G. Lynn Nelson

G. Lynn Nelson is an American author and academic whose contributions to writing education include instruction on the university level, the advocacy of young adult writing programs, and the implementation of often-controversial approaches to language study. Nelson received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Kearney State College, followed by the acquisition of a Master of Arts degree from The University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Nelson later earned his Ph.D. from this institution. He began his professorial career at Arizona State University in 1973 and later co-founded the Young Adult Writer's Project (YAWP) in 1996. This program began as a summer program with the enrollment of thirteen students. Nelson also served as the director of the regional Greater Phoenix Area Writing Project (GPAWP), an effort that continued until the fall of 2004. Nelson is also the founder of Native Images, an organization that seeks to assist Native American students in their pursuit of success in the study of writing.

"Writing and Being"

"It is about our language and our being and their powerful interconnectedness, which have often been taken away from us without our even knowing what we have lost (xi)."

G. Lynn Nelson's book, "Writing and Being: Embracing Life through Creative Journaling", distributed by Inner Ocean Publishing in 2004, offers an alternative to the traditional "critical, left-brained, technical writing" that many future educators are instructed to incorporate in their methods.

Nelson says that “too often in school, we study language and writing in isolation, apart from the people who speak and write and apart from what happens when people speak and write — apart from our being” (xii). Nelson’s goal is to show students and educators that meaningful writing should go beyond a “grade…critical analysis and correctness, [but] where you write to tell your own stories, to heal your wounds, to find a bit of peace and love” (xii).

The book is separated into 10 chapters, with 10 different writing focuses, and 26 different writing explorations. The first two chapters get young writers familiar with the process of writing, while the remaining eight chapters are individual writing explorations that have writers explore various different aspects of who they are.

Chapter 1, “Beginning Your Journey,” urges students to begin writing in a journal daily. Writing in a journal allows for writers to openly explore their inner thoughts without fear of restrictions, constrictions, or criticisms (3-8).

The Petroglyph

Chapter 2, “Entering the River,” explains the process of writing and the writing process that Nelson utilizes, the Petroglyph:

# The writer should always begin writing from the heart. Writing begins with just recording, stream of consciousness style, all ideas, feelings, memories, and associations that arise from a given topic or subject.
# The writer then organizes those ideas, chooses one or a few to explore in a piece of writing, and draw up a 1st draft.
# The writer then presents his writing to a trusted audience that will help with the organization and reception of it by providing feedback to the writer.
# After the writer gets feedback on the piece, revisions will be made to modify the final product.
# The writer finalizes the final product and presents it to the public (The Feather Circle, classroom, teacher, newspaper, magazine, etc.)

Nelson concludes that this whole process is order to help students heal their inner-turmoil, distress, and wounds through the process of becoming better and more confident writers (148).

"“Let us not, you and I, be paralyzed by the sometimes madness of the world. Let us follow our writing and our being inward to that quiet place within ourselves and let us be centered there”" (169).

The Feather Circle

The Feather Circle is the final step in the Petroglyph. After going through the process of journal writing, rough drafting, and finalizing a piece of work, students come together around a circle to freely read aloud their work. Nelson writers that the “feather circle curriculum statement looks like this:

"Tell me a story — a small story, a true story (or as true as you can tell it) — a story from your life. Tell me of a time when you were hurt or afraid. Or tell me of a time when you were hurt or afraid. Or tell me of a time when you lost something — your keys, your heart, your mind, your mother or father, your way in the world. Or tell me about a small joy you had today. Tell me a story — and your telling it will change you — and such stories will move us both a little closer to the light. Tell me a story — and then tell me another — and I will tell you mine — and we will sit in the feather circle and listen carefully to each other. And then we will write thank-you notes to each other for gifts given in these stories. And then we will do it again, anew. And we will continue doing this — until we heal ourselves, until everything begins to become properly precious, until we stop killing each other and destroying the Earth, until we care for it all so much that we ache, until we and world are changed… [http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/download/nwp_file/530/Writing_From_the_Feather_Circle.pdf?x-r=pcfile_d "Writing from the feather circle: Seeking a "Language of that Different Yield."] ]

