Week 2's Readings-- some of it anyhow

My responses to the readings for this week were, again, varied. The James Britton article, “Spectator Role and the Beginnings of Writing”, was virtual nonsense to me until we discussed it in class. Maybe it is due to the fact that I just spent three years reading, writing, teaching and grading at a 9^th grade level, but I came to grad school with the belief that reading and writing were simply forms of communication and connection. Every discussion I have, both as a grad student and teacher, is showing me that I know nothing.

Emig’s article, “Writing as a Mode of Learning”, was half confusion and half good, common sense. Towards the end of the article, she discusses several points about learning to write that make a lot of sense to me, namely that you have to write at your own pace and that writing is slower than talking, and therefore, allows the learner more time to grasp a concept.

The Elbow article was pretty much the redeeming one for the week, or at least it was the only one that I enjoyed in its entirety. As a cook, a gardener and an English teacher, I found the analogies for the writing process entertaining and beneficial. It also stressed the method of writing until the ideas run out, even if it’s crap, and then revising the information into a written work of art. Trashing one’s written words is hard, even for me, but a necessary part of a successful writing habit (in my humble opinion).

Comp Tales - A Lamenting Review

Comp Tales leaves me with very mixed feelings, so far. On one hand, I enjoy reading about the experiences of other teachers. It makes me want to write down some of my favorite, or craziest, experiences as a high school teacher and get them published and out into the world to be seen and understood my the fellows of my profession.

On the other hand, the chapters that we have encountered read very much like the end-of-article anecdotes in Reader’s Digest Magazine, only many of them (especially in Chapter 6 about students) aren’t even uplifting or humorous. I keep getting halfway through a comp tale, when I find myself anticipating the ‘punchline’, so to speak; the moment when the light bulb when on for that teacher or the moment of glory for the student. Many of the tales have comments by the teacher that lived the tale, explaining when and why they tell this story to new teacher and/or TAs, but I seem to be missing their point. Maybe the future chapters will affect me differently, but the ones read so far leave me feeling discouraged with the teaching world and not inspired to go out and become a teacher.

My last viewpoint on this book is that maybe it is attempting to give a more realistic, nitty-gritty look at the world of teaching, so the new TAs, teachers and profs do not go into their classrooms disillusioned by their idealistic hopes and plans for their students.

All in all, I finished reading the four assigned chapters feeling discouraged by Haswell and Lu’s collection of stories. In my three years’ experience teaching high school to inner city teens, I have learned that not every child succeeds (at least not in the time that I am acquainted with them). Yet, I have also seen some of the most ‘hopeless’ of kids reach goals beyond their imaginations.

I guess I need to hang onto my idyllic teaching mentality in order to go into an often otherwise unthankful job. I will try not to lose my grain of salt, the one that would lead me to despair with every student failure, but I need to read these Comp Tales believing that every student CAN make and reach goals.

First Post

I am just writing this to establish my blog. I plan to use this space to write academic reflections, first for my ENG 620 class....but who knows where it'll go from there!