Speed? I am Speed.

Pop some popcorn. Sit back. And relax. This post is going to tinsel town.

In the Examining Theoretical Issues essay of chapter 5, Williams suggests that, “Reading speed therefore is crucial to comprehension.” As a parent of a two year old completely obsessed with Pixar’s film, Cars, I couldn’t help but think of the film’s opening sequence where Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) creates his own appropriate metaphor that echoes Williams’s sentiment:



For me, this reading served dual purposes. Not only did it break down in accessible detail the two sided debate between Whole Language Learning and Phonetics, but it also served double duty as a guide to parenting. I want what all parents want: to be a good parent. Or, to put it another way, I want to create at home an environment that enhances – not prohibits – Luke’s educational progression. This chapter provided plenty of insight on how to do so effectively. And the most poignant point Williams makes is that no one single approach is the correct approach; writing is a discipline by its very nature requires an approach that is multifaceted: “language acquisition involves ‘an elaborate, interactive matching procedure that connects linguistic input and output with internalized models of reality’”(162)

With this in mind, one of the examples of the success of a multifaceted approach to writing that stood out in the reading can be found at the bottom of page 167. A student’s life was changed when he went to see Star Wars for the first time. And because this post is meant to be more about my son than it is about me, here is a fun parody of arguably the most famous scene in Empire Strikes Back as done by the creators of Luke’s second favorite film, Toy Story 2:



As aspiring teachers – regardless of level – it would seem prudent to take the lessons and theories Williams presents in this chapter seriously. As Williams warns, teachers all too often fall back into the literature-reading-produces-good-writing paradigm: “This is an unfortunate turn of events insofar as it greatly limits the opportunities students have to study a variety of genres. In literary models, students will not find analysis, interpretations, and argument – the very basis for most writing beyond public school.” (169)



The End.

Conversations with Peter

Conversations with Peter

Last night in Research Methods, we had a guest lecturer: Peter Kareithi, Ph.D. Peter is originally from Kenya, and enchanted the class with a story of his education. You see, Peter is a product of apartheid, colonialism, resistance movements, and post colonialism. He told us about his early education – some of which took place around a campfire invoking the power of the story through song, dance, performance, and oral narrative. Ancestral histories were learned, metaphor helped germinate curiosity in the natural sciences, and so on. After Kenyan's won their independence from colonial Britain, Peter found himself in formal church-run schooling. Though annoyed by the confinement of walls, Dr. Kareithi suggested that those students, who like him, had to that point an oral and visual education were exponentially more adept at critical thinking within the classroom than those religious Kenyan British loyalist students who had known nothing but the classroom setting. Critical thinking. It is the skill most important, most critical to good writing. That is why I am particularly fond of Williams's discussion of Talk-Writing. As Williams suggests, "A person has to understand a topic to explain it to others" (111). I like the idea of standing in front of the class and presenting/defending one's ideas. It forces the participant to think critically about their position and ideas – not unlike Dr. Peter Kareithi.

...This is an interesting one...

