tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-308605202024-03-13T02:51:33.930-07:00jonathan's edutalka site for discussing the difference between meaningful and ill-conceived educational reformjonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-31256100260238585612013-10-15T19:10:00.000-07:002014-05-17T22:13:04.828-07:00income inequality and student achievement<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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[Note: In order to have this essay serve as the post one reads on initially visiting this blog site, I have moved subsequent posts to a new WordPress blog that can be found at <a href="http://jlovellsjawp.wordpress.com/">jonathan lovell's blog</a>]<br />
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As a university supervisor of secondary level student teachers in English at San Jose State University, I've spent a good deal of time over the past two and a half decades observing students at the middle and high school levels reading and responding to what they read.<br />
<br />
Often, as I observe these classrooms, I see teachers behaving as if the Lutheran revolution was the only game in town. You know the general story. Luther upended the whole notion of the purpose of reading, and who should learn to read. Prior to the Lutheran revolution, readers of texts were primarily monks and priests, while those who could not read acted as listeners to the Biblical narratives told by this priestly class. These readings were frequently supplemented by visual renderings of these same Biblical narratives, often depicted as frescoes on the church's walls.<br />
<br />
Luther changed all that, proclaiming that everyone must become readers if they were to understand their true relationship to God. More significantly for today's students, he intimated that if one could not understand what one read, one was meant to be damned. Damned eternally. Oh my.<br />
<br />
Growing up in the late 50's, I was a child of the sputnik-inspired revolution in American education. Surprisingly, the sudden and quite unanticipated launching of this small orbital satellite by the Russians in the fall of 1957 had the effect of driving us back to the basics of the Lutheran revolution. Following this launch by our Russian rivals, American students' reading comprehension began to be tested systematically and frequently. Depending on one's ability to comprehend the texts one <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="6e463989-6a2a-40fa-abfb-565b7a0b98d9" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="06296a8b-cce0-4452-b6b9-8c2816feada2" grcontextid="read:0">read</span>, one was placed in either higher or lower level classes the following year: "saved" or "damned."<br />
<br />
The logical culmination of this process, at least for me, came in my senior year of college. I was taking a class in the modern British novel by a professor I greatly admired. All of us "saved" students were sitting in the first two rows of the small lecture hall, laughing at the professor's jokes and nudging each other as we pointed to passages we'd underlined in our texts and comments we'd written in the margins. I chanced to turn around one day to look at the back row of students. There on the far side of the hall, hunched down in his chair, was one of my classmates, a good friend and a fellow member of my <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="bf18ec0a-ce60-42a8-a615-d6c7acd8300b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8f98d494-bcb7-45e8-99b3-1689fc1a4c8c" grcontextid="residential:0">residential</span> hall. He was looking uncharacteristically timid, peering over the top of his book, clearly hoping the professor would not notice him. I knew this particular classmate was extremely bright. In fact, he later went on to Oxford and then to Harvard Law School. What sort of educational system would lead to the conviction on the part of such a student that he was not among the "saved," at least as far as comprehending the complex narratives of <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="011b62a4-a3f3-4043-b481-c09237b6806b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="bf1f67ab-a666-4648-85c9-524d16663bb0" grcontextid="mid:0">mid</span> to <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ec90a144-b3ba-4443-994c-1a33a48eb21e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="bf1f67ab-a666-4648-85c9-524d16663bb0" grcontextid="later:1">later</span> 20th century British novels was concerned?<br />
<br />
But that was the consequence, I later came to realize, of identifying those with special aptitude early in an educational system, then nurturing these individuals at the expense of those not "meant" to be saved. The cluster of the saved, of course, grew smaller and smaller as one rose up through the educational ranks. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0bdbb17e-3ae3-43e8-9a07-06c0ebb4e1bc" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3f3df6ac-5ea1-4907-9493-5c89c64f56b9" grcontextid="Eventually, so I:0">Eventually, so I</span> discovered, it became a matter of fewer and fewer people talking more and more loudly to one another.<br />
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In my third year of graduate school, as I was experiencing this selective process taking place, wondering when it would be my turn to be pushed off the plank, I was asked to lead an undergraduate seminar made up of English majors who had a significantly different view of the purpose and value of the study of English. These students were not planning to apply to graduate <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3fe06a43-d7df-42ae-8eeb-7aa573582179" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="3459703b-3bb4-4bd6-b20a-3b9447255668" grcontextid="schools:0">schools</span> in English, but were instead intending to pursue post-BA credential programs at a nearby university.<br />
<br />
Since I'd taught 10th and 12th grade English at an independent day school for three years prior to beginning my graduate studies, I was asked to become the seminar leader for this group of undergraduates. And as it turned out, the questions they were asking fascinated me. How should the field of English be understood when it became the one subject required of all students in each of their public school years? Even more importantly, how should this field of study be understood when students were in classrooms by law rather than by choice?<br />
<br />
And here's where Walt Disney came in. What if we decided to look at how students went about the process of comprehending complex texts when they were good at it? What purpose was served, after all, by subjecting students to reading programs whose primary effect was to increase the distance, year-by-year, between good and poor readers: "saved" and "damned"? Since I was leading this seminar as an adjunct to a course in Children's Literature, it seemed sensible to define reading as a matter of making sense of texts that were both visual and verbal. Isn't that what good elementary teachers practiced all the time: looking at stories in which the illustrations were as worthy of study as the words? In pursuing this line of inquiry, we learned that prior to the Disney studio's creation in 1937 of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first 90-minute animated film, it was widely assumed that "talking animated cartoons" could only sustain a viewer's attention for about ten minutes. Sound familiar?<br />
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Disney and his animators challenged this conventional thinking, asking themselves what might make children want to sustain their attention for longer periods of time. Telling a good story <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="9b0ba90d-f153-4212-b666-6422c1e1e01d" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="678946c2-a577-42d2-a77f-797504581a70" grcontextid="was:0">was</span> obviously a key ingredient (hence the choice of Snow White), but so was the appeal to our universal delight in sound, song, movement, and a bit of irreverence (hence the Seven Dwarfs). By drawing on these attributes of what makes kids variously talented and smart, might the supposed shortness of young viewers' attention spans be significantly lengthened? As we all know today, Disney and his animators proved the skeptics wrong. Kids could pay attention to what they were viewing for a good deal longer than 10 minutes. It was all a matter of knowing in advance what might interest and engage their attention, then incorporating these elements consciously and consistently into this <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="ccb588b6-a4d5-4521-b81a-ed499af57991" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6effa5c8-079c-4a71-8fcc-4513b840d0f3" grcontextid="uniquely:0">uniquely</span> modern version of visual and verbal <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f948bc7c-e194-40d0-ba81-0a8470f1b198" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6effa5c8-079c-4a71-8fcc-4513b840d0f3" grcontextid="story telling:1">story telling</span>. Were it not for the 1957 launching of S<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="dd5895aa-f5ab-4223-9940-ace1646859a5" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5d87b790-4535-4705-bda0-3e77d5eb5df0" grcontextid="sputnik:0">putnik</span> I by the S<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="b79b1f16-3f0d-4b84-95d8-167871b1ef2a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="5d87b790-4535-4705-bda0-3e77d5eb5df0" grcontextid="soviets:1">oviets</span>, perhaps this "Disney" understanding of kids as diversely talented readers and viewers might have prevailed in American education. Sadly, however, this vision of the late 1930's gradually faded, as our schools became more academic, more rigorous, more relentless in their widening of the gap between skilled and unskilled readers.<br />
