Teaching Lives: Essays and Stories by Wendy Bishop (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Wendy Bishop. TeachingLives: Essays andStories. Logan, UT: Utah State Univetsity Press, 1997. 346p. Devan Cook Boise State University Wendy Bishop is a writing teachet — which is to say a composition scholat, researches and theorist — and a poet; she has been a writing progtam administtatot . Teaching Lives is a collection ofessays grouped around the various aspects of teaching writing: pieces included address the teaching ofcomposition and firstyear writing, the relationship of reading and writing in the writing classroom, teaching creative writing, writing progtam administtation, and research methods in composition. Taken togethet, the essays and stories offet a self-composed potttait ofBishop's teaching lives, what she calls "a retrospective learning experience" (ix). Within sections, essays are attanged more ot less chronologically: in introductions to each section, Bishop provides a briefcontextual ftamewotk for the thinking and questioning which prompted each piece, each investigation. The eafliest pieces in the book date from the late 1980s, the most tecent first appeared in 1994, and she has been busily writing since. Bishop is well-published, and anyone who tegulatly reads composition journals is likely to be familiat with het wotk. What's different here is the oppottunity to see the teaching lives that these stories and essays casptute. The teaching of wtiting is ever a new conundtum fot which this collection provides fresh perspectives , ifnot always magic keys. So TeachingLiveswould be an especially useful text fot ttaining GTAs (which Bishop in fact does). Although nothing included is sttictly a how-to piece, much ptactical teaching advice (and pedagogy) can be gleaned: how to trouble-shoot peet response groups, implement portfolio gtading , design a syllabus for a nonfiction class, teach poetry, use readings in a writing classroom. As a composition teachet, I think the collection has sevetal strengths: it foregrounds the heuristic possibilities fot writing instruction in crossing or blurring boundaries, emphasizes the importance of reflexive ptactice in the development and self-education of teachers, and consistently frames all aspects ofwriting insttuction — teachets, students, departments, writing progtams, and institutions — as politically situated. FALL 1998 + ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 79 Clearly Bishop's refusal to categorize and limit het thinking positions het to ask sttategic questions: What exactly is the difference between composition and creative writing? Is all engaged writingcreative in some way ("Crossing the Lines")? If ttaditional and expected ways of teaching gtammar and revision aren't wotking , what might be bettet? Could insights from litetary theory or creative writing exercises help ("Teaching 'Gtammar for Writets'")? Reading Teaching Lives, I too want to take on multiple roles so I can ask bettet and more productive questions of my teaching. In keepingwith the collection's multiple petspectives, the writing employs several genres: "conventional" composition articles, poems, collages, litetary nonfiction . As Bishop says, "If we accept the job description of writing teachet, then theory and practice, the public and petsonal, must fotm a web, a network, a circle, an interconnected chain, a dialog, a mutual refrain in out teaching, a tapestry, quilt ot momentarily well-constfucted whole" (320). Stories and essays in the collection note the importance of reflective practice (as do Kathleen Blake Yancey, Pat Belanoff, Petet Elbow, and othets). Bishop especially encoutages keeping a teachingjournal, a step which can often lead teachers toward undertakingqualitative research methods as they study theitclassrooms. Natutalistic methodologies are uniquely reflexive since they offer "a way to look at the researches who is often a teachet, as well as a way to look at those researched" (190). Looking back at what we have done in the classroom often leads us to furthet questions and mote research: "In writing about out own teaching lives," Bishop writes, "we figure out out classrooms, we speak to othets, and we compose outselves in beneficial ways" (viii). Richatd Bullock, John Trimbur, and othets have atgued that writing insttuction is deeply political. Naming hetselfa feminist and a "social exptessivist" (employing Shettie Gtadin's tetm), Bishop locates hetself politically from the statt. Pieces in this collection often begin by examining a question's political context: the gendet question in creative writing, the influence of litetaty theoty on reading(s), and the feminized role ofcomposition in English departments are all thoroughly explored. In sum, the writing classroom is nevet...