{"id":149,"date":"2008-03-18T19:02:26","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T00:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/03\/18\/something-old-something-new\/"},"modified":"2008-03-18T19:02:26","modified_gmt":"2008-03-19T00:02:26","slug":"something-old-something-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/03\/18\/something-old-something-new\/","title":{"rendered":"Something Old, Something New"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Like Laura, I was thrilled by the fantastic results Carl Lovitt described in his article Using Journals to Redefine Public and Private Domains in the Literature Classroom.<\/em>\u00a0 As a diligent student who annotates texts, I even wrote “Title sounds boring, but it’s really a great experiment with wonderful results” next to the article in the Table of Contents.\u00a0 True story, I promise.\u00a0 Then Laura knocked me back to reality, reminding us that real students put less thought into their journal entries than what socks they should wear to work.\u00a0 In fact, all the articles about using writing to teach literature gave that “too good to be true” feeling.\u00a0 For example, to a disappointing eulogy for a father, Bloom merely commented “A very nice tribute.”\u00a0 With no further direction from Bloom, the student revised his paper, resolving “never, ever to write anything \u2018nice’ again!”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Getting students to rewrite anything, let alone do it with fervor, is my greatest challenge as a writing teacher.\u00a0 The twist that Bloom added, her struggling as a writer in front of them, is something I have not tried-yet.\u00a0 I think I have nothing to lose.\u00a0 Another important ingredient in her workshop was a feeling of a writing community in which erasing the teacher-student barrier also erased the student writer-real writer barrier.\u00a0 By setting the example, and setting the bar for herself high, she raised the students’ expectations of themselves.\u00a0 Similarly, Glenn’s experiment with imitation (style, tone, point of view, genre) includes a new twist that sparks enthusiasm in her students.\u00a0 I loved her idea of requiring students to respond to her comments (as Professor Sample said he has tried) and write out their revision plan before they could conference with her.\u00a0 This idea struck a chord with me because I spent an hour conferencing with a student recently, and the “revised” paper he submitted was exactly the same as the first draft.\u00a0 Glenn’s idea puts the responsibility for revision with the student where it belongs.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When Green’s students wrote their own texts in response to their reading, Green says in Reinventing the Literary Text<\/em> that the opportunity gave students “strategies they need to \u2018read like a writer’-to anticipate the reader’s response” (189).\u00a0 As a writing teacher, I have always wanted my students to write like a reader-understanding what readers expect and satisfying those expectations.\u00a0 Teaching literature can make students better writers while teaching writing can make them better readers by enhancing the critical thinking skills necessary for both.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The lesson I take from these three writing teachers is that if something I am trying is not inspiring my students to create great writing, don’t give up-try something new.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Like Laura, I was thrilled by the fantastic results Carl Lovitt described in his article Using Journals to Redefine Public and Private Domains in the Literature Classroom.\u00a0 As a diligent student who annotates texts, I even wrote “Title sounds boring, but it’s really a great experiment with wonderful results” next to the article in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}