Reflections on Reading & Discussion

This Tuesday I was unable to attend class because of the flu again, and because of this, I couldn't participate in the class discussion of the readings

I felt a strong connection with the pieces we read this week. With the Morell reading, the idea of writing as an act of self care really resonated with me. In class today I began reflecting a lot on my life and the development of my love for literature, and I realized that a large part of my love for literature is responsible by the English teachers I had in high school. I wouldn't be intending to declare as an English major in the coming months if it weren't for the teachers I have had, and as I sat in class listening to everyone's stories with in class free-writing or writing as self care, I came to understand that the opportunity and assignment of creative writing projects really influenced my relationship with the language and with literacy.

Recently I've been free writing or writing poetry when I feel particularly stressed or emotional as a release and as a way to organize my feelings. In following with Morrell, "writing becomes a catharsis, a letting out of emotions that become painful or even dangerous if they remain internalized. I am convinced that much of great literature begins this way; even though it can ultimately be shared with others, it began as a strategy to help the authors to successfully cope with otherwise overwhelming emotion" (169). I've never really done this practice consistently before.

Recently, our class conversation has delved a lot into the way that we are taught to read and write. While this is certainly not surprising for a course titled "Unsettling Literacy," I still have found myself surprised at the visceral emotions I have been feeling recently. It is probably due to sitting in a class full of thoughtful and passionate people while talking about how we learned to read, write and be literate.

In class today we talked about writing as self care, and the last time we remember writing freely in a classroom setting. I realized that the feeliings of inhibition that block me from writing "authentically" mainly stem from the knowledge that my work will be graded. This has been true for me since I began getting grades, in middle school. My uninhibited creative piping gets plugged when I remember the looming future of the number value my professor or teacher will assign to my written thoughts. I freeze. I read back over my work and check for coherence, grammar, structural integrity. It feels like the teacher is looking over my shoulder, and I become so self-conscious that my flow is shattered. 

As I write this reflection, I am extremely cognizant of what I am writing, who will be reading it, and all the uncertainty surrounding what exactly this means. I am going to try to write the rest of this piece in the surrealist form that Morell highlighted in his piece. Or rather, a watered down surrealist writing or stream of consciousness. Who are the eyes? Who should be reading this reflective writing? Who is reading this reflective writing? Will I revisit this writing again and when I do, will look at the content or the poor grammar and the awkward spelling. What does it mean to authentically reflect? I want to own this writing, but is it true ownership without my name? A pseudonym creates dishonesty between the reader and writer.

While reading the Plemons piece, "Teaching," I was reminded from the very first paragraph of our own classroom dynamic. Plemons explains that her goal in a classroom is to create an environment where students feel as equals so that they can "contemplate, challenge, and create in ways that validate their role as co-creators." In the short time we've been a group so far, I've found myself feeling in a way that I am not very familiar with while in class.

My experience in this course's classroom(s) so far has been unique to me. Perhaps this is all framed by the dynamics of having two teachers, which is very new to me; I tend to be quite sensitive to the way my teachers act and seem to be feeling, so this change is very significant. Somehow, I feel like having two teachers has opened up the classroom a lot. Often times, when my professors attempt to shape the discussion or classroom dynamics, it can feel forced because there is always a sense of authority - students will tend to accept (not necessarily agree, I suppose) with the teacher's opinions. When this sort of "authority," if you will, is dispersed among two people, it seems to make these sorts of dynamics less intense.

I believe both Jody and Anne have been effective in guiding an open, but challenging, group dynamic thus far. I have felt free to share and contribute to the learning community that we have all been trying to establish. Below I have described a few ways we could maintain/improve our learning environment:

I have refered to our classroom in the title of this post as a "community" rather than a classroom. As our class runs very much as an open forum and a place of discussion (and as we are working together outside of class as well as in class), it seemed right to use a word that puts us all on equal footing. It also lends itself to the idea that as a community, we must work together to create respect and maintain an environment which challenges us and also makes us better thinkers and learners.