WR 131
Summer 2011
Anthology of Student Writing
Eastern Oregon University
Professor's Preface
It is a pleasure to welcome you to the newest edition of the WR 131 Anthology of Student Writing. Students who submitted these essays, poems, and research presentations were enrolled in Eastern Oregon University's summer session course, WR 131. Each summer we open this class up to not only college students, but also to students who participate in our Eastern Oregon University High School Initiative Program that brings high school juniors and seniors to campus to take courses. So the class is always a mix of students who are currently EOU students who have already taken several college courses, and high school students for whom this is their first experience in college-level courses. It is always my favorite class of the year to teach.
About the title At First Glance: Students selected their own title by reading each other's narrative essays and then by suggesting names and voting. The students chose this title because they are aware that "at first glance," people might not be aware of the complexity and depth of their lives beneath the initial surface that others first see. You will find that their writing takes you deep under that surface. Also, thank you to student Julia Reynaud for finding the cover image for us that suggests this theme of multiple and complex selves. The image of writing or script on the face also speaks to the ways in which writing not only helps us communicate about our identities, but also helps us to find and create ourselves.
About the course: WR 131 is an Introduction to Exploratory Writing course, which is different from WR 121, Introduction to Expository Writing. In a traditional WR 121 course, the students and I would focus on developing their academic writing skills, especially the traditional research paper that they might be expected to write in many college classes. This writing is usually focused on the professor and fellow students as the audience, is limited in the kind of forms and styles a writer can select, and the occasion or setting is usually the college classroom. The purpose is generally to show the student's knowledge to the professor, and to demonstrate that the student can deliver that knowledge in the expected academic form.
However, in WR 131 we are free to explore different kinds of audiences, forms, occasions, and purposes.
About the Assignments: The first assignment was a Narrative essay or Memoir that asked the students to describe a specific experience/event in some detail. This is not academic writing, but rather is personal writing. Students were free to experiment with voice, style, and form. They learned that essays that are successful in this genre tell the stories in vivid detail, call upon poetic devices (simile, metaphor, etc.), and use dialogue. If these kinds of essays were to be published in magazines, they might be accompanied by some images that complement the writing in some way, so students were invited to find images to communicate their ideas as well. As you will discover as you read these essays, the students bring with them powerful stories worth telling.
After completing their Narrative essays, students participated in a workshop by Professor Donald Wolff who taught them, with many wonderful models, how to write Prose Poems and Short Line Poems, working with their Narrative essays as a starting point. So you will find at the end of many of the Narrative essays the poems that students produced in the workshop that grew out of their Narrative essays.
The second assignment was a Collage essay (as in a collage or collection of pieces put together to create a dominant impresssion). In class, we read a wonderful essay, "The Barn," by writer and EOU Emeritus Professor George Venn (which you can find in Varieties of Hope, and Anthology of Oregon Prose edited by Gordon B. Dodds). This essay does not follow any kind of narrative line or linear chronology, but rather looks at the structure of a barn from many perspectives and uses different forms and styles to convey a particular idea about a barn that he wants his readers to understand when they finish reading the essay. With this collage essay as a model, students selected a place or person as their topic for their own collage essays. Students were also invited again to complement the essays with images. Please enjoy the inventiveness with which students approached this assignment.
The third assignment was a Research assignment. However, instead of delivering their findings in a traditional research paper form, they were asked to identify a specific real world audience, occasion, and purpose. They then had to choose a form that would best reach this audience. This form could be anything: brochure, power point, poster, back of a cereal box, flyer, song, etc. The only criteria was that the form fit the purpose, audience, and occasion. The students then each gave a presentation on their research, telling us who we were as an audience, where we were, and what they identified as their purpose. They also had to explain why they chose this topic and this particular container for the information. The results were wonderful. We all learned so much from each other as students showed that they could not only find credible research on their topics, but that they could be inventive and creative in how to deliver that information in a real-world setting.
So the first items that you will find in the Table of Contents are Sample Portfolios of all of a student's work in which the student explores a theme or topic from all angles and experiments with forms in ways that reveal diverse aspects of complex topics. So in one portfolio sample, you will learn about one topic in different forms:: as narrative essay, collage essay, poems, and a research form (power point). I have selected 3 sample portfolios in which you can see all of the work of 3 students.
I want to thank my WR 131 students for a wonderful term. Each time I finish teaching this course, I say to myself that no class again will be able to top the one I just completed, and yet each new term the students manage to astound me with their courage, hard work, earnestness, intelligence, and creativity. This is definitely true of this class. I want to thank the college veteran students in the class for serving as such effective mentors, modeling a strong work ethic and a high standard of college-level work. I want to thank the high school students for their openness to new kinds of writing. I hope that you will continue on to college, where ever you may choose to go.
Susan Whitelock
Assistant Professor
Eastern Oregon University
La Grande, OR