I love writing my reflection after we meet. Our topic of the day was : If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be and why? I chose the Toucan Sam bird because of its bright colors and how it was flying over the water falls in the rainforest. It seemed so peaceful. I spoke about the music of nature that the animals make. They’re in a class by themselves. If you close your eyes and envision your standing in the middle of a rainforest, the sounds from different animals make their own music.

We also covered which topic and date we will do our presentation.

Dr. Zamora had us go on the course website and write in the boxes that our names were in. The topic was: How Did I Really Learn To Write.

As usual, it was an enjoyment listening to our class responses.

Can’t wait till next week! I wonder what Dr. Zamora has for us this time. lol

In reading Donald Murray’s Teach Writing as a Process Not Product, I connected the difference between writing as a process rather than focusing on the final product. During my first year teaching English Language Arts, the curriculum was designed to place a strong emphasis on writing. I noticed that writing could be frustrating for some students. They were expected to know what to write about. I noticed that some students would become discouraged because they struggled to write their thoughts on paper. Some students would write something quickly just to turn their papers in as a finished assignment.

Murray points out that students’ writing does not necessarily improve simply because they move from one grade level or teacher to the next. I strongly agree with his point because students can continue to struggle when each teacher has been trained to teach writing in the same way. Instead of the teachers helping students develop as writers through practice, the same approaches seem to be repeated year after year. This became my pet peeve.

As I taught ELA, I witnessed that students have different writing needs and abilities. I wanted every student to become better writers. I asked myself, “How am I going to reach students who are at different levels?” I realized that I could not teach writing the same way to every student and expect everyone to grow at the same pace. I needed to find a way to meet students where they were and provide the support they needed.

I came up with the idea of grouping my students into low, medium, and high groups. This allowed me to scaffold the students based on where each student was in their writing process. This worked out very well, especially with state testing coming up.

I started an after-school writing club. To my surprise, Just about all of my students joined. We met for one hour each day after school. This made sense to me because What I wanted to teach my students about writing I couldn’t do during the school day because of the demands of the curriculum and instructional time. By helping my students after school, I was able to focus on strengthening their writing skills.

When we first began the after-school writing club, I gave my students one word. “neighborhood”. I wanted them to begin with something familiar and meaningful to their own lives, rather than giving them a topic or telling them what to write. I encouraged them to use their own language and write down everything they knew about their neighborhood. Some of the students were from rough territories in Newark. Neither here nor there, this activity helped students begin to see that they had ideas and experiences worth writing about. It also engaged them in the thinking process that comes before writing. It helped them understand the three stages of the writing process (Pre-writing, Writing, Re-writing), without becoming frustrated or developing a negative attitude about having to revise their work over and over again. Instead, they began to see revision as an important part of writing and understood that good writing does not happen perfectly the first time. My extra help, helped my students to become better writers.According to Murray, this process of discovery through language we call writing can be introduced to your classroom by teaching the process, not the product.

Looking back, I realized that this experience taught me the importance of seeing students as individual writers rather than expecting one approach to work for everyone. It also helped me understand that effective writing instruction requires flexibility, patience, and a willingness to adjust to help every student grow. Writing should be taught as a process, and product.

As I embarked on reading Bell Hook’s Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, I was overwhelmed by her work, the impact she has had, and the many hats she wore. She was a Philosopher, Educator, Author, Social Critic, and a Professor. She was known for her compassionate personality. She was a fierce individual. This book is considered one of the most influential works in Contemporary Educational Theory, feminist thought and critical pedagogy.

What stood out to me most is how Hook’s main focus in writing Teaching to Transgress is “the classroom”. Hook believed the classroom should be a safe place, where students should be valued, loved and feel free to learn and express themselves. A place where they can build confidence, discover their own voice, and know who they are, instead of being marginalized and silenced, and that a classroom should not create fear or alienation, but encourage students to cross boundaries related to race gender, culture and beliefs. Hook reflects on her own personal alienated experience as a student being marginalized and silenced when schools became racially integrated.

