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Pedagogy, Philosophy, and Nonsense Home Essays and Links Creative Non-Fiction The Dawn, the Dark, and the Horse I Didn't Ride in On (an odd, philosophical, semi-romantic meandering) Ghost Dancer in the Twilight Zone The Hair Connection and the Nature of Choices The Mug, the Magic, and the Mistake Trumpet Player,
USDA Approved Writing and Education A Major is More Minor Than You Think Thoughts About Picking a Major Reading Poetry and Cloud Watching What's the Subject of a Class? Why Write? Legos, Power, and Control Writing and Einstein: The Difference Between Information and Meaning Writing and the Goldilocks Dilemma Something Somewhat Vaguely Like a Resumé POETRY Showing Class (writing by current or former
students) I'll Just Have
Cats Toys to Toys Scribbles and Bits (neat lines or paragraphs by various students)
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Showing Class This part of the site is dedicated to writing done by my current and former students, writing done for class, on the side, or even long after the term ended. Writing may include essays, stories, poems, scraps, or writing that defies categories. Toys to Toys Thinking back on childhood toys, nothing really has changed. The toys are the same, but the way play with them is different. Take for instance----crayons or pencils. In kindergarten, we learn to color in the lines and draw funny shapes. That is one way of expressing ourselves. We move into higher grades in school, and we graduate to ink pens . Sometimes we spend hours expressing ourselves on paper. This we learned as a small child and continue with that practice as adults. How many times have we taken our toy cars on road trips or put Barbie in her convertible to cruise through town? Every day we take our cars now to get to our workplace. Or perhaps we use our car as a get-away-vehicle for the Quick Pic we just robbed. Years ago they used to make candy cigarettes. Oh the fun we had pretending to be our parents smoking! Now, we don't have to pretend. We smoke the real thing. Maybe even our playing goes a little further. We might smoke marijuana, or even crack. Yeah, same toys--different effects. What about playing grown-up? Do you remember that favorite baby doll you considered your very own? Well, some of us ended up with our very own baby doll--our very own live baby doll! You know! The kind that cries real tears and is dependant on us for their every need? Some of us were even having "real" babies when we should have still been playing "pretend babies". I think that maybe we should encourage children to stay children just a little bit longer. Don't give up those pretend toys and games for the real thing. It just might not be what you bargained for! Allyson Bowlds, Owensboro Community College,
Spring 2002 ---------------------------------- Contact,
Converse, Critique, Question Would you like to know when the site gets updated? Drop me an e-mail, and I'll add you to the list. Much of my writing has been for the antiques site lately, but I have a long list of essays in assorted stages of revision for this site. The people who e-mail often apologize because they assume I'm swamped with e-mails. I only wish it were true. I'm a teacher from the marrow out, so give me questions. I'm a writer, so I also need an audience. Sometimes that means applause, sometimes rotten tomatoes. From time to time, a student decides to use some of my ideas, or perhaps they even quote me in a paper. Great, I'll take what fame and traces of immortality I can get. However, I should also warn such students that my ideas are not always the things that your teachers want to hear. I'm a stubborn idealist, and that puts me at odds with quite a bit of education theory and literary criticism. Sure, I think I'm right about some things, and I'm sometimes convinced of my own brilliance, but don't jump into the fire blindfolded. FDP |