired with two experienced full-time faculty who are the instructor of record for those courses. Their contracts indicate that students should observe at least one class session per week for each instructor’s class, but many will attend and observe multiple classes per week. This observation offers the GTAs the chance to observe practiced instructors managing the everyday happenings in a classroom. In their second semester, GTAs who want to be eligible to teach their own section of ENGL 1010 in their second year have two options: teach more tutorials or work in the Writing and Communication Center with Beth (see “Creating Space for Writing Tutor Vulnerability: Six-Word Memoirs in the Writing Center”). Second-year GTAs can either teach four tutorials or teach one ENGL 1010 class and two tutorials. Because of these varied opportunities, our GTAs have many opportunities to write memoirs that reflect their pedagogical experiences.
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Every week, each GTA meets with me for an hour. During the odd weeks of the term, we meet as a group; in even weeks, we meet individually. In group meetings, we spend an hour discussing questions, challenges, and successes they’re experiencing in their classes as a group. They bring things that have happened in their own tutorials and classes, things they’ve observed in their instructor of record’s classes; we discuss how these experiences and observations challenge or reinforce the reading they’ve done in their Teaching College Writing class. During the individual meetings, we dig into how their classes went, troubleshoot concerns they have about individual planning for upcoming classes, and reflect on their work. GTAs are often managing so many things at once—their studies, their observations, their instruction, their lives, their acclimation to a new place—that things can get forgotten or lost in the shuffle of that business. I thought that the six-word memoirs would help keep track of their experiences and enhance these discussions.


The Best Laid Plans…

Because Beth and I collaborated on an IRB proposal for this project, we articulated methods, but for my part, they were more of a rough framework. I wanted to be very minimal in previewing the memoirs so that they could develop as organically as possible. Because graduate students are diligent, I was concerned if I gave too much direction or guidance, it may influence the memoir content. I shared the Composition Studies article with the GTAs prior to our first group meeting and told them that they would be writing six-word memoirs after each class they observed or taught. In that group meeting, I asked them to create a document or spreadsheet to collect their memoirs and share them with me. Half of the GTAs were enrolled in Teaching College Writing and had the option of using their collected six-word memoirs to write a reflection as one of their major project components. I suggested it would be efficient to use these memoirs to reflect on their pedagogy; only one student took advantage of this option because most of the others opted to compose a teaching portfolio in hopes of teaching their own course in their second year. 
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I expected to use the memoirs as a touchstone in our group and individual meetings throughout the term and was particularly interested in using them to get GTAs who were more quiet or reserved to talk and reflect in our meetings. As the semester progressed, I found I didn’t use the memoirs as much as I thought I would, likely because this first cohort was so very talkative. While all eight GTAs composed memoirs, six ultimately granted permission for their memoirs to be collected and analyzed. Two second-year GTAs and four first-years generated 269 six-word memoirs: 119 from second-years teaching ENGL 1010, 114 from first- and second-years teaching ENGL 1011 tutorials, and 96 from first- and second-years observing ENGL 1011 classes.  The bulk of the memoirs were written in September and October, which makes sense, as they are observing and teaching for only two weeks in August and November is truncated because of the Thanksgiving holiday. The second-year GTAs were more consistent in completing their six-word memoirs overall; two first-years did not do any memoirs in November.


Findings and Analysis

As I reviewed and coded the GTAs memoirs, there was one unsurprising finding: these memoirs are filled with emotions. There was one surprising finding: these memoirs have an interesting point-of-view; some focus on students, some on the GTA, and some on the task at hand. There was one reassuring finding: these memoirs demonstrate programmatic values. Upon reflection, I should have hoped to find my programmatic values in the memoirs of the GTAs I am training, but as most WPAs know, sometimes we get so caught up in the everyday work of running a program that this kind of reflection and revelation can come weeks, months, or even years later.

“Deep breaths in the bathroom mirror”: Emotion in memoirs
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I copied the memoirs into a spreadsheet and organized them according to author and date. I reviewed the memoirs using general emotional coding, identifying the various emotions present in the memoirs (Saldaña 160). After an initial pass, I quickly identified four emotions that appeared most often: nervousness, excitement, confidence, and exasperation.  As expected, the memoirs exhibiting nervousness like “Just as nervous as I am” and “I am new to this too” occurred more often early in the term as the GTAs entered their first classrooms as tutors or their first classrooms as instructors. Memoirs like “Yes, you have to follow directions” and “Why is following directions so hard?” are good prompts for me to remind them in our meetings that FYC students are not intrinsically motivated like graduate students often are.