After schools became racially integrated, Hook lost her love for school she once had. What stood out to me most was how she felt the loss of her black teachers who nurtured her and made her feel valued as a student. She lost the sense of belonging and purpose. This changed the way she viewed education.

I can relate to Hooks’s experience through my own childhood educational journey. Before kindergarten, I attended a Head Start program at an all Black school. At a young age, I remember feeling wanted and loved. I felt like I belonged. Although I was young I didn’t feel the social differences. I just knew I was around teachers and students who looked like me. Black. Once I started kindergarten, I was bused to an all-White school where I was one of only three Black students in a classroom filled with White students. I remember feeling the difference. Looking back now, I understand how important community, love, and a sense of belonging is important to a student. This part of Hook’s story made me reflect on how my experience shaped the way I see education today. It also makes me think about the kind of teacher I want to be, creating a classroom community where every student will feel seen, valued, welcomed loved and capable of learning.

Hooks became a teacher, but she was not happy until she discovered the work of Paulo Freire (Brazillian Educator), before having the opportunity and pleasure of meeting him. His ideas opened her mind to new ways of thinking about education, freedom, and social reality. She expresses her approach is influenced by his ideas on Critical Pedagogy, and the impact that his work had on her thinking. She gives him credit for helping and encouraging her to think more critically about education and society. This in fact opened my eyes that teaching is not just about delivering information, but creating meaningful connections with students by incorporating one of her methods Engaged Pedagogy. It also helps me to think about the kind of educator I want to become and the impact I want to have on my students.

Hook was a renowned scholar. Her works have had a meaningful influence on educators. Reading Teaching To Transgress has helped me to rethink what it truly means to teach and learn. It has reshaped my way of thinking about education and the classroom.

The title might not be accurate, I have to do the title before reading cause usually I write so much I just hit publish and sometimes forget a title if I don’t do it at the start. This is the vibe I got based on the titles of the readings, but if my writing goes a different direction you now know why.

“Teach Writing as a Process Not Product” is up first.

“Our critical skills are honed by examining literature, which is finished writing”. This is interesting to me because what exactly counts as “finished”. I know so many books that come out with more editions, or articles that get edited to fit with what happened in the news, or even historical stuff that changes based on new information. Can writing ever really be finished? I would say it is just the published version at (insert specific time). But I would say nothing is ever really finished. Maybe this blogs per the website, as I think if we edit our blogs they remain the same on the class website, but we still CAN edit them. It might not show up that way.

“Our students knew it wasn’t literature when they passed it in, and our attack usually does little more than confirm their lack of self-respect for their work and for themselves; we are as frustrated as our students, for conscientious, doggedly responsible, repetitive autopsying doesn’t give birth to live writing”. What in the world is going on here. I do not know why we are saying the students are passing on literature. I don’t know what others classify as literature, but writing for a class will never be literature to me unless it is a creative writing class, where the work COULD be published into a book of some kind. Like a poetry book, short stories book, not necessarily the work being the book itself. This is because in literature classes I would read stuff published in some sort of book. Never some random essays. Maybe stuff not published but it would be done by some famous writer in history. But my essays? Nah man those are essays. I never thought of them as being literature. They are just my writings. Maybe I don’t know what literature really is, maybe everyone has their own definition, but I feel like students aren’t normally TRYING to pass off literature. I feel like they are just writing to pass the class. If you write because you have to for a class, and there is no passion or heart in the writing, does it even count as trying to pass on literature? I say no.
Also, yes. Students don’t have much respect for their own work. A lot of people have self doubt, but students as a whole might not respect their work for just trying to pass the class. Or because they know they need to workshop it a bit, learn more, grow more as a writer. There could be many reasons, but I do think the professor plays a part in how much respect people have. If it is one of those “give a good faith effort and I will help you” courses, they might have more repsect than a “you just get a grade” course.
I appreciate hearing you are just as frustrated as your students, that is nice to know. We all struggle together. But live autopsying is the start of writing. I am still unsure about this dying and living writing, writing can always be edited even if the person is dead. Writing can always be changed and also be interpreted in different ways, so I say it is always live. But, going deep into some works is how you learn to write. You see what works, what doesn’t, and can figure out the way you want to write your story. I like writing my version of other stories as I feel like some people don’t write the characters as well as they should be written. Some stories lose the plot if they go on too long or don’t write to the full potential. Going into readings is how you figure all this out, so I disagree.

