Creating the Joyful Writer: Introducing the Holistic Approach in the Classroom

This book is a teacher resource based on holistic education for those educators who want to go beyond "traditional approaches" but do not know how. The author places emphasis on the whole person (intellectual, physical, social, emotional, spiritual, and environmental) rather than the intellectual way of knowing. Written in an easy-to-read format, the book provides a holistic approach that fosters creativity and joy in the production of written expression. Schiller details background, historical development, and philosophical explanations for holistic education including a timeline of key people and ideas. Teaching activities provide a context and exigency for writing. Creativity, visual arts, and rhetorical decision-making shape the majority of these activities, but all activities attempt to provide learners with opportunities to use multiple intelligences. Contents include: (1) Background and Influential People; (2) Creativity: A Holistic Route to Writing; (3) Contemplating Great Things in Soul and Place; (4) Walking in the Spirit of the Medicine Wheel: Learning to See What We Normally Do Not See; (5) Write Your Own Ending; (6) The Connected Self; (7) Visioning in Silent Community; (8) Screenplay Writing; (9) Info-Commercial; (10) Cave Art: Is It Literature? Is It Writing?; (11) Finding Your Community's Literature; (12) Creating a Life's Legacy; (13) Music and Dance to Inspire the Pen; (14) The Writer's Scrapbook; (15) Voice and Identity: The Sound of Respect; and (16) Writing the Outdoors: 3 Days in Nature. Appended are: (A) Interesting Holistic Schools; and (B) Rhetorical Aims and Organizational Strategies.