A journalism student "shadowed" me the other day for a class project. I knew she was writing a feature story for the class, but I didn't realize it would end up online in a mock newspaper. Since it's ostensibly about a "day in the life of a writing teacher" I thought I'd post a link here: "A Fantastic Voyage into Dr. Arnzen's Mind" by Renee Defloria on the Practice of Journalism mock paper.

The biggest surprise I had reading this was the interviewing with other students about me. And the mention of where I hide the money in my office! Now I need to change its hiding place.

I'll be uploading a student anthology from my poetry class to a different site soon; I'll share here, as well. I think publishing student work in a "formal" (rather than just informally blogged) way online provides a showcase that students can be proud of. When I've done this in the past, I learned that many students would share such websites with their families over Xmas break, as a testament to how well they were doing in school. In a fiction class antho, the students were very interactive in the guestbook. I've always tried to use the internet as a part of my teaching, but I think I am most proud of these sites (which required me to do all the work, unfortunately) where students were "publishing" ... it makes writing more authentic and rewarding than just having the teacher for one's audience. That's something I try to represent as a writing teacher, too: an audience.

It can backfire, however...especially in a journalism course. I once asked a journalism course to submit their end-of-term feature stories for a mock paper called "Newshole" which I would susequently publish online. But when I discovered two plagiarists in the class, and so many other problematic issues in the writing that I just pulled the whole project and decided that it would be safer to just post titles of the papers online. Sure, I could have just dropped the two articles, but then I would have singled those students out and I instead wanted to use this as a lesson to the class about publishing.

Developing a sense of audience is crucial, and I think Renee really projects that development in her article on me. The writing here is different than the papers of hers I've graded: it directly speaks to other SHU students, reflecting a sense of what her audience would most be curious about.

Disclaimer: The bloody rabbit picture isn't a Polaroid, by the way. It's something I found on the net (from Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and used as a "test print" when they installed the new printer in my office.

If you're surprised to discover that I'm a fan of the horror genre, you ain't seen nothing yet.

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