Something that I tell my students over and over is that the point of school is not to succeed at the next level of school.

We go to school–and we work hard there–because what we learn in school enhances our lives.

It’s a sentiment that is so self-evident that it almost feels redundant to say out loud.

That a better-understood, more passionate, more alert, ultimately greater life is the purpose of school is at the core of my teaching philosophy. But teaching freshman-level composition at ODU, as I do now, this often leaves me at an uncomfortable crossroads:

Do I teach my students what they need to know to succeed over the next few years, things like citations, how to craft an academic argument, and how to write the long, clause-filled, lofty reference-littered sentences that are sure to earn them A’s?

Or do I teach my students what they need to know to succeed in life, things like how to write a letter to an insurance company, or how to write a not-totally-schmaltzy love letter, or how to write a just-saying-hello email to a professional contact that might be of some service down the line?

It is rare that an opportunity comes along that satisfies both sides of the pedagogy. So rare, in fact, that I would like to celebrate one such example here.

My particular section of English 111 was assigned to room 102 in William B. Spong Jr. Hall. From the outside, SPONG (as it is affectionately called by the registrar) is actually a fairly nice building. It has an institutional feel (in a good way), with stately red bricks, great old trees casting shadows on the lawn, and an attractive vestibule with a pitched roof and columns.

A student looking out the window of SPONG 102 (jokes) (Photo | nswcnna.blogspot.com)

When I first saw the building I thought, Oh, cool, this feels like college.

But when I first saw room 102 I thought, Oh, damn, Senator Spong might very well be buried somewhere in this room.

The room was a mess. The paint on the walls was chipped. There were piles of junk in one of the corners, and in the opposite corner was the room’s only “technology,” a mangy looking projector that looked like it may have been salvaged from an ancient submarine. Streaks of brown residue of an unknown providence stained the back wall, almost as if the room was crying for itself. A fair portion of the ceiling was occupied by two giant, rusty, onerous–we assumed–heating/cooling devices that looked perilously fixed to the ceiling. When I flicked a switch on the wall I swear that those machines bleated, like lambs not ignorant of the slaughter to which they’re being led.

The students hated it. They hated it so much that–full disclosure to my part in this–I even one day gave them the assignment of writing a horror story that took place in SPONG 102.

We complained among ourselves for the first few weeks of class. It was good for us, in a way. It helped to bond us as a group. Then one day, just as we were getting into the argumentative essay unit, one of the students asked me, “If you asked them to change our room, you think they would?”

“They might,” I said. “But I bet it would be even more effective if you asked them.”

And with that a class assignment–a class cause, if you will–was born: To write a letter to the ODU administration so compelling that they couldn’t help but give us a better room.

Senator Spong was watching over us. (Photo | U.S. Senate Historical Office)

It was a truly fun couple of classes. We brainstormed our best arguments. We broke up into groups and tweaked them. We researched. We workshopped. We revised. In other words, we modeled the entire writing process, from start to finish.

By the end of that second class, I have to admit, our letter was pretty damn stellar. If I can brag in a bit of detail about my students, in the letter they cited an academic paper called “Learning Environments for Information Literacy” by an educational psychologist. They used fantastic sensory language in describing the room (Yellow fluorescent lights make an attempt to brighten the classroom, but fail as they are only enhancing the faded and stained yellow walls.) They brought in some numbers, talking about how much they each pay for the course. Heck, they even started it off with a quote from Emerson.

At 11:06pm, one of the students emailed it to some key members of the administration, with the rest of us CC’ed.

By 8:36am the next day, our classroom had been reassigned.

We didn’t get a room in BAL, as we had hoped, but we did get the Education building, which was almost as good.

Even better than the new classroom, though, was the lesson: Writing does matter.

We learned that what we’re doing in school can lead to a better life, at least in some small, yet meaningful, way.