Reading

[lunabee34]

I've been doing research for an article which has led me to read two chapbooks published by the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project about writing marathons. I took part in a Summer Institute at the University of Mississippi Writing Project more than ten year ago (gosh, maybe 15 now), and it was one of the best experiences of my life. It was writing intensive and creative and I really enjoyed being involved in a community of teachers/writers. I am toying with the idea of applying to start a national writing project site at my university, but I know it will be a great deal of work and effort, and I'm not certain I'm willing to put that in. I would need a couple of colleagues who are willing to commit, and I would probably need to try to get involved with one of the existing sites ahead of time (and they're all a couple hours drive from here). IDK It's probably more work than I'm interested in.

Anybody else done anything with the National Writing Project?

(I intended to drop my reviews of these texts from Goodreads here, but DW keeps giving me an error message when I try to upload either; it's very weird.)




The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I love this book so much. I have always really enjoyed retellings of fairy tales, myths, and other beloved stories.

Atwood brings Penelope to life and fleshes her out, turns her into a real character instead of merely the scenery for Odysseus's story.

She's one of my favorite poets, and I love that she intersperses poetry with the prose narrative. The poem about the birth of Telemachus is exquisitely, achingly beautiful.



View all my reviews

On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse by Aristotle

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


In keeping with my review of Poetics, this is useful to know but incredibly boring to read. Should anyone feel a masochistic urge to do so, this is a very readable translation.



View all my reviews

Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This was okay. I think everyone's probably familiar with the basic premise: a team is miniaturized and sent inside a person's body to repair a blood clot near the brain. There's some decent tension since the protagonist suspects that one of the team is attempting to sabotage the mission and also since the mission has a firm deadline; they must be outside the body within an hour or they will begin to expand to their original size inside the patient and kill him.

This is apparently Asimov's novelization of the movie rather than being his original idea; I wonder how much of it is his addition and how much of it is true to the movie.

Content warning: 1960s levels of sexism.



View all my reviews

Comments

[chelseagirl]

I've heard it praised but I don't have a clear idea of what they do.

[lunabee34]

The big thing for the National Writing Project is the Summer Institute; these are hosted by the affiliate sites. NWP is the big umbrella, and the affiliate sites (most of which are hosted by universities and colleges) are underneath that umbrella. Summer Institute is a several week camp over the summer in which you earn six hours of graduate credit; the focus is entirely on writing: writing across the curriculum, practical writing activities, some research into writing pedagogy and theory. Most of the participants are K-12 teachers, but sometimes college teachers participate; I was an English masters student when I participated. Then throughout the year, they have writing based professional development events of which the writing marathon is one. The Ole Miss site had monthly meetings. Then the NWP has a big conference every year where people present about writing and writing pedagogy.

It's entirely focused on writing; so classroom activities, pedagogy, creating identity as a writer (both for the students and the teacher).

It's extremely high energy and rewarding and generates a lot of great writing.

I remember when I went into the Summer Institute thinking that I was not going to have a lot in common with a third grade teacher and wondering how that was going to translate to me teaching comp to college freshman (the big thing is that participants teach each other through sharing projects). It was wild to me how much I learned from the K-12 teachers; almost everything anybody was working on, regardless of grade level, was adaptable in some way to the college classroom.

If there's a site close to you, you should check it out.

https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/doc/findasite/completelist.csp

There's a bunch in New York and New Jersey (which doesn't mean anything, I know; there's like five in GA and they're all about a 2 hour drive).