Jill Zappia
I am a graduate of Hope College in Holland, MI where I majored in elementary education and English. I'm certified to teach K-6 and middle school language arts in Michigan and North Carolina. Currently, I put my passion for literature and teaching to use at Mills Park Middle School in Cary, NC where I teach 6th grade language arts, coach Battle of the Books and direct the fall play. I love connecting with students over stories and find special gratification in finding a great book for a student who "doesn't like to read."
The Practice of Writing
I sit on a pine rocking chair on the porch outside the St. James conference room at the Trinity Conference Center in Atlanta beach, NC. My laptop lies open. My fingers loiter over the keys. I cringe at the distractions around me. They are minimal, but completely demand my attention. There’s the tapping of keys beside me as my classmates work. There are four women from the Episcopalian Church retreat chatting on the porch twenty feet away. They huddle conspiratorially, but their lowered voices only accentuate the sharp syllables of whispered gossip. A sweet cat finds me and demands to be picked up. It’s hard to type with a cat sitting on one’s keyboard.
Writer’s block isn’t anything new to me. I often sit and wait for the perfect combination of words to come to mind. (Do those really exist anyway?) I’m that student, who stares into space, chews on my pencil, and folds Stickytack into itself in endless repetition. I wait for words.
When nothing comes, I think, It’s too loud. If only it were perfectly quiet I could write; or I’m too tired; if only I had slept an additional three hours, my eloquent prose would unarm unsuspecting readers; or even, this is not my usual pen; this pen is sticking to the page and completely throwing me off. Really, it’s not the whispers cutting through the humid silence that are keeping me from writing. It’s not the amount of sleep I got the night before. The click-clacking of keystrokes is actually quite soothing and isn’t truly keeping me from my work. My pen has nothing to do with my writer’s block. I’m having trouble getting started because I know that my words will be read and judged by an audience.
Regardless of the distractions, the anxiety over sharing my writing, and the desire to go to the beach that urges me to “get this over with,” I really do love to write. I grew as a writer during my time in this class, and I have a greater appreciation for the different types of writers that I teach. Here’s some of what I learned about myself and my experience with poetic, expressive and expository writing.
Poetry: I never considered myself to be a poet. I always thought that poetry was a gift that I never received. That it was a blessing bestowed on the selected few. One either had the ability to be a poet or did not. How wrong I was.
Dr. Buckner visited our class in March and opened my eyes to all of the possibilities poetry has to offer. Yes, some students are talented poets, and perhaps they’re born with this gift. But good writing takes practice, it requires exposure to the quality writing of others, and it absolutely IS something that can be taught.
The templates used by Dr. Buckner and Mike Cook helped me become more confident while writing poetry and I grew to enjoy it. I wrote a poem about my time in Scotland for a post card home and will cherish it. One of my favorite memories was writing a silly collaborative poem on the bus ride to Winchester. I have already used the bio poem in my classroom and will write a collaborative poem with my class next week. Overall, I’m more comfortable writing and teaching poetry and I don’t shy away from it like I once did.
Exposition: Here’s where I really struggled, but not with the writing itself. When we wrote the essays about Dr. Engle’s book A Dab of Dickens, A Touch of Twain, I agonized over mine before I posted it to the Google drive. I was so intimidated to have my writing evaluated by the brilliant high school AP English teachers in my group. I was especially intimidated to upload my document after reading Justin R’s and Lisa C’s essays. Both are marvelous writers and I felt like my essay on Dickens just wasn’t up to par.
The guidelines for giving and receiving feedback from writing groups really kept me in line. I did not apologize for my writing. I looked at my piece critically and with an open mind while I listened to their feedback, and because I didn’t act like someone who needed reassurance or to be coddled, I hear some honest, helpful feedback.
It was uncomfortable for me. I wanted to revise and revise and revise before I uploaded it, but I finally had to tell myself just to do it. It’s amazing what a fresh pair of eyes can do to transform a piece of writing. Even though getting feedback on an unpolished piece of writing from a colleague is uncomfortable, it’s a necessary step in improving one’s writing.
Expressive: The guest lecturer who spoke to our class about daybooks said something that really hit home for me. He said that if we were English (or language arts) teachers and we didn’t write everyday, we should change professions. Ouch. I didn’t write everyday, but didn’t think that made me a bad teacher. I fought my initial reaction to reject his logic and simply listened to what he had to say. He had a point. If I want to teach my students to write, to improve as writers, to express themselves in meaningful ways, I have to practice that too. I’m not done improving as a writer just because I graduated college. I
I kept a blog on the trip and wrote extensively about my day-to-day experiences in England. I kept a daybook and wrote in it whenever I could, eventually filling the entire notebook with sketches, observations, dates and facts, poetry, and train schedules. It was so good for me to write everyday.
