It All Starts With A Sentence

Before I get start on talking about the real feelings and issues, can I just admire for a moment the absurdity that is Daphne's face in this picture? I didn't really notice it until I placed it into the body of the post, but that sure is something. I'm totally keeping it. It's been a long day and I need some fun. I found it quite interesting that Kati Macaluso said that poems hide because I don't see it that way at all. In fact, I think that poems often reveal simple truths in the things that make us emotional and the things that make us think. While literally poems do hide since poems by nature bury the meaning behind a lot of floral language and clever arrangement, they reveal so much more than they conceal. Poems bring to the forefront the deepest feelings and insecurities. Underneath the clothing that we put on it, poetry is human nature in words. In her Forgotten Items poem, she talks about a worried wife who fears that one day while they're going abou...

      While reading Elbow and Belanoff I kept thinking to myself, "Wow. Have they been spying on the creative writing classes I've been in?" because most of the techniques listed were things that various professors had incorporated into their feedback structure. I know that sharing writing isn't easy for anybody because you're really putting yourself out there . You have to be vulnerable and open to criticism if you plan on getting something out of these critiques. Sometimes it can be really difficult when the writer feels that the piece is unfinished or not all it could be because their insecurities about the state of the writing can tend to make them defensive and they won't be able to take anything constructive from the points that others are making.      An important thing to do is make sure that the level of engagement is high and that the activities are varied and fun and the reading illustrates a lot of different ways that a writer can work thro...

    It's easy for me to say that I enjoyed this reading better than the Cameron from last week, but I really do like what Winn and Johnson have to say about culture in schools or in reality what amounts to a homogeneous culture where teachers and administrators tell students that their rich backgrounds don't account for much if anything at all. If student values align with white middle class values, then there are no problems, but outside of those bounds there emerges all this unspoken tension. A lot of students don't see themselves represented in the culture of their school and this essentially throws them off the track because why should they care if their school isn't interested about them and their perspective?  A point that struck me was when they said, "If you're a teacher who accepts the achievement gap, then you may attempt to fill your African American and Hispanic students with the knowledge that will afford them access to specific skill sets, cano...

Before I begin on the Cameron reading (which I have so much to talk about, so sit tight) I think I should delve into the Hawley-Turner and Hicks and the NCTE assignments as well just to touch on those assignments as well. The purpose of updating the NCTE Beliefs About the Teaching of Writing, (which is explained by using the charming euphemism "sunsetted" instead of saying it was scrapped) is to update the 21st century definition of what it means to write and be a writing instructor. In a thriving digital age, writing has expanded to an even wider variety of forms than was previously imaginable and that requires some rethinking about what it means to be an expert on the written word. In an effort to diversify contextual understanding, it's important that students know the fundamental differences between a text message, a tweet, a vlog, and the typical five-paragraph essay that are used to measure proficiency in the Common Core standards.  These new purposes include but...