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The most recent iteration of this expanding gulf between "saved" and "damned" is the anticipated imposition of a nationwide curriculum and assessment program in English Language Arts. While it is not my purpose here to argue the merits and drawbacks of the Common Core Standards on which this curriculum and assessment program will be based, it is my purpose to suggest the degree to which teaching to these standards is likely to increase the disparity between less able and more able readers. (<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1308c28b-face-44e5-ac8d-68e4a65912f6" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="2e267ca4-41f0-4b65-b136-32838e03e0ae" grcontextid="see:0">see</span> Diane Ravitch's blog post <a href="http://dianeravitch.net/2013/09/03/common-core-tests-in-ny-widen-achievement-gaps/">here</a> for an early indicator of this increasing disparity). Fortunately, the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project website has provided us with a glimpse into the spring 2015 CCS assessments, from the perspective of the New York State students who took a pilot version this past spring (see <a href="http://elafeedback.com/comments/view/National/-">here</a>).<br />
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It is worth quoting the letter Lucy Calkins wrote as a preface to these observations:<br />
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"Dear Colleagues,<br />
This site contains over 600 responses to the all-new, CCS-aligned ELA exam that Pearson gave this year in New York State. Given that Pearson is poised to compete with PARCC and Smarter Balanced as a provider of the new generation of national tests, I think you can look at these responses to Pearson's first iteration of that test as a harbinger of what is to come. What is to come, that is, unless someone calls out 'Wait! The Emperor has no clothes!'<br />
<br />
The <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="85b1cb1e-79e7-4b1d-a4e7-372c6714ce6e" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="26162420-6fe9-47f0-83d7-a49cc6799ddc" grcontextid="test:0">test</span> was unlike anything anyone here had ever seen. I don't want to try to describe it to you, because frankly I wasn't allowed to see it. What I know about the test is largely harvested from these comments, and from people's descriptions of the test. And that, I think, is the problem. How can test-makers create a whole new generation of tests that we are not allowed to see, or to respond to in their first draft versions? How can legislators vote that teachers will be hired and fired based on this test, when they haven't watched their sons and daughters, grandchildren and neighbors, take the test?"<br />
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And one representative response from a California teacher:<br />
<br />
"I am out in California and recently attended a CA Reading Association in San Diego and got to meet and talk with a Berkeley professor who was part of the team reviewing the "curriculum and testing" that will be presented in our state for Common Core implementation. He was very dismayed at the shallow interpretation of the Common Core and indeed at the creation of a curriculum at all. This opportunity to make millions is apparently being grabbed nationwide. So discouraging!!"<br />
Dee Roe - Teacher<br />
<br />
What we are facing under the shadow of the seeming juggernaut of the national "Accountability Movement" is the prospect that both the curriculum we teach our students and the way they are assessed will be taken entirely out of our hands. Several comments on this Teachers College website speak about the misuse of the "Revised Publishers' Criteria" written by David Coleman and Susan Pimentel (see <a href="http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Publishers_Criteria_for_3-12.pdf">here</a>) as a basis for creating these tests. But this is exactly what we should expect when the same for-profit companies that are creating curriculum aligned with the CCS are now major players in the creation of the tests themselves. The only change one might <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e83bed95-f341-46d6-8522-a078fae678fe" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="67ea2569-8cb4-4072-a896-cb49f32f24a6" grcontextid="make to the observation:1">make to the observation</span> above by California teacher Dee Roe is that the creation of our first-ever national curriculum and assessment program provides an opportunity for for-profit providers to make billions, not millions.<br />
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What is often overlooked in this heated climate is that the drive for accountability was itself based on a misleading interpretation of the international scores that supposedly placed American students near the bottom among post-industrialized nations in reading, science and math. Here is a useful interpretation of those scores, taken from an article in the January 2011 issue of Dissent magazine by Joanne Barkan (see <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/93758:got-dough-public-school-reform-in-the-age-of-venture-philanthropy">here</a>):<br />
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"Students in U.S. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="31544965-e144-49f9-ac9d-f74642d951d8" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7776ffd4-d03b-4ef9-994a-54b080f92f62" grcontextid="schools:0">schools</span> where the poverty rate was less than 10 percent ranked first in reading, first in science, and third in math. When the poverty rate was 10 percent to 25 percent, U.S. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7ce8d3b9-8d68-4bda-a069-898d85140066" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="19256ccb-a735-4c0f-9525-22819e3d8f8f" grcontextid="students:0">students</span> still ranked first in reading and science. As the poverty rate rose still higher, however, students ranked lower and lower. 20% of all U.S. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="6b50251b-45c6-4dea-a735-775cd3e8f563" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f4097260-bd4a-489b-b7f5-e162aa20c467" grcontextid="schools:0">schools</span> have poverty rates over 75%. The average ranking of American students reflects this. The problem is not public schools; it is poverty."<br />
<br />
(<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="e3a3b059-fee0-482e-ba15-084eee155f22" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="dc0f0622-98e0-482b-a66f-028e987a5dc3" grcontextid="see:0">see</span> also Diane Ravitch's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Reign-Error-Privatization-Movement-Americas/dp/0385350880">Reign of Error</a></i>, chapter 10, entitled "How Poverty Affects Academic Achievement," for a particularly trenchant analysis of the connection between poverty and school achievement)<br />
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And in a somewhat more nuanced <a href="http://www.epi.org/blog/international-tests-achievement-gaps-gains-american-students/">study</a> in January of this year entitled "What do international tests really show about U.S. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="df20e831-1736-44ea-9d0c-bca82bccb53b" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6a924594-ebe4-44fe-9653-fa446b8ed960" grcontextid="student:0">student</span> performance?" economists Martin Carnoy and Richard Rothstein come to a similar conclusion:<br />
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"The share of disadvantaged students in the U.S. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="52166990-84be-4b8a-bb52-711e5ddd90d8" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="4f6377b8-a58b-410d-9e2b-b8b3d9d95303" grcontextid="sample:0">sample</span> was the largest of any of the [post-industrial] countries we studied. Because test scores in every country are characterized by a social class gradient—students higher in the social class scale have better average achievement than students in the next lower class—U<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="03fdf55b-b0ea-489f-bbea-c2f52ed2ba15" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="978919f0-05b7-466b-bf2c-c7c03ad5f89a" grcontextid=".:0">.</span>S. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="1bfad3dd-bce3-45d9-9483-d23f2301e7be" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="ca7fcfc8-d49d-4a43-8747-1d3348d1188f" grcontextid="student:0">student</span> scores are lower on average simply because of our relatively disadvantaged social class composition. . . [I<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="88f9be8d-43c3-4583-9a2e-269bc8d0e634" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="852b65c1-8651-4169-a56b-30514f81e646" grcontextid="]:0">]</span><span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d80c3ed1-4263-4267-8d57-31a76443b8c3" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="852b65c1-8651-4169-a56b-30514f81e646" grcontextid="f:1">f</span> we make two reasonable adjustments to the reported U.S. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="33345317-b1f3-4b15-bb50-fc227e4b8d59" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="e3e76c1a-1460-4a2a-9b12-47337f9e6d4c" grcontextid="average:0">average</span>, our international ranking improves. The first adjustment re-weights the social class composition of U.S. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="bfdd4687-125e-4128-8cf9-43070c7bc50c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="f7e4a802-d666-41f9-86cb-6afb42e4b3d4" grcontextid="test:0">test</span> takers to the average composition of top-scoring countries. The other re-weights the distribution of lunch-eligible students by the actual intensity of such students in schools. These adjustments raise the U.S. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="8924e2dd-098e-4fd4-abf7-57dc04f0defc" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="38aba3c1-2cc8-497c-95cf-1a93cc4042e7" grcontextid="international:0">international</span> ranking on the 2009 PISA test from 14th to 6th in reading, and from 25th to 13th in mathematics. While there is still room for improvement, these are quite respectable showings"<br />
