Where the Wild Voices Are
Writing Classes on the World Wide Web
By April Newman
Since I graduated with my MFA, the economy’s hit the tank. By moving from teaching in the classroom to the internet, I’m saving cash on professional attire and spending only on cereal and pajama pants. That’s the great thing about this era of the internet revolution: pants are optional. And you don’t have to show your face.
There are other advantages to the online experience for writers: Classroom diversity. What? One of your students is a kid from New Trier and a mom coming back to school? Well, I’ll raise you: In my online classroom, I’ve got a lady in her seventies, Nettie; Avondalyn, from New Jersey; and this dude Scooter who just got back from Iraq. Imagine that class! There are challenges with regards to language when we have so many differences: generational, urban, rural, religious, and secular identities converging to talk one thing. Stories. But there is richness in the challenge. And exposure to experiences.
This online roll call reminds me of the diversity in classes when the Story Workshop approach was introduced back in the sixties. Columbia College’s urban environment and open admissions policy brought all sorts of people together. But my personal experience here felt less…seasoned. Columbia is definitely a place that celebrates diversity, but when you get down to it, the non-traditional students just aren’t filling the seats anymore.
Why? Underserved students, students who got the standard low-rent public education or were pregnant at sixteen, do not make up the majority at four-year universities. They have to work. They’re online. And if they can learn online without having to drop a hundred grand, that’s where they’ll stay. And that’s too bad, because these people have some stories!
What you’re missing in the face-to-face classroom are these points of view that will challenge you the most: the poorest folks in the cities, the people from insular Christian and religious communities, people who are thirty years your senior, as your classmates. Online education is breaking barriers exponentially and changing the educational landscape in ways we might never have imagined. Personally, I do better work eroding the power of the Christian Right by honoring Nettie’s Christian romance story, and discussing ways to make it effective on the page. Because, meanwhile, Nettie has to read Taylor’s sexy vampire fiction, and talk about scenes. Without realizing it, two cultural enemies now have a common language through their writing. Slowly, we come to find that we are not so different despite all the rules that have been ingrained in us over time.
The Fiction Writing Department gives you that safe space to find your own writing answers. It gives you the permission to write whatever story you’re creaming to tell. That’s still (unfortunately) a rare thing in this country. Of course, what would make your workshop even more meaningful is a potpourri of students with the widest array of experiences, points of view that challenge and conflict with what you find most sacred and obvious.
Sure, as a writing instructor, it would be nice if everyone could craft a sentence, and there’s lots of talent at Columbia. But I really wish that my online student, Scooter, would just stop writing about NASCAR and tell the moment he got off the plane in Iraq. Because if he faces that time on the page and tells us, Fallujah could change everyone. Until a safe writing place is really available to everyone in the flesh, I’ll do my best to provide that space, virtually.
By April Newman
Since I graduated with my MFA, the economy’s hit the tank. By moving from teaching in the classroom to the internet, I’m saving cash on professional attire and spending only on cereal and pajama pants. That’s the great thing about this era of the internet revolution: pants are optional. And you don’t have to show your face.
There are other advantages to the online experience for writers: Classroom diversity. What? One of your students is a kid from New Trier and a mom coming back to school? Well, I’ll raise you: In my online classroom, I’ve got a lady in her seventies, Nettie; Avondalyn, from New Jersey; and this dude Scooter who just got back from Iraq. Imagine that class! There are challenges with regards to language when we have so many differences: generational, urban, rural, religious, and secular identities converging to talk one thing. Stories. But there is richness in the challenge. And exposure to experiences.
This online roll call reminds me of the diversity in classes when the Story Workshop approach was introduced back in the sixties. Columbia College’s urban environment and open admissions policy brought all sorts of people together. But my personal experience here felt less…seasoned. Columbia is definitely a place that celebrates diversity, but when you get down to it, the non-traditional students just aren’t filling the seats anymore.
Why? Underserved students, students who got the standard low-rent public education or were pregnant at sixteen, do not make up the majority at four-year universities. They have to work. They’re online. And if they can learn online without having to drop a hundred grand, that’s where they’ll stay. And that’s too bad, because these people have some stories!
What you’re missing in the face-to-face classroom are these points of view that will challenge you the most: the poorest folks in the cities, the people from insular Christian and religious communities, people who are thirty years your senior, as your classmates. Online education is breaking barriers exponentially and changing the educational landscape in ways we might never have imagined. Personally, I do better work eroding the power of the Christian Right by honoring Nettie’s Christian romance story, and discussing ways to make it effective on the page. Because, meanwhile, Nettie has to read Taylor’s sexy vampire fiction, and talk about scenes. Without realizing it, two cultural enemies now have a common language through their writing. Slowly, we come to find that we are not so different despite all the rules that have been ingrained in us over time.
The Fiction Writing Department gives you that safe space to find your own writing answers. It gives you the permission to write whatever story you’re creaming to tell. That’s still (unfortunately) a rare thing in this country. Of course, what would make your workshop even more meaningful is a potpourri of students with the widest array of experiences, points of view that challenge and conflict with what you find most sacred and obvious.
Sure, as a writing instructor, it would be nice if everyone could craft a sentence, and there’s lots of talent at Columbia. But I really wish that my online student, Scooter, would just stop writing about NASCAR and tell the moment he got off the plane in Iraq. Because if he faces that time on the page and tells us, Fallujah could change everyone. Until a safe writing place is really available to everyone in the flesh, I’ll do my best to provide that space, virtually.