My oh my!!! Do the ideas of cooking and Elbow ring like the bells of Big Ben?! At first I was sure this entire book would be full of ideas surrounding structured writing and ideas that make students "good" writers. So I may have been a bit hasty in my predictions. When I began reading a chapter titled "Best Practices" I expected the same, a chapter full of tried and true methods. However, when I got to the portion on page 108 talking about Invention and so on, I began to feel a nostalgia. The nostalgia I felt was of Elbow's ideas surrounding "cooking"... Williams (whether on purpose or not) outlines his sub-topics just like Elbow did cooking. He begins with "Discussion", then "Outlining", "Freewriting", and so on. It is as if Williams takes all the emphasis off of grammar and structure and gets to the roots of what it takes to produce acceptable and good writing. Additionally in his portion "Freewriting", Williams cites Elbow and supports his idea of "The main goal is to discover things to say about a topic rather than to plan the paper" (109, Williams).
I have to say, I also agree with something Williams says on page 108 under the heading "Outlining". It is that "the focus is on the structural details of the outline rather that its content. That is, students spend much effort deciding whether an A must have a B; whether a primary heading begins with a Roman numeral or an upper-case letter..." (108, Williams)... I had never thought of this idea before, but I can agree completely! If I were a teacher in a classroom, and I assigned students a paper that required an outline, I would require their outline to be written with bullet points in succession with no indentation. My philosophy would be to just get one's ideas down on paper so one can go back later and make sense of them. This ties right into Elbow's idea of freewriting. Eventually with a mess of words down on paper, an idea or main theme with reveal itself. The same goes for the type of outlining I would prescribe. Also, I would consider the fact that outlining implies that a student would be forced to write down exactly what their ideas are in the order they would write them. I however disagree, which is why I would enforce a bullet point method with no indentation. That way all it is is abbreviated feewriting.
There are many ideas in this chapter that caught my eye, and I could go on for pages describing them, however what caught me as strong as Williams regurgitation of Elbow would be his ideas under the subtitle "Teacher as Coach". In composition classes when a teacher assigns a topic, who is the student writing for? The answer through the student's eyes is they are writing for the teacher. Williams says "Weak writers, for example, have a tendency to assume that the only reader of their essays will be the teacher, who already knows what the topic is, so they fail to identify the topic explicitly in their texts." (105, Williams). ALL HAIL WILLIAMS!!! I have found myself in the shoes of every student that Williams describes. Williams makes an interesting word choice by saying "weak writers", but I would have to argue that 90% of students qualify as "weak writers", because they write based on what the teacher has assigned, knowing the teacher assigned the work. If that is NOT the case for 90% of students then it was the case for me, and it took me to my Junior year in college to realize I needed to do differently.
The last thing I'd like to discuss is something I will surely bring up in class tomorrow... It is the notion of "Talk-Write" which Williams discusses on page 111. "...asking students to construct a plan mentally and to deliver an oral composition to the class." (111, Williams) The first thing that came to my mind was speech class in high-school and doing impromptu speeches. The task of taking an off-hand topic and preparing in little time to make a speech that is substantial. I believe this to be a very beneficial exercise because it takes the pen out of the hand of the writer. This is a brain marathon. My prediction then, would be that when the pen is put back into the hand of the writer, their thoughts will come out clear, concise, and more organized because they have had to do so without the luxury of any recording device other than their tongue. However, I could be completely wrong.

Simulation

Next week, I will have my chance to observe students. Even though I feel slightly anxious about this, I cannot wait for the experience. Next fall, I will be student teaching. As this becomes closer to reality every passing semester, I get more worried by it all. It’s not that I feel like I will be out of my comfort zone, but rather I will be urging students to exit their comfort zones. Perhaps this isn’t such a dangerous thing after all.

What I found most useful with this chapter was the application of methods. I think as an educator, it will be important to expose students to alternative writing styles and methodologies for the sake of finding what works. For instance, I have been utilizing Peter Elbow’s method from the start of this semester for all of my classes. I do not necessarily believe this has made my writing better or worse, but my anxiety over writing has been reduced dramatically. Over the course of the last three years of college courses, my writing often feels forced. Clearly, this is obvious for a college student, but I began to feel burnt by it all. Elbow’s advice has rekindled my desire to place blots on an empty page.

I specifically like Williams description of simulation: “One of the more effective methods for making writing assignments meaningful is simulation. Simulation consists of asking students to take on roles and to act in character” (125). His example of Civil War soldiers writing letters home is an excellent assignment. And since there is technically no right or wrong way to write an epistle, perhaps a young student will be free of writing anxiety as well.

Effective Writing, Coaches, and Standard Expectations

Teaching writing effectively is difficult, but the process approach (Williams, 101) has seemed to work well for me. The term process can sound a bit misleading, as though all steps must be done and in a respective order. (For this blog, I'm attempting a new strategy of planning by writing down all the section headings, even if all the headings aren't used.) Though the question of whether some partitions really exist, like prewriting and planning for example, some "steps" seem to occur more frequently than others. Planning can be formal by actually writing down what is needed or informal if one paints a mental picture of ideas in the mind. Pausing serves to transition between thoughts. Reading allows reflection. Editing also appears to be a critical step for most writing. I've noticed with larger pieces of writing, the other steps seem more important, especially drafts and in some cases huge revisions.

The ideas of student-centered instruction and having teachers serving the role of a coach are interesting. Writing with feedback helps no one if the feedback can't be applied. Also a coach is someone that doesn't push or force learning, but empowers the individual to succeed. A teacher will tell you what you need to know; however, a coach will usually give a sense of purpose as to why knowing what one is learning is important.

