In designating courses as 'studios' in the Writing Program, we are trying to encourage teachers to create classrooms that present writing as a kind of studio art. We want to design courses that critically engage students across time and in various contexts in the practice--and practicing--of the intellectual skills that are basic to literacy within the university. Studios ask students to use writing to integrate these processes and to understand them reflectively.

Now that we have taught Studios 1 and 2 for a year, we would like to describe the intellectual processes that are common to a writing studio in general, and the different emphases that characterize Studios 1 and 2 in particular--as we now understand them. We have also added a description of 315 and 404 as "prestudios" to be taught on a demonstration basis this year.

We urge teachers to think about all studios in relation to one another. We have already discovered the strong interdependence of Studios 1 and 2. This year we will have a group of students entering upper division courses (315 and 404) with the skills they've developed in the earlier studios, setting the stage for reshaping those courses into Studios 3 and 4. It will be important for the teachers of the Gateway Studios to watch this redevelopment and help to articulate the boundaries and developmental differences, just as it will be important for upper division teachers to keep a sharp eye on what their prospective students are learning and achieving in the freshman and sophomore studios, especially Studio 2.

Studio classes introduce students to writing as both a conceptual and communicative activity that takes place over time and in many contexts, and that engages students in an ongoing mix of reading, informal and formal writing, talking, and listening.
Students are asked to think of themselves as 'readers' and 'writers.' They are asked to really use writing as a way to learn, to test out ideas, to see their own words and hear others' responses. That means that students write often, and they write more than traditional essays or research papers. They do a range of informal and formal writing, from reading logs and free writings, to short speculative response papers, to class magazine entries, as well as full-scale projects like argumentative essays and ethnographies and reports. Some of this writing is graded, some not. Some is written for teachers or peers to respond to, some for the writer's own use. But writing is always presented as an ongoing part of the way people participate in the intellectual life of the academy or the professions -and in that sense, as a most 'basic skill.'

In a studio, students are asked to do pretextual writing activities, especially various kinds of invention heuristics, such as brainstorming, free writing, reading logs, class discussion, mapping, and charting. Some teachers who use computers in their classes, for example, have experimented with a program called "Story Space" as a way of teaching students to cluster and organize ideas before they begin writing a formal text. Students are also asked to do multiple drafting, as a way to learn how to develop, support, and organize their ideas by drafting texts, submitting them to peer response, and then working them again.

In the process, they learn also how to analyze the context in which they are writing--to understand their audience's needs and expectations, to assess the genre conventions of the community, to see how their texts are read and reacted to by actual readers. Writing is presented as an interactive process of communication, of participating via text in various contexts and situations.

Revising and editing processes are also taught, and next year we will begin to work with the idea of 'copy editing' as a way to help students learn how to master the mechanics of grammatical and stylistic conventions and to practice polishing their texts for final and formal presentation.

READING

Reading is presented in the studios as another basic intellectual process, that of interacting with others' texts for several purposes. For one, students are asked to study articles and books for comprehension, for use in their own writing, and for critical analyses of various sorts. In particular, they learn strategies for understanding and thinking about texts that are complex and challenging because of their thought content or requirements for specialized knowledge. These readings are drawn from a range of disciplines and professions including, but not limited to, literature texts.

Through peer groups and other collaborative settings, students also learn to read and respond to other students' texts as serious works of thought, to make comments and suggestions, to provide a real readership. In the process they learn how to read their own texts critically, so as to rethink and rework them.

And students are taught ways to learn how to do self-assessment, by describing and studying their own written texts and by reflecting on their own history and development as writers.

INQUIRING

All studio courses have at their intellectual center a topic and the process of inquiry. Topics of inquiry are chosen from a broad domain relevant to the intellectual skills and contexts for writing addressed by the studios. Inquiries might begin with a seminal book or article, a concept, a site of literacy, an intellectual problem, a suggestive metaphor or analogy. For example, teachers have planned studio courses focused on investigating the concept of time as it is analyzed in various disciplinary settings; studying Syracuse University as a cultural anthropologist might work to understand a foreign culture; and describing the composing process itself as a kind of 'flow state.'

