Bad Writer

These things, when you are historically marginalized, these things also reinforce these ideas of that you are somehow not as good as or less than and things like that. And so I get it. This could happen to anyone and yet at the same time, if you are part of a historically marginalized group or groups, this can be, like I said, socialize to you in a lot of different ways. And so with that, let me go on to , you know, my story in regards to understanding how I got to a space of being traumatized.

Um, and thinking that I'm a bad writer. Okay. And so what happened in high school? I'm sure it's happened yours, like I've had places reinforced before, but it really came together and coalesced in high school and it happened in two basic classes. It was my history class and it was , um , in my English class. And so the thing about my history class, this is kind of weird because , um , my teacher, he basically I want to use the word forced me to take an AP history class.

Okay. Cause I was getting along just fine in the , in the regular or you know, like the college prep history class, that's the , what they, that we called it back in the day. I don't know what they called the track nowadays, but it was like this, like I said, college prep history class. It was completely easy to me. And I already told you in another episode about how I learned to do basically the minimum, right . I mean whatnot.

And so for me, again, I was disruptive in class because the work was just so easy to me. All his task was easy. Everything was so easy about that class. To me. All I did was I just read the book right before the exam and I wound up getting a, that is, I mean, literally easy peasy to me.

Okay. And , um, and I remember him, like I said, literally forcing me to go into the AP class , uh , because he, he didn't give me an a on my six week transcript, he gave me a B. And what I went up to talk to him, he said Bruce, and it was my friend also, but it was like Bruce and my friend and I, both of us happened to be African American. Um, he was like, you too or have is this class is too easy for you. And so it's , it's an easy a for you. I'm giving you a B though.

Like straight up he did this and we can have a discussion later about what it would would've would've meant if I had a parent or parents that would've intervened on me with me on this space. But it is what it is. Right. And so he was like, this class is too easy for you. I really want you to go into the AP history class where you have a chance of getting a real AA or you can stay in this class and I'm just going to give you a beat. No matter what you get.

You know, no matter if you get an a or whether you get an a, you're still gonna get a B in the class. And um, you know, that sounds like a really cool challenge though, right? It's like, you know, you're thinking that, Oh, he's pushing me towards excellence in everything and , and I get that. The thing I don't think people understand though, as that going from the regular college prep history class and going into AP class, it required writing right in an essay.

And I had never written an essay before pretty much in my life. Like, I don't remember writing any formal essays and whatnot in class and having to enter , you know, interject, you know, five facts per paragraph and stuff like that. I never even had to do stuff like that. And so when I made the switch into the AP class, because you know what it's like, look, I'm not a punk. I decided to step up and to do it. But like I said, I wasn't trained to write so and to write these essays.

And so when those essay , when the essay parts came, I got absolutely demolished in the beginning. I got like D minuses F D, C, and as , as the semester went on, I got to about a C level, like a C level. I'm on that and my goodness, I never figured it out because he never explained to me what it took to actually write a good essay. Never tried to do that, like never did that with me once. And um, and so man, that really wrecked my confidence here.

I was thinking that I was, you know, I was , uh, doing well while I was doing well in the other class and um, and whatnot. But this really wrecked my confidence along with an English research paper that I did where, you know, I actually did pretty well on all the other assignments. But this research paper, it's like, look, I, y'all gotta remember this , like look, 30 something years ago we didn't have word processors, we didn't have the internet, we didn't have online libraries.

And so we go and do a research paper. I decided to do Edgar Allen Poe because I like Edgar Allen Poe. He's a horror story writer. And so everything was just kind of cool to me. That's the reason. That's a solely the reason why I wrote on him. And so I go, I remember going and looking into card catalog for all the people hold the bat on regards to the card catalog. Um , I remember looking through there and only seeing three books on Edgar Allen Poe.

And so I've checked those three books out and I wrote this, you know, freaking what 10 page paper I had to handwrite that. Remember that. Like , I'll , I just keep on thinking it was like, you remember those days folks , um , handwriting it in pen, you know, and how traumatizing it is when you make a mistake and all of this stuff and uh, and whatnot. And this was before white out became a big old thing , um, and whatnot.

And so I wrote this 10 page paper on Edgar Allen Poe using three books right now for the people who know anything about research papers and whatnot. You can probably guess what kind of happened in the spaces that I wound up just kind of repeating, right? These three textbooks all while I did repeat these three textbooks all the way through the , or not textbooks, but these three books all the way through the space.

