...and patience. Freshmyn English and College Composition.
I admit, I was spoiled with my students in Kentucky. They came to me with voice, quirky personalities, opinions, and a willingness to be creative. I took it for granted. I thought all schools were like mine and that kids would be prepared to write in college. I was wrong.
Last year, I began assigning a piece of writing inspired by Alex Schulz, class of 2005, who once said to me, "Wouldn't it be cool if you assigned us all to write on the same word to see what we would write?" I wasn't sold on the idea, but in 2007 I thought it would be cool to assign kids a task of deconstructing one word for its denotation and its connotations. I wanted to know what 'the word' meant to the world, but also to the stories in their lives. Since then, I've had students write several variations of this task, but this year, I'm following Jason Courtmanche's writing technique of having kids fold-in layers to a longer piece of writing. They begin with personal writing on a word and what it means to their world. From there, we read literature in many forms and they begin to explore whether or not their word has meaning in the text we read. This has turned into research papers where they explore the meaning of a word and its relation to literature.
With the first drafts of the research part I grew nervous. Yet, through conferencing with students, I'm starting to see that they get it and it is a process. They truly are growing and moving arguments in some interesting ways. For instance, I have one student exploring what it means to have heart and another working on how sleep and rest, in relation to death, makes meaning for characters. Another students is looking at culture and one is interrogating athleticism. What has been neat is to see how they've applied the research, the word, and personal story to make meaning of poetry, short stories and novels. Perhaps this is unique to our small community at Fairfield, but I'm growing pleased with the progress I'm seeing - especially the intellectual lightbulbs and zest for writing that the assignment has created. They have choice. They have originality. And slowly, they are getting the voice that I hoped they would have when they arrived. Too many have bought into generic writing to please a teacher and have no quirkiness in their own styles This is coming...one student at a time.
I admit, I was spoiled with my students in Kentucky. They came to me with voice, quirky personalities, opinions, and a willingness to be creative. I took it for granted. I thought all schools were like mine and that kids would be prepared to write in college. I was wrong.
Last year, I began assigning a piece of writing inspired by Alex Schulz, class of 2005, who once said to me, "Wouldn't it be cool if you assigned us all to write on the same word to see what we would write?" I wasn't sold on the idea, but in 2007 I thought it would be cool to assign kids a task of deconstructing one word for its denotation and its connotations. I wanted to know what 'the word' meant to the world, but also to the stories in their lives. Since then, I've had students write several variations of this task, but this year, I'm following Jason Courtmanche's writing technique of having kids fold-in layers to a longer piece of writing. They begin with personal writing on a word and what it means to their world. From there, we read literature in many forms and they begin to explore whether or not their word has meaning in the text we read. This has turned into research papers where they explore the meaning of a word and its relation to literature.
With the first drafts of the research part I grew nervous. Yet, through conferencing with students, I'm starting to see that they get it and it is a process. They truly are growing and moving arguments in some interesting ways. For instance, I have one student exploring what it means to have heart and another working on how sleep and rest, in relation to death, makes meaning for characters. Another students is looking at culture and one is interrogating athleticism. What has been neat is to see how they've applied the research, the word, and personal story to make meaning of poetry, short stories and novels. Perhaps this is unique to our small community at Fairfield, but I'm growing pleased with the progress I'm seeing - especially the intellectual lightbulbs and zest for writing that the assignment has created. They have choice. They have originality. And slowly, they are getting the voice that I hoped they would have when they arrived. Too many have bought into generic writing to please a teacher and have no quirkiness in their own styles This is coming...one student at a time.
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