Response to "Students, Authorship, and the Work of Composition"

I enjoyed Horner's article, though it was fairly difficult to read. I had to read many paragraphs twice and struggled to figure out exactly what he meant by terms such as "materiality" (a term I'm sure I should be familiar with at this point). Although I've found every article we've read over the course of the semester interesting and well-written, I feel like a lot of them have been about how Composition teachers grade their students' papers. It would have been nice to read articles about the actual day-to-day teaching of Composition (as opposed to grading or potential projects that some of us will never have the opportunity to implement). I feel like "getting creative" in the classroom, coming up with things for my students to do, keeping them interested, etc. was a bit of a struggle. I tended to do the same sorts of things with them (mostly group activities), week after week. I was always impressed with the members of my cohort group; they had such interesting ideas to get their students involved and invested in the classroom, and with each other. I wish some of them would write papers! I would definitely read them.

Around page 510, the article started to become more accessible. I thought this was great: "This is not to deny that in some sense students do want to learn to produce what schools or society demand--whether it be research papers, Edited American English, or a smiling face. But it has to be recognized that those desires are socially produced, not autonomous, and so neither inherent nor universal but historical." It's always good to be reminded how many of our thoughts and subsequent behaviors are not our own, as we assume, but socially produced. Though I consider myself to be an independent person, one who constantly questions what a Southern, middle-class woman should do and be, I'm still overwhelmingly influenced by societal pressures and obligations. Simply reading a fashion magazine is enough to make me feel like crap, to send me outside in the rain to run sprints.

I think treating students as authors is one thing that most Composition teachers already do (or at least try to do). Hopefully? Right? It seems like common sense that we should read and respond to the meanings of ours students' texts instead of simply correcting their writing errors s(510). Though I feel like writing well is important, and it's easier to "see" good ideas when they're well written, teachers should always look at what their students are trying to say and do and help them accomplish these things...