Yearn to Learn

Throughout this class we have asked questions about the teachings of writing, and can we teach students to become great writers? Smith on beginning pages of Chapter 12 touches on what I believed to be a universal belief… that writers do not write as a result of their lessons at school but rather from their “exposure” to writing through regularly reading and a knowledge and appreciation of writers and their craft. But then he pulls back the reins a little and says he warns that it is not a deliberate act, but more of one that occurs without us knowing it in a more subtle manner through our learning. And of course understanding learning is as equally mystifying as understanding how to write well. I identify with the learning of language of infants and vice versa, since I have a two and a four year old which are just discovering their way to use language effectively. They are incredibly creative at times in their approach to justify their actions, but also know how to act naive like they didn’t know something, when as adults we know otherwise. I agree with Smith that children learn language through its uses. It just makes more sense that kids would learn more effectively as they are doing something then be taught and then expected to apply the knowledge. Sometimes I think my writing over the past few years hasn’t been too overwhelming because I am so preoccupied reading children’s books and watching Nickelodeon and Playhouse Disney that I haven’t exposed or allowed myself to read for pleasure in quite sometime. I am not complaining or suggesting I would compromise my children’s development for my own creativity. I think I will pay even more attention to observing their inventiveness and try to learn from them as they attempt to find their way through language and life.

I inadvertently blogged about Spandel’s Chap.9 on voice last week, so please refer to blog 5 if you are seeking my astute insight on that chapter, which I doubt.

As usual, I enjoyed another lesson from the contributing writers of WTL. In the assigned chapter Tom Romano’s daughter writes a touching version of how she envisioned her grandparents arrival to the American through Ellis Island. His daughter, Mariana, may not have cared too much when she heard her family telling the stories of the immigration, but years later she was able to recount them while combining her effective, creative adaptations. It was so unexpected for the father to hear this special, intimate family tale through the written word of his daughter. This not just a lesson of the power of writing but also what can be produced when one combines memory and creativity.