In reading the articles in WWTTL, I found myself remembering a couple of my undergrad professors and thinking about how in the hell is this feasible in my current position. I am in agreement with Renee about wanting to do my writing in my classes, but the thought of having to read all the student work is a little too much to think about.

I has mixed feelings about Bloom’s attitude, but I do agree that having students write in the different genres gives them a taste of what it is like; however, I have never seen the intrinstic desire to revise that she writes about, nor the willingness to conference of which Glenn writes. I have and do give students the opportunity to mimic the writing of  stories that we have read in class with less than positive results. Unfortunately, many of my students do not take the time to do the assignment much the same as Lovitt’s students but instead of the night before it is due, it is the class period before it is due. The other aspect that I struggle with in these types of assignments is how do you teach studnets “the art of crafting an honest, engaging autobiography, not with confession for therapeutic purposes” (82). Even when they are not autobiographies this seems to happen. Recently, I had my students write 5 minute skits and everyone could tell who was upset with thier boyfriend, most of them played out like a scene of soap opera. On the otherhand there were some really good ones that delt with social issues like racial profiling, okay so maybe there was only 3 out of the 30 that weren’t carbon copies, but it was good for those 3 students, right?

Another gripe I had with Bloom was her statement about the students in her classes when she stated they “will become teachers of literature and, willy-nilly, of writing” (79). I’m not saying that this is a wrong assumption, but the fact that she is so matter of fact about it and does not seem to upset by this fact, nor does she seem to address this problem with a proposed solution. Again I ask, when is it assumed that writing is taught?

On a positive side of things – I found Glenn’s oral presentations to be a helpful idea. I had an undergrad professor who taught Native American Literature who required us to do this type of assignment. We were to research one topic (we signed up at the beginning of the semester with appropriate due dates) write a one page paper with enough copies for the entire class and then present our findings. Each topic tied into what we were studing/reading for that class and it really did bring the lecture aspect/responsibility to the students. In fact, I still find some of those papers that other students wrote useful for teaching certain pieces of literature.

I guess what is really important in all the reading about teaching we do in these types of classes is that we realize different things work for different people. Sometimes we might find something that will work well with our teaching style that will benefit all of our students and other times we may find a strategy that will help that one student who is lagging behind. Just with everything else in life as Swift reminds us with his “Modest Purposal” there is no one solution to all the problems that exist the same is true of teaching, and we as teachers must not get so engrossed in the dancing shadows that we forget they are only shadows.