Narrative writing has always been one of my personal forms of writing. It's open and not ridged like formal essays. Although I have to stay focused on what I am writing, I am allowed freedom on what I am writing about. I'm able to let my personality come out in my piece.
However, like Christensen states within Chapter 2 of her book Teaching for Joy and Justice, it is rarely taught anymore. Teachers have come to focus more on a the formal essay that students will need to know how to write by college instead of focusing on the type of writing that allows students to become stronger analyzers. If you know the techniques and have used them yourself, the more in tune you are when they appear within other authors' writing.
Narrative writing also takes away the one view on society that most people are exposed to. It allows students to see the world from their peers' perspectives who might have a different background than themselves. Christensen states, "As students analyze their own experiences and hear stories from their classmates' lives, we make it possible to 'challenge the myths of our society, to perceive more clearly its realities, and to find alternatives, and ultimately, new directions for action'..."(61). The single focus sense on society becomes multi focused and opens students' minds to change to help students who may write about the struggles they have within their everyday lives.
Here is an article I found that supports Christensen's argument that narrative writing is just as important as formal writing.They state that the point of life is for students to analyze and understand their own experiences so that they can grow as a person. This can be done through narrative writing. I really like the idea of having students keep a journal which eventually expands to a larger project.
I think that this journal activity can be combined with Christensen's Read-Around activity. I really like the idea for my own classroom. In a way, it gives students a space where they can write their thoughts down and then pick an event that they are comfortable expanding. The activity is then transferred from individual into something thats more involving when students go around the circle to share what they wrote and how the writing connects to them. It can become a very multidimensional project to shake things up so the typical lecture style classroom isn't always in default.
Thanks for this thoughtful post! I am grateful for the link you included to the article on narrative writing, and I also write narrative (journal-esque) entries. Based on that experience and my teaching education, I think that narrative writing can help students to grow more than more dry, academic writing can.
ReplyDeleteI had completely forgotten that we could include hyperlinks within these things. But anyhow, I completely agree that all writing, regardless of what kind, essentially still utilizes the same techniques, and thus can indeed be carried across genres of writing. All writing is essentially about communication. If you can communicate yourself accurately, then there's no reason to assume that you can't for something else. This same principle applies to reading as well. All reading is essentially comprehension. Regardless of what it is you're reading, if your skill at comprehension has improved because of it, then you can easily carry that over into other fields. And if neither of those things are meaningful, then there honestly isn't much incentive to grow.
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