Thinking and Q's on Swagger-isnky and Chief Rief

General Reactions

First of all, I want to emphasize that the general consensus on more constructive, collaborative, and open-ended assignments has its obvious merits in the instruction of writing. It's a wonderful and messy process that can't be fully developed with the rigidly codified structures that I knew as a middle and high school student. As a product of less engaging and constructive writing instruction, I feel that I have some authority in declaring older modes as destructive to the confidence, creativity, and originality that develop a good writer into a great writer. Rief's conception of the Writer's-Reader's Notebook (WRN) fosters support for student voices in a way that is unparalleled in my academic history, so I fully intend on integrating that into my future teaching. Somehow, I'd like to pair that with the portfolios that Smagorinsky describes in such depth (maybe using pages from the WRN as elements of the portfolio could work). Also, the collaborative approach to constructing student texts through peer editing and different group activities appears rich with developmental opportunities.

Having said all that, however, such open-endedness does play to a few of my anxieties about teaching due to its inherently unpredictable nature. The texts tend to present this approach as vastly under-appreciated in schools and complete rarities within the profession, which could lead to some rather difficult adjustment periods for students. They might even need to be weaned off of their reliance on structures rather than thrown into the fire of such open prompts as the authors (Smagorisnky especially) appear to present. Just reading some of Smagorinksy's hypothetical prompts had me verging on paralysis of choice, and I'm a graduate student. "To show your engagement with this play, create an interpretive text in any form of your choice" (Smagorinsky 91). Anxiety-inducing. Love the sentiment, but for my own sake I'd have to wade into student freedom over the course of a few months or years before I could be so bold in my assignments.

Questions

The amount of choice students have in both Rief's and Smagorinsky's conceptions of writing instruction seem to leave open the possibility that students miss out on information that they don't know they're curious about, because they haven't been exposed to it yet. How do you ensure with such student-driven model that students will be exposed to each of the various styles and genres of writing that they need to experience (as per different school, district, state, and federal requirements)? I'm not sure I've wrapped my head around the degree to which students have choice in the classes, because that aspect is so heavily covered in each of the texts we've read. Basically, I'm still left wondering: where exactly should I draw the line between appropriate challenges and unreasonable expectations for my students and for myself as new initiate to the profession? Without an actual classroom of students to engage with at the moment, this has proven a difficult concept for me.