6.20.2007

Reflection


Part I

Why I chose these particular pieces for my BLOG



When looking at all the pieces I chose for my BLOG, two out of four of the pieces are inspired from demonstrations. Both of those are inspired by images. It shows me what an image driven person I am, and images inspire me to write more detailed pieces of writing. "Baby Teeth" came from a picture of a snaggled tooth little girl. In my mind, I named her Claire because she reminded me of our neighbor in Asheville. I remembered my son was so upset that he had not lost a tooth in kindergarten when all his classmates had. To make matters even worse, he was one of the oldest in his class. I imagined how he must have reaacted if he had heard the next to the last student who hadn't lost a tooth, lost that first tooth before him. I named the little boy in the piece Mack because I love that name. Only the last part of the vignette is true. The craft lesson I tried to employ was putting myself in this little boy's shoes and writing from his perspective. I also conscientiously tried to think about how five year olds talk in order to capture that voice.


"Despair" came from the picture of the woman during the depression with two small daughters. In Discover the Writer Within, Barry Lane asked us to pick one emotion that matched the picture. I picked despair and wanted to make sure I matched every description and image of my poem with that emotion. I started thinking that this picture was taken during the depression. The reason this woman was in despair was a societal problem. I started writing in first person plural. I really liked the sound of the poem then because it became personal and fit in our time also not just appropriate for the 1930s. In this poem, I wanted to take the abstract concept of despair and make it more concrete. I tried to think about where is despair located in this picture, how is it clothed, and what is it doing?


"Fractured Hearts" is my third piece. My first year with the writing project, I wrote a short story that I felt represented the best writing I have ever done. The next five years I have been working on a story about a student teacher in a high school and a life defining moment that occurred in this student teacher's life. Well it is still not finished, and I have abandoned it completely. This year I started a new story about a group of five people who meet in high school. Some tragedy will occur that will affect their adult lives. They are brought back together as adults and get closure for this event. I want to show that decisions we make as high school students impact our whole lives. Also high school students are so driven by impulse, passion, etc., and the most normal teen-agers potentially can do the craziest things at even given moment.


My fourth piece was my demonstration turned into a professional article. I used the journal article Rebecca shared as a model for my article. It helped me to examine my poetry demonstration. I realized that writing poems in the content areas drives my students back to the original texts, and they ask really good questions when forced to write their notes in a different form. I need to examine their tests and also take down detailed notes on class discussions. I feel like it impacted these areas, but I didn't gather any specifics to prove this. If this article has a chance of being published, I need to take my research a step further and examine how using poetry impacted them at the end of the unit. When I decided I needed to research further to support my demonstration, I decided to abandon this as my professional piece. The night before my BLOG was due, I decided to write about my journey of writing a research grant, and a step by step diary of this journey. I have not shared it with anyone, therefore I have no comments on it yet. I plan to keep it up all year and possibly turn this into an article for NWP.



Part II

Revision (Note: Changes made in pieces occur in blue font.)


In my first draft of "Baby Teeth," I started with an image of Claire. Two people on NWP, Wendy and Brian, commented that they felt this was about Claire not Mack. I changed this in my vignette by starting with my first image to be of Mack. Also other commentators, Laurie and Brian, wanted to see if his tooth came out, so I added this to the piece. This is actually the true part of the piece. I had Mack finally losing his tooth the very last day of kindergarten. I need to add more details about how this happened. One person on NWP who commented on the piece did not understand how my husband had two rows of front teeth. I will have the mom in this piece, explain further about the two rows of front teeth.

In my second poem, "Despair," Mike and Claudia from the NWP E-Anthology gave me some suggestions. I decided to take the advice of Mike but not Claudia. Mike suggested that in the last line I say, "We are the poster children for depression." I liked making that line more personal. Claudia wanted me to rename it and put in some more specific details. I considered this seriously but decided against this because I was trying to capture the feeling of despair and wanted all my images to focus on the woman in the picture. To me, specific details weren't important. We have all worn looks of despair on our faces at one time or another.

In the beginning of writing the story I made many changes in the "Untitled Short Story." Now, I'm taking Ron Rash's advice and trying just to get it on paper. It's about twelve pages at this point, so it may be a novel instead of a short story. I agree with Ron that I just need to get it on paper, and I really feel like this is what happened to my other short story. I became so deeply involved in crafting that I lost the vision for the whole piece. But before Ron spoke to us, I posted this on the E-Anthology. NWP's Brian told me to start with another image and take out the specific name of the song. I took out the song and started with them pulling over at a scenic overlook. Natalie gave me a great suggestion for weaving together the past and the present. As adult Tina went to teach at her old high school, she would have flashbacks at different points of her senior year. This suggestion helped me to smoothly introduce the characters from Tina's high school year.

My fourth piece needs much work. I really need to do some more observations with my students this fall in order to complete it. As you read in part I, I actually abandoned this article until I can research my findings this fall with my English III students. My new article will be a diary of my Writing for Social Change action research project. I have not posted this diary, so I have not had any comments on my new article yet. I plan on writing it all year and possibly next year posting it on the E-Anthology and start my revisions next summer.


Part III

What I have learned from my classmates



I have so enjoyed the pieces of my classmates this summer. I love the voice of Laurie's writing. In this piece about her sons, she starts off with such strong verbs like trudged that represents the mood of the piece. I also like the dialogue between the boys and herself. It add authenticity to her piece. I loved Nicole's piece about the couple who met while the guy was playing the guitar for money. There is so much voice in this piece like "termite-infested guitar." The plot is so clever. I love how they pass by so many Starbucks because they are deep in conversation. When they finally stop, she has to pay for the coffee because he does not have enough money. I also love the surprise ending in Robbin's piece based on the same picture.

1 koment:

Anonim tha...

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