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Letter to EDUC 718 Students
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September 8, 2003
Dear Students and Fellow Writers,
In this class I will be
adopting Richard Meyer’s perspective (in Stories from the
Heart : Teachers and Students Researching Literate Lives)
that stories are one of the ways we learn and and one of the
ways we teach. I will ask you to write your own
story—really a multitude of stories that reveal who you are
and how you got that way. Because I believe that as you
understand who you are, you will come to see what it is
important for you to write about. This process may also
help you understand the kind of teacher you have become and
may provide insight about how you can become a better
teacher.
For this class I will not
ask you to write anything that I will not also write
myself. As you offer me and the group pieces of yourselves,
I will be offering you, the group, pieces of myself as
well. Actually, what this class will require most, I think,
is the ability to take risks with a group of people who will
begin as strangers. I doubt that you can have any idea how
vulnerable such a contract with you makes me feel. I have
to risk first, and then I have to find a way to help each of
you take that same risk with me and with each other again
and again.
In this class we’ll use a
workshop method, and you’ll need access to a pc. What we
are about in this class is not so much how to write—I
daresay most of you teach others how to write. We are about
re-writing—refinement : developing a clear, personal voice
and a distinctive style that pleases us because it
communicates exactly what we wish to say as the individuals
we are.
Yes, I understand that
most, if not all, of you are teachers and would find a more
pedagogical focus more immediately useful and probably more
comfortable too. But I believe you will grow as a teacher
from focusing on your own writing in exactly the same way
you grow by learning to read deeply a work of
literature—works by Homer, Shakespeare, Garcia Lorca, or
Toni Morrison—not because you would necessarily try to teach
those same works to your students, but because grappling
with your own understandings of such works helps teach you
how to help your students grapple and conquer—in the sense
of finding fulfillment—in what they read. My hope is that,
in grappling with your own writing at home and in our
workshops, you will ultimately experience that same sense of
conquest and fulfillment.
I’m sure you will have
questions and concerns beyond what I’ve addressed here. I
hope that our subsequent discussion will alleviate some of
the hesitancy you may feel about just what you’ve gotten
yourselves into. I hope this group, this room, can be a
place where you can feel understood and supported as we all
work at becoming better writers.
Sincerely,
Glenna Howell, Ph.D.
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