~back on earth...

After last semester I needed a long vacation, which is the reason for the lack of posts. Now that my last semester before graduation is well under way, I will return to regular posting status. Although this blog started out as an assignment for a class I took last semester, I plan to continue with a slightly altered theme. Instead of discussing assigned readings about teaching for creative writing, I will write about several topics ranging from last semester jitters to the struggles and triumphs of finding a job to continuing my exploration into in the world of creative writing.

~may you find a world to call your own, but until then may this one be like home.
k.s.mcclendon

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.

seeing clearly...

This is it. The last blog entry for this class, and though I am excited that this semester is coming to an end, I am not as excited that this class is almost over. The readings for this week’s blog were interesting in that they voiced some of the same questions I have asked over the past six years of my professors and myself. The articles gave me some answers and yet provided ideas for discussion that I have not thought of before.

As everyone knows, general education requirements include a combination of classes, which include English Literature. When it was time for me to take this class, I chose English Lit I. My experience as a reader was at that time much the same as described in the articles for today. I love to read, but I had never learned how to read analytically. I thought that was all I needed to learn to get through college and if I had chosen another field of study then that would be all I needed. The first time I took a Creative Writing Forms class I realized I had to learn how to read as a writer. It took me two years to get to the point I am at now in learning this valuable skill, and yet I believe there is more I need to learn. This is evident when I sit through workshops and some of my peers see things that I failed to notice when reading the pieces of my peers.

I did not realize that the line between being a teacher and a student of writing is so thin. I know now that the objective to learning the craft of writing is not something one ever stops working towards. Knowing this now, I understand that the very professors who teach me every semester are still learning as I am. Over the past three years, I have tutored writing at the elementary level and this experience has helped me to experience this juggling between teacher and student even more. The important thing to remember is that to keep my own process of learning from future students would allow them to believe in the idea that their professors know everything about writing.

When I started writing, again I had not formal training, had read one book on writing, and only had my childhood experiences to pull from to finish my first book. Along the way, I learned that I knew more than I thought about the writing craft but did not have the terminology to talk about the processes and techniques I used. In the beginning, it was like looking through a dense fog. I could see the edges and yet still not make out what I was before me. In a way, this was my way of describing what the articles discussed. We come to the creative writing classroom with this feeling of ‘magic’ writing, we learn and read which causes the fog to lift slowly, and then we realize along the way that what was hiding in the fog was not ‘magic’ but the foundation we needed in order to build.

The important thing to remember is that as teachers we need to guide our students helping them find the same tools we found in the fog and that we will never stop learning.

teaching what you know and gender issues...

The questions raised by the readings for this week are familiar to me. I have asked similar ones over the past five years. I felt for the longest time that I was missing valuable pieces of what it means to be a writer. Those bits of information that my professors held about the craft of writing and only gave to those of us who had reached a higher level of writing. I kept waiting for them to throw me crumbs, and at one point believed that I was not talented enough to receive these pieces. Then I took a special topics course called Creative Living. Half way through that semester, I realized that the precious bits of information I believed I was not worthy of lay in the realization that to be a writer was more than just words scrawled on paper. To be a writer I needed to live as one. I needed to embrace the writing lifestyle. Not the stereotype of what it means to be a writer, but to make living writing a habit.

The readings for this week reminded me of this and reinforced what I learned two years ago. I also realized that although my professors know more than I do about writing, they are not privy to any information that I cannot obtain with the same hard work and practice. I do believe that writing comes easier to some people and not to others, but so does math, science, music, acting, learning languages, etc. I also believe that you can have all the talent you need to be great, but without hard work and determination, you will never reach your full potential. Teachers give precious gifts to their students every time they teach. How much the student learns is up to them, but just as the student should not stop learning when obstacles block their progress a teacher should not stop teaching when students choose not to listen. The seeds you plant will eventually sprout. The potential of the student is worth not giving up on said student.

