Number Nine

I'll probably never try to teach writing to prisoners. That said, I have heard from former prisoners that reading, writing, and religion are extremely common ways to reach out to prisoners and help them cope with the situation they find themselves in as well as their past. It's interesting that the author explores the way both the prisoners and non-prisoners resist the writing and also put down the idea of prison writing, with a "what good will it do" attitude. I'm sure Julie enjoyed this piece, it had Moffett quotes throughout. What I found most enjoyable is some of the techniques that we talk about using with students, such as freedom of topic, is just as applicable to prisoners.

I like what Smith had to say, though this was another one of his chapters where I felt he ways just reiterating a lot of bits of common sense. "Writing is learned by writing, by reading, and by perceiving ones self as a writer." (217) Well of course. He makes many similar comments in his opening, saying things like "teachers are influential" and "writing is fostered rather than taught." More valuable information comes out as the piece continues. Smtih boldly stated "I have never seen a testing or evaluation instrument that would help students learn to write or teachers to teach writing." (224) I enjoyed that he actually wrote that into the chapter. He then tears apart the notion of teaching for the sake of evaluation. And then he tears apart the institution that is the school system. I was loving it. Another great statement was "schools are not primarily concerned with learning." (226) Smith calls it like it is, I'll give him that, so even though I cynically might say he writes common sense notions out on paper, there are moments when you need to be reminded of such things, even if it's just to reaffirm what you know. Smith tries to end positively though with a list of what educators can do to make teaching effective dispite the flaws in the system.

Again, I found 9R a hard read, only because Spandel rubs me the wrong way. I really loath the way she uses the word "publish". We have talked several times in class about the way curriculum and assessment can get in the way of teaching students to write. For Spandel to ask us to be intuitive and don't give feedback such as "you do not write well" is another duh moment. She does make the point "reviewers should be able to put personal preferences aside," (100) which is likely the hardest of her recommendations. We know what we like, and to deny that is hard. Spandel just refers to types of bias, another thing to file into duh category, but if you open it up to matters of what we feel is "good", then we may often find ourselves struggling in our evaluations. For example, the assessor that prefers modern poetics to romantic styling may be much more harsh on a student that adopts romantic devices and makes mistakes than they would of a student who uses modern devices and makes mistakes. Is that wrong? It's hard to say, because when you serve as the authority on something such as poetry writing, you should be able to explain yourself for making the choices you did in the scenario mentioned.