When I
first processed what the blog assignment was, I panicked. I whined about the
assignment, my insecurities, how to begin, and finally realized that I need to
take Murray’s (1972) advice from one of our first readings and “shut[] up…you
don’t learn a process by talking about it, but by doing it” (Murray, p. 5). I began
with the blackout poetry because that’s how I try to ease my own students into
writing in a medium that they typically sweat over. I tried letting go of my
self-consciousness and experiment. I was stressed because I know that as Ivanic
(1998) argues, “All our writing is influenced by our life
histories. Each word we write represents an encounter, possibly a struggle,
between our multiple past experience and the demands of a new context. Writing
is not some neutral activity… it implicates every fibre of the writer’s
multifaceted being” (Ivanic in Park, p. 336). In essence, I knew that if people
were to read my writing, they would know who I am, maybe more so than I am
usually willing to offer. Exposing myself through my writing among new colleagues
seemed very risky.
My
comfort level grew each week, especially as I perused other people’s entries
and was reminded that I am part of a community-writing project, in a sense.
Judith Harris’ words about this issue of context resonated with me, as she
asks, “How can a student write as a self without first formulating a social
context in which to express the personal? Even the most personal registry of
utterance is implicitly a response to the social context determined by
subjectivity” (Harris in Lim, p. 88). In many moments, I considered re-writing
or deleting my first attempt at an entry. With my second post, I felt safer
writing from the perspective of a teenage girl because I thought that if it seemed
unsophisticated, the blame could rest on my narrator’s shoulders rather than
mine. I worried about that post after I published it, and I think in an effort
to re-establish myself as a ‘serious’ student, “construct[ing] [my] identit[y] as
[a] writer…[and] negotiate[ing] the performance of [that] identity” (McKinney
& Giorgis, p. 108), I wrote the book review the next week. I had just
recently finished Francis’ novel and loved it, and this post allowed me to look
back at a road not taken in a sense, as I often thought about how amazing it
would be to review books for a living.
I slowly learned to be more confident as blogging became
part of my routine. I was reminded of the students from the McGrail and Davis
(2011) article, as my “increased confidence and motivation encouraged [me] to
take risks and explore new subject areas in [my] writing” (McGrail & Davis,
p. 429). I took more risks, such as with commenting online and I worried about
my Haikubes entry because even my partner hinted that the poetry wasn’t the
best. I posted them anyway and let myself feel vulnerable, like I always ask of
my students. I recently finished Rosenblatt’s (2011) book on teaching writing,
and my haikube struggle taught me of the importance of creating a class that is
“very careful with one another’s feelings…teachers must be alert to the
possibility of injury, and be sure that we are talking about a poem not a
person” (Rosenblatt, p. 124-125). Writing the fan fiction was also a stressful
because I felt a sense of responsibility to the original text. I wanted to
write something productive; something that explored the story that my students
love so much meaningfully, but I learned to let that go as I developed the
story. However, the Wideo was the most difficult, and I was defeated by goanimate,
which nearly made me kick my computer.
I wrote the dialogue entry with the most confidence
because here I was following the old adage to ‘write what you know.’ I
waitressed for nine years, and my father has always urged me to write down my
stories of the colorful customers I served. The memory of those two women
ordering burgers first thing in the morning came back to me so easily but it
was still a struggle to capture that moment the way I wanted to. This
experience helped me understand what Beck was saying in her book where she
claims that “Any teacher/writer worth her salt already knows this – that
writing, when it is really writing, takes us beyond what we already know and is
itself a process of discovering both what we are going to say and how we are
going to say it” (Beck, p. 132).
Because
of this blog, I learned to better sympathize and be more excited about the
writing process because it is something I do with regularity, not just when I
find the time. I see what Romano was insisting when he wrote at the conclusion
that “there is no reason you cannot become writers… begin sharing your work,
transmitting the energy, changing the world” (Romano, p. 179-180). When
students used to ask me if I’m a writer, I rush to say no, but that I try once
in a while. I’ve realized that I need to change the way I speak about myself as
a teacher of writing and as a writer to set a better example. Maxine Hong
Kingston argues, “I believe all you need to do to be a better writer is to write a lot.
That’s all. I mean, if the students just follow that one thing, they will be
all right” (Kingston in Lim, p. 79), and I completely agree. Blogging has
solidified this for me. Although I may not continue, I purchased notebook and
have begun using it as a journal, a commonplace book, and a place to record
ideas for writing. I carry it with me and even though I may not always have the
time to write, I can plan more effectively for when I do find those moments.
Reference List
Beck, H. (2012). Teaching Creative Writing. Hampshire, England: Palgrave and
Macmillan.
Lim, S. (2010). Lore, Practice, and Social Identity
in Creative Writing Pedagogy: Speaking with a Yellow Voice? Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching
Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, 10(1), 79-93.
*McGrail, E. & Davis, A. (2011). The Influence
of classroom blogging on
elementary student writing. Journal of
Research in Childhood Education, 25(4), 415-437
*Murray, D. (1972). Teach
writing as a process not a product. The Leaflet, November, 11-14.
Park, G. (2013). ‘Writing is a way of knowing’: writing and identity. ELT Journal, 67(3), 336-446.
*Romano, T. (1987). Clearing the way:
Working with teenage writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Rosenblatt, R. (2011). Unless it Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing. New
York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
