ERIC and NCTE combined, in 1983, to produce a small, fifty-page booklet giving English teachers the no-nonsense lowdown on the use of computers for instruction.Its name was straightforward, Computers in the English Classroom , and its advice was traditional.After mentioning various drill and practice and record-keeping possibilities, the document informed us, with time-honored NCTE gentleness, that "the value of the computer lies in the fact that it provides one more tool for the teacher to use."It then made what seems to me a manifesto of sorts."[The computer] frees the teacher from certain mundane chores so that instructional time is better utilized."Isn't this the way most of us have always thought about computers, as mechanical servants which can take over "certain mundane chores" so that we can get to the higher-level stuff?When you think about it, the idea is not all that comforting.It lies at the heart of the scary theory that computers intended to replicate low-level skills may someday co-opt skills considerably above the "mundane-chores" category so that the servant becomes the master or, at the very least, the master finds himself tailoring and limiting his activities for the convenience of the servant.The concept of a "servant-master" relationship between computer and human being suggests an anthropomorphic view of computers which, I think, channels our attitudes and severely limits our options in using computers.What I call the "Replacement Fallacy," the belief that computers are most successful when they are most human, hems us in between

Chaos reigns.Or does it?When uninitiated visitors walk into our Apple Lab (which is a part of our Writing Lab) at Hazelwood West High, their first impression often is "How do you work when there is so much noise going on?"But when the fifteen printers stop, visitors are even more amazed by the quiet diligence and concentration of the students who are working at the computers.Our Apple He Lab often accommodates twenty to twenty-five students and teachers, all or most of whom will be working on very different kinds of writing activities.For example, a typical class hour might include a home economics teacher composing a newsletter to parents on the Newsroom program, five to ten students typing various parts of research papers on Applewriter, a student or two making a cover sheet for a paper on Print Shop , three to five journalism students composing stories for the school newspaper, a student using the Sensible Speller to check a paper for misspelled words or to count the number of words in a contest paper, a student writing a paper for a political science class, a teacher assistant making a crossword puzzle on Crossword Magic for a vocabulary lesson, and the Writing Lab assistant updating Lab records on PFS : File .And while all these people are working, if no one is having problems, I may sit down at a computer myself to work on a grant proposal or to write an article. Getting StartedWe did not set out to have a computer lab.

In a recent article Peter Elbow posits that good teaching affirms and practices "two conflicting obligations in the job: we have an obligation to students but we also have an obligation to knowledge and society."1 Elbow characterizes the stances in this conflict as "paternal" and "maternal" versions of teaching. Paternal teaching, good for students in the long run, represents "standards and firmness" on behalf of society and knowledge, while maternal teaching, good for knowledge and society in the long run, avows nurture and support of the student (E, 329-330). Elbow suggests that in order to resolve this conflict and to help students, instructors must move back and forth to "function as ally or coach" preparing students for the rigors of achieving "deep knowledge and skills" while "role play[ing] the enemy in a supportive setting" (E, 336, 337). Such an alternation of stances is both nurturing and critical, creating a teaching environment where the student can flourish creatively and critically.

I can't do anything I want, if I can't write English. " Margarita's desire to improve lights her eyes and makes her soft Ecuadorian accent tremble with emphasis. This strong motivation, possessed by almost all the ESL students at George Mason, will help her achieve relative fluency in writing in a remarkably short time. But, like many of the other 100 of these students who visit George Mason's Writing Place each semester, Margarita is hindered by an impatience to move more quickly than she can through her composition courses. Above average, sometimes brilliant, students in their native countries, they discover that their writing of English -which they may have studied for years in school -keeps them from passing introductory courses. For the Writing Place staff, the task is as much to put this ' 'failure" in the perspective of reasonable expectations as it is to discover strategies for improving the writing. Of course, reasonable expectations vary with the individual, so that when a student declares, as Margarita will later in this session, "I must pass English 101 this semester," I try to learn as much as I can about his or he/ academic goals, as well as about course standing, before either encouraging or trying to mitigate the sense of urgency. Occasionally, a student is under a constraint -a government scholarship for two years of study in the United States, for example-which compels rapid advancement; in these cases, the staff member carefully maps out, with the student's teacher, a program of extra work in the Writing Place to help the student complete the course as efficiently as possible. The reason for Margarita's urgency is the more common: she feels that she must quickly prove her ability to succeed in the American university, and her difficulty in English 101 has given rise to self-doubt. For Margarita, her doubts as an ESL student are compounded by those she feels as a woman in her forties returning to college after a long absence.