The Petroglyph is not completed if the words are not shared with the public. Through the participation of the Feather Circle, students open their hearts to their classmates by sharing their thoughts, experiences, and ideas. Nelson writes that instead of focusing on objective modes of composition,“we try to find our own voices — not Shakespeare’s or Hemingway’s or Faulkner’s, but our own. We try to use our words to find out who we are and what really matters in this world…We want [our words] to hold up in the world outside the classroom. We want to be able to take our words home with us. We want them to help us survive and grow. We want them to be alive with our own living and loving — and to help others to live and love” (6)

The students gather around a circle with their pieces of writing. There is a feather that the speaker holds while he or she reads. (The feather can be replaced with a different item, if preferred). No one is to speak while the reader is reading; only the person holding the feather may speak. When the reader finishes, he or she passes the feather to the right, and the next person reads aloud. After the Feather Circle, everyone writes Thank-You notes to all of those who shared, thanking for the thoughts and feelings that were expressed. These are then distributed the following class or meeting.

Nelson learned of Feather Circles, or also known as “talking circles,” from friendships he made with many Native Americans. Nelson refers to his Native American companions as his “teachers” who taught him how to take “back a part of ourselves that has been lost, a part without neither we nor our students nor our schools nor the very world can survive. It is about taking back our hearts — and, in turn, discovering “a language of that different yield.” Nelson goes onto discuss:

"Not long thereafter, I was introduced to the feather circle. Now, many variations of the feather circle or talking circle exist among Native American tribes, and I do not pretend to know about them nor to be here a spokesman for them. But I have personally experienced one powerful common denominator, whether the circle is in the hogan or the tipi or sweatlodge or the condominium or the writing classroom: When it is your turn to speak, when you hold the feather in your hand, you are encouraged to speak from your heart. Speak from your heart That is all. Yet that simple dictum sends the blood of life pumping through empty skeletons of words and lives and, when used in my writing classes, restores the possibility of a “language of a far greater yield” than the more orthodox approaches of my academic training.

Greater Phoenix Area Writing Project

Nelson was the director of the GPAWP (Greater Phoenix Area Writing Project,) which was founded in 1978 and discontinued in 2004. [http://www.asu.edu/gpawp/index.html Arizona State University ] ] GPAWP was a part of the National Writing Project. Through his work with this project, Nelson led the efforts to establish the Young Adults’ Writing Project. The first summer session was held in 1996 with 13 students at Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz.

Controversy

In 2005, Arizona State University told Nelson that he could no longer limit any of his freshman English courses to Native American enrollment. Although there were many sections of this course offered, the university did not support the practice. The controversy began when a civil rights group, Individual Rights in Education/] (FIRE), drew attention and offense to Nelson’s website course descriptions. [http://www.thefire.org/pdfs/fe837027af705838520c343d42e45a9a.pdf] After Arizona State received complaints about the website, Nelson was ordered to removed the Native American descriptions. He did this promptly with the hope that he could sustain the focus of these courses. However, the courses were no longer permitted to be conducted for Native Americans only.

Nelson did not view his “For Native American only” classes as discriminatory. He explained that it was a decision he had made approximately ten years prior when he noticed that those students might profit from a class which encouraged them to “focus on their own experiences.” [ [http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2005/10/07/section Arizona State Ends Class Limited to Native Americans] ] There were cases when non-Native Americans enrolled in these courses, and Nelson did not oppose this.

Resources

“Writing from the feather circle: Seeking a ‘Language of that Different Yield.’” The Quarterly, Summer 20.3, pgs 5-9.

External links

* [http://www.asu.edu/clas/english/englished/engedglnelson.htm Arizona State University: English Education-G. Lynn Nelson]
* [http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/6322.html Foundation for Individual Rights in Education: Criticism]
* [http://hnn.us/blogs/comments/16762.html History News Network: Robert KC Johnson: The Feather Circle]
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=bp-7YSLZL40C&dq=writing+and+being+lynn+nelson Writing and Being: Embracing Your Life through Creative Journaling]