July+06

Travelogue July 6, 2010 Iowa Writing Project Sioux City Day 1 of the journey By Marty Eight of us gathered at 8:30 a.m. at Lincoln Center 103 at Morningside College to begin our three weeks of reading, writing, and learning: Rod Cameron (Council Bluffs Lincoln), Korey Cantrell (North), Katie Gordon (West), Marty Knepper (Morningside), Ted Mallory (Boyer Valley), Erin Ohrlund (LeMars), Jane Warren (West), Lisa Wiersma (MOC-Floyd Valley). After Marty welcomed everyone to Morningside and Rod explained some background on IWP (the library and articles, a.m. and p.m., IWP and NWP), we free wrote on the topic “I may be the only person in the room who. . . .” The sharing of these free writings revealed (among other things) that Rod has had difficulty distinguishing sour cream and cream cheese, Lisa is our most recent college graduate and is the only elementary teacher among us, Katie has a tooth that glows in the dark, Jane backpacked through Europe in her college years and has twin boys, Korey has worked with Girl Scouts and is the mother of four (including a set of twins), Erin’s fourth of five children is heading for boot camp soon, Ted teaches art and coaches the cheerleaders, and Marty had a 22-year old cat named Fart. The group read, discussed in pairs, and reported on three articles from the Orientation packet: Walshe, Smith, Eisner. These articles from 20 or 30 years ago proved relevant to today’s teachers. Eisner stressed the importance of teaching to enhance students’ critical thinking and imaginations and multiple literacies rather than taking a narrow, “constipated” view of learning that focuses on standardized testing. Frank Smith exposed a number of myths about writing that suggest we instruct students to write in ways that no professional writer would tolerate. He stressed every child can write and we should concentrate on re-writing rather than writing first drafts. Ted noted Wilt Chamberlain’s words in reference to his coach John Wooden: “Work with me. Don’t handle me.” These are words for us to remember as writing teachers. Walshe outlined five qualities writing teachers can embrace to lead students to become enthusiastic writers and suggested good basic practices such as writing with students, allowing students a freer range of topics, using praise, encouraging journaling, and emphasizing rewriting and self and peer editing. PM Began the afternoon getting an overview of the afternoon and updating class information for each member. We also signed up for treats. Marty then had us write about our names, how we got them, how we feel about them. As afternoon introductions we shared what we wrote about our names. Marty explained that the pm responses would focus on positive aspects of the writing. She also encouraged us to take ownership for our own writing. She then asked that we write a response to the afternoon plan. After that Marty led the group through brainstorming to generate some ideas for writing. She had us list memorable people, objects, events, and places or books.