Thursday, December 15, 2011
Welcome and Wonderings...
Welcome to our blog. Please take a few minutes to write down some of the questions you are wondering about in terms of your teaching. What are those unanswerable questions that keep you up at night? What are you wondering about after reading the article? I will use these questions as a springboard for our next class discussion.
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Since we haven't read the article yet, I will respond to the first question. One of the unanswerable questions that keeps me up at night, quite frankly, is "How do I do it all?" How do we teach reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing to a generation of students that are apathetic and underskilled while we are still managing the paperwork, the phone calls, the lesson planning, the assessments, etc? It feels as if I, as a teacher, am working harder than the students! They need the SKILLS to succeed, but they don't want to or do not understand the need to, despite my attempts at helping them understand why an education is so important.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience working in non-traditional settings, I learned how to teach as a facilitator. I learned how to activate student's innate enthusiasm. Doing so can answer some of the above questions, but I have a hard time balancing the engagement with the time it takes to develop the skills. In a perfect world, the two are not exclusive, yet too often, they are. My question is similar to yours Sarah. How do I balance the time it takes to ensure everyone gets the skills they need with the time it takes for them to understand how those skills will make them successful?
ReplyDeleteSome good questions so far! I think a lot of the frustration among my colleagues comes from a feeling that the students arriving at our "doorstep" are rather unprepared. Often they are so far below reading level that it is not within our area of certification to bring them up! Then each year we spend so much time catching up that we don't get to spend the quality time on our own skills and content; it leaves everyone behind for the following year. I suppose my question relates to time also - where and how can we find time to communicate with the middle and elementary school buildings (with data as proof) that things aren't currently working...and do this without coming off as "holier-than-thou"? I truly believe a lot of the apathy from students stems from their awareness of their own shortcomings academically; they don't feel confident, so perhaps shutdown/bad behavior is their first defense. The problems are bigger than just the high school.
ReplyDeleteOne of the challenges I notice myself routinely facing has involves getting students to generalize skills taught in directed lessons. I will teach, review, and reinforce to the point where students seem to have acquired the skill, but unless I specifically remind them, submitted works will ignore some of the skills I think we have more than covered. Worse still, when I see students writing for classes other than English, there are times when it is as if they’ve never even been introduced to these skills they are perfectly capable of mastering. I guess I’m just looking for better stick ratio.
ReplyDeleteRight now, as I sit here procrastinating grading, writing recommendations, and feeling--in general--pretty overwhelmed just before Christmas, I am wondering how to balance it all without buying myself a nifty red cape or joining a mental institution. As an English teacher, the grading pile seems to be a never-ending Sisyphean task. I actually feel like I could handle everything else at the moment (mostly) except for that. It's the last thing I get to, so it often gets pushed off, so by the time I get to it, the prime chance for meaningful feedback has gone by, and we are well into the next unit. So much for using data to drive instruction... Yes, I know there are other informal measures of collecting data, but for formal data, this is really where I fall down.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest question is how can I get my students enough basic literacy to function in life, productively and happily. I have students who are close to illiterate. They are not stupid, but if you don’t read or write you are going to be burdened by a certain degree of ignorance. Think about how much knowledge of the world we readers get from reading, and then imagine being without that knowledge. I would like my students to read for pleasure and read for information (and read for information because it is pleasurable) but it’s hard because reading is so difficult for them. If I can get them to read more, they’ll read better, and they’ll want to read more, and so on.
ReplyDelete1/16/2012
ReplyDeleteSo I am now on to Chapter 5 of Kittle’s book, and I am sold “hook, line, and sinker”. However, I am hoping that she will address how to integrate these writer’s workshop strategies into a “regular” English class. It all sounds well and good if one is teaching a writing elective, but the reality is that within a “regular” classroom, there is also literature to teach. Any ideas on how to do this?
OK, I forgot how to post wiht my name, so the last post by "anonymous" was me. :)
ReplyDeleteSara,
ReplyDeleteI agree wholeheartedly. One way is that we can approach reading and lit analysis a bit more as writers. We can ask why an author made certain choices rather than what the choices were, but I think we do that already.
