Excerpt from Episodes a Writing Class: Intersections of Possibility

Lu Huntley-Johnston

I was running around the university track and noticed a child sitting and playing in the sand on the edge of the running surface. Others her age were there that day participating in track and field trials for upcoming competition. This girl, however, was engaged in constructing a sand village edged with varied stones that she dug out of the ground. I studied her progress each time I completed another lap around the track. Using her own spit to give the sand texture and polish the stones, she kept adding to the scene she was creating.

After my run I stopped and sat in the sand and engaged her in conversation. She informed me that unlike her sister, she had not qualified for the track and field events. She was not worried about it and said she would try again next year. About her sand sculpture, she was making it for fun and wished she could live inside the sand pyramid. I suggested that she could write about what it would be like to live there. Her response to this caught me by surprise, "My mother wouldn't let me. We home school and write only complete sentences and reports."

For her, playing in the sand was far from anything having to do with school, especially writing. For me, the image of her at work was of an artist, constructing, shaping, creating from the elements at hand, epitomizing the philosophy of mind and theory of imagination Berthoff argues should be central for teaching composition. Imagination to Berthoff, "a name for the active mind," is the power we have to form (28). "Once we see composing as a forming activity, the work of the active mind, we can teach writing more intelligently in the context of speaking and listening and reading" (Berthoff 85).

When I first began learning about the teaching of writing, Berthoff's ideas about the composing mind were a touchstone and led to others who were mapping out writing process theory. I began to realize there were many voices engaged in a larger conversation about the teaching of writing. It was big; there was much to learn. I had been teaching high school English for three years; it was 1979. The field of composition studies beckoned, and I turned in that direction for more education.

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