But maybe even more importantly, there was only one of those three books that were actually good. And so I use that as my main text as I was going along. And then I would throw the other two in for like flavor, right? I mean, like literally just kind of throw that in. And so , um , I knew what I was working with. I knew what I was doing and I tried, did I try my best? I don't know, but I knew that I was doing the best I could with what I had. Hopefully that makes sense.

I was doing the best I could with what I had, but I only had three ingredients, you know what I'm saying? It's almost like, you know, whatever. Right. And so I turned in this paper and I got a D minus on this paper right now. This is not the first D minus I got right. I was getting D minuses on the , on the papers that I was doing for my history classes. But the comment that came in this base really wrecked me and, but you know, here I am, a young teenage kid, right?

It was like I didn't, I didn't realize how much this wrecked me and wrecked my confidence and really got into my head, not just my head, but my heart. And he said, I remember the comment. It was Bruce, all this is, is a glorified book report. You only used one book. Really? And you know, I'm disappointed with this paper. I'm thinking to myself, I did the best I could with what I had. Clearly he thought this research paper was going to involve more books. I didn't have more books.

Now. I know, I know what he would've said. I was like, if I would have said, if I would've went up to him and talk to him, which I didn't because I didn't like him. If I would have went up and talked to him , I would've been like, so where was I supposed to get more books? And I'm, I'm confident he would've said, go to the, you know, go to the public library and I kid you not folks. I know what I would've said then I would have been, well, where's that at?

I had never been to the public library before and so I didn't even know that there was other places to get books. Remember, like I said, this is over 30 years ago. And so for him to come at me like that was really detrimental to my soul because I didn't even get really, like, what else could I have done to have done better on the paper? Yes, get more resources. But from where, like I didn't even know like that didn't even, I couldn't even understand that.

And so then from that moment on, I really almost literally shut down the writer in me. Right. And now remember, let me tell you this folks, I'm a writer now. I mean not just a writer but also a creative writer. I'm a spoken word poet and all of this stuff. Can you imagine this? Think about that. Right? And so what I'm talking about this, this is not just some little thing. This is something that dramatically has affected my life and then it was socially reinforced in a lot of different spaces.

Right? And then, you know, fast forward and then we get to UCS , D and my goodness, I was taking hits left and right on my writing and because I was interested in ethnic studies, which was a reading, writing intensive major, but I didn't know how to write very well, but I was so head over heels in love with ethnic studies. I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to work this one out. Um , but I remember going into my, you know, my professor's office hour , um, her name is Eunice Barrett too .

I remember going into her office hour cause she had , she had given me a, a C or I had, I had earned a C on my first paper in her class and I remember going into her office hour crying because I'm like, I don't know what else to do here. Right. And, and I finally got to a space where I understood this like in some way, shape or form that these college professors really didn't want to know what I thought. They wanted me to just tell them what the book said already.

And I thought to myself, that is the most useful or excuse me, that is the most useless way to spend my time and my education. Right. Why am I going to tell you about stuff that you already know about? Now look, later on I actually figured out like the power of being able to summarize arguments and stuff like that. But I saw always still, always in my heart. I always wanted to tell people things that I was thinking about while I was reading something. Right?

And so here I am literally like devastated in my head in regards to thinking that I am a bad writer, traumatized. I'm a bad writer, I'm a bad writer, I'm a bad writer. And then I take this guy's class, this one professor, his name is George lipsticks and by the way, let me help you all out. This is a white guy. He's amazing.

And so for any white folks who think to themselves that that for whatever reason this student equity thing is not about you or about something that you can do, you are dead wrong because this white dude literally changed my life. He literally changed my life when I experienced this class. It was like an urban, like a race in this race and the city like urban policy type of class. And I remember getting my first paper, like the , the prompt for it and I was like, you know what?

I'm just going to tell people what I think because that's just, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to , I'm going to do that paper first and then I'll write the paper that they want second. I literally just got myself used to doing that, right? Because I knew that that first paper was going to be bad for them. I liked it, but it was going to be bad.

It's going to be bad, it's going to go , or I was going to get a bad grade, but then I would write, you know, a decent paper next time, give them what they were looking for. And then I wound up getting like B's and B pluses a in the class and whatnot. And so, and so that was my UCS D experience until this teacher came along until I took this till I took George Lipson's class. And by the way, some of you might be going like George Lipsett . You mean the George Lipsett ?

I mean the George Lipsett Jess . But the thing is I didn't know who this dude was when I took him for as a student. I literally didn't know who this guy was. All I did was I took the class because I was interested in the class and I was interested in ethnic studies, but I didn't know that this dude is like an ethnic studies hall of Famer. You know what I'm saying?

