Teaching: It's For Real

Walking into the halls of Portage Central High School last Monday was an interesting experience, I wasn’t nervous, like you would expect a new teacher to be, but that eventually changed. My partner and I met the teacher whose classroom we were taking over for the day and he seemed like a pretty nice guy, I imagined that he was probably considered one of “fun” teachers, so I felt like the students might be disappointed that we were going to be teaching them rather than him.

As the bell rang and the announcements ended. My teaching partner and I, took the reins of the classroom and began our two day lesson on peer review and grammar. We started by reading a children's book to the, Santa is Coming to Michigan, something we thought the students would enjoy and something that related to our Holiday themed how-to guide that we were going to ask the students to do. 

However, from the start of our reading, the kids did not seem impressed. My confidence disappeared as I saw the hardened and bored looks on the sophomore faces. My partner and I experienced little student engagement and went three our two days of lessons in under 45 minutes. Clearly, our timing was way off. 

Wednesday went about a thousand times better. My partner and I over planned for the day, because we were very unclear about how long things were actually going to take. We also made sure we had examples and took a lot of time to explain things to the students. 

While the second day of teaching was an improvement from the first, it is not my favorite memory of teaching so far. I have taught in both my pre-internships, which were with both juniors and freshmen, and felt comfortable in both of those situations. This experience did not give me that feeling. I felt very out of place, like I was not meant to be in the classroom with these students. This is a strange feeling to me, since I teach every Monday and Wednesday mornings to college freshmen and I absolutely love it. 

It may have been the lesson we were teaching or just the unfamiliarity of it all, but I am not dwindling on this experience. I do also think that this experience taught me more about myself as an educator, I find it hard to connect to students I don’t really know yet. That is something I know I need to get over. When I start subbing I will be walking into a different classroom each time and there will always be new students to learn. Thus, while this may not have been my favorite experience, I still found it beneficial to me. 

Are Boy Writers Actually Different?

I recently read a book called Boy Writers by Ralph Fletcher and was shocked at some of the things that are in the book. The book, while it has some great strategies for teachers who are dealing with struggling readers, has a very sexist tone. Fletcher make many generalizations about both male students and female students thus making him come off as uneducated. He makes multiple comments about how “boys write about violence” and girls “love to write poetry and personal narratives”. These are sexist generalizations, most teachers understand that are exceptions to these stereotypes. 

It would be unfair to say that the book was not helpful though. Fletcher had a couple example of great lessons that I think could be beneficial to all students, not just male students like he states. 

One of my favorite lessons or strategies that he talked about was having students first draw something. In the example that he gave, he had his students draw their childhood neighborhood and mark it up with “x’s” and “?” to indicate locations in the neighborhood where a story was. 

Having students draw something out would not only allows for them to do something that gets them thinking about the topic but it can also serve as a step of prewriting for the students. 

I'm Going to Use Proper Grammar On You

One would like to think that teaching children about writing has progressed past the typical grammar drills and red pen corrections, however, some parents still demand this be taught in the classroom. I recently read a blog posting from Writers Who Care called “Does Bad “Grammar” Instruction Make Writing Worse?” and it goes into depth about the new generation’s way of teaching students about grammar in their writing. While parents may remember grammar quizzes and grammar drills in the classroom, they may not remember if the drill or quiz made their writing better. In fact, in the blog post, it discusses the multiple studies that have been done to test the effectiveness of grammar drills  and it has been found that these grammar drills do not make students better writer, but it often makes their writing worse. 

In an article written by Susan Jones, Debra Myhill, and Trevor Bailey, it is explained that the best way to teach students about grammar is to contextualize it within the student’s writing. This allows for students to connect the grammar teachings with their actual writing, rather than just teaching the student’s isolated facts that they may forget or be unable to incorporate into their writing. This means that isolated grammar lessons should be avoided in the classroom, no drills about what to include the “s” to make something plural and no lessons about when to use a comma versus a semi colon. 

