week one: process and possibility

I started this week's readings with Within and Beyond the Writing Process in the Secondary English Classroom--it was hard to get through. While I found the information valuable and relevant, the narrative itself is sometimes dry and redundant. Most of all, I thought that Chapter 3: Teaching Writing as a Process, could have been a whole book in itself, there was so much information. Some things I did take away from the reading as a whole were that:

• writing is thinking, and begins with meaning making
• we learn to write by writing
• writing is a socially constructed process
• writing needs to be motivated from within, tapping into personal feelings, needs, experiences
• the process of writing is important, and never complete

But then I picked up Tom Romano's Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers, and my discouragement disappeared. This book is inspiring. Right away I connected with the idea of multigenre papers on a personal level--I realized that they're something to which I'm naturally inclined (I wrote something similar in a creative nonfiction class in college)--but also as an educator, because of the wealth of possibility this format affords to students. I loved reading the various examples multigenre writing, understanding that it can be both creative and informative.

What Romano says about working with the narrative, rather than just the expository, side of life, is important. Students need to know how to craft story--"story" in its broadest sense--as much as they need to learn how to conduct research in a library. Maybe more. Thinking of differentiation, I can see how this kind of writing allows students to tap into their own styles of learning and work at their best levels. It's freeing and exhilarating. Why not incorporate art? Music? I know that I myself connect most to any subject when it's made personal, which is the point of this style of writing (and the powerful Whitman line). Of course very specific thinking on the part of the teacher is necessary in guiding and evaluating these projects--what understandings do the students need to demonstrate, etc. But this is so much more appealing to me than the 5-paragraph essay.

I wonder how important the idea of choice is here. For example, I'll be teaching Frankenstein during student teaching, and like the idea of incorporating multigenre writing into my unit--but is it real multigenre writing if it's still a literary criticism paper on a specific, teacher-chosen text? Can authentic multigenre writing only be accomplished within a separate unit, where students have complete autonomy, or could I use Frankenstein as a framework and let students go from there? I'm looking forward to reading more and seeing if the second-half of the text helps me answer this question.

LINK

www.twc.org
The Teachers & Writers Collaborative "promotes and provides literary arts education by supporting writers and teachers in developing and implementing strategies to enhance students' interest in and love of literature and writing." The resources tab has techniques, discussions, a newsletter, and other links--all very helpful for teachers of writing.