Week II: Class Reflections

I found our discussions last night disturbing and challenging as well as hopeful.

As a parent of "now grown" children, I know how disturbing the education system was to me as a parent because of how the system stifled the love of reading and writing. Every year of schooling for my children brought a conflict between my expectations and the system's expectations.

Current literature, while acknowledging a tenuous acceptance of Compostition as a discipline, still addresses the many problems of the teaching of reading and composition. These problems appear unchanged over the last fifty years. Fun does not appear to be part of the equation for becoming a writer. I believe Writing across the Curriculum attempts to address the importance of reading and writing to our lives . . . but has it worked?
As a tax payer and advocate of children I have no answers for the challenges that confront our children, educators, and politicians. While I am hopeful of a future where people have learned to love the act of learning, you in this class are only a handful of those that teach. Vicki made an observation about two teachers in her school-one was a "grammar fanatic". I forget her discription of the other teacher, but I inferred that teacher was positive role-model (like many of you in this class)for instilling the potential to enjoy writing.
I loved Dr. Kearney's Process Of Composition: Fluency, Clarity, and Correctness. I was fortunate, that process was taught to me in the 1960's and became the basis for how I enncouraged my childre. I am a firm believer in "the more you write, the better you write". Not only do I believe in the value of prewriting and writing. but as I become older I believe that if you are lucky someone else will help you revise.

For those who addressed the mechanics of writing, check out my images.