Mrs. Connelly accepted the wilted flower from the zombie, her face frozen in a terrified grimace of a smile. His grayed-over eyes rolled up to meet hers, and he bared his awful teeth in an awkward imitation of her expression.
For some reason, his disturbing maw made Mrs. Connelly's shoulders relax and her smile open up. She said to the zombie, “Thank you... this-- this is really a very nice gesture.”
The zombie moaned in a gratified way and shuffled back and forth on his mummified bare feet. The hunch of the zombie’s back and his artless, earnest offer of the flower reminded Mrs. Connelly of students she had lost so long ago.
So many things had been lost after the outbreak. Despite assurances that most remaining Z-plague victims were now harmless, Mrs. Connelly realized she clutched her dread and resentment around her like a cloak. Anger had carried her for a long time; Mrs. Connelly had nursed its flame with a single-mindedness that she had once devoted to the nurturing of young intellects.
As she reminisced, the zombie’s gaze drifted off and glazed over. She imagined his far-away, unfocused gaze might be turned inward, introspective.
Once, Mrs. Connelly had harnessed her anger to defend herself against the ravaging monsters of the z-plague, against one-time friends and loved ones burnt away by fever and blood lust.
And yet, while the threat of the plague had died years ago, Mrs. Connelly’s rancor had not. Just as the remaining z-plague victims were left to wander undying, but no longer truly alive, Mrs. Connelly had wandered purposelessly through her life, anger festering away in her breast.
Stroking the brittle petals of her gift, Mrs. Connelly felt a crushing weight inside her lighten. Shock, horror, grief and blame wafted up, evaporating like the mist in the breaking rays of morning sun. She saw that the remnants of the z-plague, like this one standing slumped before her, had suffered far more than she at the hands of their fate.
Mrs. Connelly welcomed the warmth on her face in the chilly dawn, and felt something inside her unfurling. She felt a deep gratitude for the urge which had sent her out in the early dark this morning. Her restless wandering had brought her more than the moments’ peace she had sought.
Bending into the straying gaze of the docile, hapless creature before her, Mrs. Connelly smiled her warmest. She clasped his dry, leathery hand in a tender grip. With just a gentle tug to his hand, she coaxed the zombie to shamble forward, as she led him down the field to the road, and home.
On October 30th, I gave my first ever independently created lesson to an Writing classroom of honors 7th graders. I was very excited to dive in to leading a class, but also nervous as there would be any number of unexpected issues I may have to deal with. As it turned out, although I encountered some difficulties with the product students produced, I was very happily surprised that students seemed engaged and inspired by the content and techniques I was attempting to furnish them with.
For my lesson plan, I discussed the scope of my assignment and the future units being completed by the students with my teaching mentor. She made the great point that if my lesson did not align with what the students were doing in class for her, they would not be engaged in doing their best work. She mentioned a mythology section her seventh grade honors students were working on, and some difficulty she had had in getting them to realize the deeper meanings behind repeating patterns in mythology from different cultures and ages. I was then inspired to create a lesson to address this point using modern examples from film. While configuring the lesson, I utilized the formalized steps of the heroic journey as identified by Joseph Campbell, and realized that something I had discussed frequently with students during critiques, and something I had had trouble with myself, was long term outlining and structuring in stories.
With plot outlining in mind I created a PowerPoint of 7 steps from the heroic journey pattern which I thought invoked strong emotions in audiences, and would help the students think about characterization and plot events in terms of their effect on the audience. I was also inspired by a personal passion of mine, which is broadening the base of what is referred to as “literature” or “text” to incorporate modern conceptualizations of storytelling.
I wanted to inspire these students to read their school assigned texts and think like writers, I wanted them to see how every “text” in the wider world can be examined. As Crovitz and Kirby (2013) write in Inside Out, Strategies for Teaching Writing, “We want students to apply particular critical questions as a way to dig deeper and speculate about how the text operates and what it’s trying to do. Central to this inquiry is the idea that image-centered texts, just like written works, are purposely created human phenomena” (p 281). I wanted the students to take away from the lesson plan not only that the heroic journey they had seen in mythology has universal applications as a writing strategy, but also, for them to appreciate the scope of just what I meant by universal. I discussed emotional impact in terms of “universal” experiences, and tried to demonstrate with my examples the way most hero stories are a metaphor for the progression from childhood to maturity. I was a little bit concerned that this may be a difficult concept for these students to grasp, but I felt it necessary to include because the metaphor behind stories is an important part of audiences’ identification with stories.
In the PowerPoint, I used images from four films to cover a gamut of unexpected but popular modern places to find the hero’s journey, including the Harry Potter films, The Star Wars Trilogy, Disney’s Mulan and Pixar’s Wall-E. I stressed that I used films for the ease of explanation using pictures, but that every type of modern media, including video games, books, comics, as well as TV and films used the same patterns. I wanted examples the students were familiar with enough to discuss, and I wanted examples of heroes and settings who were unique and distinct from the classic types of hero characters in the traditional myths he class had already covered.
I wanted to present the class with uncommon or overlooked examples of heroes because I often felt stifled as a female writer in school when all I was reading was the perspective of young, male protagonists over, and over, and over again. Students should be challenged to identify with as many varied and unique protagonists as possible, in order to give them new perspectives. As Kirby and Crovitz (2013) explain it, “seeing the world from different viewpoints requires students to grow toward reflective, metacognitive thinking” (p 40). Initially I included the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I switched that film out for Wall-E when I realized that these students were mostly not yet born when the 2001 films were released, and that they may be too advanced for them thematically. As I went through the films I chose thinking about the relevant examples, I surprised even myself with things I had previously overlooked: how perfectly situations in these films suited the heroic journey model, and how often these moments were the most emotional in their respective films. Ultimately though, I did go into my lesson still somewhat apprehensive about how familiar exactly the students would be with the films I had chosen.