Students engage in inquiry through primary and secondary research and by doing collaborative work, as in peer and project groups. Reading and writing are presented to students within this matrix of activity focused around a topic to be studied, as skills basic to the process of inquiry.

WHAT STUDIOS ARE NOT

Studios can also be defined by what they are not, since they are strikingly different from what teachers might expect from their own experiences in English and writing courses. They are not traditional literature courses, with readings followed by formal essays. They are not creative writing courses, or courses emphasizing expressive writing. They are not drill courses in grammar and mechanics, although they don't neglect those aspects of writing. They are not courses in a particular disciplinary content, like art or philosophy. And they are not courses designed primarily to espouse or teach ideological content like poststructuralism, marxism, or feminism, though they may use a mix of readings that include different kinds of theoretical, political, and disciplinary views.

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Then and Now: Why A Studio?


A studio is an artist's workplace, and a writing class at Syracuse is called a writing studio. To ask "why a studio" was an important question for the Writing Program as it strove to clarify its identity in 1988, and like many good questions, we can return to it as relevant today.

At the end of that opening year for the Writing Program, after everyone had taught writing studios for the first time, "Composing Studios" reflected the struggle between traditional writing instruction and the idea of a studio. I remember it well as a time of enthusiasm and controversy. After all, the Writing Program had just replaced a product paradigm of writing instruction existing for years at Syracuse, one still near and dear to the hearts of many. The argument had to be made, then, that student texts could indeed emerge organically and dynamically through the various practices inherent in a studio design where process was valued. Ideas could be explored through informal and formal writing. Small peer groups could be used productively as a vehicle for discussing individual writing projects. Student-teacher interaction could be individualized through conferencing because in a studio, as Eloise Robbins and I suggest, "the teacher does not lecture to students who sit passively taking notes." Each writing studio was a place, in fact, where students and teacher could engage within "an active writing community, nurturing and sharing writing at all stages," within an atmosphere, in other words, much like an artist's studio.

"Studios and 'Basic Skills,'" by Margaret Himley, Louise Phelps, and Faith Plvan, provided an even fuller description of the new curriculum guidelines. In keeping with the idea that a studio is the site for a fluid rather than a fixed sense of writing instruction, the authors note that students are "asked to think of themselves as 'readers' and 'writers,'" they are "asked to do pretextual writing activities," and "asked to study articles and books for comprehension, for use in their own writing, and for critical analyses of various sorts," and so on. Within a writing studio, then, students are not dictated to but are, rather, co-creators in a variety of studio practices.

A hallmark of these texts, in fact, is the way in which teachers are also not autocratically told how to perform but instead are asked to join in the studio experiment. Reading through each document carefully, one uncovers a language of invitation, a suggestion that writing studios open up many learning possibilities for both students and teachers. We see, for example, that students can "do a range of informal and formal writing," that "some . . . writing is graded, some not," and that "inquiries might begin with a seminal book or article, a concept, a site of literacy . . . (emphasis mine)." There is a "matrix of activity," therefore, from which a teacher can choose to design her course and at the same time adapt it to individual student needs. The process paradigm intrinsic to the Writing Program's studio curriculum appears to have extended a hearty welcome to its participants, inviting creative engagement with a flexible design so new to writing instruction at Syracuse.

Are the writing studios, however, in spite of this resilient central image of the creative artist, in danger of fossilization? In 1988, as we attempted to eliminate an antiquated product model represented by the outgoing program, vigorous energy for trying something new seemed high. In 1997, as we emerge after a decade of instruction, are we in danger of reading and enacting the studio curriculum as a set of fixed standards rather than as a set of versatile and pliable guidelines asking for continual re­invention? A process model can still become, after all, the model. How can we balance the requirement for clearly articulated goals so obviously needed by teachers new to the Program (not to mention political requirements for standards outside the Program), with the essence of a curriculum that calls upon all of us to regularly re­see what we are doing? Many exciting differences can exist and interact dynamically within the Writing Program curriculum. Perhaps now is the time to re-invigorate that concept. Wouldn't it be nothing less than what we ask of our students?--Mary Salibrici, 1997

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