Elbow, Chapter 1, "Freewriting Exercises"

When Dr. Kearney first directed us to freewrite on Thursday, I was unsure of what to expect from myself. For as long as I can remember, nearly all that I've written has been for a purpose other than my own pleasure. Granted, I have gotten pleasure from the simple act of writing itself, but did not write for pleasure alone. During the freewriting exercise, I felt lots of strange emotions- chaos, loss of control, even some emotional outpouring. It was unlike anything I had experienced in all my years of writing.

As a future educator, I believe to be effective, one must experience everything they expect of their students, firsthand. To use freewriting in a secondary classroom setting could be quite useful, but I cannot stop thinking of all the "baggage" that could potentially come with it. Unfortunately our society has spun out of control with political correctness and that very climate has overtaken many teacher's classrooms and pedagogies. We discussed in class if we were to receive a student's freewriting that contained harmful or inappropriate information and then being obligated to act. This may sound a bit crass, but personally, I don't want to know about my student's sex lives. Of course I will care for them, but their sex lives are the area of their lives that I'm least interested in. If you multiply an assignment by 100 students, the odds are in favor of getting at least one paper with something of a sexual or just generally awkward nature.

I appreciate Elbow's stance that if a student wants to share, they may, but that the general rule is that no one is required to share. I believe this truly allows the freewriting to be just that - free. If I know someone is going to be reading what I'm writing, I polish it up and make sure that it has all the makings of something I wouldn't be ashamed of claiming was from my own hand. With freewriting, I felt as though I could put anything on the screen and at the end, all I had to do was select "Do not save" and all would be well with the world.

One of my philosophies of teaching is to involve students with whatever means necessary. If that means that they need some warm-up freewriting time, then so be it. If we need to take a walk around the block and have them spread out on the lawn to get their creative juices flowing, let's do it. For a teacher to be effective, they must employ a variety of techniques to reach all levels and styles of learner and I believe freewriting will someday be used in my classroom.