Brief week in review

I have about ten minutes before I have to go to an observation--after which I am blasting out of here as fast as I can go. But even though I said I wouldn't blog this week, I just have to say how much I'm liking this process of revision. It still needs tweaking, here and there, but I think it works better than anything I've tried. I think the two days in class of working on version two are especially useful. Both yesterday and today, being in class was a little like being pulled apart by hungry beasts, as each student wanted more more more of my time. But it was great to be able to circulate around the room and answer specific questions, point out problems, ask more questions for them to work on, cajole, push, encourage, praise, tease--and in one case, damned near fight.

That one case was in yesterday's class. The student was fighting me tooth and nail about my comments. That cycle from "But I did that!" (no, you didn't) to "You're telling me not to..." (no, I'm telling you that you must--but you didn't) to "How can I when you tell me I'm not allowed to..." (no, I'm telling you not to do X but to do Y instead). Among the specific issues: the student kept referring to the poet and her life and her thoughts and not talking about the poetry. When I said she needed to focus on the poetry, the student said, "But how can I talk about that if I can't mention the poet?" and "What, I'm supposed to act like I wrote the poem?" She was being willfully dense, because she doesn't want to have to change her paper--or how she thinks. I kept saying to her, "Don't fight me on this"--and even then she said, "I'm not fighting you!"

Breathe, Tonia; breathe.

In yesterday's class, two of the students there didn't ask me a single question. Those two are not by any stretch the strongest writers in the class. A few more only asked one or two questions. Ditto. The best writers are generally the ones who have the most questions about what to do, how to improve.

Today, the only students who didn't ask questions were the ones who hadn't turned in their first versions on Tuesday and so who don't yet have any feedback from me. (Again, not the best writers in the class.) Everyone else wanted my time--lots of it, more than I had to give. Which is why I'm glad we're doing this again next week. I hope that they work on trying to address my comments over the weekend so they can run changes by me to see if they're effective. But we'll see.

The short story class is pulling together nicely as well. I shuffled the groups a little yesterday, and they did very well together in the new configurations. Nice.

That's about it. I may have to see another student right now; if so I hope I can hustle him out of here pretty quickly so I can get to my observation on time. If not, I'll be out of here in five minutes....

And up this post goes, unrevised, unproofed, unexamined--raw from the keyboard.