This is an unheard of way of teaching grammar in school compared to the way that parents and grandparents experienced it. While student’s writing may be improving, parents will be confused as to why their child isn’t coming home with red markings and corrections covering their paper when there are clearing some problems with their child’s grammar. It is the job of the teacher to explain to the parents the grammar has not been taken out of the curriculum but instead, it has been reworked, so that students may understand the context of grammar within writing rather than understanding it as something separate. 

Good Literature=Good Writing

Literature is not something that should be examined as something completely separate from writing. As most teachers know, to be a good writer, one must also be a good reader. I recently looked at a chapter from Tom Romano’s book Clearing The Way in which he talks about how had been working feverishly to intertwine literature with writing in the classroom. It begins simply with students writing their own versions of literature, as one says, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. However, the students are expected to go beyond the typical “imitation” of a literary work, but the student must become so well versed in literature that he is able to create a work in the form of any genre on his own. 

This is something that is constantly pushed on students, even when students reach college. Multi-genre projects always seem to trickle their way into the syllabus of each freshman level english class. My first semester at Western I took freshman english and of course, there was a multi-genre project that was required by the end of the semester. This project was my dream project as I was able to create any genre that I pleased and anyone who has been versed in literature, knows how many options there are for genre. I toyed with the idea of many different genres but eventually chose to make a children’s fairytale picture book. 

Interestingly enough, as I am teaching an introductory course to freshman english, a multi-genre project is also required of the students. This makes one question, why do multi-genre projects continue to show up not only in high school classrooms but also in college class? Romano explains it quite well, he states that when students are able to create the genres they study on their own and attach personal importance to them, they have dug much deeper in their learning than just simply imitating the work of the author (136). 

For this reason, I highly encourage teachers to expose their students to all different kinds of literature, not just the typical “classics”, not all students are going to be in interested in the complexity of Animal Farm or care about the class differences in The Great Gatsby, thus students should be exposed to all kinds of literature, both contemporary and classic. A great resource for teachers to find many different books to teach or recommend to their students is Good Reads. Check it out if you need a little brain boost for the classroom. 

Response to "The Red Pen Blues"

After reading “The Red Pencil Blues” by Susan Tchudi and Stephen Tchudi, I have began to question the feedback I have been giving my students. It is my goal as a teacher to make my students better writers. In doing this, I stress the importance of the revision process to them. As the Tchudi’s mention in “The Red Pencil Blues”, many students to not understand the difference between revision and correcting. High School students typically think of revision as fixing grammar mistakes and changing words that have been spelled wrong. However, this is not the case. Revision involves looking at the content of writing and adjusting the paper based on that. 

One suggestion that the Tchudis make to get students to present their writing for feedback is to put them into writing groups. I love this idea, it is something that I am currently doing with my ENGL 1000 students, as I believe that students learn a lot from one another, possibly just as much if not more than they can learn from me. While I love the suggestion of students in writing groups, I was not fond of the suggestion to allow for students to pick the groups themselves. While some students may do great in a group with their friends, others may not. It is possible that students get off task easily or not take their peer’s writing seriously. I also fear that not all students will be welcomed into a group. Those who do not find a group as easily could feel like they are simply an add on and not feel comfortable talking about their writing in the group. This may not be as applicable to my ENGL 1000 class because they did not know one another previously, but could be very applicable in a high school classroom. 

There is also another suggestion made by the Tchudis about teachers responding to student writing. I have spent hours giving students feedback on drafts but give little to no feedback when I give students their final grade. I do this for the reason that I have said all that I need to say about their paper in the previous comments I have left on their drafts. Mr. and Mrs. Tchudi present the idea to allow for students to tell the teacher the kind of feedback they are looking for on their drafts. Meaning that students can say they want their paper read but they would not like any feedback about it. I do understand that feedback can be hard for some student’s to take but it is a disservice to a student to not help them improve their writing. It is important to pay attention to the student you are giving feedback to and recognize what kind of feedback they will be able to handle, but allowing them to ask for no feedback is ridiculous to me. 

