Thoughts on "Write Before Writing"

"Write Before Writing" is another excellent essay in Teaching the Neglected "R". I decided this book is a keeper just this afternoon, as I was settling into my reading in a patch of sunlight on the lawn. If there was any doubt about it's eventual resale that was quickly put to rest by Athena, the big dumb lab. She came up to snarffle in my ear and smeared her muddy paw across the pristine white page. Athena, named by my mother-in-law after the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, has been nicknamed "Pork Chop" by me. Its more fitting, for a dog of her girth and intellectual attributes. Donald M. Murray, the author of "Write Before Writing," has far more in common with the mythological Athena than her snarfling namesake.

Murray balanced the personal and professional expertly in this piece. I gained insight into caring for an invalid spouse, widowerhood, paratrooping, and his writing process. His main point was not a memior, but those memories were interspersed with tips on the pre-writing process. This style of writing is more accessible to me than the bone dry style of much pedagogical writing.

The piece of his advice I found most helpful was to not disrupt the flow of a paragraph when writing, but just use XXXX to remind yourself to come back to it. Often in my scholastic writing, I write in a torrent and then get snagged, plucked out of the torrent by a void. Words are very important, they carry weight in essays and conversation alike, but the decision of which word can really throw a monkey wrench in my writing process. Wracking my brain, consulting the thesaurus, googling a not-quite-perfect word + "synonym," all of these activities hamper the completion of the paper. Now thanks to Murray's tip, I just tap into my keypad the example was very XXXX that day and my train of thought continues without missing a beat.

Another brilliant bit of Murray shone through when he wrote, "At eighty-one I am still failing in new and interesting ways and then trying new and interesting ways to succeed" (23). As a student of writing it is comforting to know that even polished professionals are not immune to occasional failure.

Multigenre Projects

Tom Romano's "The Many Ways of the Multigenre" offered an intriguing look at how teachers can push students to do more than the mandated minimums, while having fun in the process. His contribution to The Neglected R was extremely readable and contained poems, interviews, and the inevitable expository writing. Romano's multigenre article about multigenre projects fulfilled one of the basic tenets of successful narrative writing: Show, don't tell.

As I was reading about the many facets of the multigenre project, I remembered doing something similar in my 9th grade English class. We kept class journals that we wrtoe in at the beginning of class. Often it was a response to the assigned reading or to a quote on the board. Anyone in the class could suggest a "quotable quote" for the board, the teacher would decide if it was worthy of reflection and post it. In addition to the journals, which were occasionally turned in and responded to by our teacher, the class assembled a portfolio of our work for a final grade at the end of the year. Our own poetry, a research paper of our choosing, some short fiction and some other genres, all turned in for grades throughout the year became part of the portfolio. I believe we also had to illustrate our poem, adding another dimension to an already creative project.

My 9th grade English class was a lot of fun and the teacher, Mr. Asklar, was one of the teachers who inspired me to go into teaching. Our classroom discussions were lively and during the Romantic Poetry unit, we delved into Samuel Taylor Coleridge's opium use while analyzing Kubla Khan. That's one way to make the "magic" of otherwise inaccessible poetry come alive for a bunch of jaded teenagers. Now that I am slightly older and significantly less angst-filled, I can see that my poetry was truly awful and probably not worthy of the "B" it recieved. I blame it on all the hairdye: going from fuschia to blue to magenta to red really dumped a lot of nasty chemicals in close proximity to my brain.

My penchant for morbid poetry created heavy-handed use of symbolism. Looking over the wretched writing of my melancholy youth, the cemetary-and-dead-tree motif was pretty well beaten into the ground. Despite the petulant poetry, I did well in the class and the mutligenre approach certainly helped that. Learning the conventions of various genres and applying them to our own creations was more engaging than writing yet another 5 paragraph essay. Mr. Asklar must have known, on the cusp of the 21st century, that multigenre projects would help his students become truly literate in a multimedia world.

Response to "Debating the Canon in Class"

Reading this article reminded me of how completely the teacher shapes the course and materials that students are expected to learn. Get a good teacher and even a subject that once seemed difficult unfolds in an intelligible way. The demystifying of geometry or cell division or The Scarlet Letter is important beyond the test score. To go from muddled incomprehension to mastery is empowering, and students need to have faith in their abilities if they are to succeed "in the real world." In the real world, not everyone gets an "A" for effort, so student empowerment should be accompanied by the acquisiton of skills (critical thinking, literacy, grammer, etc.)



A teacher who sheds light on a dreary subject, or breathes new life into the mummified remains of the classics is a treasure. Every person who has been properly "schooled" probably has memories of the teacher who terrorized them or turned them off a subject forever. The OMP type from the Graff article may revere what he teaches, but if he's sick of his students then his knowledge and passion will not be transmitted. Add an addiction to alcohol or poor command of English to an "OMP-type" personality and the students will retreat from both subject and instructor as fast as humanly possible. My high school math teacher, Mr. Ho, cemented my aversion to math. He was a nice man who told anecdotes about his daughter, "Baby Ho," to the merriment of the class. His knowledge of math did not automatically translate into teaching ability, and over half the class flunked the state test at the end of the year. Mr. Ho was still around to pass on his peculiar blend of chalkboard squiggles and personal conversation when my sister had him two years later. If only tenure was tied to teaching ability!