This semester I have grown acutely aware of my gender due to a gender communication class that I am taking. The material for this week discussed the issue of gender and how it affects a person's writing. I disagree with the idea that only women should write about women and the same should go for men. I also disagree that only women writers are capable of writing emotional pieces, just as I disagree that only men writers write adventure pieces. I do think that it is our experiences in life that we pull from to accomplish the work we set out to create. I am not saying that one cannot write what they have not experienced. All writers, male or female, pull from their own memories to create an experience for their readers. These experiences do not necessarily have to be about the material the writer creates. The thinking that implies gender biased writing can cause young writers to believe they cannot pursue a particular piece just because their gender cannot possibly know how the other gender thinks or feels. FYI: sex and gender for many are separate.

deeper evaluations...

I see both sides presented in this week’s readings. I agree that students should not be graded in such a way that causes them to stop writing, and I agree that there needs to be some sort of evaluation process, which results in academic grades. There needs to be more conversation between the student and professor for the student to gauge his/her progress other than a grade. This debate clearly is not finished.

I personally tend to want more feedback then what is usually given to me by professors. The grades I receive are good. I have never been given less than an A for any writing course I have taken, but many times I feel that the A I got was too easy. It is evident that professors have to evaluate each student on what they bring into the classroom, but it is harder then it seems to find the balance when grading an entire class. One thing the readings did not discuss in detail was that every writing student is not necessarily on the same level as his/her peers.

I have set in classes with students who are much more advanced then I am, but I have also set in classes with peers who are not as advanced as I am. Over the past couple of years, I have come to the point in my own writing in which I feel that I am ready to move into a deeper discussion of the craft of writing. Deeper than many of my professors are able to go due to the level of the majority of the class. I have found the level discussion I crave by reading material outside of the classes I have taken, discussing reading material options with those professors I feel most comfortable with, and reading the textbooks a friend of mine has gotten from her MFA classes.

Ultimately, the grading of a writer's work falls on the evaluation of the professor and how said professor wishes to balance the grading process in his/her class, but they can only do so much. I agree that professors should not only evaluate their students, they must teach them how to find the information they seek, at whatever level they are at, outside of the class. Only then can a novice writer truly grow.

learning by example...

As the weeks have progressed through this class I have opened my eyes to how complicated and rewarding teaching writing can be, and I have to say thank you to all the professors whose classes I have taken during my time in college. Thank you for your persistence, understanding, and professionalism. You have influenced me as a person and writer.

The reading assignment for this week covered a lot of important information that any writing teacher needs in order to teach effectively. There was too much material to discuss in its entirety in this post, but there were two points that stuck with me, after I finished reading. The most important, I think, was the realization that what my professors have done in class was not just to create grading opportunities for my transcript. The material I have read, countless talking points I have turned in, and end of the semester portfolios were strategically placed tools to teach me what I need to know from the class.

Sometime during the fall semester of 2008, I realized that I had grown as a writer based on the knowledge I had gleaned from classes since declaring a writing major. I also realized that if I wanted to continue to grow, I had to take responsibility for that growth outside of class as well as in class. Looking back on the classes I took over the past two years, I realized through this reading that these same tools my professors have used to instruct and evaluate my writing, is what I must continue to do after I graduate in the Spring, if I am going to continue to grow as a writer.

The other point that really hit home for me was that there are different types of students. I have set in classes with the student who is resistant to learning. There have been several times that I wanted to remind these peers of mine, that they are in an undergraduate program and therefore know nothing compared to the professors. I have also set in classes with peers whose skill level is above mine and peers whose skill level is below mine. I hope I have never acted superior and all knowing as I have seen some of my peers act.

The examples of how to handle these students are good. I know now that some of my professors have actually used them in classes, quite successfully, but much of the journey writers go on to grow is done on an individual basis. Yes, we watch each other, in some ways emulate one another, and without us knowing are in turn emulated, but we still have to take responsibility for our own growth. I think that the resistant students have not quite figured this out and until they do, they will stay on the same level as a writer, never gaining ground on their development and reaching their potential.