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The composition teacher seeking rich material and another approach to the process of decentering student writing would do well to give more than a casual glance at Student Worlds, Student Words. Using the catalyst of modern folklore, Simons gives numerous ways of tapping individual knowledge and leading the student from the initial expressive response to referential writing. It is a finely tuned means of not only drawing out the reticent writer, but also bridging diverse elements in the multi-cultural classroom. The combined disciplines of modern folklore and writing here seem so cohesive as to be a natural mode for encouraging writing fluency from the beginning. First, there is an inspection of the student's own folklore background and then the move to the exploration of the self's "outside," seen as part of the bigger whole. The student, then has begun with himself as the core curriculum and ended by placing himself in an historic context.
Simons devotes the first two chapters to establishing modern folklore as a serious discipline and writing as a process- oriented activity. However, the author advises the busy reader to return to these initial segments later, if necessary, since the remaining chapters suggest different folklore genre as writing projects exclusive of the background information. Some of the genre include the folklore of naming, childhood, school, teen-age, family stories and photography; subsequent chapters deal with folk heroes, modern urban legends and graffiti.
The last chapter, "Nuke the Raiders," begins with brainstorming for the classroom's collective knowledge of graffiti. The student is then asked to explore his own memories and attitudes toward the subject in writing. These may range from inspecting past personal participation in graffiti to looking at motivation for having done so. This unit then turns to the historic perspective, beginning with the cave paintings of the prehistoric, skipping to Pompeii; then it moves to the scrawled knights of the Medieval period and further to Thomas Hardy's complaint that "every gatepost and barn's door you come to is sure to have some bad word or other chalked upon it by the young rascals--a woman can hardly pass for shame sometimes."
The march toward the contemporary continues by inspecting marginal comments in a nineteenth century textbook, World War II's and the Vietnam War's contributions, and finally the incorporation of graffiti motifs on current day Swatch watches. The unit concludes with individual research projects which explore various aspects such as identifying male and female problem solving styles and attitudes toward violence as expressed in graffiti from school lavatories.
Simons is long on practicality, coming from a decade of using these techniques in the classroom, both in individual teaching and numerous classroom workshops. Her book reflects her sound grounding in folklore as well, and her enthusiasm for her subject is contagious.
Also, there is a generous offering of resources, some helpful to teachers for background, others for student use. Another plus is the fact that this approach to writing, it seems to me, is equally valuable on different levels of application. The middle or high school teacher as well as the college writing instructor will find here much palatable food for thought.