Because of the limited amount of time, I decided to structure the independent section of the lesson as a group story outline, each group only required to create a story outline from a modern prompt I assigned to each group, and to fill out only four of the seven points of the heroic journey we had discussed in the PowerPoint. I structured the assignment in this way using invaluable feedback from my teaching mentor on the dynamics of the class, the speed at which they would complete creative assignments, and her experience with structuring lessons to allow the students to practice a very explicit skill. The discussion I had with her after I had come up with my initial ideas for the lesson plan was invaluable, and leant focus and structure to my plan that I would not have been able to articulate otherwise.
During the lesson, I asked students to think of common elements they had discussed or noticed in their previous mythology readings for class, and I’ll admit I was impressed with the variety and sophistication of the elements the students came up with. I referred back to the elements they had written on the board during my presentation, aligning their ideas with the steps of Campbell’s heroic journey. I was also relieved and amused with the students’ enthusiasm for the films I had chosen to discuss, when I asked for a show of hands for familiarity with the films. I was especially pleased to hear one young man say “Mulan is awesome, Mulan is my girl!” when I asked if they were familiar with Disney’s Mulan. The class obviously had good taste. During the presentation as I described the elements and what kind of emotions they created in readers, I asked for several alternate examples from the class.
One regret I think I hold is that I knew I had limited time, and I was unfamiliar with the class personalities, so I called on a few of the same students to give their examples over the whole class, whereas I would have liked to have called on the quieter students. In addition, I think I confused the students at times when I asked my questions in varying ways, sometimes asking for an example from another film, sometimes asking about alternate examples from within the same film. Should I do this lesson again, I will probably stick to one question format, at least for this age group. Again, I was very pleased with the students enthusiasm and knowledge of the films—they came up with alternate examples I hadn’t thought of, and one student made a visual link between the character “Auto” in Wall-E and a video game character of a very similar nature that I was rather impressed by.
If I had had my druthers, I believe this lesson would have taken perhaps two classes. In the first class we would have gone over the PowerPoint and I would have gotten more examples, had a higher percentage of participation, and had a longer guided activity with the students. In the second class we would have read over the rubric, looked at my sample piece, and then the students would have more time to write with their group, or even write individual outlines. However, I did not want to eat up that much of my mentor teacher’s instruction time, and I also wasn’t at all sure how long it would take the students to complete their assignment.
As I broke the students up into groups and gave them their prompts, I noticed that most students did not flip over to the more detailed rubric I created; they simply started talking within their group, which I perhaps should have anticipated. Also, as my mentor teacher had predicted, one of the most difficult aspects of getting their work down and on paper was the fact that the class was for gifted students. Thus the students were extremely eager to share their own ideas, spoke over each other, and so had difficulty reaching a consensus and moving forward. I attempted to guide the groups forward and keep them on track with their assignments by speaking to each group, especially those who seemed not to have much written, but I did not want to influence their stories too heavily by sharing my own ideas.
At the end of the class, four of the five groups elected a member to share their prompt and one of the elements they had completed with the class. The groups were eager to share their work; I was pleased to hear the ways they had chosen to fill in their elements aligned nicely with the purposes and structures we had discussed. I was sad that one of the groups did not have time to share a section of their story, although I told them that I had been listening as they wrote, and that their story was very creative. When one group in the corner read their piece, I realized why they had been struggling to get things written down and move on even though they had been working the entire time. Instead of outlining the story, they had been writing scenes word for word with descriptions and dialogue. I feel this was in some ways my fault, as we had not gone over the rubric in great detail, and I had interacted with the group as they were working several times and not realized this was going on.
Overall, I definitely heard more plot development and elements mentioned and discussed aloud by the groups than were eventually written down and formalized. I think this may have been due to the fact that the students had trouble conceptualizing the elements of their story without having a full idea of the plot. Almost all of the groups struggled with assigning a student to be in charge of writing things down. And then, once a student had been chosen to write, no other students jumped in if that student was busy or distracted, which is probably an issue of experience with multi-tasking at that age. Even though I had stressed that they could, the students asked me several times if they could write the elements out of order, or combine them. When I prompted groups to do this as they worked, they seemed to be able to write down their ideas more quickly. If I had been more familiar with the students or had more time, I probably would have assigned a student to be the writer for the groups.
Another aspect which I think slowed the students down which I wouldn’t have anticipated was actually how little direction I had included in their prompts. I had given them only very brief and open ended prompts in the belief that the more open ended they were, the freer the students would be to run with their own ideas. Unfortunately, it seems that this open-endedness left each individual free to their own ideas, and only exacerbated the issue of coming to group consensus. I left it up to each group to give a name to their hero, and the students spent a much longer chunk of their time arguing over this than I would have anticipated.
Therefore, if I were to give this lesson again in the future, I would definitely give the students more detailed prompts. I would include a name for their hero, perhaps even 2 or 3 other characters to be utilized in their plot, in order give the groups forward momentum. Another idea I might try would be to give the same prompt to an entire group, and then assign one of the elements to each student. Then, at the end the students could read their elements to each other and listen to the patchwork story. This would give each student a chance to write, demonstrate their knowledge, and have their ideas heard, while providing an amusing hook in the style of ad libs to the final sharing portion of the class.
I had a great time doing this lesson with the students and listening to and reading the stories they came up with. I would love to have been able to give this lesson and eventually have the students write their own heroic myth from any time or place they could imagine, and see what they came up with.
After the lesson, my mentor gave me some immediate feedback that I greatly appreciated and will remember. She agreed that the students had had some issues, as she had predicted, being able to listen to each other and reach consensus. She mentioned that in my own classroom, I should be more conscious of the timing of the periods, and that I should be certain that absolutely every class I at least attempted to end with a warm-down or wrap up. She explained that although things always get in the way, wrapping up an assignment and coming back together as a group is important to remind the students of the purpose of their assignments, and for keeping them accountable for completing their assignments in class.
My teaching mentor said that some of the issues I had could only be remedied with more experience on my part with classrooms, and these students in particular. She said that I did a good job demonstrating how the students could use the information to aid them in the future, and that I had managed to reach them at their level without babying them. My mentor also mentioned her own observation that one of the ways she could tell I was a new teacher was because I stood completely still up at the very front of the room next to the computer, as if I were trying to “sink into the board”. She suggested that in the future I should make an effort to circle the room even when I am delivering a PowerPoint to the class. She said students are engaged by the movement, and that if students can predict where the teacher will stand, they are more likely to take advantage of this fact and talk or goof off. This had never occurred to me at all, and was a great tip I will work on in the future.
