Pedagogy Revised

After a semester of being inundated with the works of others, I feel that my current knowledge of teaching will pale in comparison with all that I hope to know by the time I actually begin. However, I feel that I have a greater grasp of the way that I would like to teach writing/composition after this last semester. In fact, I hope to approach this subject at greater length in my thesis. Ultimately, I believe that composition teaching must be a process. A product, then, would only be the post sign at the end of the journey.

While I have been informed by my distinguished professor that my ideas would be best appreciated at a liberal arts college, I feel that having pre-writing be the bulk of the work done in any composition class would be beneficial. There are so many prewriting techniques that we have learned in this class, and so many professors who have successfully (or so they say) educated students with these techniques that I feel it would not be out of line to integrate these techniques into my own teaching. I would like to cut down on lecturing (because a writing class should be about reading and writing rather than listening closely to the professor lecture so that, later, you can make them think that you are smarter through flowery, over-worded prose).

Again, my pedagogy will develop further from this point on, but I have come down on the side of writing in a composition classroom. Pretty revolutionary, I know.

Bishop

A large, looming question this semester is: what could ______ have done if he/she had lived longer? Bishop died at a comparatively young age next to some of the other late theorists we have studied this semester. 

As for her teaching methods, it seems that if writing can be taught in an interesting and creative way, it should be done. However, I think that someone in the class said it very well, that those who are gifted in a certain way of teaching should teach that way, but should not expect others to follow her lead. Creative non-fiction and personal narrative are very useful for getting students to write, but those skills, alone, do not necessarily teach a student to prepare for writing for the university, nor for the real world. Additionally, not all students are talented at being creative, and the best that they can learn to do is write cleanly and succinctly so that they can get their ideas across. Having the option of writing creatively in a composition classroom, however, might have a positive effect.

I know, though, that whatever opinions I might have about Bishop, after knowing so little, will not do her justice.

Berlin

As has been the case for much of the semester, Klayton has given us a new perspective on the world (I believe I only saw one Human Element commercial that was sent to me in an email, but I won't be able to ever watch one again without seeing that little girl running in the street), as well as on the perspective of composition. Though he admits that most of his ideas come from others, that could be said of anyone. Berlin, apparently, was inspired by Marx and other so-called subversive visionaries. I have often thought that it doesn't matter who originally came up with an idea or why, but what ideas we choose to embrace, manipulate and execute to serve our own journey.

The real striking idea from Berlin, however, is the tendency toward anti-capitalism, which is an interesting notion in a capitalist society. The game must be played, even if we choose to play by our own rules, and I think that is the real concept behind Berlin: taking strong notions of what is right and, perhaps, individually moral, and using them to help the machine run. This is such an antithetical notion, but yet it must be done.

I can also correlate Berlin's ideas, somewhat, to the study of composition. As teachers we can celebrate individuality and encourage broad thinking without completely breaking down the point of the university, which requires some sort of authoritarian construct. Composition, as is life, is a balancing act.