Oh, Emig. This is not the first time something I’ve read or learned during NIWP SI 2011 has felt more like a “calling out” than an informative discourse. I’d be read, read, reading along, and then BAM, a quick list of “What we do’s” vs. “What we should be doing’s” would smack me upside the head (heart?) and make me search my memory for moments when I’ve been guilty of teaching the ineffective, unproductive, even harmful way… Argh!
And I say teaching, I guess, because that’s the word we use to describe any actions teachers take in front of a classroom of students, right? That’s our verb. Teachers teach, students learn. But what if neither is happening? What if neither happens for a really long time? Entire months, quarters, school years? When will someone come along and say, “Oh dear, you haven’t been teaching at all! And look at those students—they haven’t learned!”
So, here. Here is a list of things teachers of writing should be doing, if good teaching of writing is to take place:
1. Write yourself! A person who doesn’t herself write cannot sensitively help others to write.
I can’t think of the last time I’ve written anything more complex or substantial than a greeting card. When I began teaching, I had a strong conviction that English teachers should read and write regularly. Somewhere during the…oh, first week of my first year, probably, I lost sight of that philosophy. Lost sight of it somewhere in the sea of grading, planning, and side-bar committee obligations I got caught up in.
2. Observe other writers and teacher-writers regularly.
Living in Priest River, this isn’t the easiest thing to accomplish. However, authors share their work pretty regularly in Sandpoint, which isn’t an impossible drive. I need to be more in sync with opportunities to listen to other writers.
3. Be conscious and adjust to attitudes, constructs, and paradigms of student writers.
I know I am weak here. I do my best to get buy-in from kids, but often when that buy-in is tough to procure, I resort of pleads or promises that, like, it won’t hurt too badly or that it’s “almost over.” I need to be more gentle in my approach to teaching writing. I need to understand that for some kids, it’s as pleasurable as a dentist visit. That is as much my problem to deal with as it is theirs. And I’m the one with the tricks and the ability to help them change their ideas about the writing process.
4. Assess growth in writing against its developmental dimensions (recognize growth and distinguish that from mistake)
I think this will be perhaps the most difficult goal for me to reach. I am such an objective grader (rubric is my middle name) that I’m not sure how to identify, specifically, what amount of growth is taking place within a student’s writing. This section earned a question-mark annotation, and even now, several days later, I’m not sure what that will look like as far as grading goes. And then the proficient, even prolific, writer comes to mind—how do I assess growth from a student who already exceeded grade level expectations the first day of class? I’m not saying this is impossible. I’m just leaving it floating out there for a while. I need to marinate in the potential of this goal and talk with others who practice it. I like what Emig wrote, “Developmental errors forward learning while mistakes impede it.” I think that is a good focal point.
Emig’s article was enlightening and left me much to ponder. Along with Moffett and Brittan, I’d say these three articles made the entrance fee into SI 2011 totally worth it.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Don't Forgets: Week One
Querencia
Important person/place
Life of Literacy (early reading memories)—similar to impact book
Writing marathon
“Chalk Talk” (example: community)
Gallery posters (on 1st third of Writer Mama)
Writer’s notebook (Barbara Crumb’s presentation)
Structuring class
Britton and Moffett
Write before you talk (level playing field)
Choose 1 sentence, few words, and share (better than summarizing!)
Important person/place
Life of Literacy (early reading memories)—similar to impact book
Writing marathon
“Chalk Talk” (example: community)
Gallery posters (on 1st third of Writer Mama)
Writer’s notebook (Barbara Crumb’s presentation)
Structuring class
Britton and Moffett
Write before you talk (level playing field)
Choose 1 sentence, few words, and share (better than summarizing!)
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Jigsaw: Edelsky and Smith
I loved this article! Because I am blogging post-discussion (and, by the way, it was very fun to get to talk and work with both of you Shiao-Wei and Susan!), I am going to summarize the key differences between “authentic” and “inauthentic” writing.
Inauthentic is pretty easy to see: The stories aren’t their own, the kids fret over topics, overly-probe the teacher for clarification, listen to and steal each other’s ideas, include false information, add things that “teacher might want to hear,” write to comply, and can’t tell for themselves if a piece is finished. Furthermore, there is no sense of pride or ownership in the work produced. The kids won’t use, keep, look at, or discuss work produced inauthentically.
