"...the writing classroom should be a workshop in which [the students] are encouraged through the supportive response of teachers and peers to use writing as a way to figure out what they think and feel and eventually 'publish' their work to be read and celebrated by the community of writers they have become" (Tobin 7).
"Process pedagogy has become so regimented that it has turned into the kind of rules-driven product that it originally critiqued" (Tobin 10).
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This is scary.
What? Blogging? Nah. I love to type, and I've always felt rather confident in my ability to articulate myself in writing. I'd even go so far as to say I'm better on paper than I am verbally. In this place, an environment void of social neediness (well...is that true?), or at least, an environment where those social needs can be tended to with slow, methodical measures (the time I spend editing my writing to make it sound absolutely as I wish), I am at my best.
What's scary is writing academically publicly. If we perceive this blog space to be a little bit more important than a thoughtful journal, the fear creeps in and undercuts what I want to say. Instead of focusing on the kindly peers I want to know are out there, rendezvousing with my thoughts thanks to cyberspace; I imagine instead critics, doubters, and individuals for whom skepticism is often the easiest action--the easiest, and often, the one we are trained to consult with most often.
And I get that: I get that we need to be informed readers who do not take at face value everything that smacks us upside the eyeball. My students and I have already begun talking about angle of vision and how discerning what authors leave out can be as illuminating or important as deciphering what they leave in (what happens to this post if we practice that skill?).
But there's always the fear of creative deviance, the thoughts that sound much like these: Maybe I didn't do what the teacher wanted. I didn't really synthesize my sources very well. I failed to cite a significant passage, and if I did, I've perhaps unfairly juxtaposed two portions of text, and only as an epigraph to my post. I've left this whole business in the realm of the implicit point.
But, oh, what wouldn't we all give for a little fun?
Even in the process-based college classroom, there seems to be no time for experimenting with form, or audience, or word choice or any other rhetorical option. Even our freewrites are meant to funnel eventually into the work of writing a paper. Yeah, right, freewrite.
We need to learn how to play with words. It is in our very nature to do so, but our educational system runs counter to our inclinations. (Thanks, standardized testing.) In our obsession to calculate and quantify how we keep up with the world-wide Joneses, we've shot creativity in the foot.
---
Okay.
I know I haven't really said anything too profound (it's Sunday evening and I'm working with 5 hours of sleep--forgive me). I'm interpreting our blog as a place to play, as a place to try without too much pressure.
Here's to fun, and to thinking. *clink*
31 August 2008
Teaching Writing Philosophy...What Teaching Writing Philosophy?
When I first started writing my response to Tobin I was critical of his bias toward expressive pedagogy and his equating of expressive pedagogy and process pedagogy. However, this approach did not really evaluate my own teaching writing approach, and I fully intend to use this class to try and develop a teaching writing philosophy that will actually work for students. I am not sure this is going to really be a response to Tobin as much as it is going to be a reflection on where I am with teaching writing. So...
Like Tobin I have had a hard time focusing on a particular writing theory or even practice in my teaching. I have never been one to stand and lecture about writing or teach lessons on how to write the perfect paragraph. However, I also have never had a coherent approach to teaching writing that I believe actually improved student writing. This is hard to admit since I have been teaching for 8 years and should be an expert by this time. :)
I have asked students in the past to write in their journals every day, but I have found too many students who do not take it seriously. I know...I'm probably not doing it right because I haven't been able to get them to buy into it. That is just it, how do I get them to buy into it? I envy those teachers who are able to get their students to faithfully write every day and then those students become Freedom Writers or accomplish some other great writing feat.
I have also used paper conferencing, peer editing, and several other gimmicks that seem to work for some students but not for the majority of students.
One approach that has worked for my advanced students is group paper conferencing. With this approach, students hear how I critique a paper and they learn how to critique each others' papers. But, this approach is only practical with a small group of students and those students have to be somewhat confident in their writing or they will be devastated when someone criticizes their paper.
This year I am trying a new approach for my low skill writers and average writers. With this writing process students are given four to six writing skills that the paper is going to be graded on and that they must focus on while writing the paper. Though I have only used this approach for a week or so, I have already heard some interesting comments from my students. The final step of the writing process is to annotate their own paper telling me how they did with the skills in their paper. To achieve the best score they must be able to show that they understand a particular skill and know how to use it effectively. During this final process several of my students raised their hands and asked if they could correct the mistakes they found in their papers. I, of course, said yes. In fact, I'm not sure they believed me because I had to repeat it at least once in every class.
All of these approaches, I think, are a part of the process pedagogy, but I admit that it definitely seems like a hodge-podge. I know they do not all fit into the expressive branch of process pedagogy, yet even Tobin says that he is uncomfortable with some aspects of the expressive approach even though he still believes it is the best.
