Creative writing, the step child of English departments

My Mom keeps these huge storage containers in our basement that are marked with my siblings' names and in them you’ll find relics of our childhoods. In mine you’ll find avant-garde drawings and sheep with cotton balls glued on and you’ll also see hilarious attempts at creative writing. I used to write these crazy stories complete with illustrations about everything from my pets to aliens. I loved writing; couldn’t get enough! So while reading this week’s articles I started to wonder, what happened to that love and is it too late to start again??

I attended Catholic school my entire life until college. Our curriculum was pretty strict and we rarely strayed from the formulaic structure of the five-paragraph essay. Plug in thesis statement, supportive fact, supportive fact and out comes a 4 on the AP test! Creative writing wasn’t even offered at my high school. Sure, one time we spent a week writing poetry in my English 5 AP class but we were given the types of poems we could write–I wrote one mean villanelle. The fact that creative writing wasn’t offered as a course or even in the confines of a traditional English class shows you how little my school valued creative writing. Everything revolved around test scores and getting into a good college, but where does that leave kids who need a creative outlet?

I feel a twinge of jealous when observing my CT’s class because I never had a teacher like her in a course like Reading. Reading was created to help students who did not pass the STAR test; but what I really like is that this class isn’t just a formulaic fix-all so that they can pass the test. They are really learning how to become life long readers and writers. All of the students have their own writers’ notebooks they write in at home and at school. They are expected to write every night for homework and during the allotted writing time in class. A lot of students start the year writing about things like what they ate for dinner and what they watched on TV that night but the goal is that as the year progresses, they start to write about other things that matter to them.  They are evolving from note takers to writers, people who observe and recount with feeling how they see the world.

Tomorrow I am teaching a mini lesson about literary circles and I am excited about it, but to be honest what I’m mostly excited about is our publication celebration. The students have been working on stories they want to publish for everyone to read for the past month and tomorrow we are going to have snacks and drinks and do a gallery walk of everyone’s stories. They started a few weeks ago with just thinking of a topic and free writing and as the weeks have progressed they have used different skills my CT has taught them to grow their topic and start with the “juicy” part. From what I’ve seen so far these students have so much to be proud of in their stories. They are writing like true authors. The stories range from how much they love their boyfriends, their shoes and music to stories of loss, murder and absence. This class is a chance for kids who are usually forced to go through the motions of learning about comma splices and writing five paragraphs compare and contrast essays to having an opportunity to really see how writing can be relevant in their lives outside of the classroom.

If they read, their grammar will come

Princess Chulabhorn's College Chiang Rai Thailand

I’m always pretty happy to read another chapter in Building Adolescent Literacy but when I saw that the chapter was about grammar I sighed an uncontrollable sigh. Grammar is my worst enemy when it comes to Language Arts. I comma-splice the heck out of my papers. So as I dove into the chapter I prepared myself for the worst–a dry chapter about the functions of grammar and how to teach it to students as unwilling to learn it as unwilling as I am to teach it. Leave it to Dr. Bomer, however, to change my mind on the significance of grammar and how “pointlessly distinguishing between gerunds and participles, underlining the subject once and the predicate twice, or circling the subjects and verbs, that do not agree” wastes our students’ time (Bomer, 278).

Dr. Bomer asserts that the things I mentioned above aren’t the important characteristics students need to learn about grammar. What’s important is the different ways people use dialects, written versus spoken English and how power comes into play when using standard written English versus other spoken English, like Chicano English, for example. The case study he discussed that caught my eye the most was the contrasts among different languages’ patterns and rules. Classrooms are becoming more and more multicultural and that is only going to continue into the future. A class where students speak a different language at home is a great place to implement a case study involving different languages. Living in Thailand made me appreciate the intricacies of how difficult English is and it made me really respect how hard my students worked to learn a language that is completely different from their own. The picture above is the sign at my school, Princess Chulabhorn’s College and it is just to give you an idea about how vastly different Thai is from English. A case study of the different native languages you can find in your classroom can foster a mutual understanding of your students’ cultures and the diverse ways languages are constructed and used around the world. I think this exercise can be really useful in a class where students might make fun of a student who’s English isn’t up to par with the others. It could help the bullies see why a student might not use pronouns correctly or why they put the adjective behind the verb etc. and it can foster mutual understanding and respect. It benefits both the bully and the student being made fun of, by giving the non-native speaker a chance to show pride in her heritage and maybe make new friends in the meantime. It widens your students’ sociological imagination to include students’ whose first language isn’t English.

I also like the idea of making the chart with Standard written English on one side and a specific group’s English, like Chicano English, on the other. Letting the students think about what are the differences between the two lets them think about their own identity and how it relates to the power standard written English has in the US today. You can help your students to grasp the importance of understanding and using standard written English in situations like essays and interviews but that they don’t have to be ashamed to use their group’s English dialect in other situations.

