by Rich Ross

When I heard about the Writing Intensive Program at the University of Georgia, I pretty quickly became a believer. I support the WIP principles, and since my graduate work emphasizes collaboration in the sciences, I wanted to use this space to speak about the following WIP principle:

Teaching writing in math, science, or art means interpreting and guiding the writing process and responding to student work in productive and helpful ways that encourage revision.

I feel like this principle outlines a few tasks for those charged with aiding the instructors of WIP courses:

1. Interpreting and guiding the writing process
2. Encouraging revision through productive response
3. Encouraging revision through helpful response

No matter which assignment I’m reviewing, I find that I’ve missed something when I don’t thoughtfully consider each of these items intentionally and separately.

Before I dive into these three tasks I’d like to address a common question I hear about Mathematics and Statistics as they pertain to writing:

“If you’re studying Mathematics (or statistics), why do you need to know how to write?”

Or alternatively,

“What do you have to write about?”

Perhaps you’re thinking this right now! I wouldn’t blame you; writing in statistics is usually only publicized at election time (if at all). The reports I write generally get attention from three to eight individuals. However, my writing is what makes the work I do accessible, and the writing my students do enables the possibility of getting a job without a master’s degree (which is nearly impossible if their writing is poor), as well as improves their chances of succeeding in graduate studies. Statistics without good writing is just numbers.

Numbers are a big part of my work as a graduate student in Statistics. I collect numbers, I review numbers, even the letters and symbols I write in a computer program are transformed into numbers by a machine which whirs and churns out more numbers. Numbers everywhere. But performing my role as a statistical consultant (and as a WIP Teaching Assistant) is focused so much more on words and ideas than numbers. The real work for me, and for my students, lies in doing almost the exact opposite of that machine which enables our work. We need to take the numbers that the computer returns to us and we in turn whir and churn out words and thoughts and ideas. We take data which is static and uniform and dead and we show the dynamic, vibrant, meaningful story hidden inside it.

Then I sit down at my desk and start reviewing student work, and I pine for numbers. I’ve been trained to deal with numbers; there’s often less “gray area” with numbers than with trains of thought. Numeric answers are right or wrong. This brings me to task 1. When interpreting and guiding the writing process, some of the work is done before I get student work, but for me personally the real work begins as I face student work of varying levels of quality. I wish that every answer was clearly right or wrong, but this isn’t the outcome of writing. Even though my interpretation of student work can feel exhausting, sometimes even confusing, I find that as I interpret their writing, I come to know students better.

Once I have gained this additional insight into who my students are, I find myself drawn to give productive responses. Student work reflects not only who the students are, but it often gives me glimpses of who they want to become and who they may someday become. Most of our student work progresses clearly, so my responses often identify where in their writing they stray from the clarity or the truth which their client seeks, the truth which we all seek. This type of response also involves providing examples of how I might solve the same problem.

Helpful feedback, for me, requires feedback on how the student can adapt from the current assignment to perform better and better when faced with similar problems. I try to respond to the writing at a level representative of their intended audience; I respond by explaining where truth pervades but jargon or poor explanation muddle intent, much like feeding a computer the right numbers in the wrong format. By helping students in this manner, students often pinpoint the places where their work is prone to “hinge” away from the quality they intend to produce.

In all my efforts as a WIP TA, I guess I’ve realized that my role in grading and responding is not a role in computation, like the machines my students use to get the numeric answers they seek, but is a very personal and human role, and I’m trying to provide better feedback each time I’m privileged to review such work.