Re: CCCC Sessions

[Dee Baer <dbaer@UDel.Edu>]

(Just) Responding, (Just) Venting--The last comment about session titles
struck close to my heart.  I reached a point where if I read another I
would immediately keep reading.  Surely my reaction was shortsighted, but
with thirty-odd presentations per session, one has to figure out a way to
choose. I guess many of us have been guilty of trying to create a session
title that will wow the the gatekeepers who will in some way determine our
fate, but someltimes I wish we could all just write from the heart. 

After looking for inspiration in all sorts of sessions, I finally found
it, as several others have already written, in the "Drive By Sharing"
presentation.  Beyond the power of those students' poems, letters, words,
I was reminded that institutions and individuals too often dismiss
students whose backgrounds do not
predict success.  Many of the students in that session, if not all, came
from "the rez," or reservation.  Most were the first in their families to
attend college. Two at least had been taught that all that their family
had taught them was not only suspect, but just plain wrong. Who could not
weep as one woman told how she was instructed by her boarding school
teachers to burn her parents' and grandparents' spirit pouches when she
had a chance to return to the reservation on the weekend?

Still, from those seemingly dismal backgrounds, those students showed
themselves to be completely in touch
with themselves and with the written and spoken word.  They showed us how
desperately important words and writing communities are. 

I was humbled and inspired.
 


Dee Baer
University of Delaware Writing Center