Full Lesson Plan, PowerPoint, and Handout on my GoogleSite:
Philadelphia Town Hall with Michelle Rhee (Public Practitioner Reflection 10/11)
On September 16th, I attended a live town hall at Temple University Hospital. Perhaps 100 people were in attendance all together, including mostly current, future, and former educators, as well as a contingent of journalists. I was surprised to discover on my arrival that the entrance to the building was blocked by a group of two or three dozen protesters marching and shouting with signs and flyers. There were also several camera crews.
The town hall meeting was mainly organized by Michelle Rhee, the controversial head of the education reform organization StudentsFirst. There were also two additional guests, Steve Perry, who runs Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Connecticut, and George Parker, a former detractor of Rhee and president of the Washington D.C. Teachers' Union. Parker is currently a senior fellow with StudentsFirst. The protesters outside the building were specifically objecting to previous reform practices carried out by Rhee, motivated by a fear of her involvement in the current resource and budget crisis in Philadelphia.
Before I attended the event, I watched the Frontline documentary The Education of Michelle Rhee on Rhee and her reforms as Chancellor in DC from 2007-2010. I also read several articles from various perspectives on Rhee, including her own article entitled What I’ve Learned. She has been a very public figurehead for education reform from before and continuing on after she left the position of Chancellor in DC, creating the organizations StudentsFirst and The New Teacher Project. I also watched the clip in which she briefly appeared in the 2010 documentary Waiting for ‘Superman’.
Two things brought Rhee to my attention, making me curious about the town hall in the first place. First of all, I attended the George Washington University in DC during the last two years of Rhee’s tenure as chancellor. Although I had not paid attention to her specifically, I witnessed the condition of the economic gap in DC, the state of their public schools, and often walked past one of the hollowed out schools near my campus that Rhee closed. The second event that made me curious about Rhee was listening to my professor speak about a friend of hers, Adele Cothorne, who replaced a principal who stepped down at one of Rhee’s most touted successes, Noyes Academy.
My professor, Rhee, and Cothorne were all Teach for America teachers at one point, and have interacted with one another from time to time. Because of the way teacher evaluations and standardized testing practices changed under Rhee in DC, several allegations have been made that the added pressure caused rashes of cheating. In his unpublished article A story about Michelel Rhee that No One Will Print, John Merrow (The correspondent for Frontline’s documentary) reports that “The year before Ms. Rhee arrived, 18% of Aiton students scored proficient in math and 31% in reading. Scores soared to nearly 60% on her watch, but by 2012 both reading and math scores had plunged more than 40 percentile points” (2013, p. 2). Noyes was at the center of this cheating scandal, and Cothorne, in her interview during the Frontline special on Rhee, reports that when she tightened her teachers’ access to the students completed standardized test scores, the scores for the school that year dropped 30% from the year before. However, no investigation into cheating on the standardized testing in DC has found positive proof of cheating during any of multiple investigations (Merrow & Mangini, 2013).
All of my readings had me intrigued to see what Rhee and her two co-hosts would say during the open town hall. I knew now that the debate would be a very polarizing one, and Philly’s budget crisis has put it on the map as a district which badly needs reform. Education reform is something that all educators, all Americans, seem to be able to agree is necessary. As Bowles and Gintis (1976) make quite obvious in their book Schooling in Capitalist America, Americans have been demanding education reform, quite literally, for centuries. However, determining a method of reform which allows for the greatest potentials of all student demographics in public schools without sacrificing a reasonable expectation of compensation for educators seems to be a divisive issue. I was curious to see if Bowles and Gintis theory, that education reform served as one of the primary platforms of social struggle and “personal liberation” would hold true in this town hall (1976 p. 5).
Rhee held town halls in three cities: Los Angeles, Birmingham, CT, and Philadelphia. Of course, one aspect of the town hall that my professor, I, and several others on my twitter feed questioned was, what purpose exactly was the town hall designed to address? Who had asked Rhee to weigh-in on the situation in Philadelphia?
Well, Rhee herself seems to have organized the events and located the venues for each, not her organization StudentsFirst or an organization from any of the locations chosen. The website for the town halls, called simply “Teacher Town Halls: Real Talk on Education” states on the welcome page that “We hope that you'll join us -- regardless of where you stand on the issues -- for an open and honest conversation about what we can do to improve the quality of education for all kids” (‘Teacher Town Halls”, n.d.) To me, this seemed like a hopeful, if vague, invitation to share ideas and collect wisdom from educators dealing with distinct issues in Philadelphia, L.A, and Birmingham, and for figures involved in national education reform to encourage inclusive and cooperative thinking in the nation as a whole.
At the start of the event, the moderator, another educator and supporter of Rhee, invited each of the guests on stage to say something before the beginning of the questions. I felt that this opportunity for the “guests” to speak freely from up on their stage invited an imbalance between the opinions of the educators on stage and those in the audience. Each speaker seemed to address not what they hoped to learn from the night’s discussion, but rather, they used the opportunity to more firmly entrench their belief system in front of a crowd that they clearly believed would be divided. I could see that audience members grew agitated as they spoke, especially at certain points. I believe that, ultimately, starting the town hall in this way only exacerbated the polarized state of the room.
In addition, I was not shocked, but I was somewhat dismayed, to hear the sterilized process through which “audience questions” would be “answered” by the speakers. It was designed very carefully. For a “town hall” I had imagined the event would somehow provide interested audience members with a microphone so that they could voice their point to the roup, and address the discussion it was given by those on stage. This was my conception of how a town hall between equals differed from A Q&A session with experts, making the event one of mutual sharing and perhaps reconciliation. Instead, when individuals walked into the room, they were given a printed card upon which they could write down one question for the guests on stage. The cards were then screened and read by the moderator before being addressed by the guests. The moderator reassured the audience that every question would be addressed, if not during the live event, then afterwards via twitter or on the webpage. Currently, there are lists of questions and answers on the webpage now for each location.
