You know how in school they teach you how to write a certain way with certain rules to follow and with a formal structure with citations done exactly the right way? When I was young, I hated that so much that I'd go as far to say English was my least favorite subject. I hated the amount of work I had to do when all I wanted to do was start a sentence with the word "But" and I was told that was improper grammar. So much of my current writing style exists in spite of that.
A lot of teachers and proofreaders for my writing have described it as "stream of consciousness" and they'd be right. Simple as. But I like that, it feels like when people read my writing that we're actually having a conversation. Contractions, kindas, and phrases like "I s'pose" fill my page. When I write to people, I write to appeal to them like I'm their little league baseball coach, getting down on one knee after a crushing loss, putting my hand on their shoulder and saying, "Hey Champ." Getting more down to Earth makes me feel like I can get on you as the reader's level way easier. Maybe that's because of my love for comics and manga, it's much more down to Earth, Spider-Man thwips around New York effectively talking to the reader when he says, "I gotta find Electro before he causes any more damage to the city! But first, I should check in with MJ."
I do this because I want my future students to know they can write about whatever they want, they have full creative freedom when it comes to writing, because writing is the most freeing art form. Everyone writes every single day, the thoughts in your head are your own writing, the structure of the sentence you're saying is your own writing, it's all up to you, you can write about anything you want and there will always be an audience for it. And I, as the teacher, will be your number one fan and happy to be seated in your audience.
I think you make great points about letting students have their creative writing freedom because writing is a way to express themselves! I hated how we always had to follow those specific sentence rules, and I will also admit that now, I start a sentence with "but" and "and." But, I will say that anytime I do this, I feel a sense of guilt and regret in the back of my mind. I imagine my English teachers scolding me! Anyways though, I still go against most of those sentence structure rules because I love being able to kind of "rebel" in my own innocent way.
ReplyDeleteBesides that, my jaw dropped internally and I gasped when you said that you would go as far to say English was your least favorite subject. I thought that was kind of ironic (even if it may be a joke), especially because now you're spending a bunch of years studying to be an English teacher, but I also completely understand how much work it was to have proper grammar, just to avoid starting a sentence with "but."
Alsoooo, shout out Scott Pilgrim and One Piece!!
Hi Jack,
ReplyDeleteI love your blog post. I really resonate with what you are saying. Even though I am going to teach English, I mess up my grammar all of the time. It really pushed me away from writing with all the red marks I got back. I love that rebelliousness of doing it anyway. Having that mindset of when you go into your classroom, I think, will make your students enjoy writing. I love that you want to be their number one fan. It is so important for teachers to have those relationships with students. Also, Scott Pilgrim is amazing, and I definitely listened to The Lonely Island way too young. Though when I saw them in person, and Andy Samberg was in front of me, I did not care that I was swearing so young, and the consequences that came with it.
Hi Jack!
ReplyDeleteI reaaaally liked the writing and voice in your blog post!! As you were writing I could genuinely hear someone saying this aloud with a flow to an actual speech and conversation! I relate so much to what you said because I think that writing should reflect your literal voice. The rules of writing limits voice and uniqueness of a writer sometimes. This is also something that I prioritize when I work with children and young adults and made it a point to not criticize their work based on the way they tell a story in their writing. Also cool collage! I also love Scott Pilgrim and Ready Player One, they are awesome!
Jack, I appreciate your honesty related to your writing identity and your history with writing classrooms. These less the ideal situations will make you and even better teacher of writing as you embrace the plurality in literacy processes and experiences. I look forward to seeing you experiment with this plurality in the multimodal composing to come.
ReplyDeleteHi Jack!
ReplyDeleteThank you for stating such an important idea when it comes to current academics: academic rhetoric and structure are (almost complete) bullshit! Of course there is value in the format when it comes to the way that businesses, higher education, and many other professional fields are constructed, but to force students into the same box is ridiculous! Stream of conciousness simply feels more effective to read because it feels less like a professor talking down to a student and a person sharing something cool to the reader.
The structure is extremely "one size fits all" even though no matter what, many students will drastically vary between each other in terms of learning styles and should not be forced to conduct themselves the exact same. It feels less like learning and more like schools churning out good little gears to keep the machine turning. I applaud your approach and am curious to see how it might look in your future classroom!