I went to Viable Paradise VIII in...2006?? I'm guessing (if the first VP was in 1998 according to their website). I attended as a student. It was a one-week workshop and my parents-in-law paid for it, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to afford it. My husband took time off from work and he and his parents took care of our daughter, who was very young at the time. The instructors that year were Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Laura Mixon, Steven Gould, James McDonald, and Debra Doyle, I think. There were a lot of group activities, like a reading of some Shakespeare play - optional, but as the parent of a very small child I was so grateful to be interacting with ADULT HUMAN BEINGS that I went to everything I could. I don't remember a large-group critique in the Milford style, but there were a couple small-group critiques (like, I want to say three or four students led by an instructor - in my case one of mine was with Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I remember one of the other students gave iffy feedback on a sentence structure that I liked to use and Teresa gently pushed back that "that's a fine sentence structure" - in my memory this wasn't shaming or punitive, just matter-or-fact, but I don't know how the other student perceived it. There were also some writing exercises and assignments, which we workshopped. I loved the whole experience, but I don't know how universal it was, and this was like 15 years ago so a lot of the details are very hazy in my memory.
I agree that the instructor definitely has to teach critiquing/norms, no argument there - just, as the third-week instructor at Clarion West I literally have no idea how that was done. Aside from the summary of procedures/critique norms, I don't know how the week one instructor taught that. I believe I was told that the week one instructor would do this but I don't know anything beyond that. Students generally seemed to know the basics of how to critique and I reinforced those as I could? During my week at Clarion, besides running the Milfordy group critique sessions, I met one-on-one with every student (I read everything they had written for the workshop in the first and second weeks as well - this was optional on my part but I wanted to do it because I had the time/energy) to discuss their goals, go over what I'd seen of their writing, answer any one-on-one questions they had, etc. I also ran a one-hour optional workshop on worldbuilding, to which most of the students came. I hope no one felt pressured to attend, but I really don't know.
I don't know how good/bad the new-instructor-every-week approach is. Maybe it comes out in the wash. I had some students who had had not-great experiences with one of the previous instructors, whether that was a personality clash or what. But of course maybe some of the students that year had bad experiences with me and I just didn't pick up on it. Theoretically staff are supposed to be able to mitigate against that but then that depends on the staff and their procedures, again something I didn't have visibility into.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2022-08-23 09:42 pm (UTC)I agree that the instructor definitely has to teach critiquing/norms, no argument there - just, as the third-week instructor at Clarion West I literally have no idea how that was done. Aside from the summary of procedures/critique norms, I don't know how the week one instructor taught that. I believe I was told that the week one instructor would do this but I don't know anything beyond that. Students generally seemed to know the basics of how to critique and I reinforced those as I could? During my week at Clarion, besides running the Milfordy group critique sessions, I met one-on-one with every student (I read everything they had written for the workshop in the first and second weeks as well - this was optional on my part but I wanted to do it because I had the time/energy) to discuss their goals, go over what I'd seen of their writing, answer any one-on-one questions they had, etc. I also ran a one-hour optional workshop on worldbuilding, to which most of the students came. I hope no one felt pressured to attend, but I really don't know.
I don't know how good/bad the new-instructor-every-week approach is. Maybe it comes out in the wash. I had some students who had had not-great experiences with one of the previous instructors, whether that was a personality clash or what. But of course maybe some of the students that year had bad experiences with me and I just didn't pick up on it. Theoretically staff are supposed to be able to mitigate against that but then that depends on the staff and their procedures, again something I didn't have visibility into.