It seemed to me in the audience that the organizers from Rhee’s group, as well as the moderators from Temple University Hospital, wished to circumvent discussion. Neither the moderator nor the guests welcomed audience feedback. For example, follow-up questions were actively banned, and educators in the audience were never supposed to actually speak. Several individuals did speak up however; usually the individuals most motivated to speak were the loudest and most aggravated. One notable grumbler who continued rudely speaking over the guests after his question was addressed eventually was told to “shut up!” loudly, by the moderator. I did not feel that was the necessary or prudent thing to do for a moderator whose purpose was to bring together the two sides and keep order.
The point is not that no one in the audience or on the stage made any good points. Sadly, education reform is full of valid points, and worthy goals. Every educator in that audience was arguing fiercely for the method and practices which they firmly believed would allow students to reach their deserved potentials with the highest quality service from the education system. Indeed, Rhee has brought about positive changes in the DC public schools with some of her practices, and simply by her dedication and fearlessness to meet educators face-to-face, travel in person to see the procedures and resources of the district, and demand accountability from teachers who had become complacent or despairing.
My question, listening in the audience to individuals making reasonable points all around without an agreement in sight, was how does one avoid making mistakes in educational practices and reforms? In a perfect system, one could test theories and methods of reforming the finances, training of educators, best practices and curriculum, and manners of evaluating student potentials being met.
However, there is no way to investigate the methods of education in a controlled study. Policy makers must institute procedures and reforms onto the shifting and irregular landscape of the public school system, and there is no control against which to check one’s hypothesis. When mistakes are made, as they must be, children are hurt. Yet, if we do not seek to change elements in the mix, children are still hurt. If nothing else, this town hall made me understand that there is an even greater complexity to discovering a method of reform for this country’s education system, and I have greater sympathy for those whose philosophies may differ from mine. The town hall demonstrated to me more clearly that no one individual has the answers to this dilemma. I think it is truly unfortunate that Rhee and her organization do not seem to have gained this same understanding.
Honestly, I believe that the town hall event was purposefully cast in a light of mutuality, when in fact, Rhee in particular has never shown much interest in the opinions of the parents or educators whom her policies have affected. Rhee is obviously willing to sacrifice and take risks in her pursuit of “results for children,” this is clear. However, I believe my own philosophy must differ from Rhee’s fundamentally in the complexity of a system which can address the needs of many individuals without sacrificing others.
Rhee seems to wish to apply the same broad stroke of supremely excellent teachers, pure transparency and full oversight of funds, and accountability based on objective measures such as standardized testing. I cannot believe that the solution for a nation of individuals is so simple. To me, it seems Rhee would be more effective if she were more receptive, and sifted through the fearful and disparaging criticism she is so proudly immune to, in order to find constructive analyses which would allow her methods to adapt to situations.
After the event, it seems to me that the event was designed primarily by Rhee to stir up renewed interest in StudentsFirst, since according to Maxwell (2013), the organization has lobbied and failed twice recently to have their supporters elected into positions of authority in education. In the documentary The Education of Michelle Rhee, Rhee is seen staring blankly at screaming parents who are concerned about the school closings Rhee planned, and the film reports that she was considered uncompromising and deaf to the thoughts and fears of the city (Merrow & Mangini, 2013). After listening to her deal with criticism firsthand, I have to agree that although several of the audience members were clearly unwilling to listen receptively to answers given by the three educators on stage, Rhee was not anticipating conceding on any points either.
Ultimately, the event was not what I would consider to be a town hall, since that term implies the act of sharing, listening, opening questions up to those gathered, in a mutual effort to combine and thus increase the wisdom of a “town.”
Here's a link to a video of the whole event (I was sitting towards the back on the side, you never see me, I checked :c ):
Bowles, S. & H. Gintis. (1976). Part I: The Contradictions of Liberal Educational Reform. Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. (pp. 1-16). New York: Basic Books.
Maxwell, L. A. (2013, May 22). Elementary Teacher Is Likely Winner in L.A. School Board Runoff. Education Week, Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2013/05/elementary_teacher_narrowly_le.html
Merrow, J. (2013, July 31). A Story About Michelle Rhee That No One Will Print [Blog].
Retrieved from http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6490
Merrow, J. (Correspondent) & Mangini, T. (Director). (2013, January 8) The Education of Michelle Rhee. [Television series episode]. In M. Joseloff (Producer), Frontline. Boston, MA: PBS.
Teacher Town Halls: Real Talk on Education Reform. (n.d.) Retrieved September 13, 2013 from http://www.teachertownhall.org/
Student Writer Interviews and Practices to Encourage Young Writers Spotlight
In order to investigate what I, as a teacher, will need to do in order to foster creative writing and communication-via-writing skills in students, I randomly interviewed three 8th grade students about their experiences as writers inside and outside the classroom. Honestly, I was truly surprised at how articulate and eager to share these students were, even though some were shy to talk to a virtual stranger.
During my research I ran across the 2006 article by Nancy Peterson, titled 10 Things Every Young Writer Needs which was an incredibly brief, and yet precise and accurate, summary of many of the practices my class has discussed to encourage young writers. I ran across almost all of these principals in the classroom of the students I interviewed, and the topics the students mentioned to me. It neatly summed up practices that teachers perform, like “immersion in a print-rich environment” that students may not even notice make them more effective (Peterson, 2006, para. 4). For example, none of the students I interviewed mentioned needing things such as the “on-going writing term” list and “vocabulary-to-use” list posted on their walls. And yet, all of them mentioned that they appreciated being taught specific terms and “moves,” as they call them, to use in each activity.
In my graduate class, very few of the teachers and pre-service teachers consider themselves to be “writers.” Most of them feel uncomfortable writing creatively and sharing even for class. Therefore, I was impressed to hear two of the three students I interviewed say that they consider themselves to be writers, and some said that they enjoyed writing creatively for pleasure to some degree or another. For me, this difference between the young and adult writers declares the success, and importance, of teaching writing in such way that the main goal is to “help [students] to understand themselves as thinkers, interpreters, and writers” (Peterson, 2006, para. 20).
