[Articulating Betweenity]
Educated: Being, Self, Other
Teaching (Oneself) Writing:
Dr. Jane Fernandes narrates a poignant literacy narrative about teaching herself to “write correctly” (in college) after so many years of receiving back papers from teachers that were filled with “mistakes all over.” “Fed up” and “sick of it,” she taught herself then to identify her own patterns of errors and improve on them. There was no memorable teacher navigating Fernandes’ way in this process—there was no go-between. There was only just her bright and frustrated self. And while this story might seem remarkable, it is actually not so much so—for my own dissertation research (so many years ago) with deaf college writers in their composition courses at Gallaudet University bears out the sad familiarity of this tale, time and time again. (See several chapters in my 1999 book, Lend Me Your Ear: Rhetorical Constructions of Deafness.) How Fernandes’ story does depart, however, is that she became her own teacher and successfully constructed a lesson plan, of sorts, to move her out of the deficit space of “mistakes all over”—but not until college.
It would be hard not to wonder why so many teachers that Fernandes would have learned with in all the years before that (in elementary, middle, and high school) did not help her navigate the frustrating “stuck” between place she was in. They just kept marking the errors. And she kept making them. She stayed stuck.
