In the first few weeks of each of my English classes, I always open up a real-talk discussion about writing. I start by acknowledging that writing is one of the most challenging tasks that students are asked to do in school, which usually elicits vigorous nods throughout the room. Writing is nuanced and abstract, and requires students to consider ideas, structure, evidence, arguments and precision all within the great messiness of language and syntax. Many students lack confidence in their writing abilities, and their approach to writing assignments often consists of suffering through the process, like a trip to the dentist, with the assurance that it will be over eventually.
While I am aware of the challenges my students face, time constraints often reduce my instruction of the writing process to a series of steps: brainstorm, research, thesis, outline, draft, revisions, final draft (with consideration for audience, voice and tone thrown in if time allows). Sometimes I fly through all of these concepts in a matter of days, hoping that something will stick to each student. Sometimes I have my students turn in each part of the writing process for points, hoping that this will inspire some sort of epiphany, like “Mr. Schooler, some really unexpected ideas came up in my mind map that I never would have seen if you hadn’t reviewed the process of circling ideas and drawing lines between those bubbles!” At the end of this rushed process, the essay is turned in and I boomerang it back to each student within two weeks with a grade on top and feedback that is skimmed and tossed away.
But the writing process is so much more sacred than what I often reduce it to. In its highest form this process can produce clarity from abstractions, allow for discovery of new insights and can actually transform one’s understanding of themselves and the world around them. Writing is often a big messy struggle that can teach lessons of resilience and perseverance that transfer to so many aspects of life. My approach to many projects in life mirrors my own writing process, whether it’s building a chicken coop, cooking a holiday meal or redesigning my back yard.
Two years ago, I attended the CCCC (Conference on College Composition and Communication), and one session that stood out to me was given by a professor who shared his experiences teaching a podcast project in his class. At first this seemed somewhat out of place for a conference that focused mostly on writing instruction, but I started to wonder whether a podcast wasn’t just another form of writing. A podcast producer must work with ideas, organization, evidence, tone and word choice all while considering the audience at the other end of their work. This idea stuck with me for a while, germinating, until I decided to create a Podcasting and Storytelling class.
When I started telling people I was teaching a podcasting class, they often asked me about recording. As someone whose recording experience is limited to making mix tapes and CD’s in college, I started to wonder whether or not I was in over my head. In fact, my knowledge with podcasts is pretty limited too – I have spent hours listening to them running the trails of Mount Diablo, but I have never tried to make one.
But I took solace in the fact that I do know quite a bit about the writing process, and that this class is really just a writing class disguised as a podcasting class. And, while in the first few weeks, many of my students thought that it would just be a chill, blended class where they would listen to interesting podcasts, I knew what the class would turn into, and I was thrilled that I had successfully duped them into an extensive writing project.
After an introductory unit in which we deconstructed the art of storytelling, my students formed teams that would work towards the long-term goal of producing a podcast. The first phase of the project was to identify a topic that everyone was interested in and research all they could about that topic. Each team member was responsible for documenting their research, and writing reflections on how it would direct the team’s project. One of my teams started out by wanting to do a podcast on the Byron Hot Springs, an abandoned building in Byron that teenagers sneak into since it is supposedly haunted. Over the next few weeks, this team went into a full deep dive, learning all they could about this location. They discovered that it had originated as a train depot, then became a luxury hotel that stars like Marilyn Monroe visited, then served as a satellite Japanese internment camp, then burned down twice mysteriously and now stands as just a shell of a building. One student read about how Charlie Chaplin used to visit the hotel and she decided to watch one of his films. This team even found the owner’s name and the current value of the property on Zillow. I like to think that this team got much more out of this research experience than simply searching for usable quotes from the internet, which is what many of my students do when I assign research papers.
As we shifted from the research to the production phase of the project, each team had to brainstorm and determine a central idea for their podcast. They had to give a quick two-minute pitch to the rest of the class, then receive feedback on their ideas before writing a formal proposal. As we have now shifted to the production phase, the goal is to create original content that can be used in the final cut. This involves writing scripts and monologues, conducting interviews, and considering the best organizational structure to tell their specific story. This has turned out to be a spontaneous process full of dead ends, revisions, regrouping and improvisation. But the attention that these students are putting into their work is greater than the attention my students usually put into a rushed essay process. Most of our class sessions are collaborative workshops, and I bounce from team to team listening to them discuss various rhetorical choices, like word choice, structure, tone, audience and voice. Instead of me flying through these skills that I have always tried to instill, these students are implementing these skills within the context of their projects. They have determined that these are the important qualities of their writing that they need to consider.
My ultimate goal for this class is to create a Carondelet podcast channel that gets thousands of subscribers, and becomes something our school is known for. But I still have no idea what these final projects will be, and I expect that some will be better than others. This class has made me consider which is more valuable for my students, the process or the final product, but that’s a subject for another blog. One of the great things about teaching a semester class is that it allows me to make my own revisions, and I don’t have to wait a whole year to do things better. And while I still think it is important that students write essays in school, it has been invigorating to reimagine the different forms essays can take.