Categories
Learning and Leading

Seeing Again with a New Purpose

By Julie Riggs
Lakehill Preparatory School, English Department Chair, K-7

I had so become discouraged with our tiny apartment that my husband agreed to visit some other rentals in the area. They were lovely and spacious, but moving would mean less privacy, higher rent and other expenses, and the enormous disruption of packing and unpacking.  Back at home, taking a newly appreciative look around, we discovered that rearranging a few pieces of furniture and tidying up clutter made our little home feel almost as spacious and charming as the others we had seen.

That’s a tangible example of revision, a skill I try to teach in English classes. To “see again” with a new purpose, to rearrange and tidy up cluttered writing, makes dysfunctional communication work. Even so, students are often reluctant to revise because writers are not only emotionally attached to our first drafts, we can become terribly stuck, believing we have no options.  But we do— all we have to do is take another look.