The notion that Murray focused mainly on influencing the curriculum and pedagogy of secondary education, must have been a result of the troubling experiences he, himself, had in high school. This is great because I know I see dozens of students on a daily basis whose needs aren’t met in secondary public schools.
Murray believed composition instruction should be both “product driven and process-oriented,” combining the ideas of Kinneavy(?) and Elbow. He further developed hese ideas in his pre-vision, vision, and revision strategies. I believe the most important thing a teacher can do for a student is to help him discover a vision. Teaching information or even skills is one thing, but if you can inspire and motivate a student by assisting them in realizing their vision, you have empowered them to continue learning and growing on their own.
The pre-vision signals were very interesting to me, and I’d like to learn more about some of them (news, line ?). Following surprise is also an interesting idea... I loved Tony’s approach to the presentation. He brought a lot of good energy and showed us this theorist’s ideas instead of just telling us.
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I think that the vision that you are talking about, though, is closer to the pre-vision and even beyond anything that Murray had proposed when talking about writing. The vision you seem to be talking about involves inspiration and the belief of self-worth, also the idea that if we can teach students to think for themselves they will be able to succeed in the future. I do not disagree on any of these points, but I did not see evidence of them as much as you did in Tony's presentation.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Eric. The hardest thing that we do as teachers is to try provide our students with a sense of vision. The skills that we teach are important, but without a clear purpose and goal, then they are somewhat meaningless to our students. I think that Murray hit on an important concept by focusing on vision, and his particular use of the term. It seems as if students just wander through the world with no where to go. How can we as teachers expect them to make their way through a writing assignment if they struggle to find their way through every day in their life. We need to look at writing as a way for students to find, and then express, some vision for themselves. We can give them a visions to follow, they have to find it for themselves. The trouble is, most of them don’t know where to start looking.
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