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To put it succinctly, the "achievement gap" between American students and their foreign counterparts is largely a red herring. While we<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="0a3fe49e-b0fc-42ec-b202-3c7967696d92" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="8d06650e-a49f-471c-8ed3-bc2a33cd9e45" grcontextid="'ve been sleeping:0">'ve been sleeping</span>, income inequality between the wealthy and everyone else has grown to proportions that presently exceed those of the "Gilded Age" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (see Larry M. Bartels' sobering 2010 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Unequal-Democracy-Political-Economy-Gilded/dp/0691146233">study</a> of how this disparity has steadily grown, largely by conscious public policy under Republican presidents, since 1974; for a recent <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/can-the-government-actually-do-anything-about-inequality/?hp&_r=0">update</a>, see Thomas Edsall's NYT Opinionator posting "Can the Govermnment Actually Do Anything About Inequality,"as well as the IRS <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/10/1237927/-I-R-S-U-S-Income-Inequality-Has-Reached-Record-Level">study</a> that documents the most recent "record" set <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="61198fab-7901-47ef-9e0a-a5188a55a0d1" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7c01bbc2-1fa7-4ae2-a1a9-5fccf1688f96" grcontextid="by:0">by</span> income inequality as reported <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d12dbc1e-48e5-4971-9dbb-1963898acaf6" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7c01bbc2-1fa7-4ae2-a1a9-5fccf1688f96" grcontextid="in:1">in</span> 2012 tax returns; and for a chillingly arresting YouTube video on this subject, see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM">here</a>). How likely is it that the imposition of a "rigorous" and "demanding" national curriculum and assessment system will significantly decrease the distance in school achievement between students from our poorest and wealthiest families? How much more likely is it that the results of these new assessments will once again mirror the income disparities we have grown all-too-accustomed to accepting?<br />
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In pondering these questions, I'm reminded of Tracy Kidder's moving portrait of Chris Zajac's 5th grade classroom in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Among-Schoolchildren-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0380710897">Among Schoolchildren</a></i> (1990). In one of the most memorable moments in Kidder's narrative, he asks Zajac how much influence she thought she had over the lives and prospects of her lower class students in South Holyoke Massachusetts. "I'm like a small rock in a swiftly flowing steam," Zajac responds. "I can deflect the course of a number of my students' lives. I can't re-channel the stream."<br />
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I'd like to suggest setting the bar somewhat higher. In a workshop I've given over the past few years, prodded by Kelley Gallagher's documentation in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Readicide-Schools-Killing-Reading-About/dp/1571107800/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381625355&sr=1-1&keywords=readicide">Readicide</a></i> (2009) of <a href="http://www.ncmle.org/journal/PDF/Dec11/VanSlyke.pdf">the alarming rise in the number of "<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="78214166-c7e8-4bec-a778-ea27c488a9af" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="de422213-6e24-49f0-9e08-a169b7ceba5e" grcontextid="aliterate:0">aliterate</span>" students</a> (i.e. <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="527ac5dc-3548-47f9-9fdf-4170dc77eb90" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="23a0bd01-0418-4cc9-9673-3ced2dc2b82a" grcontextid="those:0">those</span> who can read but choose not to) at the middle and high school levels, I introduce a variety of pre-reading strategies for the teaching of Harper Lee's <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>. Using a multi-modal approach that I believe holds the potential of re-engaging our most disengaged readers, I begin with vignettes from the novel based on the characters of Dill Harris, Mayella Ewell and Tom Robinson (see an earlier <a href="http://jonathanlovell.blogspot.com/2007/11/ncte-in-nyc.html">posting</a> on this <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="26b43d82-ab26-423b-a5d0-1ed161d7afcf" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="7e7a50a3-6c0b-4012-b569-bf4ae2f21874" grcontextid="blogsite:0">blogsite</span> for a copy of these vignettes).<br />
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We start with the most traditional of exercises -- having participants read these short passages describing the characters of Dill, Mayella, and Tom, then writing about what they might understand about their assigned character, based on these passages. Rather than digging "deeper" into these complex texts, however, I return participants to the world of Disney by viewing the trial segment of the 1963 film version of Harper Lee's novel. Prior to viewing the film, I use a scaffolding strategy I call a <a href="http://jonathanlovell.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-is-cumulative-graphic-organizer.html">cumulative graphic organizer</a>, designed to help participants understand the roles played by these three different characters in relation to the larger world of Maycomb County.<br />
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Then I lead participants through a relaxation/guided imagery exercise in which they are "re-introduced" to their assigned character, followed by having them create visual symbol posters of that character. I follow this with a gallery walk of these visual symbol posters, followed by <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="3b6909f5-8831-4f3e-874d-f1322bb81f87" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c6779403-4269-46e4-991c-6b892d73c925" grcontextid="having them gather:0">having them gather</span> in mixed character groups of three, role-playing their assigned character as the other two members of the <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="d1e8e276-6fc4-4d8a-a605-28ea68277dd4" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="c6779403-4269-46e4-991c-6b892d73c925" grcontextid="group ask questions:1">group ask questions</span>. Finally, I return to the excerpts that were initially read in "Lutheran" fashion, silently at one's desk, at the beginning of the workshop, but this time listening to these excerpts from Sally Darling's excellent recording of the novel, while viewing them in enlarged print using a document camera. In conclusion, I ask participants to write about what they learned about their characters, and about themselves as learners, through the experience of this sequence of activities.<br />
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My point is to demonstrate that we can all deliberately and systematically draw on the various ways we know our kids are smart. That is, we can draw on their various talents as readers, listeners, responders to and shapers of their world. In doing so, we can not only speak out but "teach out" against practices and policies that we know are damaging our students, preventing them from experiencing themselves as the diversely talented group of individuals that, in our heart of hearts, we know them to be.<br />
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And in light of what is sure to be a tidal wave of curriculum materials purporting to "raise students' scores" on the spring 2015 CCS assessments, I propose the adoption of the following resolution:<br />
<br />
WHEREAS every large scale study over the past 30 years of income level in relation to student achievement has shown a compelling correlation between the two, and<br />
<br />
WHEREAS the percentage of students in poverty in our nation's schools has grown steadily and persistently over the past 39 years, and<br />
<br />
WHEREAS the present levels of income inequality in our nation can be related directly to conscious public policy,<br />
<br />
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED<br />
<br />
That the Common Core Standards, individual schools that "beat the odds," Teach for America Interns whose students outperform those of traditionally <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_noSuggestion GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="7045b856-8bad-4679-9b43-11727b60fb85" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="58b0df83-f2eb-4263-bb6e-b06b341c6e29" grcontextid="credentialed:0">credentialed</span> teachers, and all such examples of the need to "reform" the American system of public education, be understood for what they are:<br />
<br />
Seductive distractions from the overriding issue we must face as a nation if "fixing" public schools is be anything more than an irresponsible instance of political posturing--the shameful growth in income disparity between our poorest and wealthiest citizens.<br />
<br />
<span class="GingerNoCheckEnd"></span></div>
jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-62130066015300724232013-04-21T12:08:00.001-07:002013-09-24T16:48:46.189-07:00Teaching Writing Grades 7-12 in an Era of Assessment: Passion and Practice<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<br />
<br />
Table of Contents<br />
<br />
<b>I. Passion and Practice: Personalizing the Theoretical</b> – Jonathan Lovell<br />
<b>II. Promoting the Passion: Teachers as Writers, Teachers as </b><br />
<b> Collaborators</b> – Mary Warner<br />
<b>III. Building on the Formulaic: Into, Through, and Beyond</b><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Part I: Moving Students Who Are Reluctant, Formula, or Personal Writers<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Into, Through, and Beyond” – Maria Clinton<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Part II: Chunks, Scaffolds, and Names: A Pedagogy of Sentence-level Instruction<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>--Martin Brandt<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Part III: Using Nonfiction to Empower Students to Move Through and Beyond<br />
Formula Writing – Brook Wallace<br />
<b>IV. Creative Reading in Support of Writing: Developing Meaningful </b><br />
<b> Response to </b><b>Literature</b><br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Part I: Want to be a Better Writing Teacher? Then Take a Closer Look at How<br />
You Teach Reading – Jay Richards<br />
Part II. Varying the Literature Circle Roles to Evoke Authentic Response<br />
-- Brenna Dimas<br />
Part III: Independent Reading: To Read or Not to Read–No Longer a Dilemma<br />
– Marie Milner<br />
Part IV: The Actual not the Virtual: the Power of the Book Pass to Engage Teen<br />
Readers-- Mary Warner<br />
V. <b>Finding Your Writing Voice</b><br />
