,
4 tweets,
1 min read
Read on Twitter
Last night in my first-year experience class I read my students the excerpts from the student reflections about reading and writing I quote in this post and they all agreed they reflected their experiences. insidehighered.com/blogs/just-vis…
It was interesting because I had assigned a reflective piece of writing in which I very carefully never used the word "essay" and made it clear they could respond in any form they wanted. Every single student wrote a five-paragraph essay. They'd been conditioned to a default.
Thing is, within those 5PE's were some amazing and well-written narratives that illustrated their experiences. (I asked them to reflect on times they'd had to work collaboratively.) They'd done real stuff and had real wisdom, but it was diminished by forcing it into a template.
I really think this is a crisis, people, has been for some time. Students seem to have given up on writing as something that could or should be meaningful. Reading too. One said the only reason to read is to grab enough to pass the test. Others nodded.