With regard to expectations and standards, expectations often follow natural or stereotypical judgements, and breaking down those judgements is hard once the first impression is made. Personally, I often feel I want to show interest, but am worried showing interest may imply expertise in a particular subject. As for standards, they are tricky. A low standard feels worthless or pointless; whereas, a high standard feels impossible to complete.

Addendum:
Keeping in mind the idea of standards and expections, one last topic not really mentioned in this chapter is something called brain plasticity. I saw a show about brain plasticity on pbs that looked very interesting. Research into brain plasticity is relatively recent, and brain plasticity refers to the ability of the brain to change shape or the idea that cognition is very pliable. This involves both expectations and standards. For example, old people can't learn and usually have Alzheimer's. This expectation fails to acknowledge that many people, say in their 70s, are long past needing to learn--school is done and work skills necessary for a particular field have long since been mastered. The last major feature I want to mention about brain plasticity applies to learning. Learning can only be done by having incrementally more challenging tasks or complex situations. We could jump from 1 to 10 or 1 to 2. However, let's not forget 1.5. When an important increment is missed, the connection between a simpler and more complex situation is not made; hence, learning cannot take place. The idea of brain plasticity, that brains are pliable, has been show to be true, even for older people against the stereotype. My guess is everyone's brain is more capable and pliable than we think, in spite of learning disabilities, disadvantages, or predispositions. After all, the brain has greater computational power than the best supercomputers ever known.

Process

Oh thank you ... This chapter was a relief! The writing process broken into increments that make sense and that we have been doing all along.. familiar!!! Whew. AND this will make sense to our students. Being a coach verses dictator in a "workshop environment"... intervening regularly in the learning process,.... correcting,... praising... reinforcing when most beneficial giving feedback and then having revising sessions from feedback of peers and coach, " is a GREAT APPROACH! (106).
I think positive or developmental not positive or negative is another way of looking at this process:Positive or developmental,not good or bad,good or work on it to make it better.

Janis

Williams 98-130

I truly enjoyed this chapter, not only because it is a little bit shorter than its predecessors, but because it really contains methods of writing that I may utilize in my future classroom. Williams brings in many great examples of different methods in a classroom, and I feel that the differences can be very helpful for the different students I may encounter someday. A main method I enjoy and hope to utilize in the future would be the Process Approach. This is ideal because it can be customized to fit each class' needs: "Instruction in the process-oriented classroom is different. First, it is top-down, not bottom-up, which means that the focus is on producing entire papers, not on grammar or parts of papers. . . (WIlliams, 101)". Thestudents will not be learning small pieces at a time and building on top of that, over and over again (bottom up). This is a big change from how just about everyone is taught in school. It will be interesting to see the focus switch from linguistics and mechanics to simply enjoying writing and being able to do it.

Williams Chapter 3

What a relief! Williams has gone from failed teaching methods in the last chapter to how to rectify the dire teaching situation in this chapter. His excerpt on Rita was an eye opener. Here was a student who was struggling in her classes. Williams’ focus was on the teacher’s writing assignments as well as the student’s half-hearted efforts on projects that can be easily viewed as busy work. Rita’s writing ability improved greatly not from “years of writing instruction” (122) but from assignments that actually involved an audience outside of her writing teacher. Her willingness to research and to put forth effort shows that she was not a substandard student because of inability but rather because of lack of motivation. I wonder if Rita’s teacher took the initiative to attend a workshop on effective assignments because of Williams’ classroom observation or if she would have gone regardless. Either way it shows that her traditional methods that she had relied on over her teaching career were deficient. She attended the workshop and actually applied the methods that were given.
Thinking back to one of the philosophy classes that I had taken, I remember one of the logical fallacies was arguing that something is right because it has been done for so long or that’s the way its always been done. Educational systems were set in place and implemented for so long that it would take a complete overhaul of the system to put forth the drastic measures that are necessary to make students into better writers. Writers who place content first and worry about errors later. Teachers who learn how to grade for content and who are willing to allow students to correct and make changes to papers long after the papers are turned in. Grading that takes into consideration more than just correct punctuation and grammar but focuses on meaningful content.

blog 5

On Monday in the NBC series EducationNation, one brave young teacher from Brooklyn questioned the idea of tenure for teachers. She said that in order to teach her largely hispanic students effectively, she needed a longer school day or an extra hour on Saturday. Her union contract barred her from this measure. NBC emphasized that this was a shining example of a teacher employing student-centered instruction and a bombshell thrown into the traditionalist camp. Business as usual will no longer suffice. More and more we hear that overhauling education is a matter of national security.