Even the student who did not feel comfortable calling himself a writer stated that he enjoyed creative writing in class, and he in particular enjoyed sharing student writing among his peer-groups the best of any activity they performed in class. Two of the students said that although in the beginning of the year they had felt very shy and uncomfortable sharing their writing out loud with other students, they had become much more comfortable with it over the two months they have already been in school. One student made an excellent point that she felt confident sharing among her classmates because she knew that everyone in the class would be sharing a some point, so it was not a matter of “bragging” to choose to share or not.
In addition, all three of the students mentioned, or agreed with prompting, that one of the most helpful activities that their teacher performed for them before they began their first drafts was to put up her own draft of an activity, either creative or academic. Peterson (2006) declares the importance of this practice, that educators must “share the very struggles and process they hope to see in children's writing” under the point called “Young Writers Need Real Mentors” (para. 8). One student stated that he felt he understood what was expected of him better after seeing his teacher’s example, and that this gave him the confidence to start. Another student stated that she got specific ideas about what she would include in her writing from discussing how her teacher could improve the draft she shared, and that she was not as nervous about making her first drafts perfect when she knew that her teacher wasn’t, and changed things too.
Drafting and keeping a record in a portfolio was something all of the students discussed. One student said that she enjoyed looking at her older drafts because she liked to laugh at them, and because looking at her old responses always caused her to think of new ways she would have answered questions posed. She mentioned that she could clearly appreciate the difference between her works from the beginning of the year and now. She seemed to benefit from what Peterson (2006) explained was the way students need to be allowed to “Think Through Writing” because “the process of writing gives all of us a chance to think through, process, and organize our ideas” (para. 16). This student had learned not simply to spit out an assignment and forget it, but rather, to reflect over it and its content until she had communicated her ideas clearly and thoroughly.
I noted that the student who seemed have read and written the most for his own pleasure outside of class, even before the beginning of the year, didn’t seem to see much difference in the skill of his earlier work from this year as opposed to now. However, he also enjoyed keeping track of all of his drafts of his work, and he stated that knowing there would be several drafts of each assignment before they would be turned in made him more confident to try new things. Despite his writing outside of class, he said that being mandated to have several drafts of each work made him more confident that his final product was “as good as it could be.”
One of the few constants between all three students, that each mentioned explicitly, was that their least favorite activity during class was academic writing, that is, writing papers examining the practices and “moves” in works they read to prepare for their own creative writing. I advised all of them that sadly, this practice was one they would continue to use throughout their life, and that their teacher was doing her best to make it easier for them. Academic writing being an activity many of us perform a great deal, in my future classroom I will have to think of ways to make this process less arduous, and demonstrate its usefulness to students more.
In addition to writing, I also asked the students about their reading preferences and whether they read non-assigned books for pleasure. Reading, and enjoying reading, is an important component of being a writer, since as Peterson (2006) put it “Every book, article, or poem you read as a class--every encounter with a written text--is a chance to learn about style and craft” (para. 18). One student said that she liked being given lists to choose from for assignments and summer reading, because she could later choose more books from the lists and be assured that they would be well written. Another stated that he did not read much other than what they were assigned in class, but that some of those he had chosen for school were truly enjoyable to him. The last student said that he read a fair amount for pleasure, enjoyed participating in the Reading Olympics, and that he, too, preferred being given some flexibility of choice when reading books for school assignments.
My research, including the 2001 article Hooking Struggling Readers: Using Books They Can and Want to Read by Lori Rog and Paul Kropp, supported what the students stated about their reading from the classroom, since all three enjoyed their reading more when given some autonomy to choose the content. In addition, Kropp and Rog stressed the importance of giving students book choices which were personally interesting to them, since students comprehend and retain more when they come to a book with an interest for the subject to begin with (pp. 4-5).
Surprisingly, at least to me, all three students’ favorite genres fell mostly within the non-fiction category. This was true even for the student who found writing from his own experience harder to share. In their research, Kropp and Rog (2001) explain that non-fiction can appeal to students because “Non-fiction test, especially, provides a number of supports for the struggling reader: headings and subheading, graphics and illustrations, introductions, and summaries” (p 4). This does make sense based on what the students said, since non-fiction offers content with which the students have some familiarity, because it has built-in relevancy to the student’s lives, and because it can contains these predictable conventions which make comprehension easier.
Ultimately, the students really did not share any complaints with me about their class or teacher. This was astounding to me, since at that age I know I was rather embittered and jaded over my English classes and their grammar worksheets, and yet, having interacted with them and their teacher, I can see that the practices in their classroom encourage individuality, respect, and environment of safety, creativity, and purpose. I know from observing class that they share their work readily and laugh out loud when assignments include elements of humor. When their teacher shared that one of the student works from an earlier class had been especially humorous, the students clamored to be allowed to hear that piece at a later date.
After the interviews, the teacher of the students I interviewed came to me to ask if there were any suggestions from the students, or activities they really disliked, and I couldn’t really find any she hadn’t thought of. That quality, to be invested in constant revising and evaluation not only of student work, but of your own practice, in order to “expand [students’] senses of perspective and personal relevance,” is the quality Peterson (2006) terms “Powerful Teaching” (para. 20). I think that attitude, of honesty and respect between the students and their teacher, shows in the students in the way they value their work, and the way they strive and struggle with their writing in order to make their final drafts the best they can possibly make them.
References:
Peterson, N. (2006). “10 Things Every Young Writer Needs”. Instructor, 116(3), 39-41.
Kropp, P., & Rog, L. (2001). Hooking Struggling Readers: Using Books They Can and Want to Read. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/374/
Teacher Practices Spotlight: Investigating the Implementation of Writing to Improve Literacy
The next semester, we read S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, which I can still name as one of the few assigned books for a class that I have read with pure enjoyment. In fact, the first day we began reading The Outsiders (Out loud, painstaking sentence by sentence, so slowly I actually had trouble following the story at times), I took the book home, and read it in an hour or so. The next class, I foolishly mentioned that I had already finished the book, and my teacher became furious. She assigned me extra busy work, banned me from discussions in case I used my illicit knowledge of the book’s content to predict future events, and I was almost given demerits. I was actually penalized for enjoying our assigned literature.
