Food for Thought

I sat down tonight to get some reading done and realized I didn't have enough room on my desk to place the small, concise Delpit book. I started going through the massive amounts of readings/handouts from last semester that had migrated to the top of my desk and came across this definition of a quality teacher:

"I don't think you can think of a quality teacher absent student learning. I'm being careful of what I'm saying here. I'm not saying "achievement" just simply because people read achievement as test scores. That's not what I'm talking about. If the kids aren't really learning anything, how can you be highly qualified? That has got to be an ultimate goal of the [teaching] enterprise- that students come out able to solve problems, able to make decisions, able to critically analyze their environments. If that's not happening I really don't care what your certificate says."
-Gloria Ladson-Billings, 2005

Conclusion to this post: How do you follow that?

2008-2009 English Education Cohort

Look at all these excited and inspired future teachers!

Week Two: Writing as a Team Sport?

“Writing can and should be meaningful to the writer, a source of personal pleasure and satisfaction, as well as a means for social action and academic success. Writing is a tool that gives students power over their lives (2).”

-Dornan, et al. (2003). Within and Beyond the Writing Process in the Secondary English Classroom. Boston: Pearson Education Group.

Writing is no longer an individual event. The process and product of writing must encompass a social element. While students begin writing about individual, meaningful events, the ultimate goal of writing is to present ideas, thoughts, opinions, and perspectives to an outside source. Educators have the responsibility to develop and foster both the individual and social benefits of writing.

Journals are an excellent way to utilize the many benefits of writing. In my cooperating school, journals have a huge staple in the English curriculum. Students journal almost every day; some of these are graded and others are used for participation. Dornan provided many uses for these journals beyond the simplistic writing assignment. First, giving students the option to staple personal pages is a healthy way to encourage personal thoughts without public display. Second, staring important pieces of writing will allow teachers to read, comment, and appreciate the journal entry. Using journal entries as a jump off point for more academic writing will foster student motivation about the writing process. Passing around entries with an attached blank piece of paper will allow students to receive feedback from their peers regarding their writing process (using the PQP approach would be beneficial here). Each of these strategies allows journals to develop a unique role in the English classroom beyond a diary of thoughts.

Finally, the importance of recognition can be tied to journaling. All great writings deserve a great audience. In order to entice students, I have created a blog for my two student taught English classes (see links to right of this main blog page). Student journal entries will be submitted to this site as a way to create a “Student Showcase” of important, meaningful writings. Each of these journaling ideas supports the personal and social benefits of writing. Ultimately, the writing process has become a team sport.

*Want to encourage journaling but short on free write ideas? Visit the site below for hundreds of free write prompts!

http://journalingprompts.com/

Week One Make Up: Writing Experiences

One of my most traumatic writing experiences occurred at a very young age. In third grade, we were given a short story assignment. It was to be a page long narrative or fictional account. I wrote about a lost cat and the (quick, page long) adventures “Puffy” experienced before he found his way home. I worked almost for three nights straight on the story, showing only the final product to my Mom for a spell check.

I turned in my story and waited for my teacher's excitement. That night, my parents were called. My teacher asked them a lot of questions about my story. The next day I got my assignment back-all that was written on the page was a huge, giant red C! I started crying, crumpled the story up in my backpack, and refused to speak for the rest of the day. When I got home, I asked my Mom why my teacher didn't like my story! On the phone the previous night, my teacher had accused my parents of writing the “Puffy” story. She didn't believe I was capable of that level of writing, and was completely convinced someone else had written “The Adventures of Puffy”.

This happened over fifteen years ago. I can still see that paper in my head, with the giant, nasty red C declaring itself on the page. I was upset about the grade, but that wasn't the zinger. What really hurt was that my own teacher didn't believe in my writing potential! After this experience, I did the bare minimum requirement on all my writing assignments that year. In my teacher's mind, these other writing samples probably confirmed her suspicions. In my head, she wasn't worthy of my Chaucer like writing abilities!

In schools today, plagiarism is still a very serious issue. As an educator, I understand her concern regarding the authenticity of my story. However, this was the first writing assignment in the class, she never talked to me about the details of my story, and she refused to participate in any further discussions regarding this assignment. Beyond the fear of plagiarism, this teacher gave me a very clear disdain for writing, a hatred that took almost five years to get through. It wasn't until eighth grade that I was able to rebound. I documented the ten page story of a farm girl and her mother as they try to overcome their disputes while living with the grandmother in Iowa. It had all the makings of a great Lifetime movie. My teacher loved it, read it to the class, and asked to keep a copy of it. His support, coupled with my parents assurance, had finally erased years of writing discomfort.

The moral of the story: As educators, we don't always know what our students are capable of in regards to writing. Some of the best stories have come as surprises to both audiences and authors. On the same hand, we need to be equally careful regarding what our students are NOT capable of writing. The lean one way or the other could produce another “Puffy” controversy.