“The product doesn’t improve, and so, blaming the student-who else ? we pass him along to the next teacher, who is trained, too often, the same way we were.” What a crazy thing to admit. That you don’t help them and then blame them. I do know some professors do thing they are in the right and that the students are the ones not learning. Like maybe you didn’t instruct them the way you thought you did? If the students missed the mark, maybe your prompt didn’t cover what you thought it did? Students can’t read your mind, you sometimes gotta say the same thing in 50 different ways for them to understand exactly what you want. So, admitting to blaming the students and not working with them is crazy to say but is a common thing. It is also common to just keep the train moving, not stopping to correct but to keep letting students make the same mistakes as they were supposed to learn by now. Sometimes they need a reminder, or a quick refresher on what the task is, so slowing down and teaching is important. I do appreciate the exposing truthful information being presented.

“they do not help the student since when we teach composition we are not teaching a product, we are teaching a process” I like this line. Idk what a teaching product really is, but I know how writing is a process. Teaching a process can be hard, as it is up to the student to figure out how they want to do each step. There is no one way to prewrite, everyone finds a different method. No one way to edit, everyone points out different things to fix. Every step can be done in various ways, so the process of steps can be taught but how to follow through is up to the student.

“It is the process of exploration of what we know and what we feel about what we know through language. It is the process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn about our world”. There is a lot of our own thoughts/feelings in writing. With math, you don’t really get to insert yourself in the work. But with writing, it is about our own thoughts on the piece or how we view the world. Like we all got this reading but all of our blogs on this reading will be different. I just liked the comment about being what we feel, what we learn about the world, and how we communicate what we learn as we do that with the blogs every week. It is the clearest example I can think of because each blog is truly what the person makes of it. Essays typically look the same, but these blogs all have a lot of us in them.

“He uses language to reveal the truth to himself so that he can tell it to others”. More quotes on how we show how we see the world through our writing. Our writing shows our personality and we use it to tell others about ourselves.

“The writing process itself can be divided into three stages: prewriting,
writing, and rewriting. The amount of time a writer spends in each stage depends on his personality, his work habits, his maturity as a craftsman, and the challenge of what he is trying to say. It is not a rigid lock-step process, but most writers most of the time pass through these three stages.” This right here is why I comment on quotes cause I feel like I pointed this out earlier in my own way. I agree that this is the jist of writing and I already said everyone does each step differently. Bam zam, thinking the same thing as this writer, but now you can clearly see how we both said the same thing in different ways.

“Prewriting may include research and daydreaming, notemaking and outlining, title-writing and lead-writing”. I have never once thought of daydreaming as prewriting. That is so interesting. I guess it is true, you gotta dream it or think it in order to write it. But I just never considered that. So, then yeah writers do be spending a looot of time prewriting. Research takes me a while but I always thought I didn’t do much prewriting for creative work. Once you get the story, for me at least, it just flows. But if we count daydreaming, then yeah it is more prewriting than anything else.

“It may take many times the hours required for a first draft, perhaps the remaining fourteen percent of the time the writer spends on the project.” I would just add that rewriting might never end. You might always be going back to the same work over and over, thinking of new things to edit. With my stories, I am always thinking of new lore to add to make stuff further along in the story make more sense. You might think you are done, but you can always go back (even if it is published, you can still fix the work just for you).