Response to "Teaching As We Are Taught: The University's Role in The Education Of English Teachers"

One of the main things that stuck out to me when reading this article was how many college professors say that their class is extremely discussion based. This is something I know to be true, as I myself have sat through many class discussions on an article or section of a text. While sometimes I feel like I got a lot out of the discussion, there are other times that I believe the class could have made more progress by doing something else. The article also points out that the discussion is part of a typical English class system, that students will read something, discuss it and then eventually do some kind of writing about the reading and the discussion (Marshall and Smith). This order is engrained in almost every English class at the University level. While discussing reading and eventually writing about it can be great way to educate a class about the reading, it should not be looked at as the only way. This is especially important because this process that professors use, would likely not be effective on a group of teenagers, which is what the majority of English majors are studying to do. 

I do think that discussion is important in a classroom. It can be a great tool for learning, however, as previously stated, the way that many professors do it at the college level would not be suitable to teach high school students. This is hard to understand, we English students are being taught literature in a way that we realize would not be effective to our future students. Yet, professors continue to teach this way. While we soon-to-be teachers realize that teaching like our college professors would not work in a high school setting, we do see the learning opportunities that exists in some of the things they are teaching.

As previously pointed out, English professors use discussion as their go to for after the students read something. While a discussion that takes place all class period would more than likely not work for a high school class, a small and focused discussion more than likely would. In the article, multiple English professors give their perspectives on class discussions, some say that they come prepared with things to talk about from the reading, or as some call it, an “agenda”. While others tell their students to come up with questions while they are doing the reading and then these questions shape the class discussion. These are important elements of a class discussion, especially if one were to try to have a small discussion on a text with high school students. If one is to hold a class discussion in a high school English class, it would not only be important for the teacher to have an agenda of things to talk about but also have her students come with questions from the reading, this would prevent a lag in the discussion. 

In one of my other courses that I am currently taking, “Teaching Literature in the Secondary Schools”, my professor has a website. On his website he has a page where he has written his personal suggestions on how to have a productive and meaningful discussion in a classroom. There are all sorts of tips and tricks that he has written on this page that would help both new and old teachers to hold better discussions. The page talks about everything from topic to class management during a literature discussion. I find this resource to be extremely helpful, as it will show me even more so how to hold a meaningful discussion in my future classroom.

Response to Real-World Writing: Making Purpose and Audience Matter

Writing is something that has been taught in schools since the existence of schools. While the actual act of writing in schools has not changed, over time, the kind of writing that students are doing have become increasingly formulated. I had not thought much about this previously, formulation does stifle the creativity of a student but I had no idea the kind of impact it was really having on them. Recently I read an article by Grant Wiggins in which he talks about how the lack of creativity in schools is hurting students much more than it is helping them. The article begins with discussing an opening for a job that was posted, applicants were required to choose from a number of creative writing prompts to submit for a chance at the position. It sounds like something like this should be relatively easy to do, however, students in the school system today would have a hard time with being given this much creative expression.

Students in today's school system are instructed to learn a formula for writing a paper. However, this formula (One introduction paragraph, three supporting paragraphs and a concluding paragraph) only works on a few kinds of writing. This works well in schools though, because the main focus of writing in schools has become research papers. Typically these research paper's are based on something that the student does not care about and thus they are following the given formula for a paper and hoping to get an A. These paper are lifeless, they serve no true purpose and do not give the students experience in connecting to an actual audience.

 Wiggins, explains a study he did with friends in which he asked them what kinds of writing they had done in the past year. Examples like a blog entry, a eulogy, a proposal were mentioned, but no one said they had to write a research paper. This is because very few people write papers like this outside of school. Much of the writing people do in their adult lives requires more creativity, which is ironic considering how much creativity is being stifled in English classrooms today. I have seen how this system of teaching has effected children once they reach the college level. In teaching college level freshmen, I promote them to be creative in their writing and make each piece they write have a purpose. However this is difficult, most of them have grown to dislike writing as they had never been given the freedom to write about what they care about or simply use writing to express themselves. Its especially disheartening to witness this when I know most of them will need to do more writing like this if they wish to have the skills to be successful in both college and their future careers.