I got more out of the writing about fiction than the other “writing about” assignments. This was the first time I approached a piece of literature from the point of view of one specific critical theory. In keeping my critical focus, I disallowed myself the freedom to wander off topic and discuss all my thoughts and feelings about the story. This helped enormously in keeping my paper short enough. When it comes to critical writing, the most difficult aspect for me has always been knowing, or rather choosing, what to leave out. I doubt I’ll be working with critical theory in junior high, so, while it helped me with my writing; this assignment probably won’t come up in my work as a teacher.
The creative writing we did was, as usual, not a learning experience for me. I don’t like parameters. If I’m going to be creative, let me be creative. Don’t tell me to be creative in exactly this way. As a high-school or junior-high teacher, using prompts like those we were given may come in handy. Children function better when they know exactly what is expected of them. Not all students are creative and not all of them are self-starters. Not everyone is comfortable to just get in the car and go. A lot of people don’t feel safe without a map in hand. For some young writers, being told to follow the yellow-brick road may be the only way to get them to the Emerald City.
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3 comments:
Hi Deborah. I don’t understand how this could be your first time writing a piece of literature from the point of view of one specific critical theory, but if it was, than I am glad you learned from it. I fully disagree with you that this assignment wont somehow help you with your teaching. After all, we are all students, and the world of literature is vast. Some may think they know it all, but until you really have experience in a classroom, we all have much to learn. Once you look in your students’ eyes, I think teachers will feel like they don’t know enough. Unlike your opinion, I think this assignment was an excellent way to get our minds working and to get a chance with being creative. I think having guidelines such as “under what circumstances” or “x in y land” is a great way to spark creativity, rather than inhibit it. If you are working with middle schoolers (the appropriate name now for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade is middle school and not junior high by the way), you will have to have guidelines for them when you teach creative writing. Without a prompt or a certain direction, you will be leaving your students stranded and frustrated about writing, which could leave a bad taste in their mouth with future assignments. So as you can see, I don’t know how you came to the conclusion that this assignment was a waste of time. I learned so much from it, but then again, it also has to do with how open you are to learning from others.
I understand you do not like parameters when writing. I don’t like parameters either, but we are doing these assignments to help gain focus on how to teach these subjects in the classroom, not just because our professor decided she wanted to read stories we wrote on a Sunday morning because she was bored. I agree with you that some students need strict guidelines to get out of “emerald city,” as you put it, but as an educator, your job is to provide them with skills to get out of emerald city themselves. If you provide ALL the guidelines they will not know how to write and analyze literature without being in a classroom setting, and I don’t know about you, but this is the opposite of what I want to teach my students. I want my students to be self sufficient in reading, writing, and literature, and I think one way this can be achieved is if you have confidence in their abilities.
Hi Deborah,
I agree with you regarding this assignment. It would have been fun not to have constraints put on us to write creatively. But, I guess the exercise was to give us exposure to a type of assignment that would be challenged with students. I have not taken Advanced Expository Writing and I hope that in that class we are allowed to run a muck and be creative.
In the past I have taught middle school and it is challenging. The students do need to be kept on the yellow brick road. If they are not steared they are lost. They may give the impression that they are grown up, but once the routine goes array they revert back to being true teens.This age group requires lots of patience and with your creativity I think they will not have time to get out of control because they will enjoy you class. Good luck :)
When I was in the fourth grade my grandma gave me a giant tome of Poe full of his most famous stories and poems and I read that thing religiously, even reading the raven to my class for Halloween to largely bored kids. It was not intentionally that way, it was more that this served the idea of a gift being a threat as a completely psychological reaction. But I have read so much over the years that things begin to mix and run together and I begin to realize sometimes I am completely ripping off much of what I have read before. But that is what being Post Modern is all about.
What you said is kind of funny though. I am so used to getting a prompts even as a senior in university that when one of my other teachers didn't really give a specific prompt for the final paper I got completely lost. I personally think that it would be better if we were more free to write papers without any specific thing to write about but that is something that needs tobe done from day one.
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