Wilder Teaching Artifact: The Writers Blog / 1

Writers Blog:
The Writers Blog will be an ongoing and multi-step process designed to help you practice
organizing your writing, explore different ways to express a point-of-view, write with an
audience in mind, and practice revision.
Step 1: After reading the assigned essays from Crossing Cultures, you will select one of
the suggested prompts. There will be two to three options available depending on the
week. You will write a rough-draft response by hand in your journal notebook.
Step 2: You will bring your journal notebook with you to class on Tuesday (this will
happen every Tuesday). The class will exchange notebooks, and you will receive
feedback from two to three of your peers.
Step 3: Using the feedback from your peers, you will revise your original entry. You will
publish the polished version of at least 300 words on your individual blog by midnight
Thursday every week.
Step 4: You will read through all the published blogs, commenting on at least three and
voting for one as Blog of the Week. You will complete this step by midnight Sunday.
Step 5: First thing on Tuesday, we will discuss the winner of Blog of the Week in
class, focusing on why people voted for it and what was most successful. We will then
move on to step 2 for your next entry.
As you can see, The Writers Blog will an ongoing and overlapping process. It will be crucial
for you to stay organized and on top of each step. No single step is excessively challenging, but
they will become overwhelming if they pile up.
The following are selected prompts from Crossing Cultures: Readings for Composition. These
follow essays or poems that embody some form or idea that the prompt is asking the student to
recreate. Students always have multiple options and are also encouraged to use the prompts as a
jumping off point if they are inspired to diverge.

Develop your own philosophy of a teachers role beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic. In
other words, what can teachers teach us beyond academics?

Most students experience some change when they go to college that distances them from
their family or alters their family role. Describe a change that you have gone through or that
you see yourself going through in the future.

Have you ever experienced an eventa dance, a party, a tripthat you looked forward to
and that turned out to be a disaster? Or have you ever dreaded an event, such as an interview
or a blind date, that turned out better than you expected? Tell it, trying to make the reader
feel the anticipation and the change through specific, descriptive details you cite, rather than
by direct statements.

Describe a situation where you had an insight into an experience that you felt others around
you might not share. Describe how you gained that experience, and how it affected your
feelings about, or your approach to, that situation.

Have you ever felt yourself in real danger? If so, try to describe the circumstances. Instead of
just an objective description of the events, try to heighten the effect by the careful use of

Wilder Teaching Artifact: The Writers Blog / 2

emotionally effective words and phrases (You will find that overuse of emotional words
diminishes rather than enhances the effect).

Has there ever been a moment, event, or experience with a person that changed the way you
view things or yourself? What was the change? How did it change you? Try to describe the
experience so the reader can see you change instead directly stating that you did change.

Write a response in which you celebrate some aspect of your identity. Consider beginning
with the line This post is in celebration of Focus on one specific aspect (race, ethnicity,
gender, national identity, religion, class, state identity, college identity, hobby) of yourself
and reflect on how that part helps shape who you are.

Although not all of us are of mixed or battling heritages, most of us have felt split at some
point in our lives. For example, we may feel both allegiance to and conflict with the identities
prescribed by our family traditions, our religion, our social class, or our societys ideas about
appropriate gender roles. Describe a way you see yourself on the border of any of these
identities or others important to you.