Many of the techniques in the book seem difficult for students who have difficulty reading, with higher level thinking, or with both. How do we adapt these strategies to reach those students? In the past I have success using many of Kittle's techniques combined with breaking the tasks down, but echoing Sara's sentiment, that slows the course down immensely.
In reading this book, I am reminded of why I was so inspired by Penny Kittle when we attended her workshop at UNH a year and a half ago. Her ability to focus only on teaching writing—and the skills necessary for that—amaze me. I feel like it is a constant battle between getting through everything we need to “cover” and doing what is really right for kids. I also feel like, as a department, we went back to that same conversation this past spring, working to cut some of the texts from our classes so we could focus more on skills, rather than on content. Over the summer, many of us, including me, had second thoughts, but now I am wondering again if we should have stayed true to what we decided back in the spring. Giving our freshmen and sophomores more time to work on writing skills—and reading skills—rather than having them plow through difficult text after difficult text, might be the way to go. If could focus more on those skills and the writing process—and work to show them how writers make the choices they do—it seems like that would also achieve the higher test scores that everyone is looking for us to produce. I like her use of the pulled quote from William Zinsser: “Trust the process. If the process is sound, the product improves.”
ReplyDeleteProbably the most important point she makes, however, is the fact that good writing teachers should model the writing process for their students. That is one thing that I know I don’t do enough of, although when I do, my students’ writing does seem to obtain clarity. I do like Kittle’s notation that all of the great literature in her class is a good example of product but not of process—and that is what kids need help with. She notes that organization is key—but it also seems to me that she must constantly be reading new texts in order to keep up with model texts for her mini-lessons. Having a resource—online or otherwise—of writers who offer excellent examples of each technique would be really helpful. I feel that I could do what she suggests in Journalism, which is a writing workshop based course, but I would need to find numerous examples, and finding the time to do that—in addition to all of my other teaching duties—is a challenge. However, I can certainly see the benefit in doing so.
I really liked her idea of having kids annotate the pieces in their final portfolio—going through their list of skills and finding places in their pieces where they thought they demonstrated mastery of those skills. It’s a good example of metacognition, and I think I would like to try incorporating that into the Journalism final exam portfolio.
I enjoy the fact that not only are the quick writes a good example of authentic assessment, but they really get my students grounded and ready for the lesson of the day. In addition, I notice a lot of wonderful writing that I would have missed because we do not give a lot of opportunity for unstructured writing. I have many students who thrive in this situation whereas they falter in other writing assignments like essays and even creative writing assignments with more constraints. Penny Kittle mentions this in her book, but it hits home when you see it in your classroom.
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure about the article of which you are asking, as we have never received one to read, so I am unable to respond to that question. What are those unanswerable questions that keep me up at night?....How do I keep them all motivated? Like Steve, I want my students to read for pleasure. I want them to leave me with sufficient writing skills to fill out job applications, the ability to write letters in defense of their positions and beliefs, and the ability to recognize the audience they are writing for and write accordingly. What do you do with the students who never want to lift a pencil? Who write one line and say they are finished? Who push their notebook aside and refuse to write? How do we reach them? How do we get them to pick up the pencil and attempt? How do we find the topics that peak their interest? How do we motivate and teach those who refuse to attempt to read and write? My mind is constantly spinning with these questions and various new topics, ideas, and spins on activities I can attempt in the classroom to reach these students. Some days I’m successful, but most days I am disappointed in my valiant efforts. Sometimes I dream and wonder: Does self-motivation ever kick in for some of these kids? I feel like I am working so hard some days and they don’t work at all!
ReplyDeleteOur students come to the high school with few basic skills. Our class is geared o fill this gap, but the task is daunting. It is difficult to get them to buy in and makes reaching this population a challenge.
ReplyDeletePS I still do not get emails.
Michele
3/19/2012
ReplyDeleteI have noticed that many of my students do not have a lot of faith in their writing. Who am I kidding? There are times when I have no faith in my own writing! It takes a long time to think about what I am going to say. Did I use the correct punctuation? Did I properly use vocabulary? Did I use words that make it sound like I have several college degrees? Wow! I can definitely put myself in my student's shoes when it comes to writing. Wouldn't they say the same things to us?