Book Report 3

Dixon, Deborah. Writing Your Heritage: A Sequence of Thinking, Reading, and

Writing Assignments. Berkeley: National Writing Project, 1993.

This book's subject matter connected closely with courses I teach and concerns I have about those courses. I teach both developmental and transfer freshman writing classes. Students have been better motivated at both these levels when what happens in the class goes beyond just a focus on writing process and a cycle of assignments dictated by the modes or by purpose. Like the students I'm also bored if the course seems to have no connection to life beyond the classroom and the term; that's why I prefer to teach Persuasive Writing rather than WR 121 because I seem to do a better job of finding a course focus that asks students to discuss, to reflect, and to make connection to their lives. I wanted to see whether I could adapt Dixon's model for my students in Developmental Writing and in WR 121.

In several ways, I can. The question of heritage can engage students other than those of the diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds Dixon encounters in her UCSB Educational Opportunity Program. I have had students in my whitebread community use family history and local history effectively for WR 121 and for WR 123. And I have used family issues, including some of the same texts Dixon uses (James Baldwin, Maxine Hong Kingston) as topics for papers (write a letter to a family member saying something you have always wanted to say to them, what is your role in your family, describe your family's hero).

However, as I said, I live and work in a primarily whitebread community. The cultural, rather than familial, issues which Dixon uses seem unlikely to engage my less diverse student population. In a typical 25 student composition class, I may have one Japanese student, one African-American student, and one Hispanic student. Most terms I have no Hispanic students, although the ratio of 3/22 non-Anglo to Anglo is probably a constant. I would love to address the various roles of women in the cultures represented as Dixon does, but I think that task requires a more balanced representation. Otherwise those three students are forced into the false position of representing a whole culture, a form of racism which happens to them too often anyway. And it seems unfortunately typical of my Anglo-American students that they have less information about family history than any other cultural group. Not only are they typically at least one generation removed from immigration, they really have few family histories about moves, changes, and events that cause crisis or tradition or values, assignments that Dixon moves students through in really interesting ways.

So, enough whining. Could I find a focus for a full term so that students can see the course as being of personal as well as academic value because of we are using a sequence of connected readings and connected papers? Perhaps. I'm exploring the idea of using such issues as social class, geographical setting and history, family values and traditions, and family myths (Teresa Jordan's Riding the White Horse Home comes to mind.) Having students forced to talk to their parents and grandparents is not such a bad thing, even if there may be some phone bills. Because I ask students to think of one writing purpose as being establishing community, I think I could also ask students to define a community that they are part of and discuss their role in that community. And as a lead-in to persuasive writing, I would like them to look back at the assignments and identify an issue that can be discussed in a strongly persuasive manner. I tend toward the philosophy that all writing is persuasive writing, but I admit to a continuum with one end at which certain kinds of argumentation and certain topics are more likely to be addressed.

In fact, my question to you, Dr. Teich, is whether devising a syllabus somewhat like this one could be my independent study project.

Finally, I strongly connected to the use of readings, not as models to intimidate student writers, but as grounds for reaction and discussion. I find I need to teach reading for effective writing, and some of my favorite readings come from this body of memoir and cultural commentary. Again and again I hear from college students how silent they were in their high school classrooms and how much discussion means to them. I also see the focus of this course as an opportunity for content-based writing and for some writing across the curriculum, at least toward some writing in the social sciences. I see it as an opportunity to use both personal writing and public writing and expressive writing and analysis.