With this background, I came into the 8th grade writing classes of my fieldwork partner at Sandy Run Elementary somewhat mystified by how a class based in the practice of writing, using reading material as a jumping-off point, might function. I was actually skeptical that it could function, especially as Sandy Run does not practice tracking, so students at various levels of ability and enthusiasm would be mixed together. How could they really be learning much about writing more effectively, or more creatively, when all they would be doing was fooling around with their own work?
For our assignment to investigate a practice, I chose the lesson the students performed in which they read several examples of an “Open Letter” together on the Smart Board, leading ultimately to writing a 350 word essay of their own on any topic or theme they found in the open letters. During the lesson, as a class they discussed and listed the common themes of personification, exaggeration, and humor in the letters. Then Sam, the teacher, put up her own somewhat deliberately flawed response to the student’s writing prompt, and the class discussed and suggested ways for her to improve the piece, while she edited it on the Smart Board. This was one of my favorite parts of the activity, since it directly modeled the fairly vague idea discussed by Crovitz and Kirby (2013) in their book Inside Out, that the writing classroom should be a “liminal” space (p. 48-49).
Sam encouraged the students to critique her own work, and gave them confidence to do so by making herself vulnerable. In doing so, the students were able to learn from each other, while Sam was also teaching them the specific structures, elements, and language to use when they later began their own work. As Inside Out might say, the activity created a liminal space by purposefully “subverting the power dynamic” as Sam “reveals herself as a writer,” as well as by creating “a sense of community [that] arises spontaneously through trust, mutual respect, and shared experience” (Crovitz & Kirby p. 49). Critiquing the teacher’s work is a somewhat precarious place for both student and teacher without a great deal of trust. The student has to trust that the teacher will not penalize them for honest critique, and the teacher must trust the students to be honest and to identify the necessary structures.
Next, the students wrote their own reflections, and shared them with a peer. Each editing pair received a sheet of reminders to edit with the goal of “making one another look good,” to read their piece out loud as their partner read along on their own copy, and to find one strong element and one element which could use work in their partner’s piece. I could clearly see that many of the students were enthusiastic about sharing their work, or at least nervous. I don’t think any student I saw or spoke with seemed apathetic or indifferent to the response of their partner. I could see the motivation for the students to go home and edit their work, and every student was engaged with their writing no matter their level of ability.
I think this observation speaks very well to what Inside Out calls the “social and collaborative” elements of writing (Crovitz & Kirby p. 13-14). First of all, the students were writing with the knowledge that they had a real audience. They had already had the experience of reading and reacting to others work, as well as sharing their opinions and emotions with others or the writer themselves, and with having others do the same with their work. Their peers would be reacting to the piece, and this motivated them internally to do their best work. In addition, communication, and thus writing, is by its very nature a collaborative event. By sharing with their peer audience, the students were learning to view their work in a context of both writer and reader, and view neither as a passive activity.
I found the focus on reading their pieces aloud particularly interesting, since I know in any of my own writing, academic or creative, reading the piece aloud or to another person is an important step for making it follow logically, and read smoothly. The children told me that they knew to read their pieces out loud because this used a different part of their brain than silent reading, and thus they were able to think about their pieces in a different way. I was impressed that the students were not only given a task to repeat with all of their work, but also the reasoning as to why the technique would benefit them. I know I would have been more cooperative with repetitive tasks if any of my instructors over the years had bothered to trust that if I understood a task to be beneficial, I would keep performing it faithfully without prompting.
I found it impressive that the students were able to effectively give one another feedback, not only on grammar and surface elements, but in providing particular tasks that they felt would improve the piece. I know I have struggled even in college writing workshops with receiving meaningful feedback that would guide the effect of my piece’s argument or communication, rather than simply clarify its grammar.
After discussing with a partner, the students shared one task for their piece that they were going to perform on their own while editing for homework and Sam restated what they said as a very specific task when the comment did not state how the issue would be addressed. During our interview, I asked Sam how she sifted through the student’s comments like “It’s too boring,” to come up with such specific recommendations as using more variety of language, avoiding overuse of pronouns, or using more explicit examples from their readings.
She told me that this skill was the result of practice as well as getting to know individuals as writers. In addition, Sam recommended researching the specific tasks student writers can perform and the structures of writing, as our text Inside Out terms it, “the anatomy”, in order to more swiftly comprehend what effect the students were going for (Crovitz & Kirby p. 31-34). Reading about this process of coaching students as opposed to constraining them seemed very nice, but somewhat impossible to learn. However, Sam’s answer was quite explicit and task oriented, and I could see myself improving at understanding my student’s needs through those methods.
Sam’s school has only recently undergone the change to a writing based approach to English, so she only began thinking in this manner very recently herself. She said that the initiator of the change for the school is a mentor to her in this, and she is obviously very enthusiastically in favor of the changes. She told me that her initial training as a writing teacher consisted of one course in the process of writing years ago; so much of what she was doing now was novel for her, as well as her students.
She also stressed to me that the school had dealt with teachers who were disbelieving or resistant to the new curriculum by promising that the change would continue only so long as standardized test scoring showed positive effect of the teaching, and that the district as a whole was beginning to shift in a similar direction. Apparently they were never taking much of a risk there, since As Inside Out substantiates, “authentic writing practice raises students’ scores on standardized and high-stakes tests.” (Crovitz & Kirby p. 17).
One other element in the activities of which I was wildly jealous was the availability and utilization of the Smart Board in the lesson. It made pulling up new reading examples swift and easy to read, and actually allowed the students to watch, live, as their teacher edited her own work with their suggestions. I could obviously tell that this activity was more efficient and more engaging than it would have been if performed without the technological props—if in fact it had been conceived at all. One of the open letters the class read was actually written by an employee of the Google search engine itself.
