think outside the workshop

In an interview at the Stanford Writing Center, Andrea Lunsford talks about collaboration: "I believe that all writing is collaborative. . .No matter what you’re doing, even if you’re sitting by yourself at your computer you’re collaborating with somebody, something you’ve read, or some voices you’ve got in your head, or your friends, or something, there’s some kind of collaboration going on.” I love this idea of collaboration existing outside of what we normally see as collaboration in our classrooms, i.e. the Workshop. (dum, dum dum dum DUM. . .) I hope that workshopping is more pleasant for other teachers than it is for me. In my class, it's a day when most people don't show, everyone seems a bit bored, and every technique I've tried has seemed to fail. (Though the reading-out-loud exercise was at least exciting in terms of sheer volume!)

If I teach composition again in the future, I think I'm going to try a different approach and teach my students about collaboration as defined here by Lunsford. I might give them a text in class, have them read it, and then rewrite their freewrite. I think this could be really effective! I do something similar to this in my creative writing class (writing after reading a very distinct style and seeing how that style, simply by reading it, can infuse into the writer's own style) and I think it could be effective in 110. I also think I might encourage some collaboration with another 110 class, perhaps working with another TA to swap drafts and let our students respond to each others' work. I think this could be fun and also establish a sense of community amongst 110 students.

I get so stuck in the workshop rut, and I think my students feel the same. This may have been obvious to other people, but when I've heard the word "collaboration," I always think of this workshop scenario. I simply love this idea of collaboration as communicating with multiple disciplines, medias, people, ideas, and even "voices in my own head." (I'm collaborating right now with the episode of "Seinfeld " playing in the background. . .gotta love it.)