Learning, Writing, and Thinking at SI Orientation

It’s a pretty funny thing that I have been requiring my students to keep a blog this past semester, but I have been putting off starting my own because I am terrified. I don’t know if it’s because I am a writing teacher, so it feels like I have to produce some perfect piece of prose or I will be outed as a fraud. Maybe it’s because I have a hard time putting myself out there in general for fear of being weighed in the balance and found wanting. Whatever the reason is, the result is the same: I have been putting this off for way too long (including this circumlocutory introduction). Okay, so on to the writing…

I have been hearing about the NWP and the Summer Institute for years now—how it changed the perspectives, attitudes, and pedagogy of my colleagues and how it even spurred people to make drastic life decisions from career changes to relocation. Needless to say, I have been curious over the years as to what all the fuss is about. However, after attending the orientation, I can really see what the Summer Institute is really about—getting teachers together to think, to write, to learn, and to grow. We get to learn how to become better teachers and better writers as we shift our identities a bit in order to create a space for us to experience writing through the eyes of writers. It’s easy to become used to seeing writing only through the eyes of the teacher (especially when it’s your job), but I think it’s worth the struggle to be able to experience writing in the way that our students do. 

In my experience, one of the most moving moments of the orientation was the collective recitation of "Hotel Nights with My Mother." I found the Image Explosion so moving because I liked the poem when I read it to myself, I saw value in the poem when I chose a favorite phrase, I connected to the poem as I free-wrote on my phrase, but it wasn’t until we all recited it together that I was moved by the poem. Once we had finished, there was this unbelievable buzzing energy in the room even though everyone was too moved to speak. I see that collective recitation as tantamount to the way the NWP works—we could appreciate teaching and writing on our own, but by appreciating and discussing it together, we can create a powerful initiative with endless possibilities. 

Teetering and tottering into Twitter at SI Orientation