Sharing personal writing is intimidating

As a way of getting some input about my memoir, took a copy of it to work and had a couple people read and comment on it. It was harder to hand over than I thought it would be! I know and trust the people, but still had doubt in the back of my mind. It's like when we talked in class about students not knowing if their writing is good unless the teacher tells them it is with a good grade.

Maybe it is a little different for me as I am not an English major, so I've done less sharing of my writing in the past, but I felt like a little kid! It seemed like their readings took so long and I thought that maybe they were trying to think of something nice to say, etc. In actuality, I pretty much know my own writing so well I can quickly scan for certain parts in a matter of seconds. These readers were taking time to really read the piece. I liked that the one reader had food in front of her, but she wanted to finish reading before she started to eat. That made me feel like it must have been compelling enough for her Charlie's to get cold!

I asked them what I could change and they both mentioned the sequencing, which is what I have been having trouble with the last couple of weeks. The one said that the piece definitely had my voice and that she would have guessed I'd written it if it didn't have a name on it. Hooray! I can't believe we are turning in a "final" draft next week--I could keep working on this memoir for the rest of the year easily.

I was struck by comment in Thomas Newkirk’s book, Holding on to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones, that made me pause.

We can similarly project our teacher fantasies
of self-importnace and sacrifice and fail to
decenter; consequently, we ignore, reject, fail
to acknowledge the natural resistances and divided
loyalties to students, the inescapable fact that,
except in unusual cases, we are not as central in
their lives as they are in ours (Newkirk, 2007, pp. 160).

Wow. That has a lot of power because being a teacher is such an important job with so many things to accomplish outside of the regular school hours. Is it really necessary to do everything? Students know a good teacher by their methods and sincerity—not by the quickness of papers handed back or elaborate bulletin boards. I’m not proposing we stop doing these things, but that we re-evaluate the time we spend working to help our students actually learn and grow. Being a burned out teacher after five years will not benefit future students.

I am learning to pace myself and create separation from work and home life (I didn’t have much of a home life previously). A recharged teacher is better able to nurture students and lead them towards new experiences and opportunities. Even teachers deserve the weekend off!

Schooling, standardization, women, and lowered educational prospects in the late 1900's

The book Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment by Maja Wilson really opened my eyes to the reasoning behind how our current standardized assessment began. The first couple chapters really helped my understanding of how the educational system really worked back during the industrial revolution. Since I have only known modern schooling personally, it is hard to remember back to a time in history when only rich and priviledged males attended school.

Pre-industrial revolution, assessment was used as a tool to help writers hone their craft. Now, masses of people poured into the cities, quickly raising the attendance at schools. Because of this new surge of students, teachers needed a way to measure mental "power" in an easier format for grading and ranking capabilities. It is interesting to think that a respected learning institution like Harvard would be at the forefront of creating standardized assessment over processes of learning and student discovery.

I was also shocked that "women's colleges had argued powerfully for standardized tests. If each student were judged by educational ability--not by wealth, not by gender, not by family connection--women's struggle for equality would make remarkable headway" (Wilson, 2006). This observation from the late 1900's almost seems like too much and screams of treacherous agendas! I find it interesting that when things start to run amuck, many times it is the females and minorities shouldering the brunt of the blame (when they were never in charge of making decisions about important topics anyway).

One of the portfolios we looked at for class was by Jason Ceynar from Bonnie Sunstein's The Portfolio Standard (Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH: 2000). He wrote about always writing to impress a teacher or to sounds scholarly.

He wrote:
I can't even remember what the paper is about.
I didn't want to reread it because I was afraid
that I'd discover I was given the A unjustly.
This paper represents my tendency to value the
grade I get on a paper mroe than the content of
the paper and the learning that I achieve through
the process of writing it (227).

Wow, I totally understand what he is talking about! I think we have all started papers with a mindset of finishing, doing little revisions, and submitting asap. I know I have "held my breath" before submitting papers with last minute doubts as to its quality or purpose. But, I know that I have done this with nonacademic writing before, too.

I have kept a journal for years, ever since my first diary back in 3rd grade. Looking back at my journal entries, even from a year ago, can be surprising. Even though I don't share my journals with others, I sometimes think I sound like I'm trying to impress someone. Who would this unknown audience be? Am I concerned about writing my true feelings down because someone might find it and read it (like when I was younger and felt a need to lock my diary)? I guess age and time has made me more aware of how powerful writing can be. I can remember certain experiences better after reading journal entries--the words have meaning behind them that help me remember. Not everything I have written is gradeable, but different formats have definitely had their reasons for being important. I will continue to write, not only for scholarly purposes, but also for me so I can continue to remember where I came from.

Paradigms are shifting!

Like many of you, love fun words. To me, using them seems like some sort of small pleasure in my day. I don't really tell anyone I get a little giggle inside everytime I use one of these words, but they probably wouldn't understand like a group of writers would. I first discovered the word paradigm back in freshman year at Wartburg during a Humanities-type required class. This concept was hard for me to grasp then, but I have been a part of my own paradigm shifting ever since. Thomas Kuhn wasn't interested in slow changes (The Winds of Change, Maxine Hairston, 1982). Instead he was passionate about using theory and practicality together to create science solutions to ongoing problems. Ignoring there is a problem doesn't get the work done, leaving thinking static.

There are certain things I strongly believe about teaching, but I can never say it will stay the same forever--my philosophy has changed from "textbook" teaching in college to "real" teaching in a third grade classroom of my own. Kids don't want to hear about what I believe, they want to know how to use the manipulatives to make a quadrilateral or if spelling is really important on the assignment. As my philosophy of teaching paradigm continually shifts, I have to be careful not to simply throw out the old thoughts/methods as outdated. Instead, I have to reflect and research to keep my teaching current for the students in my classroom. Maybe my being an outsider by doing lots of read alouds and writing with students, instead of test prep, will help someone else consider their practices. There will always be new methods in teaching, but what is popular at the time isn't always best if it works against my beliefs about an aspect of teaching.

Closing thought: Hairston posed crucial questions
eternally plaguing writing teachers--
What is the basic flaw in the traditional paradigm for teaching writing? Why doesn't it work?
(and I would add) How do we change writing for students to make it more neccessary for them?

Building a community of writers!

I think that being able to share and help classmates with their writing is an amazing exercise in trust. No one wants to be considered a weirdo or "bad writer." After all of the time we spend writing our masterpieces, the next step seems to be one of sharing! One of the things I strongly believe is from my experiences teaching elementary kids. Kids, like adults, want an audience--it gives their writing more meaning and purpose. You are right that there has to be a high level of communication and trust between writers. When kids feel a part of a writing community, so many things can happen. I love reading kids' creative writing, either by themselves or in groups. You can really start to see the wheels turning and confidence building in their chest as they successfully create meaning together.

Approaches to Writing

I have been reading and writing ever since I was a little girl. I always had a diary, wrote notes to friends, and began epic novels on my old Macintosh Classic. I have struggled with helping students discover their voice in their writing and am hoping to learn more this term. I liked the energy from class on Monday, it seemed to be a buzz with good work and dedicated writers. In all of my classes we always talk about how much we teach literacy, but never give students a chance to read or write in class. I liked that we did just that, we discussed, wrote, discussed, and began developing new ideas for our drafts. Friends have been telling me for the last several years that I should write a book and maybe this class will help motivate me enough to actively find time and energy to write my book! Here's to a class full of exploring the art and craft of writing, metacognitive viewing of writing, and real strategies for the classroom.