Being a product of the heavy-on-the-expository generation of education, I am relived and enlivened by the shift that is taking place in writing education. Somehow I had never heard of multi-genre papers until I read Romano's text. How exciting! I think that one of the main reasons that students do not like writing is because it is, well boring. Some forms at least. I liken expository essays to marathons and multi-genre papers to triathlons. Training for a marathon is almost exclusively running, with one day per week set aside for cross training. Unless you really like running day after day, and not doing anything physical besides, training for a marathon and the marathon itself are physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually draining. Training for a triathlon on the other hand demands a practically endless amount of training techniques. Basically any form of exercise is recommended for triathlon training because the event in itself is varied. What is also lovely about triathlon training is that your exercise surroundings are varied, you social interaction while training is varied, and you muscular usage is varied. Now that I have exhausted (pun intended) this comparison, let me get back to multi-genre papers and my love for them.
When writing a multi-genre paper, students have a variety of writing options. Some of these options may appeal to a student more than another option--ie student digs poetry more than dialogue or student digs newspaper story style more than comic form--but at least they don't have to spend all of their time and energy on the option they don't like. It is important for students to write outside of their comfort zones which is why it is important for students to write in a style they don't prefer, but a multi-genre paper also allows for them to write in styles that they do like, both challenging them and satisfying them. Also, from an assessment perspective, multi-genre papers are awesome for portfolios.
The shift in writing process is equally exciting. I cannot remember how many time I was required to write the same dull essay that the rest of my class was writing. In my class of 30, many 3-8 were actually interested in the essay topic, leaving the rest of the students to simply go through the essay-motion without any real motivation. The grades and teacher comments that resulted reflected who was and who was not interested in the given topic. On this point, I am reminded of what Jack and Dan often bring up in class, which I think is a valid concern. They often criticize student choice and "engaging" activities as setting students up for a rude awakening when he real world requires them to sit down, take instructions, and produce something that they would not have chosen in a million years. Valid critique boys.
In the writing process, the authors say that the writing process varies as much as students do. I wholeheartedly agree. Outlines, as helpful as they can be, are not the only way to organize a piece of writing. Free writing, as helpful as it can be, is not the only way to generate ideas for a piece of writing. The book offers a number of techniques to generate ideas and spark creativity. My favorite was "Six Objects" on page 53.
Finally, I appreciated that the authors disrupted the traditional editing process. Turning in a piece of writing to teacher and having them "correct" it without getting the input of other people is just silly. Thankfully, even in the dark ages of writing instruction, teachers did go over the "corrected" paper with the student, but still, this was only two people. Student ownership and student involvement in editing is hugely important. As teachers, one of our main goals is to prepare students to be independent, but also teach them to work with their peers. Writers workshops and other forms of student-involved instruction do just this; they remove the teach, to a degree, from the equation and put more power in the hands of the students themselves.
The loft literary center is the nations largest non-profit literary center. It offers gads of great courses for writers of all skill levels. The price of the classes are based on how much money the student can pay, and they also offer scholarships to low income students. The loft also showcases a number of literature readings including Equilibrium which is a bimonthly spoken word series dedicated to writers of color.
http://www.loft.org/
Hey Ted
ReplyDeleteI liked your analogy on writing, comparing the standard essay to a marathon and the multi-genre paper to a triathlon. I think that this makes a good comparison, because you are still talking about two very important and exhausting things. Nobody is saying that running a marathon is not an important thing. It is good for a person as it obviously makes them more physically fit. Writing a five paragraph essay does help students to become better writers and thinkers. However, it is not the only way for students to become fit writers. It is also not the most efficient way at times.
With a multi-genre paper, students are not just able to have more "fun," because they are varying it up. What I think makes it more intriguing is the fact that it requires students to think about all angles of the assignment that they are writing. They are forced to understand the emotional, subjective, contradicting, and factual sides of an issue. Students have to think outside of the box as they develop different ways to discuss all of the issues and problems that stem from a certain topic.
I think that when students are using multiple resources to express themselves, they are forcing themselves to see issues in a more realistic context, as they become personal and universal at the same time. It really forces students to develop writing and thinking skills that may not be achieved through the constant act of running.