Authentic is also pretty easy to see (just more difficult to encourage, I guess): Kids feel ownership and take pride in this type of work. They want to share, they want feedback, they want to provide clarity through revision and discussing the work. This work is student-driven—they are interested in their own findings, their journey, their discoveries. I love the example from the article that depicts the authentic journal writer as being more secretive and protective of their thoughts as they write.
My big takeaway from this article is that I WANT my kids to behave as authentic writers and to produce authentic writing! I believe we do quite a bit in the education world to sabotage a young person’s desire to engage through writing. Inauthentic writing won’t and can’t translate magically into authentic writing, and we’re doing a huge disservice to our students when we assume it will.
Inauthentic is pretty easy to see: The stories aren’t their own, the kids fret over topics, overly-probe the teacher for clarification, listen to and steal each other’s ideas, include false information, add things that “teacher might want to hear,” write to comply, and can’t tell for themselves if a piece is finished. Furthermore, there is no sense of pride or ownership in the work produced. The kids won’t use, keep, look at, or discuss work produced inauthentically.
Authentic is also pretty easy to see (just more difficult to encourage, I guess): Kids feel ownership and take pride in this type of work. They want to share, they want feedback, they want to provide clarity through revision and discussing the work. This work is student-driven—they are interested in their own findings, their journey, their discoveries. I love the example from the article that depicts the authentic journal writer as being more secretive and protective of their thoughts as they write.
My big takeaway from this article is that I WANT my kids to behave as authentic writers and to produce authentic writing! I believe we do quite a bit in the education world to sabotage a young person’s desire to engage through writing. Inauthentic writing won’t and can’t translate magically into authentic writing, and we’re doing a huge disservice to our students when we assume it will.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Moffett's "You, I, and It"
6 July 2011
The fact that this article was published in 1965 blows my mind. So much in the article sounded really new, progressive, and refreshing. Did this kind of thinking go out of style for a few decades? During our small group discussion, I was relieved to find the same sort of surprised faces on my neighbors.
I suppose my response, at this first reading, should to be to the two “abstractive progressions—one in which the speaker’s audience becomes more remote and diffused over time and space, and another in which the speaker’s subject becomes less and less matter and more and more idea.” This article is so deep and dense that I feel like a phony trying to do more than summarize and make sense of the four stages of discourse (inner verbalization, outer vocalization, correspondence, and formal writing) and of the four stages in the processing of raw phenomena (what is happening, what happened, what happens, and what will, may, or could happen).
However, this blog is about exploring, however sheepishly, and so I’m going to take a face plant into a couple fledgling thoughts I had in reaction to this article.
First: Chekov is a master at getting away from the chronological and the what happened. When I find a moment to sneak into to a Chekov short story, I am impressed over and over again by how able and willing he is to tell what happens and what could happen. How can I consider myself a Russian winter in the middle of an Idahoan summer? Easy! I can feel the shame, pain, hope, desire, and humiliation of his character despite the fact that, for example, I am not an awkward, young, male soldier whose only experience of affection occurred when a female stranger momentarily mistook him for her lover in a dark room and gave him a sigh-filled and eager kiss on the cheek.
How do I strive to write like that? How do I get my kids to strive to write like that?
Second: I am guilty of what Moffett described as “failures of teachers”—I ask my kids to compose constantly. And I often ask them to compose in response to either a prompt or idea I’ve presented (and, again, often that prompt is attached to a reading assignment!). Disgusting! Because it will take some time for what Moffett has presented to sink in, I look forward to marinating in the potential of the ideas presented in this article over the coming days and weeks. It will take time to wrap my head around this new perspective. I had many question marks annotated in the margins of the article—not representing confusion, but to remind myself that I want to think more about what Moffett is really saying and what that will look like in the classroom.
Feeling enlightened! Well, moreover, I’m feeling like enlightenment is just around the cloudy corner...
The fact that this article was published in 1965 blows my mind. So much in the article sounded really new, progressive, and refreshing. Did this kind of thinking go out of style for a few decades? During our small group discussion, I was relieved to find the same sort of surprised faces on my neighbors.