“First by shutting up”. lol so true

“When you give him an assignment you tell him what to say and how to say it, and thereby cheat your student of the opportunity to learn the process of discovery we call writing”. First of all, the “he” business is crazy. I was letting it pass at first but it is a little wild we just keep using he/him. Defaulting to a man for why. That is a whole other converstation though. Anyway, I disagree with this as not everyone is a writer. I know many science/math minded people that need to know what you are asking of them. I get the whole idea of seeing what the students do, not giving too much instruction, having them learn. But some get so lost with no guidance. Panic sets in on grading or how they will complete it, some people need to know what is expected of them. And if this is to learn the processes, help can be given as they learn and not just throwing them to the wolves. Maybe just drop grad students off in some place, but those learning the process need help.

“The student uses his own language. Too often, as writer and teacher Thomas Williams points out, we teach English to our students as if it were a foreign language. Actually, most of our students have learned a great deal of language before they come to us, and they are quite willing to exploit that language if they are allowed to embark on a serious search for their own truth.” I said this in the last post, but I think that is an interesting idea, to have students write in their own language. You might not understand it if you don’t speak that language, but for them to get their ideas/thoughts/feelings/vocie out it is important. Some important stuff might be said if people just wrote however they wanted to.

“The student should have the opportunity to write all the drafts necessary for him to discover what he has to say on this particular subject. Each new draft, of course, is counted as equal to a new paper.” Good idea in theory, but classes do have end dates. As the semester gets closer to the end, the amount of drafts have to be limited in order to get the work on time. For the start of the semester, I say go for this idea, it is great.

A lot of these other points I feel the same about. That it depends on the class (for some classes do need to teach specific writing skills in order for the students to later be able to write however they want), it depends on time and classes do have limited time, that students might need some help in figuring out how they write, etc. Since I still gotta get to the other reading I will just leave that summarized.

“Teaching to Transgress”

What the heck is up with the highlights. I being highlighted so much for why.
“I was haunted by dreams of running away-of disappearing-yes, even of dying” So we going extreme right off the bat. I can’t wait to figure out why this is bad. Usually people dream of ending up in these high positions, why are we fearing.

“You never wanted to be a teacher. Since we were little, all you ever wanted to do
was write”. Opposite for me. As a little kid I always wanted to teach. Was my favorite thing to do to my stuffed animals and action figures. I didn’t enjoy writing as a kid, because I yap too much and back then everything had to be hand written as laptops in class were not a thing. So I hated it in the sense that I wrote too much and hurt my hand, but now I can easily yap as much as I want (sorry all of you who have to read this yapping). Teaching has always been my goal, but writing got more and more a hope as time went on. I wish I could be a creative writer, but that is not a realistic job, or one that pays well. I would love to write a book, film a TV show or movie, but that probably won’t happen. So, this quote was interesting as I feel like we can all relate in some way. Being forced to teach since writing doesn’t pay, or being forced to write academic papers alongside teaching.

“To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure. But to learn ideas that ran counter to values and beliefs learned at home was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone.” I do indeed love learning. It is why I love Guitar classes, cause that man always twists my mind in new ways. His classes are a lot of work, but always good for being changed or challenged by ideas. I do also see how learning comes with risks of home life. I have family members agressively republican, to the point I do not dare let them know about my queerness. Trying to figure out ideas at home, by communicating what you learned in class that day, does come with great risk.

“they continued to nurture black students even as their efforts were constrained by the suspicion they were favoring their own race”. Not saying it is right, we all have a bias. And it is hard to work against that. Favorite students might be the quiet kids who listen better, and thus they might get treated differently than others. They might then learn more. Teachers might migrate towards certain kids without realizing, maybe favoriting them due to mutual understandings. Just some thoughts to consider about bias and teaching.

