An Experiment

Teaching involves speaking to the whole class and speaking to individual students as well as writing for the whole class (on the chalkboard, in the form of assignment sheets, etc.) and writing comments to individual students; hence, teaching is filled with rhetorical acts. I want to apply the concept of kairos to a teaching moment to see how I can make it more effective. I will choose the hypothetical yet realistic situation of a teacher writing comments on the first draft of a student’s paper, a draft that is struggling to even fit the assignment.

Is the rhetorical act appropriate? As I am deciding what to write, I must determine first of all who my audience is. What can I tell about this student based on her writing? Perhaps she seems overly concerned with grammar yet seems unable to recognize the main arguments of her paper and understand that they do not connect in a logical way. What do I know about this student based on my experience with her in class? Maybe I have seen in her a combination of willing participation with her peers and reluctance to respond to me as a teacher. These questions will influence the way I approach encouraging her to revise.

Does my rhetoric incite action that is possible? The student may be at a basic level in his writing capability, to the point where he would be understandably frustrated if I asked him questions like “How does this inclusion reflect the author’s ethos?” or suggested that he try to vary his sentence style by not always starting with the subject.

Are my comments and the specific act of commenting timely? Have I taken so long to comment on her draft that she will not have enough time to completely revise her draft before the final draft is due? Perhaps I have made comments on her paper that she will not understand because I have not yet covered certain concepts in class. Or maybe I have explained them in class, but she was absent for the last three class periods and has missed the discussion; hence, my rhetorical act is not timely for her.

Clearly the connection between kairos and teaching should be (and surely has been) explored much further, but even my little excursion has been helpful for me.