Life of Writing

paper 1 draft

Lindsey Yong

Dr. Allen

Eng 319

22 September 2008

The Teacher- less Classroom

            When I’m writing, I feel as if I don’t have to hold back on my feelings, emotions, and thoughts in front of a reader. Rather than telling an individual certain things, I prefer having the pen take its course. I wasn’t always like this throughout a majority of my high school career. I always found that each of my classes were consistently the same, having nothing but structure, and less freedom to write on a personal level. That was until I entered into my senior year Creative Writing class. Ms. Frost walked in cheerfully as if she could let the world pass by her. As I stared into the blackboard, the words that struck me the most was “free write.” For a split second, I felt my heart freeze. English classes have taught me to write in a specific way, have a specific tone, where I felt as if none of my papers had my voice. But as I lifted my pencil, I wrote as if I had nothing against me in terms of structure, grammar, or even spelling.

 No matter how my day went, I would write for countless minutes during the freewrite session until Ms. Frost yelled, “stop!” I didn’t understand what came over me when writing during class. A rush of emotion came through and I felt as if I was able to give the reader a chance to understand where I was coming from. But, it all made sense. Ms. Frost explained to the class that sometimes writing requires individuals to write as if there was no audience and to write as if you had nothing left to lose. From that moment on, I was able to write papers endlessly which lead to the direction of majoring in English.

            In a way, I can see Ms. Frost relying on Elbow’s theory with writing because as I read this new take on writing, all I could think of was my Creative Writing class. The way Elbow sees writing as a way to find voice, making it “the main source of power in writing” (Elbow, 6), I find it best to write without any fears or doubts, only because I know that my writing has truth behind it one way or another. I was determined to continue to write this way because writing does give people the power to move the audience, which is what I did throughout my senior year in the classroom setting. Looking around the classroom, I could see everyone enjoying the freedom to write, no matter how spelling or grammar went; suddenly writing also became personal for them.

The Creative Writing class is the one course that everyone reflects on one way or the other, because it allowed students to reflect on their own thoughts and feelings academically, creating a sense of empowerment that Elbow wanted us to feel. You are probably asking yourself right now, “how is that so exactly?” Well, throughout the entire system of education, we were always told how to write, what to write, and even though there were some teachers who enjoyed reading an “authentic” piece of work, there was always some part of the teacher that was within that writing.  Both Ms. Frost and Elbow summarized their methods of teaching in a classroom into one simple idea, there are rules that are made, and several of them are there to be broken, which I continue to do even at a higher education of learning. Elbow’s purpose of having teacher-less classroom can be effective depending on the approach of the student. But the best way to bring voice into a paper, the writing has to have some truth behind it.

            Writing has countless ways of expressing the mind at work, allowing readers to understand the writer in a deeper sense. But if the teacher were to enter into a classroom where nothing but structure is created, this leaves students to focus on grammar, spelling, and a set structure on a piece of writing. Overwhelmed with the thoughts, the student would write as if there were no voice, where suddenly a paper lacks voice. Bartholomae uses the classroom as a place of structure where authority is made, leaving students vulnerable to their own writing.

Although there have been times where teachers are necessary, Batholomae sees an authority as a way where “students will not feel the pleasure or power of authorship unless if we make that role available” (Bartholomae, 5).  But if there were a teacher to lecture us on the correct ways of writing, wouldn’t that mean the teacher’s voice would come through in a paper rather than having a student’s voice dominant throughout a paper? I struggled with having Bartholomae’s perspective on writing only because I was focused mainly on what was given to me, rather than my take on a book or a topic. I felt as if writing wasn’t personal for me at the higher education level. Everything that I had grasped from my creative writing teacher Ms. Frost was becoming a blur. Going through several of my English classes up at college made me feel as if writing personally would lead me towards a failing grade. So now, I am going back to the basics, where hopefully having a teacher will help me succeed in the long run.

            In a way, I am still learning the different perspectives of writing. I am still trying to figure out whether the use of an authority figure will only help or hinder me later on down the road to becoming a teacher one day. There have been moments where I truly have followed the words of advice from Ms. Frost, but then there have been times where I feel as if Bartholomae is correct about teachers being crucial in a classroom. As we grow into the individuals that are standing here today, many of those experiences make our writing come to life. Maybe the use of freewriting with some sort of academic structure, such as Bartholomae’s approach to having a teacher in the classroom, our experiences do help us grow as writers.