I was like, look folks, for the people who don't know George neces think LeBron James of ethnic studies thinks something like that and we good. But that's what I'm trying to tell you right now. Washington say LeBron James, he's black. Let's see a dirty Lewinsky . How about something like that? Because this is a white dude. I want to make sure that it's clear and there is something that white people can do in order to help. Right ?

Student equity groups, historically marginalized groups and to close equity gaps. So here, here's, here's what happened on my first paper, I get 100% on my first paper and I'm like, I wonder what's wrong with this dude? Doesn't he know that I'm a bad writer? You know what I'm saying? Like for real, it was like I w I now I'm like giving the bad writer critique to him. Like, well , I'm like, doesn't he know that I'm a bad writer? Right? I'm putting my trauma into his space.

Like you don't recognize that I'm not good here. And um, but I do remember that paper and I did some really fun stuff with uh , hip hop and talking about how hip hop , um, you know, you know, like the is a , is a worldview and how mixing and scratching means certain stains. And I didn't realize until later on that he was like really into music. And so what I did to hip hop thing, that really was something that he was like, yo, this is really outside the box. This is great thinking. Right?

And then I decide on the next paper right to , to, to push it even further. I'm like, look, if this guy, you know, things like that, you know, the last paper was, was good, then you know what I'm to , I'm going to tell him what I think again. And on the next paper I get another a hundred percent. And I'm like, yo, there's something real worried about this guy. But I love him to death. His lectures were absolutely amazing. The do talk really fast though.

And I didn't try to take any notes in his class. I literally would just sit there and just listen to them because taking notes in his class was, was completely useless. And so I would just sit there and listen to them and just go like, this dude is amazing, right? It's like he's so much data, so much, you know, passion for what he's talking about. This guy's amazing. And um, and so then, then comes to final. And I remember thinking to myself as like, yo, I got this a in this class right now.

I don't want to take any chances. And so let me write the paper that I know he's looking for. Right . In quotes, you can, you can feel the air quotes right now. And I remember on the final, I was sitting there on the final and I literally wrote the first paragraph out of this standard essay that I was about to write. And then I literally was like disgusted with myself because this was a paper about , um, like what kind of policies and things need to happen. What kind of laws need to be passed?

Uh, in LA, this was post riot, right post Rodney King riot and everything, or rebellion depends on how your, your worldview on that one. And the paper was about, like I said, what kind of policies and laws and things like that that needed to be passed in order to rebuild LA. And in order to, to help with all the racial tension that's in the space. And I remember, like I said, starting to write the standard essay and then in the second paragraph I would just like, you know what?

I don't believe any of this crap. This is what I really believe. And I just started writing like literally just kind of almost free versing in the space and just going like, yo, we already have enough laws to deal with racial discrimination. What w what we don't have is the compassion to enforce those laws. That's what I was writing . You know, when I was at UCS D , that's what I had felt then. That's what I feel now, quite honestly. And I get my paper back, right? This was at UCS.

D is like, you gotta do this dislike thing . It's called a Buckley waiver because all the professors, they don't want to like deal with you. They don't want to actually hand your papers back. They want real talk.

They really don't want to hand you your papers back to you otherwise , especially as the final dominate , just put it all in this big bucket, you know, like this big box and you signed a Buckley waiver so you can just , uh , so they can put it in that box and you can go searching through it. And I remember being afraid of what the score was going to be. I mean, did I ruin my a , because like I said, I had 100% going into that, ended that final and on the final I had a a hundred percent also.

He was grading on what I was writing and expressing from my heart, right in my, in my analytical ability of the, of the space and whatnot. And I remember him coming. It's like, so here I am sitting looking at the paper near his office and he comes walking by, I remember this like it was yesterday and I said this, now this is my ego talking, so you're going to have to deal with this one here folks.

And I told them, I looked at 'em and I'll , I just like thank you for recognizing a good paper when you see one. And I know that that sounds completely contradictory to me thinking that I'm a bad writer. I never, I didn't tell you that I thought I was stupid. What I said was, is that I felt like I was a bad writer. And so I feel like that kind of connects the two spaces together. I was just like, yo, thank you for recognizing the good paper. When you see one and this is what happened next.

White folks, everybody in general pay attention. White folks in particular, pay attention. This is what he did. He sat down right next to me. He looked me in the eyes and he said, Bruce, he, he remembered my name out of like 150 students who remember my name and he said, Bruce

And it allowed me to get myself prepared to finally make my way to USC. That was the difference that he made in my life. Right. And understand this, it still took me a long time and well, it's not even about that I'm over it because I'm not, I told you this , like I still struggle with this to this day, but the fact that he just took that time to say that to me and to grade me the way that he did it literally changed my life.

