I'm going to be honest, I have no idea why I decided to give this post the title I did. I guess I decided a long long time ago, which was a Sunday night, that I was going to give each of my posts an interesting title because that grabs the "audiences" attention. Right?
Anyways, here's what hit home with me from these articles...
"Published contemporary writers do all sorts of things students are taught to avoid."
Boom! I mean, Ka-Boom! Is it just me, or does that hit you square in the mouth? Such a powerful statement. I can honestly say that I didn't feel the freedom that writing can consist of until my senior year of high school. It's such a joy to be able to put anything that crosses my mind on paper, because I'll be damned if I don't think of some of the craziest ideas. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta....Office Space anyone? Nevermind that nonsense. To all that think that my post thus far is not the most grammatically sound piece of writing they've ever read, I challenge them with this...."Some may say: Effective writers follow the rules. We say: Effective writers have something to say and follow or break the rules to say it." Students need to realize that they are in control of their writing. They can break the rules. Write how you want. Write what you want. Write to simply get it out. I mean when you look at it, teachers are like coaches. You got to give a mean (mean as in real legit, almost Too Legit like MC Hammer) pep talk to get the creative juices flowing. What's going to be my bulletin board material to get my students pumped, how about this little dandy...."Pulitzer Prize-winner writer E. Annie Proulx's novel The Shipping News is chock full of what any grammar handbook would label as "fragments," and Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle never used quotations around his characters' dialogue." Why make students into robots in middle school when in college they are asked to do the complete opposite? With all that said, I'm beginning to feel like I'm either going to be a ground breaking teacher that opens all kinds of doors for his students or some washed up hippie that is going to suffer quite a bit of pain when he hits the wall of reality he is sliding downhill in neutral towards.
Nike and writing should pair up for a campaign.....
"Just Write It"
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1 comment:
I know we are suppose to write our own post, but Andrew's was too good to pass up!!!!
As I was scrolling through everyone's post Andrew's title just stopped me and made me wonder what on earth he was going to talk about!!! It had nothing to do with the reading but it still stopped me and made me read what he thought and took from the reading.
I agree with him on the quote from the book and how it just hits you like a ton of bricks, "Published contemporary writers do all sorts of things students are taught to avoid." I believe that this is true, there are sooo many wonderful books out there that are defying the grammical rules of writing a novel. I mean we have graphic novels and novels like "Crank" that are nothing what the students are learning in hs! Granted, I do believe that students NEED to know how to write a complete sentence and all that jazz, but it is also important to allow students to be free and express themselves in any form of writing! Without introducing students to different genres of writing and allow them to experiment themselves with different types of writing the majority of the class will hate writing, no matter what you try to do to change that.
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