Textbook Reading Blog

My last blog, the i-search paper, was a great start to this weeks textbook readings.I agree that picking our own topics can definitely lead to just as much confusion as when we're constantly being told what to write. As Spandel states "We don't want to push our student's off a cliff."(19). However, she also illustrates how we must allow our students the freedom of choice; we just have to guide them in making the better one. Although many students wish to have a more creative and free approach to their writing, they may not have the immediate ability to make a transition between writing from a prompt or writing completely on their own. A blank page or blinking cursor can become as much of a hinderance to writing as a teacher who wishes that all work be in conformity with their own darkened (or enlightened) perceptions of reality.

In addition, students need the challenge of being able to study themselves and realize that somewhere, there is an appreciative audience willing to listen when that "self" is expressed. These concepts are key in the development of student writing because they need to believe that they have something interesting to say and that others would want to hear it. It just takes a little guidance and ambition (on behalf of the student and teacher) to get it heard. There have been many times when a teacher would prompt me, spur-of-the-moment, to write something I knew nothing about or that I could care less about. It would seem as if I had no voice at all. It is during these times that we have to summons our creativity and find our own voice. However, this is exactly what Spandel meant when she said that "when we suggest a topic that doesn't push the right button, student's may think 'If you find that so interesting, why don't you write about it?'" (25) Again I agree...as teachers, "Maybe we should." (26)I am an advocate of teachers sharing their writing with students--especially when the topic was not something the teacher wanted to write about either.

In WTL, Swoger makes the comment that in his class, "there were no assignments, no tests, no homework, nothing that the students had to see my way." (53) I think that what he was able to do with Scott was nothing short of a miracle. Even other teachers had remarked on Scott's progress as an effective writer and communicator, when they had already possessed the preconceived notion that "there is no cure for disability; the kids just learns to live with it." (53). Scott was able to read and write so much better through the process of writing. Once allowed to formulate his own ideas, he opened his own mind and acquired the freedom to choose his own topics and work at mastering the communication process.

So far, this class has taught me a valuable lesson; one which I had already believed, but had not quite contemplated to this extent: My belief in the freedom of writing and the mastery of skill through process is without a doubt, the only way to effectively teach writing. All my years of schooling and writing for the teacher had given me doubt as to my own personal teaching methods and desire to include freedom as part of the process. After all, why would I teach differently if I was always taught that my teachers' opinions were the only right ones? I had always felt that I had a better idea, (although maybe not worked out in the minute detail necessary for teaching) and that it would somehow prevent me from effectively teaching writing and literature. My ideas were too "abstract", as I've been told, and that there are set systems, which have been taught for years by the more experienced educators that would surely expose my methods of teaching as dramatic and "far-fetched" for an 8th grade classroom (or any classroom for that matter). In other words, I would fail--especially if my ideas were too outlandish for the mainstream. We were bound by the laws of the old school, and they would not consider revision.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm grateful for having learned that my "differences" are not quite so different.