And so after a story like this, I want to give you some, some takeaways, something, something practical. Hopefully you understood where I was coming from with the story, but now let me, let me give you some practical teaching stuff, right? Some student equity takeaways. First and foremost, I really believe that introducing writers from historically marginalized groups in high school would have helped me understand, right? Like life for, for my, my space.

It would have been like Ralph Ellison and Audrey Lorde or something like that, introduced to me African American writers. Um, cause I didn't get any of that. And if you would've , they would've introduced those things to me early on.

Then I really feel like it wouldn't have reinforced the idea that my writing was somehow my race lacking, not me being poor, me being male, that it was something that I was deficient in versus just thinking that writing is a skill and you can learn a skill because here it look clearly. There are other people of color like yourself who can do this and do this really well. Right? And so and so that's just one really to me, really easy, straightforward away into space.

Second, make sure that your expectations match up to what your students have access to, right? And so that's with the English class and that research paper and whatnot. If you're expecting someone to be able to site 10 resources, academic articles, then your students better damn well have access to articles like that in order for them to write that paper for you. Right?

And so if your expectations meet up with what the students have access to will then hopefully at least you won't traumatize that student by saying you didn't try so hard looking for materials. Right. And I know, like I said, we live in a different day and age now. It's like all the internet access and everything. But think about that. Think about what that means in regards to do your students have access to your textbook and whatnot, right . Do they have ax ?

If your papers are depending on them, especially in the very beginning of, they depend on students having access to the textbook and the textbook cost $200 or something like that, then how are you expectations being set up? Right? And regardless of what the students have access to. So think of this, think about that. These are all, I'm going quick on these folks and so we'll , I'll definitely talk more about these and go more in depth later on with , with a lot of these.

A third one is to also think about, tell your students why you're doing something right. So, so the thing that I figured out is that, you know what, there is very real value in summarizing an articles , right ? Basic arguments and stuff like that. There's very real value in that is just that no one ever told me why that was important. Right?

And so in my research methods class, I actually had them do a lot of the papers that I struggled with in regards to, you know, just kinda summarizing, you know, the Arthur's argument, you know, the , the basics of the author's argument. But I also make sure that I tell them, I was like, look, when we get, when you get to graduate school, make sure you keep all these papers because these summaries are going to come in really handy for you to be able to write, you know, papers and stuff like that.

And so you're, you're gonna know which books on a very quick look in your own words. You're going to be able to, to be able to see what that book had to offer and whatnot . So that's why the summaries are handy. And then also though , um , I gave them a space at the end to make sure that they could tell me what they actually thought about the article. Right? It's like, I always want them to just tell me, it's like, well, what do you think? What do you think? What do you think about this?

Okay. Um, another quick takeaway is to say to grade more when you're grading these, your papers graded more towards communicating concepts and ideas versus granular at Anglo speech patterns. There's no other way to say that. Folks, you can be as mad at me as you want to about that. But Anglo speech patterns is for real. And so a quick thing on that for me is to say that I only minus like six points for grammar and structure out of 50.

And so even if they didn't do very well on that, they're still getting a B plus. Right? And then I then I direct them to other resources and things like that to help them with those other parts. Because look, as much as I don't like it, it would be remiss, I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't help them become better writers in a school environment. Right? And so that is what it is and I accept that. And then lastly , um , definitely create spaces for students to express themselves.

And I would tell you even to say to express themselves with like low stakes writing versus the high stakes, like you could do what high stakes writing, but the low stakes writing , um, I really feel like it , it allows them to be a lot freer with what they're going to tell you. Um, and, and, you know, just gives them a chance to just express themselves really quickly , uh , so that they don't feel as alienated.

I mean, that's just simply how that goes, but when you do this, I wanna make sure you understand, please read it. And then also because they're, they're writing this stuff to you that may be more expressive. Also make sure you care about it, right? Like try to demonstrate to them that you care about it by a remembering and,

If you want to learn more about me or my open source introduction to sociology textbook, please go to Bruce hoskins.com and closing. I want to leave us all with a question. If you learned something today that you think would help close your student equity gaps, how long will it take to incorporate this into your classroom? A year , a semester, next month. Today, no matter the timetable , we must commit ourselves to becoming better teachers. Our students deserve it.

All of them, not just the ones that are good already . [inaudible] .