Red Ink and Me

Growing up I always thought of myself as a good writer, I read A LOT of books and tried to do my best to imitate Roald Dahl and company as best as I could. When we wrote our first essay in third grade and the teacher said "Now I'll read a few good examples from the class" I leaned back with a smug grin on my face and prepared to hear my own massive one paragraph essay read aloud and bask in academic glory. It came as a shock when the teacher did not start reading my essay first...or second...or third...or ever. With my bottom jaw almost on the floor the teacher began to hand back our small pieces of literary defeat. When she finally placed mine on my desk I almosy immediately declared that she had given me the wrong essay, I had written mine with pencil not red ink. A horrified feeling ensued as I realized what the red ink was...corrections. I seemed to me as though my words, sentences, and overall ideas were entirely incorrect. It was, in fact, this very moment that my long standing hatred of thick red ink was birthed.

Obviously I have never been a fan of having a paper thrust back at you with various lines, circles, and puncuation written all over it. Red ink does not seem to do any justice to the fact that what you are holding in your hand is somebody's ideas (or at least an attempt to mold ideas). It always seemed like kind of a vain attempt at improving students writing on the teachers part. I do find it understandable since most teachers have way too many students to ever throughly review and revise every piece of writing produced by their students. For me it always seemed like a few minor puncuation and spelling corrections were never enough, I wanted actual feedback. My wish was finally fulfilled (only about eight years later) when I arrived in college. In classes comsisting of only 10-12 people it was possible for the instructor to read and response to students writing in both a positive and critical way. I really prefer some kind of writing workshop, one that lets both the teachers and students work together as a microscopic writing community in order to advance the writing skills of everyone involved (and maybe save some of that precious red ink for the math teachers).

I am from poem

I am from...

I am from freezing in summer
and sweltering in winter
I am from ice cream trucks out of snow cones
and ice skaters out of breath

I am from always falling asleep with the TV on
and sinking into an overstuffed couch
and "You'll be a hunchback if you slouch!"

I am from being ready early and still being late
with a soundtrack of Phil Collins and some Annie Lennox too
I am from last minute school projects still wreaking of glue

I am from Boys Meets World credits will still in soccer socks
and knowing that the fronts door will never have any locks

The second post of the semester

I decided to choose a passage from Donald Murray's work because I don't really think Christensen has the most profound quotes in the world. Don't get me wrong, I though the Christensen piece was extremely helpful, but it seemed to read more like a set of intructions or more specifically what worked the her class. Again helpful, but I believe that every class is slightly different and the instructor needs to realize this and tailor their teaching method to best fit said class. I DO believe that there are many useful way on which a teacher can go about doing this within the work. I guess what it really comes down to is that I just didn't like the way Christensen put lengthy thank you notes to herself in the essay.
Way back at the beginning of the last paragraph I mentioned that I decided to choose a quote from Murray and havn't even so much as touched the issue. It's hard to imagine that I will be teaching children to write even though I can't ever seem to get to the point, and have an even harder time staying on it once I finally do. To this point Murray has tossed a slew of quality quotes at us. Out of this latest batch I found one that really seemed to perk my interest: "Voice is one of the most complex and yet least-investigated areas of composition. It is a subject that often makes academics uncomfortable because it does not seem intellectual, but we all speak and write with voice." I chose this not because it was the most profound or enlighting quote out of the essay, but simply because it was something I strongly agree with. I find that every writer, scratch that, every person has a different voice that is strangly similar to their speaking voice. It may get masked in MLA format, over-flowery lauguage and spellcheck, but it is always present. Readers/writers will never agree with "intellectuals/academics" (whatever those title really mean) because readers and writers alike both look to find voice in literature. Once I do find the voice of a certain person, I find reading their writing to be far more enjoyable. An example would be one of my favorite authors Dave Barry, at first his comedic writings seemed a little lost on me, but once I found the flow and tone and all the other elements (known and unknown) that go into a persons literary voice then an entire new world opens up. I had the oppurtunity to hear Dave Barry speak which I treasured as a rare occurance, not because Dave Barry seldom speaks in public, but rather because you seldom get to hear and author of a literary work speak, here is where the classroom is truly a fantastic place. In the classroom you not only get know your students on a personal level, but you also get to hear both the literary and non-literaray voices of your students, but you also get to help them merge the two into one.