Re: Holly's Post on Using Themes in FYC

Holly Pappas, who has her own blog at Re: Thinking, Teaching, Writing, begins 2007 with a reflective post on feedback she received from her FYC students regarding using themes in a composition course.  What makes this post most interesting --aside from her showing thinking, teaching,writing at work in the piece--is that with each topic, she breaks it down to "what they said," and "What I could have/should have said."  And in each section, she weighs their perspective against her experience and the needs of the course.  I don't get the feeling that she's arrived at any answers, at least, not of the hard and fast kind, yet, but that she's mulling it all over. It seems to me that this kind of post would be an interesting one to use in any "teaching writing" course, especially with inexperienced teachers who would benefit from seeing an experienced writer use student feedback in a pedagogically generative way, that is, of taking the time to consider how the students have viewed the course and then reflecting on what it means.  The post is a good example of how it's okay not to have all the answers all the time, and how asking the students to participate via feedback can lead to more questions before the answers come.