I suppose my response, at this first reading, should to be to the two “abstractive progressions—one in which the speaker’s audience becomes more remote and diffused over time and space, and another in which the speaker’s subject becomes less and less matter and more and more idea.” This article is so deep and dense that I feel like a phony trying to do more than summarize and make sense of the four stages of discourse (inner verbalization, outer vocalization, correspondence, and formal writing) and of the four stages in the processing of raw phenomena (what is happening, what happened, what happens, and what will, may, or could happen).
However, this blog is about exploring, however sheepishly, and so I’m going to take a face plant into a couple fledgling thoughts I had in reaction to this article.
First: Chekov is a master at getting away from the chronological and the what happened. When I find a moment to sneak into to a Chekov short story, I am impressed over and over again by how able and willing he is to tell what happens and what could happen. How can I consider myself a Russian winter in the middle of an Idahoan summer? Easy! I can feel the shame, pain, hope, desire, and humiliation of his character despite the fact that, for example, I am not an awkward, young, male soldier whose only experience of affection occurred when a female stranger momentarily mistook him for her lover in a dark room and gave him a sigh-filled and eager kiss on the cheek.
How do I strive to write like that? How do I get my kids to strive to write like that?
Second: I am guilty of what Moffett described as “failures of teachers”—I ask my kids to compose constantly. And I often ask them to compose in response to either a prompt or idea I’ve presented (and, again, often that prompt is attached to a reading assignment!). Disgusting! Because it will take some time for what Moffett has presented to sink in, I look forward to marinating in the potential of the ideas presented in this article over the coming days and weeks. It will take time to wrap my head around this new perspective. I had many question marks annotated in the margins of the article—not representing confusion, but to remind myself that I want to think more about what Moffett is really saying and what that will look like in the classroom.
Feeling enlightened! Well, moreover, I’m feeling like enlightenment is just around the cloudy corner...
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Takeaway from Palmer's Courage to Teach:
I want to be more in tune with inner self. Chapter 1 left me with the strong, uncomfortable feeling that I have gotten away from listening to myself—that somehow I have stopped thinking about what makes me happy, what makes me feel good, what helps me fall asleep at night feeling fulfilled and tired. When did this happen? Last time I really paid attention to myself, I was writing, reading, part of clubs where I shared things in common with others. What happened? Was that really five years ago?
I can’t even excuse this fact by scapegoating my daughter. She’s only eight months, afterall, and it’s been at least four years since I lived according to my inner voice. I can’t blame my first, and only, full time job as a teacher, either—how many times over the years have I eaten boredom and spare time for dinner? How many times over the course of the past few years have I frowned and complained about feeling disconnected and lost?
What I took away from Palmer’s book, The Courage to Teach, is that the discontentment I am feeling in life could have less to do with what I am doing than with what I am not doing. The book encouraged me to revisit old passions and to keep an eye out for potential new ones. I am not too old or too busy or too set in a routine to open up my heart and to spend some time everyday doing things that bring me pleasure and keep me feeling alive. I want to pursue activities that interest me, get absorbed in things I love, new and old, and prioritize what I value over the agenda of meetings set forth by my job. Doing so will make me feel like a more complete, happy, vibrant person.
I can’t even excuse this fact by scapegoating my daughter. She’s only eight months, afterall, and it’s been at least four years since I lived according to my inner voice. I can’t blame my first, and only, full time job as a teacher, either—how many times over the years have I eaten boredom and spare time for dinner? How many times over the course of the past few years have I frowned and complained about feeling disconnected and lost?
What I took away from Palmer’s book, The Courage to Teach, is that the discontentment I am feeling in life could have less to do with what I am doing than with what I am not doing. The book encouraged me to revisit old passions and to keep an eye out for potential new ones. I am not too old or too busy or too set in a routine to open up my heart and to spend some time everyday doing things that bring me pleasure and keep me feeling alive. I want to pursue activities that interest me, get absorbed in things I love, new and old, and prioritize what I value over the agenda of meetings set forth by my job. Doing so will make me feel like a more complete, happy, vibrant person.
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