The ideas that we read about week to week, the inclusion of writing in the reading process, the use of writing to understand, seem to be relatively new. As I peruse the citations for each our readings this week, I see references to pieces written in the ‘80s, ‘90s, but little bits and pieces from the ‘60s and ‘70s are there. I wonder if in the ‘60s, the authors of those pieces were the radical, new thinkers. Hearing how effective these techniques have been for my classmates, I wonder about how long it has taken for these ideas to become mainstream.

In Greene’s Reinventing the Literary Text,” students practice writing from a character’s perspective. This is an exercise that I intend to utilize in my final teaching project. We will read The Harlem Dancer, a poem, and then write letters from the stripper to her grandmother and a friend. After reading Greene’s piece, the idea settled as perfectly suited to this work. How better to get into the mind of a stripper in Harlem? I am sure none of us have had the experience, and yet somehow, I think that we can imagine the anguish this woman feels. I am toying with the idea of having students write a letter from her to her Southern Baptist grandma in — I don’t know — Georgia, the one she supports, and then rewriting it after they have read more about Harlem and survival in New York during the ‘40s. I wonder, what lies would she tell and why? The answers seem obvious. But if the assignment were repeated in the form of another letter to a friend, perhaps someone in the same position in another state, how would the tone change? How much would students gain in understanding from this type of writing?

From the very beginning of this course, each reading has been enlightening for me and encouraging, as I have stated before many times. I do find that they are somewhat repetitive now in theme and content, some more enjoyable than others… But they all say essentially the same thing: that we must allow our students to explore freely.

We visited Princeton this week. We do not anticipate that our son will gain admittance, but we went anyway. We went to the admissions off ice and checked the admissions stats. Twenty-six percent of freshman students had an SAT of 2300-2400 last year. Obviously, writing skill made the difference for those students that were accepted.

The most impressive aspect of the application packet was the description of freshman coursework. They said that all freshman are encouraged to explore an area of interest in a seminar style classroom. Freshman, exploring. I thought that it must be difficult for a lot of those freshman to work for a seminar class, to be free to research., but I had to laugh a little because so many of my fellow classmates are already pursuing this format, at the high school level.

These are ideas that seem to have come into mainstream acceptance in the ‘80s, but it has taken years for them to trickle down through the ranks. I wonder how many kids will be left floundering because their teachers refuse these newer, somewhat freeform ideas. And I wonder, as more colleges adopt this method of instruction, how difficult it will be for kids to adjust to the idea that they can be free to explore and research what interests them.