Creating an atmosphere of conversation and written reflection in the most balanced way possible allowed me to have my most effective classroom experience this semester. By first allowing the students to reflect on the readings and their personal reactions, not their in-depth discoveries and analyses, we were able to have conversations about the topics of sexuality and bullying. The students brought in their personal lives; one student mentioned her brother, who fell under the heteronormative definitions of masculinity, but who was also gay.

This personal experience created an atmosphere of open discussion and one where we were able to cite that real-life example, along with other students’ personal examples, to move towards a deeper discussion of gender identity, sexuality, and the reasons that bullying occurs and certain people are targeted.

After that class period, I felt rejuvenated, and I felt like the students were inspired to go and begin writing. Their papers were far more analytical, thoughtful, and personal. By creating a space where the personal could collide with the theoretical, we were able to focus more on the organization of their writing. The students were not so much worried about the content anymore; now they could move into their papers with a confidence that gave them room for a better understanding and a closer look at the composition itself.

Striking that balance of personal, analytical, and stylistic writing and conversation can be challenging, but I think it is the best way for students to grow as writers and thinkers.

Post-process theory can be enacted through community-based outreach classes. I work at the University Center for Excellence in Writing where I see this community outreach occurring on a tutoring-level. Non-FAU students or professionals work with the CCEW, an extension of the center, where they can get writing help and knowledge. I think this is vital to the community and to the act of composition because so much gets lost in grade schools, where the formula is so ridged and individual attention is rarely provided for the students, so when they go out into the professional world, they have minimal writing and communication skills.

Bringing this to the classroom would be a wonderful way to provide college students, most of whom are eighteen years old and still trapped in the ridged test-taking mentality. If they can see and understand how and why people who are not college students are using writing and communication in their personal and professional lives, then they can take those experiences and learn from them, broaden their perspectives, and try to make their writing reflect the world outside of standardized testing.

So often I see my students trying to fit all of their ideas into five paragraphs; when I would encourage them to build ideas and separate them into individual sections of the paper that can be made up by more than one paragraph, they either gave me blank stares or grew concerned and afraid to continue writing. Their writing was not reflecting their language, and their language was far more reflective of the outside world. If they can go out into the community and see how they can take the time to write about their experiences in an essay, they may be able to alter their perspectives on writing and communicating.

After class on November sixth, I was considering how eco-composition is more than just writing about nature. It is writing about how we have evolved as a result of our nature both physically, psychologically, and intellectually. Geographic locations have created different races and cultures, and that has led to different ideals, mentalities, beliefs, and religions.

It is a thoughtful way to begin considering how we can provide our students with perspective. If we can impart on them ideas of how history has led to our current thought processes, ideals, and moralistic views, maybe they can then be thoughtful about their in-class interactions and arguments that they are beginning to formulate in their writing.

Sometimes, I think, it can be hard to provide our students with new perspectives. They get defensive when their ideas are challenged, and it is so easy for a teacher or a classroom full of students to further push one student into their narrow perspective. If we can show them how each perspective is reflective of location and differing intellectual ideals, maybe we can allow them to open up to understanding. This would be helpful for all the students because while one may seem particularly disagreeable to us as teachers, all of the students must learn that their perspective is created through certain cultural values, and we’re really all “drinking the kool-aid” to one degree or another.

According to Elbow, we should try to distinguish writing in its own category separate from academia. From the start of this article, I was full of questions. Firstly, I wondered what a writer actually is and does, according to Elbow. How can you express ideas externally from the confines of culture, history, etc? Are our minds that our producing this writing not totally and wholly developed and defined by our history and our culture? I don’t see how we can disconnect one from the other, and in turn, how we can disconnect our academic mentality from our writing. Isn’t academic writing just focused, specific forms of expressing cultural, historical, and scientific ideas? Just the same way we write about our lives, we’re writing about an author’s life’s process when we analyze his or her work. Similarly, when we write about a specific research project in the field of chemistry, we’re looking at processes that we are only able to learn and understand, at least initially, by somehow making connections and comparisons to our own lives and experiences.

In Sommer’s essay on paper comments, she detailed the problems teachers have faced when commenting on papers. She highlighted the issues with brief comments (they can be discouraging to students) and very directive comments (the student spends the revision process focusing on what to write for the teacher instead of what to write to improve their argument).

Her conclusion is that we need to focus on different aspects of writing in the different drafts we are given. If we throw dozens of ideas at the student on both a global and sentence level, then they get lost in the revision.

My problem with this is twofold: 1. We’re not supposed to be commenting on drafts. I want to be able to spend that time moving from one style of writing to another, but I don’t know how to build that revision process when the students are meant to rely on the peer revision process. As much as peer revision can be guided by the teacher, it is still out of our hands when it comes down to the act itself. Then, 2., the problem with brief comments. We are told that we can’t overwhelm the students with comments or they will lose focus, but we can’t be brief because it will come off as harsh or apathetic. I wonder how universal that reception is, or if that idea is focused mainly on certain student personalities. Maybe a certain student with a type A personality will respond better to brief, directive comments, while the free-thinking student may need more encouragement.

In the end, I still don’t have an answer and I’m still trying to figure out what is most effective for students.