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New post from EWG: The Big Shift: From High School to College Writing (part 3)

The Big Shift: From High School to College Writing (part 3) - Enodia Writers Group The Big Shift: From High School to College Writing (part 3) by PDArrington | Feb 13, 2024 | Uncategorized | 0 comments The Truth in Two Sides PROBLEMS The previous posts in this series claim that secondary schools generally do a disservice to students who will write in college, in part because they....

New blog post from Enodia Writers Group! The Big Shift: From High School to College Writing (part 1)

The Big Shift: From High School to College Writing - Enodia Writers Group The Big Shift: From High School to College Writing by PDArrington | Feb 1, 2024 | Uncategorized | 0 comments Method PROBLEM In k-12 schooling, the teaching of writing typically focuses on outcomes. What do we want young people to produce? In terms of writing, society tends to seek from students corr...

Reflection

In college writing classes the terms “metacognition” and “reflection” have been buzz words for some time now.

Metacognition: Thinking about our thinking

Reflection: Looking back on our experiences and thinking about them

These are general definitions, and in the context of writing it’s easy to imagine their value; looking back on what we’ve written and thinking about what we’ve written are intrinsic to the drafting process.

But there’s no evidence to suggest that just reflecting on what we’ve written somehow leads to growth, improvement, or insight.

Journaling is a good example of this. I still have the journals I wrote when I was sixteen years old, miserable in my body, insecure in my talents, and emotionally abused by my brothers. The pages are filled with strong emotions and, among some good ideas, some very warped perspectives.

Do the pages of my journal reflect on my life? My emotions? Yes, the journals are reflective in nature. But that reflectice writing practice served more to reinforce my emotions and perspectives rather than help me gain some control over them.

Writing can be so much more than drafting “reflections.” Journaling can be so much more—to young people, especially. But for reflective writing to become useful in the self-construction of young humans, it must be methodical and pragmatic.

Methodical: Doing something in a considered way, and doing it that way for a reason

Pragmatic: Thinking in terms of what could be (not what should be)

The coaches at Enodia teach people how to use journalling in methodical, pragmatic ways to improve writing and mediate self-construction through writing.

Why ENODIA?

In Greek mythology, Enodia is known as the goddess of the road, the goddess of “the way,” or the goddess of crossroads.

She is often identified as a version of Hekate, the moon goddess, and I thought her appropriate in several ways as a source of reflection and identity for a writer’s group.

The First Way

In school we often learn writing in formulas. An essay has an introduction, a body (in 3 paragraphs), and a conclusion (that starts “In conclusion…”). A good paragraph begins with a topic sentence and develops it with an example that is then explained. Within a paragraph, sentences are arranged via “transition words” like “however,” “therefore,” “also,” etc. Writing is treated like an act of assembling; writers put words and phrases together to make paragraphs, which make essays (and blogs), or reports, or stories, etc.

The “assemblage” approach to writing might work early in a person’s life, laying out a road for communicating in school environments, but it’s usefulness is limited. Once people begin to demand a person actually mean something when they write… Well, school formulae usually fail us.

This moment—when the school-learned formulae for how to write fails to serve our needs, or the needs of our communities—can be seen as a crossroads. Both roads lead into woods, dark with unfamiliarity. And they go in different directions. But in order to move forward as writers, we must begin to make choices; instead of following roads people give us, we must begin to make our own roads, our own ways, purposefully.

It’s a scary thing, writing purposefully, if the woods are dark. I imagine that the goddess of crossroads, who is comfortable with the dark and the power of darkness, would be a good friend to have in the moments we writers begin to sense the power of real writing.