Dr. Bomer sees the normative teaching of grammar as a bland waste of time that only corrects students’ errors in sentence structures. His ideas and suggestions on teaching grammar as a part of social and class struggle are refreshing. He offers great ideas to make your students think about grammar in new ways that actually pertain to their lives. He thinks teachers should spend more time helping “students becoming strong, independent, purposeful readers and writers with active literate lives is much more important, and it’s such a high expectation that it requires most of our attention” (Bomer, 277). In other words, grammar is important to a certain extent but engaging your students to become life long readers is a more beneficial endeavor. I personally believe that if they read they will come to understand grammar through their literate lives. 

Beers' take on confidence and trust

This is unrelated to my post today but I think it is so poignant! It is the UN Security General talking about the little girl the Taliban tried to murder, Malala Yousafzai.

If you haven't read Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn you truly should. 

I really liked how Beers questions teachers at her conferences when they don’t want to speak in front of their peers. The teachers acknowledge that it is difficult to share your ideas in front of people you don’t know out of fear that you might be wrong. Beers points out that if adults with expertise in their subjects have problems sharing ideas how can we expect students not to share these same feelings?

Lack of a confidence affects people of all ages. I had many students in kindergarten last year that lacked confidence in themselves. It was really disheartening to see it in a five year old and it is just as tough to see it in a teenager. Teenagers care a lot about what their friends think of them. They don’t want to be made fun of or seem dumb in front of their peers.  

For me, the most amazing part of this week’s reading was when the students in the “regular” class read the books the advance class read and were able to keep up and excel. I thought that was such a great story and I’m glad the teacher gave them a chance to prove they can handle the workload of the advanced class. They did just as well as the students in the advanced class! If you have high expectations for your students and, most importantly, you help them along the way they can accomplish great things.  This teacher went above and beyond to help these students by scaffolding these difficult texts and helping them individually with the parts of reading that challenged them the most.

When you have confidence in your students they can start to have more confidence in themselves. This reminds me of the expectancy theory we learned about in our beloved Psychology of Learning class. When a student expects to do well they achieve higher. They work harder because they expect to succeed. The student focuses more on the task at hand and less about what others think or the possibility of failing. It can be really difficult to instill confidence in a student. Merely saying “You can do it; you’re great” simply isn’t enough. You have to be realistic about your expectations for your students. Reading Proust in a class full of reluctant readers probably won’t instill confidence in them. They could feel defeated before they even begin. On the other hand however as Dr. Beers says “you’re fooling yourself if you think middle school and high school students don’t know when we’ve dumbed down the curriculum” (Beers, 261).  If the students think that their teacher believes they can’t do something difficult they’ll start to believe it’s true. This sets them up for failure from the beginning.

I love how she mentions learning your students’ names. It is so vital to learn all of your students! If you repeatedly tell them you have confidence in them but you don’t even know their names you come off, and probably are, being insincere. When I finally learned (most) of my 300 students I saw once a week my relationship with a lot of them grew tremendously. (I’m Skyping with one of them later this week–I’m so excited!!) They start to trust you and realize you really care about them with the little effort it takes just to learn their names.

A huge component of confidence is trust. You have to trust those around you to encourage rather than belittle you. Although I feel like the idea of the Ding a ling would be hard to really commit to in a classroom, I really appreciated that it helped the students realize how destructive their snide comments and “joking” can be towards one another. Hearing a concrete signal when a snide remark or a condescending statement was made reminded students how often they are cruel to one another. If students trust that your class is a safe space where they can say what they think without being made fun of they will be more willing to participate.  This engagement will lead to success in your class and hopefully become the norm for your students rather than an anomaly. 

Lastly, here's a great article about the rising Latino population in Texas and how in 2010 40% of Latinos in Texas under the age of 25 never finished high school. This is what we're up against people! Let's do our part to fix this inequality. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/as-hispanic-population-grows-the-education-gap-may-grow-too.html?_r=0

Dear George, hope you're doing swell

One of the many fantastic posters on the wall of my CT's classroom. 

Reading Dr. Beers’ letters to George got me thinking about my students; the ones I’ve taught that make my mind wander with thoughts of how they’re doing in school now. First let me say that I know I’ve mentioned my job as a literacy interventionist before but I feel like I should elaborate. Last year I worked for an AmeriCorps program called ACE: A Community for Education. Essentially, ACE is an intervention program where I would see ten students one-on-one each day and we would work on improving their literacy skills. These students were kindergarten through second graders at a low-income elementary school in Southeast Austin.  We were trained to help the students with their fluency, phonemic awareness, automaticity and comprehension while reading. We worked on specific skills the readers struggle with until they reach a predetermined goal. An experienced staff of ex-elementary teachers supported us and guided us through the frustrations and confusion of dealing with a horde of five year olds.