“During my undergraduate and graduate school years, only white women professors were involved in developing Women’s Studies programs.” This is interesting, as on the first day of class someone asked Guitar how he felt about writing on topics he wasn’t a part of. The class is Gender and Language Communication, and Guitar has focused the class a lot on the feminist perspective. He has done a great job expanding our minds and getting us to see different perspectives, but from the start we had people questioning him as he is a white straight man talking about gender and sexuality. Can you write or teach subjects you aren’t a part of? Does it lessen your credit? Or does it show that you are trying to include others in the converstation? Like, would you look bad for only writing about subjects you are a part of? Lots of questions around this, as I know to trust Guitar based on many classes I have had with him. I know he puts in a lot of work trying to break norms. But I can see how others might not trust him to teach this class.

Skipping ahead as most of what was talked was good things we see Dr. Z doing. Getting to know us, making learning exciting (while I might not be excited at the start of every class, our side conversations/egg time and jokes always get me excited), and learning as a community.

“We communicate best by choosing that way of speaking that is informed by the particularity and uniqueness of whom we are speaking to and with.” I love this idea so much, that everyone speaks differently in different settings. I have talked about it so many different times. Love discourse communities/knowing your audience.

“Students often do not want to learn and teachers do not want to teach” I knew about the students not wanting to learn, but didn’t know how bad the teachers not wanting to teach was till getting to grad school and having teacher friends. Shout out to all of them (Zach the only one of them that might read this), but they all truly opened my eyes to how awful education can be at times.

“Engaged Pedagogy”
My bad everyone, I didn’t see it was intro AND chapter one, thought the intro was 22 pages long and went “it seems to be wrapping up, how are there ten more pages”

Sorry sorry for the yap I will try to summarize. Lots of good things to think about though.

“to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students.” Yes yes, I agree. I like just learning things and growing as a student. Information can always be looked up or relearned, but some greater lessons stick with you when it isn’t just memorizing information.

“that approach to learning that is rooted in the notion that all students need to do is consume information fed to them by a professor and be able to memorize and store it.” Had a whole theory class with Guitar, remember not one theory. But, I remember the assignments he made us do and how to do them. I probably won’t remember every theory exactly here either. Some things will stick based on the fun memories made here. Just memorizing things doesn’t work, you will always forget that stuff. Using the lessons, having them be taught in a fun way, that works.

“Despite this shift, many students still seek to enter feminist classrooms because they continue to believe that there, more than in any other place in the academy, they will have an opportunity to experience education as the practice of freedom”. Interesting concept I never thought about. That people might feel more free based on the class topic. I don’t feel more free in gender learning classes, I know I will be challenged a lot and see the world in more evil ways. But I can see how the topic of a class might make people feel more freedom than a typical writing class. This seems like the type of class to share ideas and thus people feel more free than a literature class. I can see that.

“This meant that whether academics were drug addicts, alcoholics, batterers, or sexual abusers, the only important aspect of our identity was whether or not our minds functioned, whether we were able to do our jobs in the classroom.” Okay so I was like kinda skimming cause there was a lot of body and soul stuff (I am not really into all that)… WHAT WAS THIS?? This is such an insane idea hello. What is happening. I would say that is not the only important aspect. I think all that “bad” stuff (some things like alcoholics isn’t that bad, maybe to the body and if you take it out on others, but sexual abusers is very bad. didn’t want to lump it all into being bad but…) is important to note because it does impact the mind. Hunter brought this up in the AI class last semester, that the way the author thinks is important in the work they do, because it does influence in some way. If we put ourselves into our writing, if it is our truth, then all those things mention do show up. Also, “minds functioned” crazy statement. What does a functional mind even look like. We discounting a lot of people here. This overall, is an insane line to just throw in after talking about mind and soul. Whiplash. Double take. Like what the heck happened to all the chill stuff.

No quote this time, shocker I know, but do these scholars know they were wrote about? Did they get told that this author was going to be reliving the memories of their classroom? Do you ask someone to do that? If it is your memories, can you just write about other scholars in this way? Are these fighting words? Like if I write about Dr. Z and she hates it (I would never, this is just an example) what happens? Does my stuff get published if the higher scholar doesn’t agree? Something I am just now asking, even though I have written many research papers that I interpreted other scholar’s writings. You never really get to ask people if they are okay being used for your research, so do we just have to let people write whatever they want about us? Crazy. They could be misunderstanding our message. That is kinda how things are though right, everyone has a different meaning of everything.

