Composing Process A

I never thought much about the composing process..especially as it relates to art and music as well as writing. I remember reading a book by C.P. Snow while I was in high school. I can't remember the title after all these years, but it changed by thinking about creativity permanently. The protagonist in this novel was a scientist, who was every bit as involved in the creative process as any writer. This week's readings made me think about composing in a similar way...that art, music, and words are all mediums in which composing takes place. They can complement and reinforce each other in significant ways.

The Ross, et. al., article on Mask-making challenged some of my long held prejudices about including visual art as part of a student's response to literature. In my day (we're talking 1950s-1970) English teachers dealt with words. Students responded to literature by writing essays. Students expressed themselves in English class by writing poems, sonnets, persuasive essays, stories, memoirs. When teachers began assigning collages in the early 90s our resource room began filling with magazines, paste, scissors, and construction paper, I must admit I didn't see the value. How could composing a poster be equivalent to analyzing a poem? Many resource students are much stronger with visuals than language, so I was glad to see they could express their ideas this easier way. However, personally, I saw art as a cop-out; OK for elementary students but enabling secondary students to avoid composing in words. Ross's article focused on three senior boys who created masks of themselves as part of a unit on identity. The analysis of their composing processes revealed not only the value of creating a visual representation of self-identity, but the way in which narrative and language were involved both in creating the mask and in presenting it to others. Peta drew on his affinity for poetry, seeing similarities in the process of composing in each medium. A critical point here, though, it that the project introduced with pre-composing activities to focus students on ways of representing their identity (visual, written both) and was followed by a consideration of the role of identity as the class investigated British literature. Cindy gave her students time and space to create these masks...and an opportunity to express the insights they had come to in writing as well as in art. It wasn't just throwing together a collage... Yet, the process of artistic composition described was valid and certainly valuable on its own; for these students it complemented and enriched composing with words. And if I'm honest with myself, is a thrown together collage really any less valuable than a thrown together character sketch? Getting students to engage honestly and intensely with the medium and assignment is key.

The Composing Process: A Model supported some methods that we talked about in class last week. In "real life" writing situations, the audience is critically important in how the author words, frames, and structures his argument. In school, the audience is primarily the teacher. On the NYS Regents, the audience is the rubric and several teachers. The article made clear that in research, professional and business writing, the composing process is shaped by the knowledge of the context and the audience for which the writing is intended. Authentic writing experiences benefit students in that they bring the importance of knowing your audience and purpose to the forefront of their planning. If all writing is writing to persuade on some level, student need opportunities to go beyond the formulaic 5 paragraph essay to incorporate critical thinking into their writing.

I'm not quite sure how to save this draft, so I'll publish it now. More to come...

Barb