Writing Stuff
I purchased Derrick Jensen's Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution in a fit of extreme brain tickle. I saw the book in Borders yesterday, was intrigued, and couldn't get it out of my mind. So today I picked it up and brought it home. I'm on page 71and can't decide how I feel.
On the one hand, Jensen is a master of the honestly profound teaching statement, the kind of statement young idealistic teachers find honestly profound, so profound that they blog about them. I speak of statements like this one:
As I've written elsewhere, grades are a problem. On the most general level, they're an explicit acknowledgement that what you're doing is insufficiently interesting or rewarding for you to do it on your own. (71)
Now, Jensen doesn't totally eschew grading, but the point he's making is one that resonates with me as both student and teacher. And the book is full of these types of observations, all couched in (and this is the part I think I have trouble with) Jensen's accounts of his teaching experiences in freshman and prison writing courses. Lots of classroom histrionics, the kind of stuff that to me, quite frankly, screams "Look at me!!! I'm the cool teacher!!! I'm the only one who really gets it!!!" Ego, thy name is writer and thy form is writing instructor.
But that's what writing is all about anyway, isn't it? Ego. Abstract placement of self outside of self. I write this blog not only because I want a record but because I want a PUBLIC record of what I do, what I think, what I read and knit.
Anywho, that's what's tickling my brain right now. What I really need to be doing, though, is prepping for my classes tomorrow night. Or prepping dinner.
But I think I'll read some more of this book.