blog 8

I do actually read everyone's blog: often, to give myself ideas, and my personal favorite, to guess who the author is before I get to the last line.  At this point, I am pretty good at making intuitive assumptions.  I agree with Diggs and with Elbow that too often we shy away from giving each other harsh criticisms regarding our writing.  However, when it comes to arguing points of writing pedagogy, I fear I am too much the novice to claim a proper battleground and fight to the death for any one side.  I have read enough to believe that teaching grammar does not work to improve students' writing, but from my own experience in school and from what I'm observing now, this statement ignores the fact that most students just don't write enough in general.  Is it because we thrust correctness down their throats not just with grammar but in all facets of their learning?  By the time my students are in my class in high school will I have to slyly tell them to disregard all those pesky rules of grammar.  I wonder about ways to insert writing as in my own life and in my future classroom.  I figure I will cross the grammar bridge when I come to it.  Deconstruction.  Trial and error.  Trial and error.  This is not to dismiss that I have found the overview of varying viewpoints on writing pedagogy extremely necessary.  Without any sort of road map, I would be very uncomfortable indeed.  Perhaps, I am too mired down with my own persistent need for having to know everything through lectures, taking notes, and subsequent, success with regurgitating facts.  Only before I feel I know points A through at least M will I begin to argue against those who are probably not my friends in the education world, those pesky ahem conservatives. 

I found this whole chapter extremely helpful regarding the creative writing workshop.  In all of my creative writing classes at Temple, the teacher served as more of a coach than anything else.  These classes were unforgettable experiences, and I feel as if this was the first time I was able to see writing as a permanent fixture in my life.  The workshop brought into reality the vampires in my process, and my classmates weren't all that scary after all (well most of them).  By the end of the semester, most of us chose writing buddies with whom to revise and edit our future pieces.

Diggs, I wonder what you had to say in the previous blog that could have offended.  The very mention of the word "offended" is like telling a 2-year-old to absolutely not look underneath the covers and then step out of the room.  I think we would all agree that since you mentioned the "offensive blog" you must now post it.