This experience really taught me that things that make you grow are often uncomfortable, but they’re necessary. Being unwilling to be uncomfortable or stretched (in writing and in life I suppose) results in stagnancy. My writing has been stagnant for a while now. I’m grateful that my desire to write was rekindled on this trip and I’m determined to stoke that fire by setting aside time to write.
Writer’s block isn’t anything new to me. I often sit and wait for the perfect combination of words to come to mind. (Do those really exist anyway?) I’m that student, who stares into space, chews on my pencil, and folds Stickytack into itself in endless repetition. I wait for words.
When nothing comes, I think, It’s too loud. If only it were perfectly quiet I could write; or I’m too tired; if only I had slept an additional three hours, my eloquent prose would unarm unsuspecting readers; or even, this is not my usual pen; this pen is sticking to the page and completely throwing me off. Really, it’s not the whispers cutting through the humid silence that are keeping me from writing. It’s not the amount of sleep I got the night before. The click-clacking of keystrokes is actually quite soothing and isn’t truly keeping me from my work. My pen has nothing to do with my writer’s block. I’m having trouble getting started because I know that my words will be read and judged by an audience.
Regardless of the distractions, the anxiety over sharing my writing, and the desire to go to the beach that urges me to “get this over with,” I really do love to write. I grew as a writer during my time in this class, and I have a greater appreciation for the different types of writers that I teach. Here’s some of what I learned about myself and my experience with poetic, expressive and expository writing.
Poetry: I never considered myself to be a poet. I always thought that poetry was a gift that I never received. That it was a blessing bestowed on the selected few. One either had the ability to be a poet or did not. How wrong I was.
Dr. Buckner visited our class in March and opened my eyes to all of the possibilities poetry has to offer. Yes, some students are talented poets, and perhaps they’re born with this gift. But good writing takes practice, it requires exposure to the quality writing of others, and it absolutely IS something that can be taught.
The templates used by Dr. Buckner and Mike Cook helped me become more confident while writing poetry and I grew to enjoy it. I wrote a poem about my time in Scotland for a post card home and will cherish it. One of my favorite memories was writing a silly collaborative poem on the bus ride to Winchester. I have already used the bio poem in my classroom and will write a collaborative poem with my class next week. Overall, I’m more comfortable writing and teaching poetry and I don’t shy away from it like I once did.
Exposition: Here’s where I really struggled, but not with the writing itself. When we wrote the essays about Dr. Engle’s book A Dab of Dickens, A Touch of Twain, I agonized over mine before I posted it to the Google drive. I was so intimidated to have my writing evaluated by the brilliant high school AP English teachers in my group. I was especially intimidated to upload my document after reading Justin R’s and Lisa C’s essays. Both are marvelous writers and I felt like my essay on Dickens just wasn’t up to par.
The guidelines for giving and receiving feedback from writing groups really kept me in line. I did not apologize for my writing. I looked at my piece critically and with an open mind while I listened to their feedback, and because I didn’t act like someone who needed reassurance or to be coddled, I hear some honest, helpful feedback.
It was uncomfortable for me. I wanted to revise and revise and revise before I uploaded it, but I finally had to tell myself just to do it. It’s amazing what a fresh pair of eyes can do to transform a piece of writing. Even though getting feedback on an unpolished piece of writing from a colleague is uncomfortable, it’s a necessary step in improving one’s writing.
Expressive: The guest lecturer who spoke to our class about daybooks said something that really hit home for me. He said that if we were English (or language arts) teachers and we didn’t write everyday, we should change professions. Ouch. I didn’t write everyday, but didn’t think that made me a bad teacher. I fought my initial reaction to reject his logic and simply listened to what he had to say. He had a point. If I want to teach my students to write, to improve as writers, to express themselves in meaningful ways, I have to practice that too. I’m not done improving as a writer just because I graduated college. I
I kept a blog on the trip and wrote extensively about my day-to-day experiences in England. I kept a daybook and wrote in it whenever I could, eventually filling the entire notebook with sketches, observations, dates and facts, poetry, and train schedules. It was so good for me to write everyday.
This experience really taught me that things that make you grow are often uncomfortable, but they’re necessary. Being unwilling to be uncomfortable or stretched (in writing and in life I suppose) results in stagnancy. My writing has been stagnant for a while now. I’m grateful that my desire to write was rekindled on this trip and I’m determined to stoke that fire by setting aside time to write.
Writing Across the Modes Collection
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