Wow.

With this daunting and exciting task of entering of whole new world of education in mind, this chapter was really refreshing. I went back and drew a picture of the sun on the first page of chapter 3. Williams illustrates that it is not what we do, i.e. the process approach, but in the way of doing. Two different teachers can be giving the exact same assignment and both administering the process approach with very different results. Whether or not the students are able to improve as writers or even feel engaged lies in implementation. This point seems like plain common sense, but sometimes when we do an activity over and over again and we have been using that method for twenty years examining the way in which we do it falls in favor of thoughtless mechanized routine. After all, once we have those nice, shiny handouts printed from the previous year, will we be willing to edit and reprint three hundred new ones?
The idea of teacher as coach would definitely be something I would like to implement in my own classroom. I do not remember the name of many of my teachers from high school, but I do recall all of my sports coaches. If I think about the approach to coaching sports, very little time is given to lectures. Even when plays were learned, they were often interactive, starting in slow motion and then proceeding to game pace. For drills to improve speed or ball quickness for example, we were almost always broken into small groups. My most memorable sports seasons are definitely junior varsity where everyone was allowed playing time. Varsity was too competitive. Williams points out our preference to cater to the highest-performing students. This was always my experience in varsity sports and often I was one of the star players. If we are not going to be professional athletes, why wasn’t everyone allowed equal playing time? Low performing students in the classroom may work just as hard as our star performers. If a student takes the time to revise their paper four times even with minimal improvement, this is a great accomplishment for both student and teacher

Blog 5: Williams

This chapter was interesting, in showing the variety of roles a teacher can play in the student's life as a writer. "Instruction in the process-oriented classroom is different. First, it is top-down, not bottom-up, which means that the focus is on producing entire papers, not on grammar or parts of papers. . . These behaviors, identified through observations, interviews, and analyses of good writers at work, are consolidated as the following various 'stages' of composing: Invention (prewriting), Planning, Drafting, Pausing, Reading, Revising, Editing, Publishing," (Williams, 101). While I love this process, I fear that as a secondary English teacher, I may not have time to work all these processes with my students. The curriculum in most districts is already demanding and spending extra time doing these steps, one by one, might interfere with other coursework. If possible, I would like to get them to complete the steps, especially the steps pausing, reading, and revising. If given the time, students can and will go back and reconsider what they have written. This enforces revision as a step in the process, not something implied before they must hand a paper in. Segmenting it out draws attention to this important step in the writing process.
The "Student-Centered Instruction" segement gave me insight as to ways it could benefit students for the teacher to not be at the center of it all. The three factors that I intend on implementing in my classroom are"(a) asking students to write often, in meaningful contexts, (b) providing frequent feedback on work in progress, and (c) requiring numerous revisions based on that feedback," (Williams, 101). I believe by asking students to write (going back to our freewriting exercises), that they will become increasingly comfortable with the writing process and when assignment are graded, will produce higher quality writings. Also, the concept of providing frequent feedback gives a student the opportunity to learn from shortcomings in their writing at a point in time when it is still fresh in their minds and relevant. Nothing is worse than being counselled on something out of date! Finally, requiring numerous revisions goes back to my previous paragraph. By allowing students the time to revisit their work, they can make better choices and produce a better final copy. If what we, as educators, want to achieve is having a class filled with students who are engaged and enjoying writing, then we must provide an environment consistent with that wish.

making writing meaningful!

