Driving Lessons

This summer I took on the task of teaching my step-daughter how to drive a standard shift car. Cara had been driving for several years already, but always a car with an automatic transmission. Since her father traded the car she had been driving for a standard shift car, she had to either learn how to drive this new car or learn the bus schedule. Since she was using my car until she learned either of these things, we thought it would be best to give her a deadline. I also wanted my car back.

We began our lessons driving around the roads of the small town where we live –roads with no stop lights and little traffic. We drove around practicing starting and stopping, making left and right hand turns and backing up. As we drove we discussed the importance of being able to drive a standard transmission. Well, this isn’t completely accurate. There really wasn’t a lot of discussing going on. Cara kept saying, “Why would anyone want to drive a standard?” “Why don’t they make all cars automatics?” “Why do I have to learn?” and I kept saying, “This way you’ll be able to drive any car.” “People like to drive standards because they feel they have more control.” “You’ll appreciate it in the winter when you will be able to downshift.” I did feel encouraged on the second day of our lessons when she said, “When will I be able to shift gracefully?”

After a couple of afternoons of driving around the back roads of our town it was clear that she had mastered the basics. Since my step-daughter was living in Northampton and going to school and working at UMass, she was going to need to be able to drive through the center of Northampton and down Route 9— a street full of stoplights and traffic. Since our next step was to drive in traffic, we started at the university. Cara got in, started the car and pulled out of the parking lot and stopped at the first traffic light. When the light turned green, she stalled. And then she stalled again. And then she stalled again. “It’s okay,” I said, waving the honking cars around us. “You’re okay, keep trying.” Finally she got the car going and we came up to the next light and stopped. The light turned green and she stalled. And then she stalled again. And then she stalled again. Luckily we were near one of the university’s parking lot. “Pull into the lot,” I said as I again waved the honking cars around us. “I can’t do it,” she said. “You can,” I said. “You just need to practice.” We pulled into the lot and practiced stopping and starting in order to regain her confidence and then we went back onto the road.

I wish I could say everything went fine from then on. But it didn’t. She continued to stall at every light. “You’re thinking too much about what you’re doing,” I said and tried to distract her by turning on the radio and chatting about anything I could think of. “I can’t do this,” she said. “Everyone stalls,” I tried to reassure her. “You just need to practice. You just need to drive more.” But after I dropped her off and watched her drive away in my car, I was beginning to wonder if she was right. Maybe she couldn’t do this. What was the problem? She knew how to drive. She actually did know how to shift. She drove perfectly in the parking lot, and around the traffic-free roads of our small town. Why couldn’t she do it? What was wrong?

There was nothing wrong. Teaching Cara to drive a standard is a good reminder of what our writing students go through when faced with new rhetorical situations. Our students come into our first-year classrooms with years of writing experience. They have experience as writers. But like Cara’s experience behind the wheel, many of them have experienced writing specific kinds of things— particular forms of the essay, college application essays, reports, etc. When moving to a new unfamiliar writing situation, on the surface, our students’ writing appears to fall apart—their organization isn’t as focused and developed, their sentence structure falls apart, the word choice becomes a bit silted. It appears they have lost control over the skills they had previously mastered. They stall and they can’t seem to move forward. And, like Cara, they lose their confidence. And who doesn’t? Who doesn’t lose their confidence when faced with a situation they can’t immediately master?

Throughout the semester our students stall a great deal. Each unit presents a different writing situation that presents new challenges. Just as Cara had mastered shifting on our small town roads, and stop-and-go traffic presented a new challenge; each rhetorical situation presents a new complication for the students to work through. It is important to remember that they will work through these challenges. As teachers we need to give them the encouragement (remind them of what they are doing well) and the opportunity to keep writing. The more they write, the better they will get.

And we also need to get out of their way.

As we approached the deadline for when Cara would take possession of the standard shift car, I worried that she wasn’t ready. After our not-so-great day of driving around the university, Cara’s willingness for our driving lessons began to fade. “I’m not sure she’s ready,” I told her father. “She’ll only get better by driving,” my husband said. “She knows how to shift. She just has to do it.”

My husband was right. A few days after Cara took possession of the standard shift car she appeared in my office with a plastic bag. “I drove from Northampton to Wal-Mart and then here and I didn’t stall once,” she said. “I knew you could do it!” I said. “Here,” she said giving me the plastic bag. “I don’t want Dad’s junk in my car.” I happily took the bag from her.

She had done it. It seemed that once I had shown her the basics, she needed to practice without me sitting in the passenger seat reminding her to put the clutch in, to slow down, to downshift.

And our students will do it too. Sometimes the best thing for our students is to send them home to revise and then to revise again. We can show them compelling introductions and tell them about the importance of not using the passive voice, but until they are alone with the page making those rhetorical choices for themselves they won’t completely get it.

So as my students move from “Inquiring into Self” to “Interacting with Texts” I try to keep in mind all these things I learned this summer from Cara—we all lose confidence when confronted with something new and challenging, we all need encouragement, sometimes we learn best by consistently doing it, and sometimes we need our teachers to get out of our way.

And grace comes with experience.

The other day Cara stopped by our house for a visit. When she got ready to leave, her father and I walked her out to the driveway. We watched as she gracefully backed her standard transmission car around and drove away.

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