Response to Chapter 7 & 8 of A Writer Teaches Writing, by Donald Murray

Chapter seven in A Writer Teaches Writing is about the response theory of teaching and the challenge of diversity in the classroom. According to Murray in the composition class, “diversity becomes an advantage, where individuality is nurtured, developed, and given expression.” (pg. 131). There are many forms of diversity that create challenges in the classroom. They include cultural diversity, economic diversity, the diversity of experiences, educational diversity, sexual diversity, and racial diversity. While these all effect how someone writes, there are also writing specific diversities such as diversity of goals, diversity of writing tasks, diversity of standards, diversity of cognitive skills, diversity of personality, and diversity of voices.

            Teachers should learn not to fear diversity, but to glory in it and take advantage of it. The first step for a teacher is to accept his or her own diversity. If you are going to glory in your students’ diversity, then you have to glory in your own as well. It is important to recognize your diversity, understand it, and use it in your writing. I think this is something most people do, but in an unconscious way. I think my writing would benefit greatly from doing this in an intentional way. The next step for a teacher is to accept their students’ diversities. This takes time for the teacher to learn about a child’s background, where they are in their writing skills, and where they want to go. Although this is time consuming, it will be greatly beneficial for both the teacher and student.

            The response theory of teaching can be used to use diversity in the classroom as an advantage. The response theory builds on the observation of learning from infancy. It is a trial and error process in which we learn from our own successes and failures. When a classroom is diverse it enhances this process because it gives a larger pool of failures and successes to learn from. In this way, teachers should celebrate diversity because it can help both the teacher and students to learn more from others’ experiences.

            Chapter 8 of A Writer Teaches Writing discusses conference teaching. Murray states that conference teaching is the most practical and effective form of teaching composition. The one-on-one situation allows the teacher to focus on the individual, his or her strengths, weaknesses, individual voice, and what needs to be worked on specifically in his or her writing. This may be very difficult to create this form of teaching when dealing with a large classroom, but it is imperative to work conferences into curriculum.

            Murray outlines a basic conference pattern that should be used each time, as it is beneficial for the student and teacher to have a familiar and predictable pattern for the conferences. While any pattern can be used, it is important to keep the pattern the same. The one Murray lays out is 1) the student comments on their draft. 2) The teacher reviews the draft. 3) The teacher responds to the writer’s comments. 4) The student responds to the teacher’s comments. The purpose of this pattern is to teach students to read their own drafts effectively and objectively in order to see where they can improve. The teacher is not their to rip the paper apart, or to do all the revision work. Instead the teacher is there as a guide and resource for the student as they revise. This is never how I viewed conferences as a student, but I think I would have been much more receptive and gotten more out of the conference if this was the teacher’s obvious objective.