Finally a chapter I can relate to! I must say being a non-English major I thought blogging, writing long papers for this class and reading these books would be challenging for me since we as Finance majors only focus on statistics and formula. But gradually reading these books made me realise how strictly I follow these theories by Williams and/or Elbow in my everyday life even if I am writing a Finance paper on stock valuation!
I just have to add that I simple love the process approach. There does not really have to be so many stages in my opinion but one can work around to add or subtract a stage.
The first stage invention is of course where we need to start, the book gives us a lot of invention activities but personally I go for freewriting, discussion and brainstorming. We all know the benefits of freewriting we have read enough chapters by elbow to know how effective it can be. Brainstorming or outlining is helpful too, but one must remember that outlining does not mean writing in details. We are just supposed to jot down some important points that we may use in the paper. One of the most effective activity from the teacher and even the student's perspective would be discussion. Just like freewriting it helps generate excellent ideas for any topic. As a past tutor for Eng 015 myself I have seen the results of a good discussion on papers. And they are usually positive. The idea is to generate students in these discussions and help them form their ideas into concrete ones.
The Discussion checklist on page 109 pretty much covers everything a teacher should focus on from what I have learned. I am not a fond of talk-writing myself because it takes me forever to come up with something meaningful and presenting my initial plans would not do me much good I suppose but discussing with the class and teachers is definitely a start.
Planning is probably more time confusing and frustrating especially at the initial stage. I think when we make the initial plan we should focus on a few simple questions: Who is the audience,? What is my thesis?and How I can support my thesis. The conclusion can come later. I know some people are not a fan of planning but again this process can be personalized to suit each individual. The most important stage for me and it has always worked out for me is the Drafting. I cannot stress enough on the importance of drafting. For me drafting pretty much takes care of all the other stages. For any paper long or short I produce at least three drafts. And I can guarantee you that my paper only improves with each draft. It is that effective! After drafting there has to be workshops, it is most important to share views with different people and different opinion. When we write we write from a writer's perspective, but what we forget is that we are writing for the "readers." Therefore, we need readers' opinion to improve the paper. I have never really done pausing and reading, personally to save time I would skip that stage for my papers. And also because I have a lot of confidence on the "drafting stage," where I can focus on things like audience and punctuation. Revising and Editing is usually one step for but if someone wants to split them, then its even better. Needless to say and I think everyone knows revising and editing is vital for any paper. We need to be critical editors and unbiased readers with our papers to attain maximum efficiency. Editing can be difficult as William states in chapter 3, because we are simply not taught to edit as students. The problem I face with the most is spotting errors in my own work as I tend to focus on the content rather than form.
I know that this stage model can become very formulated, but like I said before one can edit the stages according to their preference and comfort. But to say that a phase model is better than this stage model may be taking it too far. I do not even know what this phase model is about and it certainly does not make sense to me.
I have not been exposed to any of the activities to improve writing that has been mentioned in the chapter. But emailing pen pals seem like the most fun and helpful to me. The only thing I can probably relate to is writing these blogs for this Eng 470 class. The whole point is to keep students writing and having them interact with pen pals and/or bloggers can help them experience a better educational experience. I know the blogs are helping me each week to develop my writing skills! I think this is so far the most I have written for the blogging assignment! Now I am starting to see what Dr. Kearney meant when she said she wants us to practice writing every week, just to get us in the habit of writing regularly. It will only help us in the long run.

Fully Realizing X, Y, and Z.

This week’s chapter beautifully summed up the purpose of education and an educator. I absolutely loved the section on the teacher as coach (page 105). We are educators because we seek to encourage our students on their knowledge-generating journey and not to basically bore or steer them away from this exciting (and at times frustrating) process. As a coach, we are allowing the students to seek out answers, examine perspectives and in the end, claim their voice. This chapter offers beneficial exercises that allow students and teachers to reclaim the classroom and curriculum from the “teaching for the test” standard. However, there was one point that seemed to impact me and greatly influenced this blog. This chapter basically highlights how there are multiple avenues that a student can take to fully explore his or her various ideas. In this blog, I wish to address how a student is able to fully realize X, Y and Z.

First off, I love that Williams refers to the writing process as “the composing process” (106). I feel that this term appropriately denotes what a writer is actually doing. A writer is creating a masterpiece , a work of art that only he or she is able to fully shape, mold and showcase. In the case of all artists, it takes time and numerous “false” starts (initial efforts) to finally unveil a stunning product. Why is it that Western civilization marvels and praises the works of noted artists and musicians, while writers are denied the same praise and even deemed lazy for “slowly” working on a book? Indeed, same noteworthy authors, like Alcott, have described the anguish of having a publisher and “waiting” public. Anyway, the point of this chapter centers around this idea of writing that “proposes that a finished paper is the result of the complex interaction of activities that include several stages of development” (106). One can see that through these different steps, which a writer may or may not fully utilize, the writer is able to fully develop his or her thoughts and focus.

