Oscar R. : Blog #2 02/12/21

 Hello everyone,

I found this weeks readings to be very interesting and useful. Being someone who has zero experience teaching, a lot of the readings from this week offered and gave me many useful teaching tips. Some of the stuff I read, I had previously learned while other stuff were new to me. 

I had previously learned about free writing in one of my other composition courses. During my middle school and high school years, my teachers made us do a lot of free writing but I had never quite thought about why and what it did for us as students. Lindemann talks about free writing and the many benefits of it. I feel like free writing is very useful and effective. For one, many students like me enjoy the fact that it is not graded and that it will not be looked at. This allows students to simply just write what is running though their mind without worrying if it crafted perfectly and if it makes sense. It relieves stress in a way. It also allows students to write in their true voice since they are writing what they want, their own ideas, without having to consult with a specific prompt for a grade. A couple of times, my free writings were better than some actual papers because it was just very natural and honest. All of the time the naturalness and personalization leaves on the final paper because we are trying to adapt and format it to sound great and for the assignment to please the teacher not us. Also, free writing allows students to take time to practice and work on their writing. It is a very hands on activity and is the first step towards starting to write a paper. It is a way better option than a teacher simply talking about what they want and how the paper should be. It is a perfect way to allow students to organize ideas, think, and practice. I definitely see myself using this in a classroom as a teacher. 

Something I found interesting was in chapter one when Lindemann talks about the ability to write and how it still creates economic power. I agree with the statement. I think recently over the last couple of years, a lot of people have downplayed the importance of reading and writing in general. As time progresses and the years go by, there seems to be a loss of literature and reading/writing keeps being pushed away. In one of my other classes, we read an article that talked about the lack of jobs in the literature field. The job opportunities are decreasing. Many people have this belief that literature is not important but I do not think they realize how important and powerful it is. It literally runs our society entirely. Without it we aren’t able to do much. Most jobs require reading and writing. For example doctors, teachers, film writers, film makers, acting jobs, singers, engineers, architects, etc. still require the ability to read and write. I was able to connect what Lindemann was talking about the importance of literature to what I read in my other course about the lack of literature education  jobs despite society needing reading and writing.  Overall, I found this section very intriguing and was able to build connections to other courses since we talked about similar topics. 

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