I expected a lot more attention being focused on the nitty-gritty details. I think, for better of for worse, I had made the false assumption that English 101 would be geared towards creative writing and not this focus on the much more broad idea of literacy in general. I assumed that time would be spent going over grammar, scene, argument structure, and creative tools of the trade. I did not expect the more broad focus on the effort and work that is put in, regardless, somewhat, of the quality of the final product that reaches the instructor. At the outset, this shift in my perspective towards teaching this course was liberating, however, as we move through the details further, I am not entirely sold yet on the pedagogical standpoint. I assumed that there would be a benchmark of acceptable final products, and, while I understand it is difficult, ethically, to ultimately judge a work as good or bad, I also become more and more concerned with the idea of whether or not this approach will actually produce “better” writing, although, I suppose, there would have to be a debate on what that term “better” actually entails and from which perspective it stems. For this, a quote from Murray would be beneficial to include:

I must, as a teacher, encourage (force?) my students to develop their own writing habits: to write frequently, at least once a day; to write much more than they will complete or publish (maple syrup is the product of boiling thirty or forty gallons of sap to get one of syrup, and in writing there’s a great deal more sap that needs to be boiled down); to read writing that doesn’t look like writing but which often contains the essential surprise; to make it possible for the student to share unfinished writing with myself and the other writers in the class in such a way that the habit of writing will be reinforced. Murray 4

While I like the way this teaching style is modeled to encourage individual ownership and work towards writing growth, I can’t help but look back on my experience in writing courses and music courses; without the breakdown of what was wrong or what I was doing in my practice that was not effective, I wouldn’t have found my techniques and process as a writer. The style Murray and Bean propose, alongside our experiences in the 513 classroom and comp camp, seem painfully open without the drive or direction towards a particular goal. Ultimately, that has been the biggest dissonance so far between my notions of what teaching this would entail, and, then, what it actually entails in this particular classroom setting and curriculum. Bean attends to some of these issues in the section that covers the controversy over using small groups. Bean states:

Perhaps the most frequent objection made by my own colleagues is that using small groups seems like a lazy way of teaching, requiring little out-of-class effort or in-class teaching skill … In response, I must acknowledge that small group teaching looks easy — in fact, its practitioners can sometimes be observed wandering the halls while their students are working in groups. However, as with other modes of instruction, there are both well-prepared and ill-prepared users of small groups. The well-prepared teacher is hardly lazy: the use of small groups described here is a goal-directed form of teaching that places heavy emphasis on task sequencing and overall course design. Bean 198-199

One of my fears going through this and about being a teacher is not necessarily that I won’t be able to create goal-directed groups and prompts, but that, however, the effort to get people excited or to encourage literacy of different kinds will fall flat here. I often find that our discussions in groups will lead to the already known or agreed upon elements, and that the open set up of the curriculum and class then does not focus in on or reinforce any new findings or knowledge. I fear that while the activities may be sound and the goal of encouraging ownership and excitement is a positive one, that it is simply just not enough to actually excite people or teach them something new. Prizing work and effort is great, but there is a disconnect for me between encouraging it and the actual outcomes and experiences that I have been having personally in classes that are ran this way. I think, perhaps, there is a middle ground, and, ultimately, I don’t align as closely to the extremely free, open-ended kind of drum circle atmosphere. I am excited, however, to get to watch and see how this progresses. I leave open the opportunity to be pleasantly surprised as much as I leave open the opportunity that this style does not align with my personal learning and teaching preferences.