Outreach Blog 2

Outreach Blog 2

            My second engagement was the same as the first, a four hour session on the twenty-first of October from eight in the morning to noon.  The location was again Mrs. Fyke’s classroom at Dexter High School.  The participants were the students in her three freshman English classes and a class of sophomore English students.

            Reading through my last post I noticed how I didn’t expand on how I was going to give students these tools or how they might apply them.  The “tools” I’ll be referring to are a term I’ll use interchangeably with the mindset I wish to instill in students when they’re engaging something new or on a deeper level and “tools” as in methods and questioning to ask themselves about their writing and others.

            The mindset I want to instill in them is an openness and a willingness to approach someone else’s writing on its own terms.  Acknowledge we can never totally detach ourselves and our perceptions from our reading but to come to a work in the spirit of charity and a willingness to engage the work on its own terms.

            The “tools” in the sense of actual writing means aware of and asking questions about the work.  What mode of narration is the author using?  What does this do for the story or to the story?  What was the author’s intention in this work?  Assuming that was their aim, did they achieve it?