Part I: Using Readers’ Theatre to Hear the Voices in the Text -- Mary Warner<br />
Part II: Tapping the Voice of Middle School Students -- Kathleen Cohen<br />
Part III: “Make <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="4d0286d4-b782-4731-aff6-b786bc64567a" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="6cfc9c24-bdeb-4065-8a2a-69f316a94150" grcontextid="Music:0">Music</span> that Wasn’t There Before”: Modeling Voice with Mentor<br />
Texts –-<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Marie Milner<br />
<b>VI. Bringing Passion to the Research Process: The I-Search Paper</b><br />
Part I: The Crittenden Middle School I-Search: Introducing Passion into<br />
Research and Long-Term Project Planning -- Brandy Appling-Jenson<br />
<span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="120f8919-3856-4d30-9de4-cd86852e03cb" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="1d2c7050-d036-45f2-9e5c-012c97cde2bd" grcontextid="and:0">and</span> Carolyn Anzia<br />
Part II: Demystifying the Research Process: The I-Search Paper -- Kathleen<br />
González<br />
<b>VII. Expanding the Boundaries: The Uncharted Territory of Multigenre </b><br />
<b> Writing</b><br />
Part I: Why Multigenre Writing Belongs in Middle School--Suzanne Murphy<br />
Part II: The Museum Exhibit --Maria Clinton<br />
Part III:<i> Romeo and Juliet</i> Brought to Life through Multigenre Strategies<br />
--Marie Milner<br />
<b>VIII. Empowering English Language Learners: Moving toward </b><br />
<b> Competency as </b><b>Speakers, Readers and Writers</b> -- Marie Milner<br />
<b>IX. Practical Guidelines for Portfolios: Promoting Qualitative Assessment</b><br />
<b> <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="042b2488-65a2-401d-8730-ad68523d1241" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="75233832-3451-4f02-beab-e02e839ca47f" grcontextid="in:0">in</span> a </b><b>Test-Prep Climate</b><br />
Part I: The Case for Portfolio Practice with Middle School Students<br />
--Suzanne Murphy and Amy Thompson<br />
Part II: The Portfolio Process in High School: Empowering Student<br />
Participation in Learning -- Kathleen González<br />
<b>X. Keeping Heart: Dealing with the Realities of the Paper Load </b><br />
<b> While Providing </b><b>Authentic Response</b><br />
Part I: <span class="GINGER_SOFATWARE_correct" ginger_sofatware_markguid="f5a20ef9-d613-4f06-94f0-82787250150c" ginger_sofatware_uiphraseguid="0ae1092d-0f8c-479e-9666-7e065b7539fe" grcontextid="TimeBusters:0">TimeBusters</span>! Techniques for Saving Time When Grading<br />
-- Kathleen Gonzalez<br />
Part II: Standards Based Grading – Maria Clinton<br />
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<br />
Intro for our Sept 25th Pearson Webinar on Implementing the ELA Common Core Standards:<br />
<br />
What we intend to accomplish with our presentation is to place the middle and high school level Common Core Standards in English Language Arts within the context of “best practices” in the teaching of reading, writing, listening and speaking.<br />
<br />
Each of the presenters you will be hearing from in this webinar will be talking about a specific practice, or a group of related practices, that they have discovered lead to significant growth in the language abilities of their students. Not too surprisingly, these practices can be correlated quite convincingly with one or another of the “end point” Common Core standards we will using in the spring of 2015 to assess what students throughout the nation know and are able to do in the areas of reading, writing, speaking and listening.<br />
<br />
It’s important to remember, however, that these standards are still essentially experimental. They set the bar quite high for all students, but particularly for “high needs” students who do not start with the same advantages as their more affluent peers. Whether or not it’s a good idea to set the bar at the same height for all students, regardless of their entry level skills and abilities, remains to be seen. What we can say is that the national conversation we are likely to have quite soon on these issues is one that is long overdue, and the practices you will be introduced to today will be ones that all your students can benefit from, regardless of the eventual outcome of our current national fixation with the possibility of creating a curriculum and assessment system for every student based on the Common Core Standards.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
So with that in mind, I'd like to say that on Wed Sept 25 from 3-4 pm Pacific Time, four of the authors of the <i>Teaching Writing in an Era of Assessment: Passion and Practice</i> will lead a webinar on the teaching of reading, writing, listening and speaking in relation to the Common Core Standards<br />
(<a href="http://pearsonpd.com/index.cfm?locator=PS2cY4&acornRdt=1&DCSext.w_psvaniturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Epearsonpd%2Ecom%2FELA">http://pearsonpd.com/index.cfmlocator=PS2cY4&acornRdt=1&DCSext.w_psvaniturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Epearsonpd%2Ecom%2FELA</a> -- the webinar is the fourth item down from the top of the page).<br />
<br />
<br />
The webinar will address two vital questions faced by all teachers of writing:<br />
<br />
1)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>why might students wish to engage in the performative activity of writing?<br />
2)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>why might they wish to do so not only with dogged persistence but with genuine passion?<br />
<br />
Marty Brandt, high school English teacher in an urban setting, will describe the “chunks, scaffolds and names” that he developed to help his students his see the possibilities of writing rather than its limitations. Using compelling examples of model sentences from a wide variety of sources, Marty will show how students can be led to understand how these sentences work, as well as how to use them effectively in their own writing. How better to address Language Standard 3: “Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening”?<br />
<br />
Middle school English and Social Studies teacher Kathleen Danzey Cohen will describe how she capitalizes on her students’ unending propensity to chat, channeling this skill into narratives lush with description, dialogue and reflection. Her writing curriculum encourages students to create organized, detailed narratives filled with their own unique voices. This curriculum encourages the improvement of student writing while addressing Listening and Speaking Standard 1: “Prepare for and participate in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners . . . and expressing their own [ideas] clearly and persuasively.”<br />
<br />
The specific teaching strategies of Marty and Kathleen will be bracketed by Jonathan Lovell and Mary Warner. Jonathan will discuss using Peter Elbow’s response groups to move students towards “clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience” (Writing Standard 5) and Ken Macrorie’s I-Search paper as a uniquely effective means for students to “gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate [this] information while avoiding plagiarism” (Writing Standard 8). Mary will demonstrate the importance of student voice, showing how the techniques of readers’ theatre can be employed with such “voice-filled” texts as Karen Hesse’s <i>Witness</i> to “evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric” (Speaking and Listening Standard 3). Like so many of the strategies described our book, Mary’s concluding contribution will reiterate how the language arts curriculum is significantly enhanced when each of its component parts—reading, writing, speaking and listening—serve to support one another.<br />
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jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-83343678785786359822013-02-13T22:05:00.002-08:002013-08-27T22:17:54.648-07:00writing and revelation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Writing and Revelation<br />
Jonathan H. Lovell<br />
Published in California English, May 2013<br />
<br />
The small but heavy cardboard box had been opened, closed, and put aside--part of a larger project to plow through the accumulated debris of twenty-eight years of marriage. Its moving label read "Home Office. Books. His." My daughter Stephanie called me to ask if I might pick it up as part of my upcoming trip to Berkeley. Why not?<br />
<br />
Steph’s husband Mike, mindful of my weak lower back, hefted the box into the back of my car. I'd had no occasion, therefore, to examine its contents until I arrived home later that afternoon and carefully set the unopened box down in the center of our living room rug.<br />
<br />
The first items surprised and amused me: the “subfusc” gown -- a black vest really -- that I was required to wear while attending tutorials at Oxford; an endearing picture of me at about age five; a somewhat disorienting picture of my father at a younger age, looking for all the world like a young girl; a college sweat shirt; my framed BA diploma.<br />
<br />
Then came the books. As soon as I saw the top one I knew exactly what they were. The red cover with the words "poems," "ballads" and "sonnets." And then that oh so familiar frontispiece: an oval lithograph of the poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with his large expanse of forehead, short beard, and well trimmed mustache. His left hand holding a felt hat tipped provocatively "open" to the viewer; his right clutching his dun colored vest; those deeply inset dark eyes once again looking out menacingly at me.<br />
<br />
I was back, almost instantly, to New Haven in the summer of 1979. Rossetti's "Poems, Ballads and Sonnets" were sitting on my high drafting table. I was reading over a chapter of my dissertation that I'd written the previous summer. Even with my kindest critical eye, I could tell it was painfully convoluted and overwrought: a prime example of what Oxford's Dame Helen Gardner called the "lemon squeezer" school of literary criticism.<br />
<br />
The house was quiet. Stephanie and her mother were abroad on a fellowship-sponsored research trip to Paris and Venice. My younger daughter was at a summer kindergarten program just a few blocks north from our downtown New Haven home.<br />
<br />
