A few thoughts on our readings...

Foreword: I am suffering from an acute headache and therefore can only hope that my ideas make sense.

Readings: "Proceess Pegagogy" by Lad Tobin in A Guide to Composition Pedagogies & "The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution in the Teaching of Writing" by Maxine Hairston in the journal Teaching Writing

Process is what we all do as writers, whether we know if or not. We may have been taught in the traditional, writing our thesis, outlining before writing, creating “perfection”; but these requirements did not stop us from prewriting, drafting, brainstorming further, drafting more, revising phrases or thoughts, redrafting, revising those thoughts, etc. We (as students) knew that if we hit stages for the teacher we would get the points (some would agree this still happens in process classrooms), but how the paper progressed didn’t necessarily adhere to these stages alone.

Today process is the accepted method, some might even say preferred, for teaching writing. Educators are more aware of the importance of looking at process and guiding students explicitly through the process. However, process may still be viewed as too fluffy (focusing on process rather than context or social issues as Tobin’s article pointed out). Teachers are always looking at what the best method is for teaching students. As a teacher today, process seems to be the ideal way to help students evolve as writers and become participants in academia, but teachers can’t forget that also we are preparing students to enter the workforce and be participants in their community, in the world. Furthermore, teachers want students to become lifelong learners (seeing the wonders in broadening one’s knowledge base and the success a broader knowledge can bring).

In my opinion, the ‘best’ method may be a combination of pedagogies. Like Tobin, trying ideas and being unsuccessful (or sometimes achieving success), reading scholarly literature, and talking to other teachers has caused me to rethink and revise my teaching methods in some way every year that I’ve taught. I am constantly trying to figure out how to best give my students the tools they need to be successful in school and beyond. Because being a ‘good’ writer is important for communicating ideas and getting the job after school and being a ‘good’ writer is important for the stellar grades each student vies for, teaching writing becomes more than taking students through the writing process, in some regards. Therefore, process pedagogy, because it is holistic in how it views writing, may be a great foundation for preparing students for prospects after school. But other aspects within the writing class may need the values of another pedagogy to supplement and supply some structure.