Professional Ponderings

Tom Romano’s Blending Genre, Alternating Style was a wonderful day-brightener. He gives teachers suggestions on how to use these ideas, as well as examples of multigenre work, and contact information of teachers who are using this style in their teaching. Romano also acknowledges that this is not a one-size-fits-all-every-teacher-do-this -my-way type of teaching/writing. Which was truly refreshing (especially after reading Williams-see earlier post)

I was tentative at first wondering; how on earth can I integrate this idea? (Which is the usual question when I come across something I really like but have no idea what to do with it.) I have to teach some type of research report this spring to my 7^th graders, dealing with a novel that they are reading. It has already been decided that they get to choose their specific topic, however the thought of assigning (and reading) the five paragraph research essays makes me nod instantly to sleep.

Romano’s text gave me a wonderful idea: have the traditional research write up be one part of a multigenre text. Like the example of “The Allosaurs in Phoenix” my students can write an encyclopedia type article. In this section I can look at the topic sentence, supporting points etc. that they are required to write in 7^th grade with the additional freedom of having my students write a few other styles on their topic as well.

My favorite phrase from this text is “Narrative Knowing.” This is a way of “rendering experience or phenomenon(22).” Another great thing to think about is Narrative Summary V. Dramatic Scene. Yes it is another way of saying “Show don’t tell” but with an additional emphasis of the reader really experiencing what they are reading.

Since different genres are used for different purposes, and we can’t always remember all of the genres off the tops of our heads, here is a link that I found helpful. The main site is Learnquebec.ca The site is an English education resource for teachers, administrators, students and parents in Quebec, Canada. It is full of a lot of different resources depending on who you are and what you are looking for. I found a few on multigenre writing, including a list of different genres. This part of the site is designed to help us get our students to go beyond the five paragraph essay, and into multigenre writing.

According to James D. Williams (Preparing to Teach Writing ) the inherent issue in our students’ writing difficulties lies in the fact that we the teachers just don’t plan ahead. “More often than not, teachers put together a writing assignment the night before they give it to students, and it is commonly unrelated to any instruction that preceded it (280).”

Now I will admit that I have been in classrooms where an assignment did not have meaning, but I honestly do not think that this is due to lack of planning. If it does occur it is a much smaller occurrence than “[m]ore often than not”. If you are expecting English and writing teachers to take you seriously, Williams, you might want to give us more credit, learn about how our job works and then write more respectfully.

Speaking of writing respectfully, or the lack there of, Williams blew past the line of writing professionally when he slammed the then Council of writing program administrators’ president Kathleen Yancey. I really do not care why Williams could not get a permission letter to publish the Outcomes statement, 1999 in his book but it is a sign of complete lack of professional judgement to sarcastically print that “Kathleen Yancey, was such an important person that she was far too busy to write a one page permission letter allowing us to reproduce the outcomes statement here (usually deemed a simple matter of professional courtesy) (281).” Obviously Williams needs to rethink his idea of what professional courtesy is. It would have been appropriate to state that at time of publishing they did not have permission to print the statement, or that what followed was a summary of the statement. In either scenario sarcastic cheep shots are eliminated.

Moving away from the way Williams says things, he has an interesting perspective on the purpose of high school writing courses. “At the public school level, goals must include preparing students to write at the college level, which means that objectives must reference students’ ability to produce the kind of writing required at university (280).” This is a rather loaded statement, and it puts much responsibility on the teachers, whose ability to prep for class will be judged as extremely lacking in the next paragraph.

My question back to Williams’ statement is: is it our job to prepare students for college or for life? If we are to prepare students for college, what type of writing would that entail? Will the student be going to a college that prefers the good-old five paragraph essay? Or will his school be working in multi-genre, multi-modal forms of writing? Will he be majoring in journalism , strategic communications, English, business, science, art?

When Williams makes this grandiose claim, and others throughout his text, it would be helpful to offer evidence rather than simply his opinion.

Finally the sequence of writing that is presented in chapter 9 feels to be rather arbitrary. “Report of events, report of information, interpretation of events, interpretation of information, evaluation of events, fiction, auto-biography.” This sequence implies that there is no give and take of writing genres and that they are not fluid. Also he is sure that non-fiction writing is easier than fiction or auto-biography. I don’t agree that you can put a generalized scale of difficulty on types of writing.

I will end this rather long post with a shocker; I actually do agree with one thing Williams talked about in this chapter. That there is value and learning opportunities in doing research to write about things that you are not familiar with.