My feeling in looking over my previous summer’s work, and reading over the poems that would serve as the focus of my next chapter, was of nausea. Overwhelming nausea. As a poet and as a man, Rossetti was a difficult person to like. He was self-absorbed, obsessive, demanding of others' attention, given to long bouts of depression. To me, his poetry seemed to reflect these attributes: it had a hot-house quality that I found particularly distasteful, seeming to demand that the reader allow himself or herself to be drawn into the poet's lushly overwrought interior spaces. I did not wish to be drawn into this world, either by Rossetti's poems or by his equally lush and overwrought paintings. So what in the world was I doing writing a dissertation on this man’s poetry and paintings?<br />
<br />
What compounded my problem, however, were the consequences of NOT finishing my dissertation. I'd just finished my second year on the faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University's graduate school of education, and I loved what I was doing in my newly discovered field of English Education. If I did not finish my dissertation this summer, or at the very least make significant progress on it, I could say goodbye to my Teachers College position, and for all I knew any future at all in higher education.<br />
<br />
These problems were further complicated by my back and forth movement over the past two years between teaching English Education classes at Teachers College during the school year, then returning in the summer to the very different set of questions and problems posed by my sunken-eyed poet/painter. How could I possibly find something worth writing about in the work of this somewhat marginal Victorian artist, especially when my heart was increasingly drawn to the compelling issues faced by public school English teachers at the middle and high school levels?<br />
<br />
My day-to-day strategy for coping with my sense of growing anxiety was simple and satisfying. As soon as I completed a page of writing, I'd go out and shoot hoops in our backyard. I was getting some work done, very slowly, and my shooting percentage was improving significantly, but I could not help but feel the hoops were slowly gaining the upper hand.<br />
<br />
I was spending one hot and muggy summer morning gazing out at my backyard, thinking that perhaps this morning the hoops might come before the writing, when I chanced to pick up a book I'd read, rather cursorily, a number of years earlier. It was a study of Shelley's mythmaking, written by one of my teachers, Harold Bloom. It had grown out of his own dissertation on this subject, also completed at Yale. For some reason the passage that caught my eye was a discussion of Shelley's "To a Skylark." I was familiar with its opening stanzas, as it was a favorite with anthologists of my parent's generation:<br />
<br />
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!<br />
Bird thou never wert,<br />
That from Heaven, or near it,<br />
Pourest thy full heart<br />
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.<br />
<br />
Higher still and higher<br />
From the earth thou springest<br />
Like a cloud of fire;<br />
The blue deep thou wingest,<br />
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.<br />
<br />
It's vitally important, Bloom argued, that the distance between the poet-narrator and the skylark dramatically increases with each successive stanza. In fact the bird has already soared so high before the poem begins that the poet can no longer see it. He only hears its "profuse strains of unpremeditated art." With each succeeding stanza, therefore, the poet must re-train his ear to detect the ever-receding melodies of the bird's unpremeditated song. To put it simply, the swiftly moving upward trajectory of the skylark, away from the narrator, is inextricably linked to the appeal of its "full hearted" song.<br />
<br />
And to put my own response to Bloom's argument equally simply: I'd never thought of looking at the role of the poet, or more generally of voice and inspiration, in quite this way. That we start by hearing an already distant air, and as we strain to hear its glad-hearted melodies, it is already growing getting more and more distant from us, soaring away from us we labor to hear its song. The speed of that skylark's flight, and the fact that it was flying upwards and away from the poet, even as the poet was attempting to capture and remember its song, presented a riveting and arresting picture for me of what Shelley was up to in many of his poems.<br />
<br />
And then I realized, quite suddenly and with a degree of comprehension I find difficult to account for, that this was what Rossetti was up to in virtually all of his.<br />
<br />
It was a single moment, really, and of course I went on to write and re-write many subsequent pages and chapters, and to shoot many hoops, before I completed my dissertation the following summer. But it's as if I'd been given an wholly unlooked for gift. As a result of this gift, I was able to see everything that in my previous study of my menacing-looking poet-painter had been vexing and harassing in an entirely new light. I experienced the writing of my final chapters as something pleasurable, something I looked forward to, something that I knew I could do with integrity and even with occasional insight.<br />
<br />
So what might we make of this story of writing and revelation, of perseverance well beyond the bounds of logic or probable success? I would suggest the following moral. That what we experience when we write is quite like listening for the full-throated, glad-hearted sound of that skylark. As I've discovered from co-directing a great many Writing Project summer institutes, and being a full participant in two, we start by hearing only the dimmest whisperings of our colleagues' and our own voices. But with a day-by-day training of our ears, and a growing faith that each of our colleagues, and ourselves, do indeed have voices to be heard, we begin to hear them. And it's this very faith that helps to transform the hesitant murmurs of those initial days into the full-throated roar of the final days of a summer institute.<br />
<br />
We are now at a point in the evolution of the seventeen sites of the California Writing Project where continued funding of these invaluable and inspiriting summer institutes, each costing 40K per summer to run at their maximum level of effectiveness, has been put in jeopardy. This has resulted largely from the decision three years ago by the US Department of Education under Arne Duncan to “zero out” ongoing funding for all categorical educational programs, including the National Writing Project. Given the central importance of these intensive summer programs to the vitality and consequentiality of the California Writing Project—certainly one of the most influential professional development programs in the teaching of writing in our lifetime—I believe it is essential for us to act now to prevent these often life-changing summer institutes from continuing their seemingly implacable downward trajectory. Without such action, these pearls of professional development will surely slip, almost without our notice, slowly and quietly into this good night.<br />
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jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-17857426828786024712013-02-12T15:45:00.000-08:002013-09-03T16:46:33.727-07:00passion & practice to be published!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>Teaching Writing Grades 7-12 in an Era of Assessment: Passion and Practice</i> has just been published. I have an hard copy in my hands I re-write these introductory remarks. Quite exciting! Pearson gave us the go-ahead to go into production in mid-fall 2012, with the book scheduled for publication (correctly, as it turned out) on August 30, 2013. Here's my own initial chapter:<br />
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">Chapter 1</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Passion and
Practice: Personalizing the Theoretical*</b></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">by Jonathan Lovell</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b>Introduction</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">In introducing Teaching Writing Grades 7–12 in an Era of Assessment: Passion</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">and </span>Practice with attention to the theorists and theorist-practitioners who served as</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
pioneering founders, my goals are twofold. The first is to demonstrate the practical</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
but profound influence of these founders on our practices as teachers of writing</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
today, especially in light of the emphasis on writing found in the Common Core</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
State Standards. The second is toput some flesh on the bones of these seminal</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
thinkers, showing how what they wrote was deeply enmeshed in what they did</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
as practitioners themselves. As Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers: The Story of Success,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
2008) and Howard Gardner (The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Understand, 1999) have helped us to understand, excellence in performing any</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
activity is dependent on a willingness to perform this activity over and over again.</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The question for the authors discussed in this opening chapter is the question</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">all teachers </span>confront, however much they believe in the essential nature of</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
repeated practice in relation to performance excellence: why might my students</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>wish</i> to engage in the performative <span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">activity </span>of writing? And why might they</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
wish to engage in this practice with not just dogged persistence, but with</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
