The hands on the clock are sliding past the minutes at a glacial pace. I am giving an essay test right now and all of my students are diligently writing on loose leaf paper. I've never given a test like this before and I'm curious about the results. I've given them the prompts in advance so they should have something that resembles a thesis by the time they are done writing but one never can tell.
I'm teaching Intro to Expository Writing for the first time and I find the students at this level to be truly charming. They have a real sense of wonder about them and a very real sense of anxiety. When I get them writing about things they like the words on the page take off. Sure, they may be misspelled, but they are poetic, vibrant and full of voice. There is a certain joie de vivre about them and about their writing that I almost envy. They are all passion and enthusiasm. They slit their wrists and bleed across the page. Each sentence seems to carry the weight of a first telling. I work so hard to simply get them to put one word after another on the page and once they do, it's lovely. They feel they've expressed themselves in a new way. I want to open this door for them. I want to give them some of my love of writing. I want them to walk out the door and to feel the elation I feel at a particularly astute turn of phrase.
Here's to hoping.
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