            I taught Michael last school year from beginning to end. He struggled with his fluency and comprehension. What he lacked in skill he seemed to more than make up for in confidence. Whenever he would painstakingly read an entire sentence he would look up at me and say “Oh man, that was easy!” I believe that these confident statements masked his frustrations and insecurities about his reading abilities.  Without going into detail, Michael has faced more hardships in his seven years than I could ever imagine. The days he was at school were considered an achievement. When we started the year Michael was mostly at level with his peers. He was reading a DRA 2 (the average for the first month of 1^st grade is 4) but he stayed at this level for much longer than other students. It was a daily struggle for him to stay focused but by the end of the year he was reading a level fourteen–still behind his friends but the gap was closing.   His lack of motivation was so severe that by the end of the year I had to bribe him with a weekly trip to the playground or to play basketball so he would focus everyday. If Michael would receive five smiley faces for the week on Friday we would go outside for five minutes and I would push him on the swings and he would tell me about his baseball team, the Wildcats. This time was really special for me. He might not remember it in a few years; but I know I will never forget it.

            I can’t help but think (and hope!) that maybe in a few years Michael will show up in my classroom again. I always feel like there was more that I could do for him. There were those days I would get annoyed at his lack of attention or I felt tired or sick and didn’t give him one hundred percent of my skills. I regret that I never completely got him to grade level, which of course is only one indication of his abilities, but I can only hope that he is now a more active reader who can take pride in his accomplishments.  We really focused on phonics and as much on comprehension as possible but as Dr. Beers said “the point of reading is to get meaning and you can’t get to the meaning if you can’t get through the words” (Beers, 38).

            As I read about Dr. Beers’ students I see so many similarities between them and my old students. I’ll admit that it’s disheartening to read about Dr. Beers’ students who suffer from the same problems Michael did. They are five to six years older than him! What offers some comfort to me, though, is that there are teachers out there like Dr. Beers’ and countless others I’ve met who are working to help these students understand and appreciate reading. I hope to be counted among these teachers some day soon.  I’ve come to really enjoy observing in my CT’s class. I admire her passion and her patience with students who others have written off by lamenting, “these kids can’t read.”

When Dr. Beer’s said she wanted to start out as a 12^th grade English AP teacher I couldn’t help but smirk. I absolutely wanted to do that too! I value my AP classes so much that I wanted to recreate them with new students. The longer I’ve been in education; however, I’ve realized that those AP students aren’t the ones who need my help the most.

If you want to learn a little more about ACE: http://www.utdanacenter.org/ace/about/index.php

Remember, these kids could one day be our students!

             

Observations and the awkward conversations that go along with it

As I read this weeks chapters in Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classroom I found myself highlighting a lot but simply writing things like “good call” or “so true!” or one time I even wrote “Booyah!” Dr. Bomer’s concepts are things I’ve thought about before but haven’t been able to put into words and he presents his ideas in such a clear and exciting way.

I only wish I could have read this section about conversation before observing this week! I observe Reading II, the name doesn’t give this class justice. It sounds so banal but what happens in that classroom is, for lack of a better word, magic. My CT is so engaged and encourages her students without them even realizing it. I observed her give a great lesson about visualization and after I walked around conferencing with students about what images they were seeing in their books. I’ll admit…it got awkward. I enjoyed getting to know the students and talking to them but it was hard to draw out of them more than just the specific image they were seeing in their book. I know that this doesn’t come naturally and that it takes practice, but I was surprise how difficult it was, even with books I’ve read before. That’s why we observe experienced teachers! I found our conversations veering from what we were supposed to be talking about and I needed to steer it back to their books rather than their cruel volleyball coach. These conversations are important, however; by talking to students about things outside of class I get to know them better and they start to understand that they can trust me; but the middle of class isn’t the time. But I digress…  

After reading chapter eight, I realized I was doing some of the things Dr. Bomer warned against when starting a conversation with students. I asked questions I knew the answers too and as a result the conversation didn’t really go anywhere. It’s important for the students to lead and mediate the discussion. By steering the conversation only in the direction I want it to go we could miss out on some great insights.  I never realized that was the consequence of asking questions I knew the answer to until I put it into practice. I feel better prepared to have meaningful conversations after our readings for this week. I am just an awkward person, though, so I hope I can get past my social ineptitudes to really get to know these kiddos and what they're thinking about while theyr'e reading. I really want to have the kind of conversation I would have with my English IV AP teacher are the kind I want to have with my students. Those conversations are a major reason I decided to become a teacher myself.  I would walk out of class feeling like I just had a major breakthrough in a therapy session.  There were several times where everyone would let out a collective sigh, as if we discovered the meaning of life. It’s not that my teacher necessarily said anything enlightening or guided the conversation the way she wanted it to go but she let us have a conversation for ourselves. At times, it veered away from what would be seen as appropriate at an uptight Catholic school; but it was a safe space we needed away from the prying eyes of the nuns. That's what all students need, a safe space for conversations.