genuine passion?</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">For readers of this book not fortunate enough to be familiar with the work </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">of these </span>founders, my hope is that my accounts will serve as a direct and</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
memorable avenue to <span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">understanding </span>them. It is especially important that</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
this act of tough-minded homage be done during this “era of assessment,”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
since the broad, comprehensive, and inspiriting view of language growth</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
espoused by these founders is presently in danger of being marginalized</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">or simply forgotten. While each account is embedded in a personal narrative, </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">the events </span>I relate are similar to those experienced by any teacher who confronts</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
challenges in his or her teaching, but is fortunate enough to be introduced to</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
new perspectives that transform his or her understanding of what students can</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
accomplish in their writing. While the teacher-authors represented in this book</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
reflect the direct influence of these theorists only occasionally, these seminal</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
thinkers contributed significantly to my own shaping of the San Jose Area</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Writing Project’s Invitational Summer Institutes. It is these summer programs,</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">in turn, that provided such fertile ground for the rethinking of practices in the </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">teaching of </span>writing that you will reading about in the chapters that follow.</div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b>James Britten and the Value of “Expressive” Language</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">In 1969, in my second and final year of study at Oxford University, I happened </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">to find a </span>recently published paperback entitled <i>Language, the Learner and the </i><br />
<i>School</i> by Douglas Barnes, James Britton, and Harold Rosen, all of the London<br />
Institute of Education. What help might this publication provide, I wondered, for<br />
a position I’d soon be assuming teaching English to 10th and 12th graders at an<br />
independent day school in Wilmington, Delaware?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">The perspective these researchers brought to their study was intriguing. What </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">happens, </span>they asked, when students move from being taught by a single primary<br />
grade teacher to the six or seven different teachers of their subject-centered<br />
secondary classrooms? <span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">In asking </span>this question, these researchers brought to<br />
their observations a point of viewthat sounds strikingly contemporary: how do<br />
students at the middle and high school levels come to understand the often quite<br />
different “academic languages” used by their different subject area teachers? And<br />
how does the language these different teachers use to describe and explain their<br />
different subject areas compare and contrast to the language the students themselves<br />
might use to explain what they already know and what they are in the process of<br />
learning?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">What gave particular resonance to the work of this group, however, in contrast </span>to</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">the focus today on having teachers gradually lead their students to an increasing </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">sense </span><span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">of </span>command of the academic language of their respective disciples, was<br />
the respect they had for how students expressed themselves when they met in<br />
small groups to discuss what they were learning, independent of a teacher’s<br />
guidance. I was sufficiently intrigued by the contrasts between the “expressive”<br />
language the seventh grade students in the study used to convey their under-<br />
standing of what they had learned and the academic language used by their<br />
secondary level teachers that I vowed to conduct my own small classroom<br />
experiment when I began my teaching. Rather than tell students what I thought<br />
they should notice about the short stories we were reading for our 10th<br />
grade curricula, I would take out my notepad and write down what they said.<br />
And I was prepared to wait quite a long time, in silence, before I said anything<br />
myself. Otherwise, so I reasoned, I could not be sure if what I was listening to<br />
was my students’ own “expressive” language or their desire to sound as much<br />
as possible like their teacher.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">It turned out that my students did have to endure quite long spells of silence </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">in those </span>first few weeks of my teaching, and I’m not certain that I made very<br />
productive or beneficial use of the student-centered language that I learned<br />
as a result. What I did learn was that the majority of the students I taught<br />
were simply not very interested in talking about short works of fiction that<br />
had been “pre-packaged” by a publisher who cared little about what interested<br />
them, and who marched them doggedly through groups of stories according</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">to what these works of fiction revealed about the salient characteristics of the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">short </span>story genre. In other words, it did not matter if I did not say a thing, since<br />
the organization and academic focus of the anthology we were using spoke<br />
volumes “on my behalf.” </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">While I gradually abandoned my experimental role as an observer and recorder of </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">my students’ responses to the short stories they were reading, I did not forget the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">impact that reading those </span>initial research studies had had on me as an eager and<br />
expectant young English teacher. When I returned eight years later to the work of<br />
this group of researchers, their writing had become much better known, both in<br />
England and the United States. In response to the influential teaching and writing<br />
of James Britton, author of <i>Language and Learning</i> (1970), the world of English<br />
Education that I re-entered in the fall of 1977 was abuzz with discussions of<br />
“expressive writing,” writing-across-the-curriculum, and the development of writing<br />
abilities from the early to the later teenage years.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">In my position at Columbia University’s Teachers College for which I’d been hired,</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">my job was to organize an MA program in English Education for prospective </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">secondary </span>level teachers and create new EdD and PhD programs in the teaching of<br />
reading and writing. I was qualified, however, for neither of these roles, having<br />
managed to get through my interview by doing some quick research in the field of<br />
composition studies and somehow managing to persuade my interviewers that I<br />
knew what I was talking about. When the spring semester came around, however,<br />
I was in deep trouble. I was responsible for teaching a course entitled "Composition<br />
for Teachers of English," with my audience composed of the dozen or so MA<br />
students I had begun to work with that fall as well as about 30 New York City<br />
high school English teachers who were taking the course to move up a notch on<br />
their salary scales.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">What made teaching this course especially troubling for me, however, was my </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">own </span>writing. I was trying to complete the second chapter of my dissertation—a<br />
study of the work of the Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti—<br />
but what I was in fact doing was crossing out sentences and paragraphs I’d written<br />
months earlier and feeling like I was sinking slowly and inexorably into an ever-<br />
deepening verbal morass. What I really needed to do, I remember thinking, was<br />
re-title my course "De-composition for Teachers of English." That was a subject<br />
I knew something about.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I managed to make it through the first few Monday evening classes. Following the</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">graduate school model with which I was most recently familiar, I lectured to the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">class on </span>the research by Douglas Barnes, James Britton, and Harold Rosen that I<br />
described previously. As this research evolved in the late 1960s and early 1970s,<br />
it paid increasing attention to the disconnect between the “expressive language”<br />
students might use to convey their initial responses to what they read, and the<br />
overly dry, academic language they were required to use in their writing, especially<br />
as they moved from 7th to 12th grades.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b>Peter Elbow and the Value of Respectful Listeners</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">While this research was indeed quite important, the lecture-discussion style in which </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I presented </span>it to my class was a disaster: a modeling of just the sort of dry academic<br />
