The Revelation

Nearing the end of my OWP experience, I decided to join a Zoom call with Jason Palmeri. He was doing a revisions workshop and I thought it would be nice to participate, since I was finishing a few revisions of my own work. He had offered insight on a few of my pieces, which I found to be extremely helpful.

At the beginning of the workshop Jason asked us to take a few minutes to write. His questions that spoke to me had been on my mind earlier in the day as I was making my own revisions. He asked, "If you have never had a meaningful experience of revision (and it’s very common that people haven’t!), why do you think that is?" Crazy enough, I already had my response. I knew that when working with Jason and Katie Bills-Tenney on my revisions, both had led me to give the audience more background for my story or more insight to my thoughts and experiences. Clearly, I had lacked meaningful peer revision in school. We also lacked investment in each other's writing due to a poorly developed writing community.

Please don't misunderstand me, I loved my ELA classes in high school. They made a lot more sense to me than any math or science class. But, as Shawna Coppola explains, I was a good writer. This is how she defines a writer in most experiences, "...successfully complete the writing process we assign, understand the fundamentals of English grammar, have a solid grasped of 'mechanics', possesses good writing and/or keyboarding skills, regularly produced content while in the classroom, have a distinct writing 'voice', and/or independently engage in writing tasks outside of school."

Coppola goes on to discuss how this is actually a limited view of what writers should be, do, and think. We are limiting our students to be only writers instead of supporting other forms of visual expression to demonstrate understanding. It's hard not to think about what could have been created if only teacher's were armed with this information. It's hard not to think about what I could have created if given the chance in my learning.

Bibliography

Palmeri, Jason. "Revising with Joy". Ohio Writing Project 41st Annual Workshop on the Teaching of Writing. 8 July 2020

Coppola, Shawna. Writing, Redefined : Broadening Our Ideas of What It Means to Compose. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Stenhouse Publishers, 2019.