GTAs gleefully recorded their golden moments when teaching: “Satisfying to see a flame ignite,” “When they learn, I feel proud,” and “Monster synthesis was a graveyard smash!” These memoirs can be used to remind the GTAs that good teaching days and bad teaching days happen, sometimes even in back-to-back classes. But the memoirs provide evidence to them that there’s more positive and less negative than they remember. Their confidence is shaky in the early memoirs, like “Will I ever be that comfortable?” As they observe the experienced faculty and gain experience, their confidence builds, “I can control my anxiety better.” Helping them to see evidence of their growth is another way for the GTAs to reflect on the significant amount of growth that happens in bursts in these early years of teaching.

“Technology is a passive aggressive frenemy”: Perspective shifts in memoirs

Admittedly, I expected most of the six-word memoirs to generate emotion codes, as the early years of teaching are fraught with emotion, more so than our later years. But in the coding process, I started to observe that some memoirs focused on the students, some focused on the GTA, some spoke to the course objective for the day, and others offered reflection. I coded each of these in their own color: student-focused blue, instructor-focused green, objective reporting orange, and reflection purple (see Figure 2).
The student- and instructor-focused memoirs often demonstrated how the GTAs were viewing themselves (“Caffeine makes me a better speaker” or “I am AOK with being flexible”), their mentor faculty (“Even seasoned professors have stressful moments” or “The two professors are so different,”) and their students (“They all look so very studious” or “Them boys be the lazy ones (or I gotta stop judging elevator riders).”). We spend a lot of time discussing the humanity of teaching in Teaching College Writing and our weekly meetings; the notion that we are all whole human beings with lives and priorities outside of the FYC classroom that can affect both writing and the teaching of writing. Seeing this instruction manifest in the six-word memoirs reassures me that this message is being received and internalized among the GTAs.

“There’s no pedagogy without deep kindness”: Cate Denial’s influence on us all

In February 2023, I attended a keynote at the AACU General Education Conference by Catherine Denial, who was offering material from A Pedagogy of Kindness, which grew from her Hybrid Pedagogy piece “A Pedagogy of Kindness.” Our Teaching and Learning Center brought Denial to campus for pre-semester workshop; her work inspired me and I shared it with, honestly, anyone who would listen. Denial writes that a “pedagogy of kindness asks us to apply compassion in every situation we can, and not to default to suspicion or anger. When suspicion or anger is our first response, a pedagogy of kindness asks us to step back and do the reflective work of asking why we’re reacting in that manner and what other instances of disappointment or mistrust are coming to bear on a particular moment in a particular student-teacher interaction. This can transform the student-teacher relationship — but it’s not only on an individual-to-individual level that it can alter our working world” (Denial 2019). Denial’s assertion that we, as instructors, must pause and think of our own positioning and reactions is so important to all faculty. New instructors can benefit from instilling that reflective work that is so key to pedagogical development, and experienced instructors can use this reflection to consider how their own assumptions and beliefs are sometimes tainted by past experiences. When Denial asks us to consider that extending “kindness means recognizing that our students possess innate humanity, which directly undermines the transactional educational model to which too many of our institutions lean, if not cleave,” she directly challenges the foundation of some pedagogical perspectives. It’s this rejection of a transactional model and the acceptance of a humanity model that informs much of my GTA and programmatic training.
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I should not, then, have been surprised to find that the tenets of Denial’s kindness pedagogy interwoven in the six-word memoirs of the GTAs. First, Denial asserts that as faculty we should prioritize justice for our students, question assumptions we have about our students, give them the benefit of the doubt, and get rid of arbitrary, inherited hoops. GTA memoirs reflected this--memoirs like “I can relate to the tiredness,” “The classroom vibes were in despair,” and “We’re all learning as we go!” show the GTAs working to see the situatedness of their students and to recognize that many do not demonstrate the skills or demeanor of what they envision as a traditional student. Second, Denial tasks us to believe students, to cultivate an atmosphere of trust that can be mutually beneficial. Memoirs such as “My vibe creates a talkative class,” “Granting grace to those in need,” and “Patience really is quite a virtue” show the GTAs working to be kind and graceful to both their students and themselves, the latter of which GTAs often neglect. Finally, Denial reminds us to believe in students, to believe in the work they do and what they bring to the classroom. Idealistic new instructors are the perfect faculty to believe in students and it was clear in their memoirs: “I like connecting with real conversations,” “Feeling helpful is a wonderful thing,” “Love seeing them help each other.” But, dear readers, I was surprised to find these memoirs filled with such grace and kindness, and it did, in fact, make my Grinch heart grow three sizes that data analysis day.


