Stephanie Van Horn

Oregon Writing Project

Summer 2001

Paper 4

What we paid for and got in this class was time. Time to talk to other teachers, time to explore materials, time to reflect, time to write. For me, probably four or five years from retirement, the time was an opportunity to acknowledge places in my training and experience that needed attention. The corollary is that I set aside notions of myself as nearly done with my career and continue to approach teaching as an never-ending process of development.

The opportunity to talk to other teachers at other levels, especially to middle school and elementary school teachers, is one I currently only have with my cousins who teach at all the other levels when we meet on family visits. Here, with the focus on best practices, I can see how my teaching fits into an Oregon student's development process. I'm interested that my students come to me with so little transfer from their earlier education. It's apparent that they are exposed to writing process, to literary analysis, and to editing. A question that needs to be asked in education is how it is that so many students fail to hold these skills. Another question that needs to be answered is why so many students have such negative feelings about their own potential for developing these skills and for the classrooms where these skills were first taught. My college freshman are genuinely terrified that they will be asked to read their writing before the whole class. Their writing is constipated rather than fluent. They frequently lack information that would assist in surface editing, such as a sense of the rules of punctuation or an awareness of the varieties of sentence structure. I can see that conscientious teachers have been part of their past. However, I also wonder what other kinds of teaching have been part of their past and what the community of educators can do to alleviate the problems I see.

I appreciated the chance to paw through materials. I receive exam textbooks in a shockingly wasteful system. However, I have less time and less access to professional materials than I need. And while my department works hard to share what we learn, all of us need better opportunities for professional development. Time and money are significant issue here. I can find time to read College Comp, but need time to go to conferences and the financial resources to purchase materials and to pay for conferences. This of course is an individual campus problem, but at least this opportunity provided time and the financial freedom to develop professionally.

Finally, there was time and a reward for time spent on individual writing. Because I am trying to work in a new genre, the essay, after twenty years of poetry, I appreciated being scheduled into that sometimes difficult process. The last class working in the essay was one I took in a very casual fashion for no credit. And the class itself was pretty casual, so I tended to let the more difficult task of revision slide. Sometimes in taking on a task, the neutrality of a fixed schedule gives space to explore what our writing issues are. I could look at when it was easy for me to meet deadlines and take the risk of exploring essay styles that challenged me. The fact that grading was not an issue also allowed me to take risks. I do have a structure in my classes and encourage students to be reflective about their process as well as about their feelings about themselves, their writing and their progress. However, I'm not sure how I can free them from grading so that they will feel encouraged to experiment. I do significantly reward writers who take a challenge, however, in my grading system, so perhaps I do this. I'd like to continue to explore ways to develop student confidence and competence while battling grade inflation.

The genie should give teachers the gift of time: time to communicate with each other, time to explore new skills, and time to follow their hearts' desires.