Within the first step of writing, prewriting, Williams offers his readers several activities that aid students in exploring all their ideas, comparing the ideas to see which one best focuses on the key points of the given topic, and finally helping students discover their points and voice. For example, in the discussion checklist, Williams provides several important questions that require a writer to seriously think about before responding. Some questions that I have found helpful with my own students and self are “Who is the audience for this paper,” “What am I trying to do in this assignment,” “What effect am I trying to produce in those who read my paper,” “What point or message do I want to convey,” “Where will I get information about my topic,” and “What should the conclusion do” (109). For both my students and myself, I found that these questions aided in guiding our thoughts to suitable topics based on our answers. I discovered that these questions allowed my students and me to better recognize the situation and audience of the paper and this allowed my students to discard alternative ideas that would be best for other writing assignments. For example, last semester, I had to write a research paper on an art history topic. By utilizing these questions, I was able to immediately narrow my vision on a topic that not only served my overall academic interest but one that best answered all my questions. These types of questions not only help control the panic and anxiety that arise with a writing assignment (what am I going to write on, why am I writing this anyway) but they also help to better focus the writer at the task at hand. Right now many of our fellow blog peers are trying to answer these same questions for their concept papers. It is through this discussion that students are better able to figure out whether idea X,Y or Z best suits the writing situation.

I equally love Williams’ take on outlines. This textbook is showing that outlines are not scary or beastly items that will destroy the writer but rather outlines can be another guiding light for a focus struggling writer. Just as Williams advocates for the top-down approach instead of the nitpicky bottom-up approach (where grammar, punctuation, sentence structure are the main focus), so too does he advocate for writers to create an outline that best suits them and their work. Williams writes that “Too often, however, the focus is on the structural details of the outline rather than its content. That is, students spend much effort deciding whether an A must have a B; whether a primary heading begins with a Roman numeral or an upper-case letter; whether a secondary heading begins with a lowercase letter, a lowercase Roman numeral, or an Arabic numeral, and so on” (108). Thus, our students are scared, worried and panic stricken when a teacher asks for an outline. How on earth are they ever going to finally form their idea or ideas if they are too busy worrying about this A or that B. The whole point of the outline was to aid the student and writer on composing his or her piece. In the sixth grade, I decided to rebel against the whole notion of outlines, who needed that darn A and confusing numeral system. I told everyone that I did not need an outline. It was not until I was in my senior year at my undergraduate college that a professor gave me the greatest shock of my life: I did indeed create outlines for my major (and long) papers. I tried to counter him till he pointed out that I created my outlines through the use of color coded post it notes. I had to admit that while I bucked the traditional notion of outlines, I did utilize another outline technique that aided me when composing larger papers. Suddenly, the light clicked and I realized Williams’ point that “Outlines begin when writers list the major points they want to address in their papers, without worrying much about order (style)” and this allows “outlines [to] start with general points and shift to specific ones” (108).
The last item that I want to discuss is simulation. I utilized this method a lot in my classes and found it extremely beneficial for those students who have been labeled “general (remedial/basic)”. This technique really allows those students who have been negatively impacted by such a stigma to give school a second chance and to really find their niche. Williams writes that “Students also seem to enjoy role playing a great deal, and thus, they are highly motivated by stimulations” which “offers students reasons to move out of their role of student and into the role of writer” (125). I found Williams’ comments to be completely true. My students really enjoyed this activity and for many of them, this new role allowed them to find their voice and niche in an English classroom. Since this event was already focused on a topic or event (Jane Austen, Slavery, Zlata’s Diary, etc.), the students were able to dig deeper into a particular avenue and present a unique perspective on an idea. For example, one of my students was so touched by the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, An American Slave that she wrote for her creative paper a letter from the perspective of Frederick Douglas’ fiancée in response to Douglas’ critics about the authenticity of his book. She spent a lot of time researching not only Douglas’s life, the fiancée’s life (who at the moment her name escapes me) but she also studied the book’s criticism. She not only borrowed books from her local public library, but also loaned out texts from several local college libraries. She spent time researching at the Lancaster Historical Society and even attended with several of her classmates two lectures about slavery at the society or local college. All of this generating from a student that many teachers dubbed “a complete waste of time.” Thus, this activity not only aided in focusing the writer’s thoughts but it allowed the writer to seek out and present a new perspective on an “old” scholarly topic. I highly recommend this activity for any classroom and I found that it really did allow my students to seek out knowledge and discover the joy of writing.

I love this chapter and am thrilled that we are finally going to discuss how writing is a process of composing. After all, don’t we call it composition for a reason? I loved this chapter and how it highlighted that education is about bringing forth new ideas to long standing issues.