​Next Time I Promise I Will

Recently, I was chatting with one of the participants in this study about the six-word memoir project and this exact piece. She said, “Those memoirs were really fun! I hope you continue to do them. Or at least have an updated version in a few years!” I’d already decided to keep the memoir project because it generated so much useful detailed and reflective data about the program, and her encouragement reinforced this decision. Of course, I plan to revise the approach so that some of the hiccups I encountered can be smoothed out.
1.      Actually do the six-sentence memoir.
When I wrote my portion of the IRB, I was ambitious. I wanted to have students reflect on each month’s worth of six-word memoirs and then compose a six-sentence memoir. If the GTAs were tasked with reviewing and reflecting on their monthly data, it may have informed their choices or identified patterns in their process. However, once the semester got into its groove, the six-sentence memoir was forgotten. In most aspects of my life, and particularly in my worklife, I follow the glass and plastic ball philosophy: we are all juggling glass and plastic balls, and invariably we will drop a ball or two. Plastic balls bounce and if they’re dropped, no harm is done; glass balls shatter and if they’re dropped, they often cannot be repaired. The key is to recognize which balls are plastic and which are glass so that when we must let a ball drop, it’s a plastic one. The six-sentence memoir was a plastic ball, and I let it drop.

2.      Be more consistent in reminding them to do their memoirs.
For the next cohort, I’m going to build announcement reminders for GTAs in our LMS to remind them weekly to complete their memoirs. I may even build a zero-point assignment into Teaching College Writing or our Composition Faculty Canvas page that keeps the memoirs in their minds. Additionally, this move could prevent GTAs from abandoning the memoirs mid-term.

3.      Make the six-word memoirs more meaningful in Teaching College Writing.
Because only one GTA in Teaching College Writing used their six-word memoirs for analysis, I felt like this is a missed opportunity for reflection. Depending on the year, Teaching College Writing can have all GTAs enrolled, or some GTAs and some non-teaching graduate students. In 2024, all students enrolled will be GTAs, so I will use their six-word memoirs to support an activity or assignment that promotes their pedagogical reflection. In future terms, I will need to think about how to adapt this project for students who are not GTAs

4.      Use the memoirs in GTA meetings more frequently.
I am torn as to whether or not I should reference the memoirs more in these meetings. Yes, using them would encourage the GTAs to do them more often, but also wouldn’t they then be more performative? I wonder if showing these students how they’ve grown in the short months of writing the memoirs would help build confidence in GTAs who need that extra push. Would identifying that a GTA who is mostly reporting on class content and doing little reflection get him to reflect more? Is that what he needs? I may try this in 2024 and scrap it in 2025. That is part of the beauty of this work—it’s ever-evolving.
While I know that WPAs do a good amount of work to determine if their programs are successful and I also know sometimes it does feel like vibes, this six-word memoir project provides data to support those vibes. It helps me see how our GTAs function in our program, how they view the work they do and the work they observe, and that’s valuable for me, for my program, and for their pedagogical development.
Click here to download a printable PDF with Works Cited.
Jennifer Stewart is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Composition at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in teaching college writing, ethnographic research, workplace literacies and project management, and the rhetoric of popular culture heroines. She has taught FYC and rhetoric and professional writing courses since 1997. Much of her scholarship comes from the work in her program or in her classroom; recent research projects are situated in incorporating diversity-themed common readers and multimodal composition into writing programs and using institutional ethnographic methods to investigate standard writing program practices. She is also greatly invested in non-tenure track faculty and graduate student advocacy, professional development, and mentoring.