language that Britton, Barnes, and Rosen were arguing against. Just how disastrous<br />
was revealed to me by a note my chair left on my desk a few weeks into the semester.<br />
“I thought I’d better pass along this letter written to President Cremin of Teachers<br />
College,” it read. “I wouldn’t take it too seriously, but it does suggest problems that<br />
might be worth addressing.” A student in my class who was teaching at the innova-<br />
tive private day school to which President Cremin had sent his own children wrote<br />
the letter. In the letter, she referred to a lecture that Cremin had recently given on the<br />
need to bring a greater sense of professionalism to teachers at the K–12 level. An<br />
excellent way to start in this direction, she suggested, would be to fire a recently<br />
hired assistant professor teaching a course entitled "Composition for Teachers<br />
of English."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">As I was sitting disconsolately at my desk, expecting to find my belongings uncere-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">moniously </span>dumped onto the street at any moment, two of my graduate students<br />
walked into my office. “We heard you were having some trouble with that course<br />
in the teaching of writing,” they told me. “We thought you might find this book<br />
helpful. We use it in our CUNY basic writing courses and find the practices it<br />
recommends work very well.”</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">The book was <i>Writing Without Teachers</i> (1973) by Peter Elbow. I figured at that </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">point </span>I had nothing to lose, so I began reading. What immediately drew me in was<br />
Elbow’s account of himself as a writer. He’d had more and more trouble with his<br />
own writing as he progressed from college to graduate school and had become<br />
hopelessly stuck in the writing of his own dissertation. Since his inability to write<br />
disqualified him from any potential job he might get teaching English Literature at<br />
the college level, the only job he was qualified for, ironically, was as an instructor<br />
of freshman composition.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Elbow did more than write about his own travails as a writer, however. More use-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">fully, </span>he outlined a program for addressing the deep-seated doubts and failures of<br />
nerve and confidence that he suggested we all face as writers, no matter our age or<br />
grade level. Try writing in short bursts, Elbow suggested, not letting your “editorial<br />
mind” prematurely censure what you’ve written. Try writing these short bursts at<br />
unusual times of day or in inconvenient places. I came to call this approach “Writ-<br />
ing in difficult circumstances,” and often practiced it by writing before I’d had my<br />
morning coffee or on the New York City subway as it lurched its way from station<br />
to station.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">The most distinctive and important component of Elbow’s approach, however, is </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">his insight </span>into the importance of getting response to one’s writing. Just as the in-<br />
ternal editor in our mind tends to censure our work prematurely, so do those who<br />
respond to our writing. And yet getting response is crucial to discovering what we<br />
have to say. Therefore, Elbow suggested that rather than reading a writer’s initial<br />
drafts silently, authors should read their writing aloud to a small group of listeners:<br />
once through a first time so listeners gain a sense of the content of the writing, then<br />
a second time so they gain a sense of its emerging shape. Elbow further argued,<br />
quite surprisingly and innovatively, that rather than having listeners suggest revisions</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">to the writer, they should describe the effect of hearing the author’s words read aloud.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Listeners would begin by recalling words and phrases they’d remembered from the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">piece, then they would summarize the piece as a whole, and finally they would tell </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">the author what hearing the piece read aloud led them to think about as they were </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">listening to it. These “showing,” “telling,” and “generative” responses should be </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">written out by the listeners, Elbow suggested, then read aloud and handed to the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">authors who had their pieces responded to in this objective fashion. In this way, </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">authors themselves could decide how to revise their writing so that it produced the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">desired effects on listeners, or effects that they admired in other pieces they’d heard </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">in their small groups of writers and listeners.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I was fascinated. I decided to put Elbow’s approach to the test, producing a “compo-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">sition manifesto,” as my students came to call it, for the next class. “We will write </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">each week,” I announced, “including your instructor.” And I went on to explain </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">that we would form small groups of five or six, read our pieces of writing aloud to </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">one another, respond in the ways I’d just learned from reading this compelling new </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">book, and document what happened to us and to our writing as we went through </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">this process.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">And for those in the class that chose to stick it out, our writing—and more impor-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">tantly, our appetite for producing and revising our writing—did indeed improve: </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">steadily, obviously, and often quite dramatically. I later came to see that what Elbow </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">was proposing was the creation of a community of respectful and skilled listener-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">readers as much as confident and competent writers. That’s what these elaborate </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">rituals of response were all about: gaining steady and consistent practice in learning </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">to become attentive and respectful listeners. And in the process of becoming these </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">listener-readers, writing is “brought out” of us that responds directly to, and is in a </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">sense the creation of, this new community of writers and listeners. One of Elbow’s </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">most enduring legacies is that most 21st century K–12 teachers have come through </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">college composition classes where peer response groups are the norm.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b>Lucy Calkins and the Value of Writer’s Workshop</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Four years later, in response to a position my wife was offered at UC Berkeley, </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I left </span>my tenure track position at Columbia and assumed a one-year renewable<br />
position at UC Davis teaching freshman composition. At Davis, I was one of<br />
40-odd composition instructors. Some were graduate students in English, some<br />
were Davis residents, and a few like me were PhDs in English looking for full-<br />
time tenure track positions elsewhere. Everyone taught the same course, using a<br />
session-by-session instruction manual based on Frederick Crews’ Random House<br />
Handbook of Rhetoric and Composition.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">My students at Davis were quite different from those I’d taught at Columbia. </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Products </span>of California’s affluent and protected suburbs, they treated composition<br />
instructors as service providers whose main purpose was to ensure that they, the<br />
service recipients, maintained their 4.0 GPAs. “What must we do on this compar-<br />
ison/contrast paper to get an A?” they would ask. Or “Could you tell us exactly<br />
what you want on this descriptive writing assignment?”</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">They’d arrive at my office door, graded papers in hand, asking me to show them </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">which </span>words, phrases, and commas they should change to upgrade their paper from<br />
a B+ to an A. Soon, they were coming up to me as I walked into class, asking me<br />
with an edge to their voices if I might “make the next assignment clearer,” so they<br />
would “know what I wanted” and could “give it to me.” I knew exactly what I<br />
wanted. I wanted to shake my students by their shoulders until their collective teeth<br />
rattled, saying to them: “Write about something that matters to you, or I will go<br />
completely bonkers!”</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I recall driving to Davis one morning, numb with apprehension, with a pile of 30 </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">“classification” papers sitting expectantly on the passenger seat beside me. In these </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">papers my students had been asked to “select a generic group of things and describe </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">the features that distinguish the sub-categories that make up this group.” Although </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I’d </span>skimmed these papers the night before, I now had to re-read and grade them<br />
