Fossilization and Growth

The best aspect of graduate school and multiple readings is the forced reflection process you undergo as you read through a series of methods, strategies and experiences in your field. Oddly, I found that while reading about the inner world of the immigrant child, I had to stop several times to think through the ideas which I was immediately connecting to in the text. The following paragraph was particularly meaningful for me...and the reason I am writing. "Our challenge as teachers is to know how to reach these children, to teach them, to know what to do when they reveal--or cannot express--themselves to us. But with every challenge successfully undertaken, I believe we contribute to the world. Teaching, then, becomes purposeful."(Cristina Igoa 3 1995).

I have been deeply fortunate in the past few years to work with a student population that I can reach - often finding myself in a position of advocacy as a writing instructor and writing advisor trying to provide a place of refuge and understanding. Being in the same place for five years has helped me to see the growth of my students. The ones who spoke haltingly in writing advising sessions now stop to talk to me in the hallway or on campus to share how their classes are going. I still receive emails from former students around the world and I have written countless recommendations, reviewed statement of purposes and worked as a liason to students who are now confidently pursuing their undergraduate or graduate education. In their growth and maturity, I have found my own.

Like my students, I have been in the position where I have had to struggle to reveal myself and work from a position of vulnerability and confusion. Also, like my students, I have come again and again to moments when I cannot express myself. In language acquisition there is a term known as "fossilization" which refers to when a student's language ability is static - a student may continue to make progress in certain areas, and yet return again and again to the same error. Thus, for example, we find advanced students who communicate with great skill and who make very few errors, but still do not master a certain aspect of knowledge. In my own life, I have fragments and pieces of myself that have fossilized.