I will share with you, my sister is four years younger than me, and the technological improvements afforded her that just miss me have haunted me from grade school onward. Our grade school acquired Smart Boards and laptops that could be signed out the year after I graduated, our high school gained an improved blackboard service, Smart Boards, and more AP classes the year after I graduated (the year she began), even the technology in the ID cards issued by colleges have improved since I graduated to banish the need for keys (which I lose, constantly).
I asked Sam for both the benefits and hindrances of the use of technology in her classroom, and she stated many clear benefits. I was surprised to learn that the only drawback she found was in the complications of technological trouble shooting. For example, she had prepared a lesson for the Smart Board, which was not functioning correctly. She ended up having to change the lesson at the last minute, and wasted precious class time attempting to fix the issue first.
In fact, Sam saw learning the various troubleshooting skills and responsibility needed to utilize the computers and internet responsibly as a necessary skill for students. I hadn’t thought of it in that way, but Inside Out also discusses the value of not only teaching students using technology, but also supervising students about how to use technology. The text even asks teachers to consider, “how the digitally networked complexities of modern communication demand dexterity, judiciousness, and ethical awareness that we could teach our students…” (Crovitz & Kirby p. 8). As the digital age marches on, not only does the tool we use to communicate change, the very manner and purposes for which we communicate must also evolve. As teachers then, it is up to us to ask the questions of what technology threatens, changes, and what it affords along with our students.
Discussing the potential for distraction with Sam, I was very surprised to learn that she did not have much of an issue with the students being distracted by the options presented by the computers used in class. In my time undergraduate, the first time in which I experienced laptops in the classroom, I saw them to be a huge window for distraction and zoning out during class, and even I couldn’t force myself to concentrate fully when I could check my email instead. We discussed the possibility that newer generations are becoming accustomed to the presence of technology in the classroom as a tool, and are thus less tempted by the siren song of its other uses. I think we’ll have wait and see for the answer to that one.
Crovitz, D., & Kirby, D. L., (2013). Inside Out: Strategies for Writing (4th Edition, pp. 1–66). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Where Does Creativity Come From? (Author Reflection)
Watching both of the Ted Talks of author Amy Tan and Elizabeth Gilbert, as well as reading some interviews about writing and advice for new writers from one of my favorite authors, Sara Rees Brennan, I noted a pattern which I suspect to be a theme.
One thing I noticed is that both of the extremely popular and financially successful authors seemed to be talking about creativity in a rather grand sense, and they assigned the source of their inspiration in some sense to an outside force. Although they may have many differences, in their writing career they have had similar experiences. These include meteoric popularity on bestseller charts, tremendous pressure from media and fans to produce more work, and both authors have had a work turned into a major film. Tan spoke about mysterious coincidences, and taking on the personas and histories of others in order to answer questions, and Gilbert spoke about the origin for the term genius from the ancient roman muse-like spirits.
Sarah Rees Brennan, on the other hand, a successful author but a very new one, spoke about her own stories and characters as much more deliberate. One interview I read from Brennan was about the number of multi-racial and LGBTQ characters in her books, and their scarcity in other YA books. She spoke about choosing characters from different cultures than her own in order to challenge genre conventions, and several times referenced publishability and the pressure to write sellable books for modern publishing companies.
I thought this perspective shift was very interesting, and perhaps influenced by the very huge successes of Tan and Gilbert. Interestingly, both mega-authors talked about outside influences, Tan's coincidences and Gilbert's higher power, on their creativity as part of an explanation for unpredictable success. They also spoke about the way this belief was “necessary” in order to function and relieve enough pressure in order to be able to create vulnerable, genuine work. In contrast, as I think was obvious in Brennan’s interview, more modern, less monetarily successful authors live with pressures that they can never evade: that of how to make a living, interacting with their live audience of the internet and fandom, as well as how to get powerful publishing companies to even accept their work. Although I believe that every creator works and is inspired in unique ways, I do believe that experiences and audience reaction seem to influence this.
Although for the most part I think I have a very different view of creativity and inspiration than Tan and Gilbert, I resonated with one particular thing that Gilbert and Tan referenced. This was the basic concept that, although there may not be one answer or way of doing something, searching for meaning and asking the impossible to answer questions is ultimately the point of living. This is one of the few things in life that I can agree with myself on that is definitively always true. I very rarely allow myself to find easy answers to questions, and I play devil’s advocate to absolutely everything. I find myself sometimes playing devil’s advocate to my own devil, and being somewhat lost in an infinite “Why?” For me, twisting expectations and reality and finding one of the infinite perspectives possible of a concept is one of my strongest motivations to write.
As an undergraduate English major, I took several courses which came back to the question of “What is art, what is beautiful, and why should we care?” Although I found searching the web of these questions to be exhausting and mind-crushing at times, ultimately, I rejected the idea that intention has any outcome on response, and really any notion of coherence. I realized that I believe that reality is a construct pasted together by each individual’s brain signals, and as such, beauty and meaning could, and can be, and is anything at any time. This absolutely does not mean that there is no point in searching, because the constant search in some ways defines each moment, and thus, to me, reality itself. So in the literal sense, the search for meaning creates meaning.
Now, that said, when I read or write for pleasure, I tend to have a much more linear and defined taste. I definitely tend toward the deliberate side when it comes to creating characters, though ultimately I still believe that the source of these imaginings is accidental and statistically improbable. Unlike for Tan and Gilbert, this is not daunting for me, but ultimately freeing. In some ways, I think of myself in my writing process similarly to the way I think of the question of Aesthetics. What that means is, even though there is no one “ultimate” inspiration I am working from or toward, it is the pursuit of an end that gives the work its meaning. To me, this is very freeing, since none of my stories is ever finished, or really even says what I think it does. The notion that I am drawing a concrete mental “object” from a source through myself into being (which Gilbert rejects and also accepts) is boring and constrictive to me. For me, the process of deriving meaning, and its sheer multiplicity, is more satisfactory than any one meaning that is uncovered.
Hello there!, If you're seeing this, this is the little story of myself as a writer- so far.
