A Reflective Rhetorical Model: The Legal Writing Teacher as Reader and Writer

Abstract

Like most writing teachers, the legal writing teacher believes that his reading and response to student work is the most important thing he does, an importance that is underscored by the amount of time it takes. Yet, despite its importance and the hours it consumes, the rhetoric of teacher reading and writing remains relatively unexplored. This article proposes that we begin to apply what we have learned about student reading and writing to our own reading and writing. Our process of reading and responding to student work should be as reflective and rhetorical as the reading and writing process that we suggest for our students. As we read, write, and comment, we should be conscious of the movement of our students and ourselves from meaning to text to reader to writer and back; we should focus as much on planning, monitoring, and revising our own reading and writing as we do on communicating our interpretations of student work; and we should use our own reading and writing experiences to reflect on and respond to what our students are doing.

Keywords: reflection, reflective teaching, legal reading, legal writing, teacher commenting, rhetorical model