Professional Ponderings

I admit it. I am a Type A. Yes I know many of you reading this will be shocked to hear my confession, however, believe it or not, I used to be much worse. I was a student like Lowell Madden describes in his article Do Teachers Communicate with Their Students As If They Were Dogs?, always seeking praise.

I still remember when my Undergraduate adviser and law professor told me that she was disappointed in me when I turned in an assignment late. Though I held back my tears during our discussion I bawled on the phone to my now husband (who definitely was not a student who sought his self-worth from classroom praise) after leaving class. “She is disappointed in me!” I cried. But through our discussion I realized that in-order for someone to be disappointed in you they have to have high expectations of you. Although I left the lucrative path of Internet and First Amendment Law and settled on the less glamorous road of middle school teacher, this moment forever stays with me.

I disagree with Madden when he states that students who seek teacher praise do so for selfish reasons. I did so because I am a Type A personality and I wanted to please the teacher and be the best so that the rest of my class or group could be the best. Although you can not squash the A personality I do believe that Madden has a point when he says to use statements of encouragement instead of statements of praise. If we do this as teachers we might just save the A’s from staying up to 3am fretting over the placement of a comma.

Don’t worry, my self-worth does not lie (solely) in my grades but primarily in the hugs and smiles from my daughter.

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.

I have been sitting in my living-room studying for the fun praxis II tests for about 2 hours now. After taking practice tests I feel like I completely forgot my under-grad English knowledge. I know most of the cohort took one or both of the tests earlier this month; do you have any tips for myself and any others who still have to take one or both tests?

Real life application is important to many students, since they then have an audience besides the teacher. I loved Williams’ examples of pen-pals, and I love writing letters myself. Below is the link for IECC. it is the Intercultural E-mail Classroom Connections’ website. Here teachers can connect their classroom to others around the country and the world. Pen-pals (electronic or regular) can be set up and projects can be created or worked on with other schools as well. This helps give students a purpose and an audience for their writing.

http://www.iecc.org/

The writing process. These three words have always brought anxiety and a sense of impending doom to my life. I love to write but I am the type of person who waits until the very last moment then dashes out an A paper and doesn’t even bother to look at the comments when it is returned. Although this technique has gotten me through high school, two bachelors degrees, heavy on the writing (in English and strategic communications) and most of my teaching license program it has not helped propel my writing forward.

When I read through the Williams’ chapters and Carney article more bad memories came back to me. These were memories of the times when I did create drafts, only to have them riped to shreds by my peers- not my writing style, or even my horrid spelling (since I thought that a rough draft did not need to be spell checked since in my mind that was the point of the process); but instead I was personally attacked.

Granted the negative feelings that I had, and to some extent still reluctantly have, about the writing process and peer editing have to do with my bad experiences. However with these in mind, and the fact that I want to use the writing process and think peer editing is a fantastic way to go through papers, how can I make it work? How can I make sure that my students do not have the adverse reaction -almost an anaphalatic shock, in need of an epi-pen reaction-that I have to the process?

Is it even possible to teach seventh graders the peer editing process and have them take it seriously? I am not doubting their ability or their mental prowess at this age, simply if it is an effective strategy.

I think that the most important thing is to make the phases or stages of writing clear. To help students understand that they don’t have to write a perfect draft the first time and like Williams and Carney said, it is not a personal attack or an attack on the writing to edit it.

When freewriting about a memorable writing experience I wrote about one that is still ongoing: writing letters to my husband. He is in basic training right now and the only way that we are able to communicate is through letters. With the Internet, cell phones, IM, email and blogs it is rare that I ever send or receive a letter. The only exception to this is the usual pile of holiday greeting cards.

However there is something so exciting about receiving a letter in the mail. The formal heading, the date on the top and real handwriting present a totally different feel than an email. The anticipation of waiting for the mailman (or is it mail-person now?) to come brings back memories of waiting for college acceptance letters or a birthday card from Grandma. The disappointment is great when the metal handle is pulled down, the door to the mailbox screeching, and you look inside to see a dark abyss scattered with the “have you seen me” ad and a phone bill; but the excitement just increases knowing that at the same time tomorrow there might just be a letter in that tin box. And the wait will have been worth it.
A lot of times reading what others have written does not provide this much excitement. Maybe students would be more excited to read and write if they were to write letters. Even in this age of constant technology buzzing around us, kids still pass pen and paper notes in class. Some type of pen-pal exchange might just help with writing, and maybe the students will get that rush of waiting for and reading a long awaited letter from a friend.