New summer quarter, 2010

It seems that I only get around to this when I'm starting a new course. I'm glad I like to write, because one thing about a blog is that sometimes it becomes a very lonely place to share one's thoughts. However, writing is about exploring one's thoughts. As Goethe wrote (paraphrasing). "I only know what I'm thinking after I write."
This is the beauty of writing—exploring one's thinking.
I just finished the Haitian writer, Edwidge Endicat's, Farming the Bones. The book is sheer poetry despite its tragic subject. One piece that I particularly mulled over was a remark about the dead—the book is about Trujillo's massacre of the Haitians in his country, The Dominican Republic in 1937. She wrote:
"I once heard an elder say that the dead who have no use of their words leave them as a part of their inheritance. Proverbs, teeth suckings, obscenities, even grunts and moans once inserted in special places during conversation are passed along to the next heir."
Most parents— even while alive— would agree wholeheartedly when they hear their offspring mimicking their use of language.
As teachers we have a responsibility to leave a legacy of word usage that helps students explore their thinking through writing, a responsibility to leave behind students who can communicate in many forums: in personal relationships, at work, in leisure pursuits, on the street and in formal situations. It is a huge order especially in this electronic age when students text, blog, etc., —where fingers do the communicating rather than verbal interchanges.
As long as we have books to demonstrate good writing, and provide opportunities in the classroom for students to write, there is a chance that we just might contribute to the education of an individual who can communicate clearly, even creatively, despite the distractions provided by digital access.
Carrol