The real me

Well I have to say that I learned something about myself from these readings. I learned that I am an Expressivist at heart. I completely agree that writing is all about reflection and self-discovery. Easy to say, but hard to teach! In fact, I'm finding it REALLY HARD to teach!

I was introduced to Peter Elbow's work last summer when I participated in the Capitol Area Summer Writing Project. I've used lots of his ideas in the classroom for some time - but I didn't realize that it was his work. This year I made a conscious effort to introduce my reading students to Elbow's notion of freewriting. What I've found is that it's not so easy to get buy-in. For example, one of my goals for the reading remediation classes I teach is to get kids to LIKE to read. So, for the first 15 minutes of class, they just get to read. They can read anything they want (appropriate for school of course!) - and, here's where the conscious effort to freewriting comes into play - after those 15 minutes, they write about what they've read for 10 minutes non-stop. My success rates vary greatly.

I find that prompts help. And the more specific the prompt, the better. I expected a prompt like "Reflect on what you just read" would give students the license to write, write, write. But what I found is that the vagueness of it doesn't give my students enough direction [It is notable that many of my students are most successful when given step-by-step instructions for any task]. So I've tried giving more directed prompts like "Make a text-to-self connection between what you read today and something that actually happened in your own life." When I do this, students are able to write more. Often they finish well before 10 minutes elapse. I haven't yet found the right words to get them to continue on. I want them to be able to pull a thread out of something they wrote and expand on it or take it in another direction. I haven't been able to make that happen.

BUT I have a new idea! I'm going to model freewriting. Although it sounds like a no-brainer, I haven't done that. The idea came to me after we had a fabulous class discussion that started out when a student read her "read and reflect" that she had just written. She wrote about a mom whose son just committed murder and she hid his guns when the police came to their apartment. The question"What would you do if you were a parent?" sparked lively conversation and debate. Then another student talked about the Tookie Williams biography he was reading. (Tookie Williams is the founder of the Crips [an LA based gang] who died in prison where he was serving a life sentence for murder). This launched a great discussion about prisons and humane treatment of prisoners. As we're having this conversation, I'm animatedly telling my students that "This is what I want you to do in your freewrites!...This is IT!" And what they told me was that it's so much EASIER to TELL it than it is to write it. That got me thinking...and I realized that they needed to see how a conversation in one's head can easily be put on paper. It also made me realize how critical the social end of writing is. And haven't the Expressivists known that all along?