Watching Murray (video Notes)

Writers Teaching Writing
Iowa Writing Project
October 13-14, 1985
Holiday Inn of the Amana Colonies

First 30 min

Women, room is packed, green chalkboard in the back, enthusiasm, such a tacky room, chandelier with shadow on the wall, looks like a wedding video from the eighties, Murray's tie is too short, he admits his nervousness, jerky camera, awkward zoom-out

the writing conference

She's quoting from students who wrote letters to Murray, one of whom opens her letter with, "As a fellow writer..."

This gets it, right? Murray got HER to think about herself AS a WRITER. This is such an important point that I don't want to miss, it's his contribution, his gift...I keep thinking of that quote about writing was a gift they had not been given. So he gave it to them...

"I would not be a writer without here" (Minnie Mae)

I don't try to win every conference
If I did, I'd be happy if I batted 1 out of 3

They are going to do demonstration of a conference--they are SHOWING
Modeling conferences at three different points in the semester

Humor THROUGHOUT

First Conference (4 min): poem called "Matthew"
All he says in the first conference is that he likes it, it's nice, asks if there is more and if Jim would like to bring something more in next time. He says yes.
Don speaks very little

Question: Can the student be taken seriously as a poet? I don't think it's the time to be critical.

Second Conference (4 min): also a poem
What do you like about it?
Student asks what he thinks and he confesses that his mind wandered to a story about his own life
I'd like to keep it and look at it and get back to you tomorrow. I can show you my stuff, maybe, too

What do you intend to do next with it?
Do you mind if I mess with it, write on it?

Again, Don doesn't say much...

Third Conference (7 min): kind of a painful poem
He immediately gives a more directive approach here, right after the student finishes reading poem
His entire approach is basically, follow what is working, do more, keep going

---

He then says that what we saw is typical, elementary school through professionals
writers talking to writers
What we've been doing is response teaching (30:15)
I was concentrating on him and the text, in that order

30-32

Now I know him as a writer
I don't know what they know or what they need to know
there is nothing that I feel I need to tell people
I see my textbooks as a resource that they can use as they see fit
There is no sequence that I am trying to teach
Take the student
Respond as a human being the best I can
The student initiates

What are the responsibilities of the student

To define the territory to explore
Let's not assume that we are writing about personal things
I want my students to explore in writing
They have to evaluate their exploration, figure out what they're discovering
share and use the resource of fellow writers
help others during their sharing so that they see writing in process
I don't require revision but I allow it

The responsibility of the teacher is to write
My job is to create a climate where exploration is irresistible
I want to be a model listener, we don't have many listeners, so my job is to listen
As a teacher I try to listen, shut up, under-teach
They make the first evaluation of their work
I tell them the roles and open it up for them to challenge me about them

A Writing Community

39:00

Let's look at the conference (system)
My way is the way that's evolved for me

1. First, the student comments on the recent writing or the writing experience, they speak first
2. The student reads the paper and the teacher listens
3. You respond in the student's terms
4. Invite further response from the student (what surprised you? What do you intend to do next? What needs work? What do you think works best? How does this fit into your goals as a writer?)
5. 
   

I don't have workshops until I have had a few conferences and modeled the behavior
When we have a workshop we ask the student "how can we help you?"
The more frequently you see the students, the easier it is to help the students

46:15 he tries to show how a high school teachers could do conferences (chart on blackboard), he sketches out a weekly pattern that h.s. teachers could follow

What's Happened?

Jim has written
Jim has read
He has evaluated the writing
Has discovered what he knows

If you asked me what I teach and I had to say it in just one word I would say I teach my students what they know.

This changes your whole feelings about being a professor. What do I profess? That my students know what they know.

The student knows the subject better than I do
The student knows the process better than I do

The student in this process of questioning discovers that he or she can identify and solve writing problems.

58:00

• Writing is a thinking activity
• writers know what they do when they do it (they are making rational/logical decisions, even when they are wrong)
• they are individual, individuality changes with the different writing tasks
• you change according to the task
• students learn best when they make their own meaning, when the writing is important to them, when they have to find out about something
• my job is to help them realize what they've done
• the first texts 
• the genre will evolve from the meaning, from the need, from the audience
• student makes first evaluation of the text
• students teach the teachers
• by respectful and intense listening the instructor convinces the students they have something to say, a language and rhetoric with which to say it, a knowledge of subject matter and writing process and ability to identify writing problems and solve them

1:01: On Narrative

Learning Transfer: to what does the teacher respond?

To what does the teacher respond? To what the student says. The teaching point does not come from the text but from the student's response to the text. I am very little these days paying much attention to the student's text. [...] I pay attention to what the student's are saying about the text. (1:05:44)

What I teach is my students is how to read their text so that they can make the next draft better or the next piece of writing better. (1:06:42)

1:06

I monitor their reading and help them read it in a productive way. Usually not praise or criticism but just an intelligent reading of the text.

To what do you respond? (1:09) You respond to what the writer says
How do you respond? As a reader, as a fellow human being
By inviting the student to give an account of how the piece was written
What surprised you while you were writing?

There is a natural connection between the writing process and the scientific process. A writing course is a laboratory course. Every writing is an experiment in meaning and most experiments fail and have to fail.

All of this is a bunch of nuts and bolts coming out of one rather simple theory and that is that our job is to do responsive teaching. We are not initiators, we are not beginners, we are not people who have knowledge that we would pour into empty vessels. If our students are coming to us in first grade they are coming with years of language experience, and every grade after that, and our job is to find out where they are and to listen to them and help them keep moving forward. (last lines)