One of the things that really drew me to majoring in English was the fact that I loved to write. I really wanted to be a writer, but there's not a lot of money there unless you're J.K. Rowling. So I decided to become a teacher, and share my love of writing and hopefully continue to do it on the side.
I've always written stories. I remember the first story I wrote and it had all of my friends in it and I was so sure that it was the best story and was going to be published someday. I was in second grade and the story was about an evil snowman, so needless to say it probably won't escape the notebook it was written in. Today I write a lot for my classes and so most of my creative writing has been pushed to the back burner between school and work.
One of the classes I enjoyed the most was a creative fiction writing class. The entire class was based on the grades received from two short stories you wrote throughout the semester. For each story you had to print off copies for the entire class and they would go home and read and comment on them and then you would come to class the next time and have a discussion about your work. This was terrifying to me, but also wonderful because it helped me get out of my comfort zone. The feedback was validating and helpful. I appreciated that my classmates respected me as a writer and looked at my story seriously. Sometimes the criticism was hard to hear, but hearing the criticism as well as the compliments helped make my stories better. I hope that someday in my classroom I can foster the environment of respect that was in that classroom which allowed people to share their ideas freely and really help students become better writers.
Reading your writing aloud to the whole class can be very scary. My friend, a college professor, taught a writing methods course. When the students in the class liked each other and felt comfortable with each other, they felt comfortable reading aloud, but when there was contention among the social groups in the class, they didn't like reading aloud. I think that, ESPECIALLY in a writing course, fostering good relationships with different class members is SO important.
ReplyDeleteI like that the class got to take the story home to leave comments. That way they can have the time that they need to leave relevant comments and can do it anonymously. Also, you could set it up so that the author doesn't have to take the constructive criticism in front of their peers.
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