Greetings and welcome to my blog, “Practices of Process.” I define the word process as a verb, noun, and adjective. For example: Students and teachers process our experiences of the writing process through journaling and other process work.
I have been doing process work for all of my life, and it was the hope of exploring practices of process that drew me to writing studies back in graduate school in the 1980s. Since then, across several decades, practices of process have become my life’s work. I have published several editions of a textbook with Bedford-St. Martin’s used in basic writing teaching practicums, wrote a blog for Macmillan Learning for several years, and have published articles on documenting processes of reflection, most recently in Community Literacy Journal and the Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics. Immediately before starting as an adjunct at Queens College in Fall 2018, I worked as co-coordinator of the now discontinued Stretch First-Year Writing Program at Arizona State University. All of this work in writing and living across time, space, and place informs my practices of process as a teacher and a writer.
Anticipating English 110 course revisions for Spring semester, I had intended this first blog post to be about my assignments for teaching the writing process. But my orange tabby cat Destiny suddenly became critically ill the Monday of finals week, and died the next day, a week before Christmas eve and two days after my birthday.
While reading through my students’ final essays, I considered what I might do differently next semester, and I will share those ideas in my next post. In the interim, I can offer another impression of process: What I learned looking through almost 11 ½ years of Destiny’s photos, when he adopted my partner and me as a kitten in Arizona, through the month before he died at age 12.
The most important lesson is, perhaps, obvious. A writer (or any creator) can tell a different story using the same details and examples. But the theme or the argument or the moral of the story can change. Writing, and creating, in other words, can allow us to understand the same story in many different ways.
Destiny, a winking orange tabby cat, poses next to the book James Baldwin: The Cross of Redemption
This lesson seems similar to how the writing process is often taught, especially with a strong concentration on revision.
Yet, in everything he did, Destiny, who often appeared in my course introduction videos and sometimes in my Bedford Bits blogs, showed his adventurous spirit and his unyielding courage. He taught me more than I have words to express. Instead, I share his videos.
The first video was made in 2019 a year or so after my partner, Destiny, and I moved back to New York. Destiny was about 6 years old at the time. The video was made from an iMovie trailer and includes various photos of Destiny as a newly adopted stray kitten and, five years later, as a transplanted New Yorker. The video shows his transition from living in a two-story rental townhouse with stairs, to a one-bedroom apartment in Queens. To my solace, I found this video in my iMovie drafts, did a few quick edits, and then posted the video on YouTube. The video is titled: Destiny: Catastrophes Averted.
Then, several days later, I took some of the same pictures, added a few later photos, and made another video with a different iMovie trailer template. It is a memorial video and it is a celebration of Destiny’s life. This video is titled: Destiny: Dare to Dream.
In videos, Destiny’s life story can be retold in many forms, and in each of those iterations, I find a changed focus and a revised purpose. I look forward to translating these reflections in my own teaching and learning in the coming semester. My invitation to you, my audience, is to consider your own practices of process in teaching, writing, and everyday life. What is it, as James Baldwin emphasizes in “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity” (The Cross of Redemption ebook p. 65), that “compels” and “corrals” you in your practices of process? In times of struggle and in moments of joy, what draws your attention inside and outside the classroom, as you teach, write, and learn alongside your students? What motivates you to carry on?
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Such a beautiful tribute to Destiny, Susan. I’m looking forward to hearing more about how you translate these reflections into your own teaching and thinking about you in this time of loss.
I know this is a random connection, but your point about the way that a story can be told (and retold) through new configurations of image and text is making me think a bit about #HillmanTok, a network of Black scholars and other educators who are giving abbreviated lectures from classes that they’re teaching IRL on Tik Tok right now, and what is lost and gained when we switch from one modality or medium to another. I’m having all kinds of thoughts about learning and access and deep engagement and the encapsulation of huge complexity into shorter and more succinct forms. A lot to learn and think about from this trend.
I am sorry for your loss, Susan, and I thank you for sharing this intimate and poignant reflection with us. I am struck by your assertion that “[w]riting, and creating, in other words, can allow us to understand the same story in many different ways.” My hope as a FYW instructor is that my students experience this expansive potential of critical (*and* creative!) writing; this alone has been transformative for past students, especially those who entered college with a self-deprecating view of themselves and their capabilities as writers (or students more generally). Why? Because when those students see how they’ve thought and written themselves towards ideas, arguments, and perspectives that they did not necessarily have or start out with, it transforms their views of their own potential and standing within this thing called academia. I fully agree with your implication that this, in practice, means facilitating a class centered on writing process(es) more than anything else because gaining these multiple understandings of a story, or a thing, often happens via the process of creating and re-creating our writing about that story or thing. But what does it mean concretely to “facilitate a class centred on writing process(es) more than anything else”? This is the question that has tickled and continues to tickle me as I go back to my English 110 class. For now, I am finding myself – once again – back at the issue of grading. If I want to facilitate process, can I effectively do this using a grading practice that only evaluates the level of “perfection” of the final essay draft? Does my evaluation focus on student growth and development over the writing process or just what comes out at the end of that process? Ultimately, how can I fashion my grading practice so that it communicates to students that process (is all that) matters?
You ask: “What is it, as James Baldwin emphasizes in ‘The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity’ (The Cross of Redemption ebook p. 65), that ‘compels’ and ‘corrals’ you in your practices of process?” I will continue to think this through but, for now, I want students to see, understand, cherish and value their own growth and development as writers. I want them to be compelled to write and revise because they can see themselves change and grow when they do so.
I’m so sorry to hear that Destiny passed on, Susan, and hope you’ve been taking care as you grieve her absence and celebrate her life.
And thank you for this beautiful reflection on process. It really resonates with my experience as an educator and artist/writer. Your final questions (“In times of struggle and in moments of joy, what draws your attention inside and outside the classroom, as you teach, write, and learn alongside your students? What motivates you to carry on?”) feel especially relevant this year, and I’m exciting to think and write alongside students about what “compels” and “corrals” us right now.