Workshops

I enjoyed this current reading of Elbow and liked his ideas on sharing one’s work with others. I think if you are able to get over the fear of sharing, the benefits of peer review are very beneficial. I like what he states on page 78, “Do you want to learn how to write or protect your feelings?” This is a good way to look at it and just get over it for the betterment of you and your writing skills.
I understand what Elbow writes on page 112, “The teacherless class makes people nervous.” Having a teacher there to monitor and keep others on task makes people think they are being productive. Is that teacher really assisting with something like peer review between others though? I don’t think so.
Last Fall I took a creative writing course that was pretty much run without a teacher. Everyone was assigned two weeks through the semester that they were to contribute a piece of work for everyone to read and review, this included the teacher as well. All he did through the entire class was to take attendance at the beginning and remind the person who was to submit their work next. The peer reviews were great and insightful and I feel I learned a lot about myself as a writer that semester.
Another professor I had did something I has never had do before. When we had papers due, that class period was set up as a conference time and you signed up for a 15 minute spot where you came into the class and read the paper aloud to the professor, then he read it on his own and graded it there right in front of you. I can say that it was sort of intimidating at first, but it forced me to read my papers out loud before I even got to the point of turning them in. This helped me to correct the silly mistakes that I would of never found had I not read it out loud to myself first.