Find your Muse

Three of the four essays seemed to have similar purpose and scope while the fourth by Charles Suhor just did not seem to fit. This is not to say that I found the article to be overall useless. In fact, his point about art, literature, and music being interrelated did hit home. I have taken several art classes in the past few semesters and feel that this has greatly impacted my appreciation for all of the arts. I am not sure how he progressed from that idea into structured silence in the classroom. I felt like he should have separated these ideas into two articles.

As for the others, the obvious connection was the importance of inspiration in writing. From this stand point I guess I see now where Suhor's article fits. He talks about being inspired as much by Charlie Parker as he was by Shakespeare. I can imagine that one of the most frustrating aspects of teaching writing is to find a topic that will inspire thirty kids. Rex, Graves and Murray all offer different techniques to combat this problem. Graves' article sounded like a review of last week's readings when we talked about getting all thoughts on paper, no matter how sloppy. I think his quote from page 116 "when rules are foremost in our minds, then our primary concern is the fear of making a mistake" best sums up the entire concept.

Sometimes I implement the word-dump technique myself, but I have always wondered how an instructor would manage to get students to refine this into a finished product. I was surprised when I realized that Rex's article offers one way of solving this problem. She also reinforced some of the readings from last week when she explained how she used one of her own experiences as a class room example. More subtly, she pointed out the importance of setting the right mood for the exercise. Rex says that she used in class writing to create an emotional and retrospective environment. That way, the class was ready to listen and share personal experiences. I think that this concept, though mentioned somewhat briefly in the article, should not be overlooked in execution. Imagine the different reaction students might have had to Linda's sharing if they were not emotionally prepared.

I have never understood why reading and writing is so often separated in curriculum. Even in college literature classes, required writing is usually an essay or responses to the text. Teachers rarely (in my experience) have students write their own version of the assigned text. For example, I can remember having to reread "Shooting an Elephant" several times before connecting to the level of personal reflection that is present. Rex's idea of having students write their own personal essay is possibly the best way to get students to understand the difficulty and importance of such writing. In a fiction class students should be taught to write fiction, etc. I think assignments like these connects the reader to the writer, like Murray was trying to explain in his essay.

Finally, one statement made by Rex ruffled my feathers a bit. She seemed surprised by the revelation that students prefer to consider themselves in a process of maturation rather than in a state of knowledge deficiency. This sounds like a no-brainer to me. Of course students in any age group would be insulted if the instructors takes the position that she is filling in all of the information they do not know. If I had to sit and listen about all of my inadequacies, I would eventually tune out the teacher. All knowledge is built upon other knowledge and students should always feel as though they are expanding upon what they have already mastered.

By the way, if anyone is interested in Jazz, Clint Eastwood directed Bird; an excellent movie starring Forest Whitaker as Charlie Parker.