Excellent tools for teachers

In Chapter 2, Boice is delving even deeper into the idea of prewriting and planning, giving writers a less painful alternative to procrastinating and binge writing. I feel like the prewriting process is so important to English 1000 students, especially since many are used to waiting until the last minute and then pounding out their assignments in the middle of the night. For many of them, that’s probably how they got by in high school, unless their teachers regimented very strict prewriting activities like highly structured, Roman numeral outlines (which I hated doing while I was a high school student). I try to encouraging students to engage in the kind of research process that facilitates their creativity, allows them to collect and assimilate ideas, and cultivates their interest in the subject matter. This is key. I also try to emphasize the outline, not in a regimented way, but with the attitude of, “This benefits me because I’m very visual, and the outline allows me to ‘see’ where my paper is going.” I agree with Boice in that outlines help to “organize ideas into visible, coherent wholes,” allowing us to “see patterns” (49) where we didn’t see them before.

Do I think the outline is beneficial in all instances? I don’t know. I had a MFA professor who decried outlining fiction as a kind of blasphemy, and really, I think the helpfulness of an outline depends greatly on the kind of story you're writing. Plot and character oriented stories typically require tons of prewriting for me (I do sometimes draw characters and locations from my stories, so the thing about the two writers in Boice’s workshop who sketch-outlined their ideas really excited me). However, I tend not to outline lyric stories in which the action is more internal and circular; the story sort of “directs itself.” I do concede that I revise like crazy once I have a first draft down, and that most of my truly original ideas spring up during the second go-around or later.

The Rodgers piece we read was very informative and helpful, particularly the attitudes highlighted in Criterion #4: whole-heartedness, directness, open-mindedness, responsibility, and readiness. All beginning teachers should be well-versed in these qualities. Teaching has required the most flexibility of anything I’ve ever done – there’s a very delicate balance between instructing your students and being willing to learn and adapt in response to them (Just like any rhetorical situation! How clever that the “I-Thou-It” on pg. 859 corresponds perfectly to the rhetorical triangle.). I especially liked the comments about open-mindedness, that being open-minded doesn’t mean “blind acceptance of all ideas without intelligent critique”; rather, it is “a willingness to entertain different perspectives, coupled with an acceptance of the ‘possibility of error even in the beliefs that are dearest to us’” (861). This is an excellent sentiment for everybody to have, especially teachers, and we should take special care to communicate it to students.