Like Tobin I have had a hard time focusing on a particular writing theory or even practice in my teaching. I have never been one to stand and lecture about writing or teach lessons on how to write the perfect paragraph. However, I also have never had a coherent approach to teaching writing that I believe actually improved student writing. This is hard to admit since I have been teaching for 8 years and should be an expert by this time. :)
I have asked students in the past to write in their journals every day, but I have found too many students who do not take it seriously. I know...I'm probably not doing it right because I haven't been able to get them to buy into it. That is just it, how do I get them to buy into it? I envy those teachers who are able to get their students to faithfully write every day and then those students become Freedom Writers or accomplish some other great writing feat.
I have also used paper conferencing, peer editing, and several other gimmicks that seem to work for some students but not for the majority of students.
One approach that has worked for my advanced students is group paper conferencing. With this approach, students hear how I critique a paper and they learn how to critique each others' papers. But, this approach is only practical with a small group of students and those students have to be somewhat confident in their writing or they will be devastated when someone criticizes their paper.
This year I am trying a new approach for my low skill writers and average writers. With this writing process students are given four to six writing skills that the paper is going to be graded on and that they must focus on while writing the paper. Though I have only used this approach for a week or so, I have already heard some interesting comments from my students. The final step of the writing process is to annotate their own paper telling me how they did with the skills in their paper. To achieve the best score they must be able to show that they understand a particular skill and know how to use it effectively. During this final process several of my students raised their hands and asked if they could correct the mistakes they found in their papers. I, of course, said yes. In fact, I'm not sure they believed me because I had to repeat it at least once in every class.
All of these approaches, I think, are a part of the process pedagogy, but I admit that it definitely seems like a hodge-podge. I know they do not all fit into the expressive branch of process pedagogy, yet even Tobin says that he is uncomfortable with some aspects of the expressive approach even though he still believes it is the best.
28 August 2008
Vent: We'll Call this One a Freewrite on Process Pedagogy
I was home earlier today, and I read the article about Process Pedagogy in our text--I'm blanking on the author's name; the book is at home in Plainfield--and he had me SO EXCITED about teaching students the process way, the way that W131 at IUPUI is set up to be taught. And I was SO EXCITED to go to class and teach my students how to do a freewrite, and how to talk about it afterward.
And then, reality. Why are students so suspicious of being allowed to write freely and to doubt what comes out? And why are they interested in tying up their belief systems so quickly, and so tritely, with nary a thought otherwise?
I love the idea of process pedagogy, but I don't know how quickly I can get my students to believe in it. It almost feels like they don't think I'm for real, like this is a bunch of bunk I'm trying to get them to believe, and they're sitting there thinking, "She's nuts. She's just a grad student so...we don't trust her."
I just needed to get that off my chest. My first group today made me so mad today by reading only the first seven or so pages of the first chapter of _Hunger of Memory_, stopping when they got to small number 2 within the chapter, despite the fact that the chapter heading, Aria, remained for many pages to follow.
ARE YOU SERIOUS?
I'll have a more thoughtful post on process pedagogy later. I just had a bad day at the office and wanted to unload. Steve, don't tell Scott Weeden to fire me.
And then, reality. Why are students so suspicious of being allowed to write freely and to doubt what comes out? And why are they interested in tying up their belief systems so quickly, and so tritely, with nary a thought otherwise?
I love the idea of process pedagogy, but I don't know how quickly I can get my students to believe in it. It almost feels like they don't think I'm for real, like this is a bunch of bunk I'm trying to get them to believe, and they're sitting there thinking, "She's nuts. She's just a grad student so...we don't trust her."
I just needed to get that off my chest. My first group today made me so mad today by reading only the first seven or so pages of the first chapter of _Hunger of Memory_, stopping when they got to small number 2 within the chapter, despite the fact that the chapter heading, Aria, remained for many pages to follow.
ARE YOU SERIOUS?
I'll have a more thoughtful post on process pedagogy later. I just had a bad day at the office and wanted to unload. Steve, don't tell Scott Weeden to fire me.
Welcome to our blog!
Hi everyone,
I hope you are as excited about our blog as I am. I plan to write my first response here--not just post it, but write it--so that I create it with all of you in mind. I hope you will do the same.
Hope you don't mind the blog's name, etc--it was hard to make decisions for the masses, but necessity demanded I do so.
Can't wait to read everyone's stuff!
Jackie
I hope you are as excited about our blog as I am. I plan to write my first response here--not just post it, but write it--so that I create it with all of you in mind. I hope you will do the same.
Hope you don't mind the blog's name, etc--it was hard to make decisions for the masses, but necessity demanded I do so.
Can't wait to read everyone's stuff!
Jackie
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