“Not all students interested in Freire have had a similar experience.” Me with Dr. Guitar and Dr. Friend. Some people be hating on them and I be loving their classes.

I read all these highlighted things in a different voice as they seemed important (due to being in yellow), but I do not think I put any of them here. One, who the heck highlighted these lines and who are they to decide what I should think is important. Two, I did not care for many of them. Like yeah they might have said something cool, but I might have already said that or didn’t want to be persauded on thinking it was important because it was already yellow.

Anyways, the rest was just about engaging the students in learning so we can skip all that (this is probably longer than anyone other than Dr. Z is reading). I shall end it here, as the rest didn’t really interest me other than a “so true, I agree” type of thing. Or a possible question on how truthful these writings on enjoying the professor are, as the names are kinda known. Might just be hype to get in the book idk. But yes! Ending it so you no longer have to read a fourth thing for class (I am joking that my blog is a whole other reading, but it actualy might be no clue. Seems fine to me but I will look at the class website and see everyone else to a paragraph or two).

So, reading through “Teaching as a process not product” gave me triggered some PTSD.

Story time.

Last year we had a change of curriculum. Typically, we would start the year with narrative writing. (Personally, I think this is the best way to start. Its a lot of low stakes writing. The kids can draw on their own experiences. And it’s just more fun in general. Anywhoseits.) For whatever reason they changed it last minute, and I mean a week and a half into the first marking period, to literary analysis. Now one may assume that this isn’t a huge shift. I mean, we were going to do literary analysis for the second marking period so what’s the difference?

When I tell you it was huge, the difference was monstrous.

While I love me some Shakespeare, and I think my dramatic readings are on point, but good god trying to teach students to write with Hamlet was like pulling my own nails out with rusty pliers. There are a lot of things I think the students can learn from Shakespeare— if they have the foundations for it. Without that foundation, though, these guys were absolutely lost.

Now this is an extremely long way of agreeing with Murray. While it is important that we teach the cannon, it isn’t the best way to teach students to write. I like the way that Murray broke things down to writing in 3 stages: Prewriting, Writing, and Rewriting.

I can also appreciate how he tells us to shut up. I think a lot of people, myself included, spend so much time filling the air that students don’t have the chance to actually put any of it into practice. I’ve tried consciously making space for students to write and it seems to be working.

To avoid ranting for too long, I’m gonna wrap this part up by just saying that the implications are completely accurate. It’s funny that I did a lot of these prior to reading the paper, but seeing it in this context, it did make me consider the way my colleagues run their classrooms. While they do excellent work, I do think there’s a difference in the way students grow over the course of the year.

Then there was the tie in with Bell Hooks. Another flash of PTSD from my days as an education major. I have had plenty of experience with the philosophies proposed by Mrs. Watkins. There is a common theme of student centered teaching, similar to what Murray proposed. I think this is a crucial mindset for all teachers, especially english teachers, to have.

A big hurdle we are facing as educators is a general apathy towards the learning experience. For a lot of students, it’s really just a means to an end. I think shifting the focus from testing centered, which is really where we currently are as a discipline, to one that focuses on students’ intellectual identities. By giving students autonomy in their learning, with teachers still acting as a guiding hand, we can further encourage students to develope their own voice and writing style, as well as a passion for writing.

It is kind of like the activity we did in class the other day. We each have two different birthplaces for our writing. While some did enjoy the academic writing, and there is no shade in that, a few of us did find our passion outside of the classroom in more creative environments. This is what Mrs. Watkins is suggesting we adopt as a practice and I would like to cosign this.

Anyway, that was a bit of a rant. Sorry!

Until next time Dear Reader!