sowricon
sophomore writing conferences … going on all this past week and - with a brief break for Street Scenes - moving on to the end of the month …
every day i meet with five sophomores … five minutes each … during which each tells me of strengths, weaknesses and goals for writing over the rest of the semester and in some cases the rest of their lives (some aspire to the writing professions) …
i take quick notes as many repeat what they’ve already written there in their folders about strengths weaknesses and goals … so there’s something a little redundant about this … about the information passed from them to me … but there’s nothing redundant about the meeting … the me listening to the actually-speaking them … in which there’s a possibility … that i might learn something i hadn’t known … that this or that student realizes i’m trying to understand … how writiing works or doesn’t for him or her …
and i am … trying to understand … i’m learning that these conferences are more for me than for them … i’m learning that i need to do more with and for their writing purposes … i’d like to say just write, kids … because that’s the only way it happens … i wouldn’t be able to read everything they wrote … but would i need to? couldn’t they show me what i needed to see?
i suppose i’m thinking about something like a portfolio process … i’ve done it in the past … what stopped me … & when? … no matter … could it work better electronically than on paper? via wikis? blogs?
