Steve Parks: An Appreciation

Abstract

A few years ago I heard Jim Slevin give an impassioned talk at a Writing Program Administrators summer conference about the general state of composition/rhetoric as a field and the job of directing a writing rogram specifically. He made a point in that talk I found invaluable. He said that, beyond all our advances in theory and research and our high cultivation of administrative arts, we should never forget that in the 60’s & 70’s compositionists were also hell-raisers, rebels, and overworked laborers questioning their lot. He warned us not to forget these roots as we hobnob with deans and provosts, school superintendents and foundation program officers. Effective writing instruction requires empirical research and emotional empathy with those who most struggle to navigate the social and linguistic conventions of written language. Teachers are complicit with a system that can stand against many of our students, but to do our jobs well we must constantly find ways to challenge the oppressive aspects of that system.