Literacy Story

I know this is not a requirement, so to my fellow classmates I am posting this reflection outside of class. I repeat, this is not an assignment.

Creating my literary story opened my eyes. Until I did this project, I did not realize how much of the eleven years between graduating high school and coming back to UCA in 2006 I truly lost. Looking through what pictures I had of my family I found maybe five-six more than what I placed in the movie.

In class this semester, we discussed the myths novice writing students have to deal with and how those myths are reinforced through today's media. I heard a professor once, when discussing the syllabus, actually say that we writers are prone to depression and there were services on campus which would help us. When I started writing again I realized that in order to control my depression I needed to write, but many of my peers say they experience depression due to their writing.

I wonder how many of us fall into either of these camps? How should this knowledge affect how we teach future students?

We talked in class about how to discredit the writing myths students see and how our own experiences can be used to help teach novice writers. Does anyone have any thoughts about what to teach, how to teach, and when to teach students about your own battles with depression? Or is this a topic so close to our core as writers that we can't expose our struggles?

Works Cited page for my literacy story...

Fletcher, Ralph. Boy Writers: Reclaiming Their Voices. Ontario: Pembroke Publishers Limited, 2006. Print.

Royster, Brent. “Inspiration, Creativity, and Crisis: The Romantic Myth of the Writer Meets the Contemporary Classroom.” Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom. Ed. Anna Leahy. Tonawanda: Multilingual Matters Ltd., 2005. 26-38. Print.

Uppal, Priscila. “Both Sides of the Desk: Experiencing Creative Writing Lore as a Student and as a Professor.” Can It Really Be Taught? Resisting Lore in Creative Writing Pedagogy. Ed. Kelly Ritter and Stephanie Vanderslice. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc., 2007. 46-54. Print.