Blog # 5

Dear Ann,

I was actually interested to read the Mike Rose article. I read his book “Lives on the Boundary” last year and it was very interesting (and I highly recommend it, if you ever have the time). However, it took all of my power not to through this article right off the back end of the ferry. I had trouble with Rose trying to choose a new word for “skill.” I have always functioned by assuming that writing well was a skill. Finally on page 358, Rose renamed it as an “ability.” I think I would have appreciated a little more if he had said this in the beginning, because as he tried to drive the reader away from using “skill,” I became more frustrated. However, once he said that writing is an ability, I thoroughly enjoyed the last two pages.

Earlier in Rose’s article, he was talking about writing tools. I liked his point that writing itself is not a tool, but what we use to write coherently, such as grammar and sentence structure, are the tools. The problem I had with this is that Rose seems to think that teaching writing is to simply teaching how to refine what we should already know how to do. I’m sure that you will have a problem with this as well, as you are trying to teach your freshmen what an adverb is.

I’m sorry, but that Rose article made me angry. I’ll talk about Bean now. I enjoyed this reading and I think Bean’s ideas about getting to student to see both sides of the argument they are trying to make because I agree that it will make a stronger argument. The thing is, I don’t think that Bean really gave a good example of how to do this. He gave an example of a student who has reached this point, but he doesn’t say how to effectively lead students out of their comfort zone. Did you see anything like this?

On a final, and hopefully positive, note Bean says, “Often students do their best work when instructional methods and assignments match the way they like to learn,” (p 39). He then goes on to say that every assignment cannot appeal to every student. I liked the suggestion of moving through types of assignments (concrete, reflective, abstract and active (p 41)) so that all students have an equal opportunity to do well. What do you think?

I look forward to seeing what you have to say.

Sarah