Day Two - Don't Assume Students Know What You Know

By: Deanna Babcock on 2:00 PM

The students' first homework assignment made me realize something important: they enrolled in this course because their writing needs improvement, but I've been expecting them to understand different types of papers. I've been writing them throughout my college education, so to me they're old news. These students are new to college and to many different genres, and I need to keep that in mind.

With half an hour left of the day, the class moved next door to the school's writing center. They were instructed to find an article about autism on one of the library databases (they were shown how to do this before moving). The articles will be used for their first essay, which is a brief summary paper. In my mind, it was simple: You find the article, you summarize it, you write it down, you turn it in. So what? 

It wasn't until she announced the homework assignment that I realized it's not necessarily that simple for students who have never encountered summary papers. The professor told them to write a list of 10 facts from their chosen article and bring the lists to class on Tuesday. This assignment, which to me would seem tedious, is an important step in preparing the students to write their first summary essay. While my first thought was "Wow, that's such an easy assignment; just skip to the summary," I now understand her reasons behind it. It's little things like this that made me really glad I'm getting this experience and understanding that not everyone knows the things I know - and I only know them because I'm further in my education than these students.