Sometimes reflection is painful. My reflections here will contain some ugly confessions. For the past three years as a working mom, I have never had enough time. I am rushed at home, in my teaching, with my husband. Life feels like a constant race. This first week back to school, however, I am slowly relearning the necessity of slowing down. I am reclaiming time to teach, to read, to write. In College Comp we are taking the time daily to quickwrite about a reading assignment or in-class prompt. We share our writing and take the time to examine writer’s craft. I’m also giving more time for the early stages of the writing process. We are slowing down in this class, experiencing the honey-dripping gold that comes in the early stages of the writing process. This is a task in my teaching I rarely took time for. I felt the pressure that comes with a dual enrollment class. Hurry up, write the essay, get the grade, move forward at an “academic pace” (whatever that is). That type of teaching resulted only in frustration, though, and mostly mine. My students’ early drafts were surface writing; their revisions often forced. Students willing to put in the time outside of class made some progress, but I didn’t see the growth in critical thinking and style I wanted to see. So I crossed some assignments off my list and decided to spend more time in each of my major units. We’re on our second stage of narrative, and we’ve even slowed down in topic selection. Yesterday I announced that we would be moving to a longer narrative. Looking to Penny Kittle (Write Beside Them) for inspiration, I instructed, “Select one moment from your life so far. Tell that story.” We’ve read mentors like George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” and Sherman Alexie’s “Indian Education.” Together we’ve talked about stylistic choices and what makes a story worth telling. I’ve modeled my own prewriting and rehearsing for a memoir of my first year of teaching. Using the document camera I showed them my messy planning pages full of arrows and crossed out words and moments when the ideas came so quickly I could barely get them down. I want them to see that a real process is sloppy and non-linear, frustrating and then fulfilling. Last year I would have assigned the narrative, shown the text example, and set them free. Topic selection would have been an overnight assignment that involved no conversation from me. (See, this is the terrible confession time. I knew what was best for my students, but I wasn’t taking the time to do it.) This year, though, I walk around the room today, asking one or two questions of my students in the early stages of their narratives. “How’s it going?” I ask one student who is staring at a blank screen. “I don’t know what to write about,” he answers truthfully. “Look through your quickwrites and see if that helps,” I encourage him. He discovers a pattern: many of his quickwrites involve his friends. “Hmmm,” I question. “How old were you when you moved here? Did you have a moment when you finally realized that you were going to be okay with new friends here?” “Yeah, actually I did. I’ll write about football camp.” And he gets to work. Maybe he’ll stick with this topic or maybe he’ll switch, but the important thing is that I allowed that thinking process to take place. I gave the time for the conversation that led him there. As an English teacher I often feel like my life embodies the cliché, “Time is running out.” But really this week I’ve discovered that another cliché just might fit better. "There’s no time life the present." My writing class will look different this year, substantially so. We might not produce so many final drafts. Maybe we won’t get to the opposing sides essays we’ve written the past two years, but I think that’s okay. There is a beauty here in this process, and I don’t want to move so fast that I miss it.
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September 2020
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