Right On

Still awaiting word on my proposal. I don't know if that's good or bad. I'm prepared for rejection, so I'm ready. But last night I came across something quite interesting while Kristie and I were reading out on the porch. Sometime ago I bought "Teaching Powerful Personal Narratives: Strategies for College Applications and High School Classrooms" by Mary Jane Reed. I'm only getting around now to reading it. I was well into chapter two when I came across that paragraph that got me all fired up - and made me thing that maybe some of my ideas in my proposal were not completely off the charts -- ". . . In fact, assure your students that the five-paragraph approach should not eve be a consideration. It is too binding, too restrictive. I don't know if I should chuckle or cringe [I always cringe] when I hear teachers at conferences confess to each other that they swear by the five-paragraph format for every essay. I declared it dead years ago, and thankfully my department agreed. Where is it written that a personal experience occurs within five paragraphs? Students need the freedom to unleash the angle that allows the paper to develop with continuity and culminate appropriately regardless of the number of paragraphs." Amen.