Can you believe that internships are officially over, and we only have a week of class left? Less than a week. Four days. Unbelievable. I remember being terrified about my internship and really wishing there was some way I could get out of it. Going to class, doing tons of critical reading, thinking and writing… Fine. That I can do. But when DCT said, “You’ll be teaching one day with your mentor in the room and one day on your own,” I wanted to cry. It struck me as the most daunting task ever. A task I was in no way prepared for. That was only five short weeks ago. I’m proud to say that when I left my internship on Thursday I knew each of those students names, their strengths and weakness, and I could honestly write on their last papers, “Your writing has improved so much!” Even better, they insisted I return for an encore performance on Wednesday, and I was more than happy to say, “of course!” I’ve learned so much from those seventeen students and my mentor, more than I’ve learned from the hours of class spent discussing pedagogy and more than the hundreds of pages I’ve read on theory and practice. Every day when we discussed readings, workshopped papers or read aloud the writing activities, I asked myself, “Why does this class have such great community? What’s going on here? How can I bottle this up and use it in my classroom in the fall?”
I know now that it isn’t just one thing. And, sadly, it’s not something that can be bottled and transferred from classroom to classroom. It’s something that must be cultivated and nurtured by instructor and students. The recipe for classroom community has lots different ingredients, many of which I’ve discussed in past blog posts. One activity that, without a doubt, nurtures a sense of classroom community is workshopping among peers. It’s something that we do every day in my internship.
This week we read an article by Muriel Harris, Collaboration is Not Collaboration is Not Collaboration, in which the author outlined the similarities and differences between writing center tutorials and peer response groups. The benefits of workshopping are undeniable. Peer-response groups encourage honesty, accountability and respect among students. These are three key ingredients to classroom community that, without workshopping, would be hard to effectively cultivate. The article notes a number of different benefits of peer response groups, which includes that it “develops a better sense of audience, reduces paper grading, exposes students to a variety of writing styles, motivates them to revise, and develops a sense of community” (Harris, 372).
This weekend I’ve been creating my course schedule for my fall section of ENC 1101, and it seems that every week we are doing some sort of peer-response group, be it as a class or as pairs or as small groups. Every day the students will be encouraged to share their free writes with their peers. Although sharing and peer response groups can be scary at first, I think that students will immediately see the benefits. I’m confident that my classroom in the fall will have a strong sense of classroom community.
Bring it on, Fall 2011.
from the mirror,
Claire
I know now that it isn’t just one thing. And, sadly, it’s not something that can be bottled and transferred from classroom to classroom. It’s something that must be cultivated and nurtured by instructor and students. The recipe for classroom community has lots different ingredients, many of which I’ve discussed in past blog posts. One activity that, without a doubt, nurtures a sense of classroom community is workshopping among peers. It’s something that we do every day in my internship.
This week we read an article by Muriel Harris, Collaboration is Not Collaboration is Not Collaboration, in which the author outlined the similarities and differences between writing center tutorials and peer response groups. The benefits of workshopping are undeniable. Peer-response groups encourage honesty, accountability and respect among students. These are three key ingredients to classroom community that, without workshopping, would be hard to effectively cultivate. The article notes a number of different benefits of peer response groups, which includes that it “develops a better sense of audience, reduces paper grading, exposes students to a variety of writing styles, motivates them to revise, and develops a sense of community” (Harris, 372).
This weekend I’ve been creating my course schedule for my fall section of ENC 1101, and it seems that every week we are doing some sort of peer-response group, be it as a class or as pairs or as small groups. Every day the students will be encouraged to share their free writes with their peers. Although sharing and peer response groups can be scary at first, I think that students will immediately see the benefits. I’m confident that my classroom in the fall will have a strong sense of classroom community.
Bring it on, Fall 2011.
from the mirror,
Claire
No comments:
Post a Comment