My parents were forced to choose a name for me at the last minute, having been told, even from an early ultrasound, that I would be a boy since I was so big. Apparently, when my mother’s mother heard my name and looked at me for the first time, she announced that I had “a perfect author’s name.” Reading and books are very important to her; my mother and all of her siblings were read to as children, and grew to love reading. My mother and grandmother then passed this love on to me.
In fact, my oldest memory of writing is working on a short story with my grandmother about an odd garden gnome in her backyard. It holds a fawn in its arms, and it still stands out there in the same place today. I narrated the story about the gnome and the fawn while she wrote, and she drew little colorful illustrations. We gave it to my mother as a present. This is a very strong memory, and I couldn’t have been more than 5 or so, as my younger sister wasn’t present. Obviously, I have been nurtured with a confidence for writing since very early on.
In first grade, I wrote my first piece for school. It was just a few sentences, but I decided I would do a fake horror story, where what seems like a murder turns out to be someone making dinner. My first grade teacher, who famously once told my mother “Oh, Sara’s self-confident alright,” determinedly tried to talk me into another story. I said no. Parents got involved, but long story short, I wrote my story my way, and got a bad grade for it. I don’t even know where it came from, either. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t even near Halloween. I was then, and am still, as my father likes to say "a junk yard dog with a bone" when it comes to creative projects.
The crippling blow to my young writer’s soul came in 4th grade, through sheer, dumb, bad luck. In my spare time, I had written a 27 page masterpiece about a vampire alien with a plant friend which contained not one single piece of punctuation. I remember thinking that holding the shift key and the quotation mark twice every time I wanted to write dialogue was a herculean task. In addition I recall that figuring out where sentences ended and new sentences began was an obscure and perplexing task.
One night, when I went upstairs to work on this epic, I clicked on the file, and the computer stated there was an error; the file was corrupted. It wouldn't open.
I remember feeling a paralyzing sense of grief, and I quietly asked my father to see if he could fix it. Sensing my level of upset by my rare quietness and lack of outrage, he tried everything. But it was no use, the file was gone. I recall lying in my bedroom in the dark, not crying, thinking, “I have a bad feeling that I’m never going to write again.” And for a long time, I didn’t. I dabbled with writing for classes up to and including during High School, but I didn’t really write for pleasure again until college, though I continued reading voraciously.
During my high school career, sadly, I received very little really good English instruction at all. Two teachers took on a PhD the year I had them, one dropped out for half the year because of emergency surgery, and one retired and was replaced by a retired professor. That said, absolutely the most valuable thing I have learned about writing came from my AP US History teacher, Sister Josepha, in senior year. For AP exams, she had us write frequent short essays, while concentrating fiercely on a meaningful, precise, captivating first sentence. We read the sentences aloud and analyzed them in detail, so that during the exam we could bang out a swift and powerful thesis.
The way we critiqued these sentences, not just the grammar or vocabulary of the writing, but specifically the connotation of each word together, was challenging and useful for me. This specific process of thesis writing has served me in academic papers a thousandfold, and my enjoyment of it led me to take creative writing as an elective junior and senior year of college.
Both of my college creative writing professors were excellent, in very complementary ways. In fact, I think my experience would have been very different if the order in which I had them had been reversed. My introductory professor, Professor Bayard, was a published author, and ran the class as one long critique of basically whatever work the student chose. It was very collaborative, and students gave a great deal of feedback on each story. Although my stories were genre fiction that he and the rest of the class were mostly non-familiar with, they were incredibly supportive and helpful in my editing process. I had long conversations with the professor several times, and he told me late in that class that although sometimes my critiques in class were more stringent than others, they were incredibly accurate at finding the issues with each piece that could be worked on.
This “stringent-ness” I subjected my classmates to which I had laughed off came back to haunt me a bit during my next writing class, advanced fiction. I skipped over intermediate fiction due to scheduling issues, and also in order to take a course with the head of the creative writing department, a professor who had been strongly recommended to me personally.
Professor Mallon was also a published author, of historical fiction, and a strong believer in getting the nitty-gritty of language down pat and out of the way before attempting anything else. Unfortunately, I have never been proficient in grammar, and particularly never seemed to pick up the hang of punctuation. I think it is because I read so quickly, and write fairly grammatical structures from familiarity from all that reading. My teachers have complained a bit, but as long as there was no penalty, I sailed through.
This class, a full level above the one last semester, had an amount of reading and personal writing that was grueling even for me. It included a midterm with minutiae from the books we read that even I struggled to recall. The professor was very critical of my stories, pointing out issues I wasn’t sure how to fix even after they were described, not a problem I often have with editing.
However, I believe the pressure to succeed in the professor’s demanding eyes, as well as dissecting some really unique shorter stories in a way I had never done before, really impacted my personal writing. A story I had written for the previous class, for which I had received a small award for, was almost completely re-written. By the end of the class, I had a much better grasp of comma usage than 15 other years of education had given me, and I had a better appreciation of the way support and gentler critiques affect the spirit of a writer.
My previous years of being unquestioningly supported in writing had made me somewhat oblivious to the less confident feelings other writers often experienced. However, as my writing had become more personal and advanced, because of my past support, I was able to helpfully integrate the harsher criticisms of those not invested in my happiness.
In critiquing others work then and since, something I enjoy, I have attempted to be more diplomatic, which I hope to work on in this class, as I also believe I have come to appreciate a wider range of the pleasures of writing than I had before I studied it. This factor, my appreciation for good writing separated from good books, is something I believe is often skirted by teacher training in writing literature. I suppose, though I thought I knew what I liked before, it was the equivalent of someone who has never had a tomato saying that they don’t care for them.
Writing is an amazing opportunity for reflection, an issue I also believe is touched on in the literature about teaching about writing. I hope that I will never cease reflecting on what I have learned and how, just as I hope I never stop learning, and that I can learn efficient ways to share my love for reading and writing and learning with future students. I will recall and be grateful for the support I have received, and attempt to foster unique creativity in students, even if it doesn’t quite fit what I had in mind. Especially when it comes to teaching writing as a process, I think it is extremely important for teachers to recall what it is like on the other side of that red pen.