before my first morning class. As I sat at the table of the lab classroom I’d been<br />
assigned, working doggedly to complete this task, it seemed to me that every single<br />
paper described the bicycles ridden on the Davis campus and the various sub-<br />
categories into which these bicycles might be classified. “What should we do,<br />
Professor, to get an A on this paper?” “Write about something that matters to <i>me</i>,”<br />
I wanted to shout, “or I assure you I will start swinging from the trees outside our<br />
classroom windows and loping across campus on my legs and forepaws.”</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I was in the middle of my first semester, my desk at home littered with piles of </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">compo</span>sition assignments I could not bear to look at, when I received a call from my<br />
former department chair at Teachers College. Because our decision to move to<br />
California was made quite late in the prior semester, my chair had decided to leave<br />
my position vacant for a year so that a departmental committee could conduct a<br />
proper search for my replacement. “We have an interesting candidate for your<br />
English Education position,” my chairman said. “I wonder if you could help us out.”<br />
He explained that while the candidate’s research had been in the general field of<br />
English Education, she’d focused <span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">her studies on </span>upper elementary level students.<br />
“But it’s first-rate stuff,” my chairman said, “really first rate. Could you give this<br />
candidate a call, perhaps have her send you her current work-in-progress, and write<br />
an evaluation to the search committee of her appropriateness for the position?”<br />
“Glad to,” I replied, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “Do you want me to<br />
be an advocate for the position as well? I would suspect she’s being courted by<br />
other universities.” My chairman replied that he’d be pleased if I would, describing<br />
the candidate as a “rare find.”</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I called her the following weekend, and when she asked if Columbia usually called </span><br />
candidates as parts of their searches, I told her that hers was an unusual case.<br />
“‘Unusual’ good or ‘unusual’ bad?” she asked me. “‘Unusual’ good,” I said,<br />
mentioning my chair’s reference to her as a “rare find.” “How would he know?<br />
What’s he read of mine he likes so much?” This is more difficult than I’d<br />
anticipated, I thought to myself. I <span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">wonder </span>what she has written? So I asked her<br />
about her research.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">The manuscript arrived a week later: 300 pages wrapped in brown paper. I started </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">reading immediately. The content drew me in at once. Here were third and fourth </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">graders writing exactly as I wanted my college freshmen to write: choosing topics </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">of consequence to them; experimenting with different modes of writing—narrative, </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">poetry, drama—and getting thoughtful and respectful feedback on their pieces from </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">their teachers and fellow classmates. And the writing that the students in these class-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">rooms produced was absolutely stunning. Several years later, I used the book that </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">emerged from this dissertation,<i> Lessons From a Child</i> (1983), as one of the textbooks </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">for a college level writing course I was teaching. One of my students in that course </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">came into my office shortly after the class had begun, </span>asking anxiously, “You don’t<br />
expect us to write as well as the kids in this book, do you?”</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">The author of that small but seminal volume,<i> Lessons From a Child</i>, was Lucy </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Calkins. </span>I wrote an enthusiastic review of her candidacy for my former department,<br />
which I first showed to my then middle school-aged daughter. “It’s well written,<br />
Dad,” she remarked, “but this person does walk on the ground like the rest of us,<br />
doesn’t she?” As it turned out, she was selected for the position at Teachers College,<br />
where she is still teaching. Having written, among many other publications, the highly<br />
successful K-2 and 3-5 <i>Units of Study</i> for the teaching of writing and <i>Pathways to </i><br />
<i>the Common</i> <i>Core: Accelerating Achievement</i> (2012), and having directed the<br />
influential Teachers <span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">College Reading and Writing Project </span>over many years, it’s now<br />
clear that she does indeed walk on the ground like the rest of us, only more sure-<br />
footedly and quite a bit faster.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b>Donald Graves and the Value of Learning From Our Youngest Writers</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">In the spring of 1982, however, the University of New Hampshire group through which Lucy Calkins was introduced to the field of composition research was just starting to gain attention. Its leader, Donald Graves, was known at the time primarily through his authorship of the Ford Foundation monograph <i>Balance the Basics: Let Them Write</i> (1978). In this powerful study, Graves pointed out that for every dollar spent on the teaching of writing, one hundred dollars are spent on the teaching of reading. Even more tellingly, he noted that for every dollar spent for research on the teaching of writing, one thousand are spent for research on the teaching of reading. His conclusion was that by not taking advantage of a child’s initial urge to write rather than to read, we significantly underestimate the power of the “output languages” of writing and speaking in favor of the “input languages” of reading and listening.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">This monograph, along with the fact that Graves was receiving the David H. Russell Research Award for authoring this study and concurrently publishing his seminal work <i>Writing: Teachers and Children at Work</i> (1983), was creating quite a stir in the hallways and sessions of the 1982 NCTE Annual Convention in Washington, DC. As a rather wide-eyed attendee at this conference, I was greatly impressed with the energetic and dedicated cadre of young scholars that Don Graves had drawn into his orbit: Lucy Calkins of Teachers College (discussed earlier in this chapter), Nancie Atwell of Boothbay Harbor, Maine (soon to publish <i>In the Middle: Writing, Reading, and Learning with Adolescents</i> in 1987), Mary Ellen Giacobbe of Atkinson, New Hampshire (later to publish <i>Talking, Drawing, Writing: Lessons for Our Youngest Writers</i> in 2007), Linda Rief of Durham, New Hampshire (later to publish <i>Seeking Diversity: Language Arts with Adolescents</i> in 1992), and Tom Romano of Edgewood High School in Trenton, Ohio (soon to publish <i>Clearing the Way: Working with Teenage Writers</i> in 1987). </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">But I was also impressed with the fundamentally important perception about language growth on which much of the research and practice of this University of New Hampshire group was based. This perception might be expressed by observing that while most parents would never dream of putting their hands over their children’s mouths if they uttered the words “mama” or “papa,” telling them instead not to speak until they could say the words “mother” or “father,” something analogous was happening quite routinely in the teaching of writing in our nation’s elementary school classrooms. Rather than recognizing and honoring children’s desire to write, as well as their confidence that they had something important to say, and rather than learning the predictable patterns of “invented spelling” that young children routinely use when they begin to write, teachers were closing the door on these nascent efforts at written communication, focusing their attention instead on handwriting, spelling, and the basic punctuation conventions of simple sentences. By imposing this adult perception of the “fundamentals” of written communication prematurely, teachers were unwittingly creating a nation of students who either hated to write or were convinced that they were “horrible writers.” It was just as if parents had indeed put their hands over their children’s mouths when they began to speak, with the analogous result that we were raising a nation of children who were being essentially chastened into silence.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">That’s effectively what we’d done in our practices in the teaching of writing, specifically in this era of ever-increasing high-profile assessments. Rather than capitalize on the simplicity and depth of Graves’ innovative understanding of how students might grow as writers and how we might assist them more humanely and productively in our practices as teachers, we have been increasingly focused on testing that segments writing into component parts, and in the process largely destroys our students’ urge or desire to write.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b>James Gray and the Value of Writing Teachers Collaborating Across All Grade Levels</b></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">A few months after meeting Don Graves and his impressive cadre of young teacher-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">researchers, </span>I assumed a position in English Education at the Reno campus of the<br />
University of Nevada. One of my new position’s job requirements was that I<br />
collaborate with a group of K–12 teachers who formed a professional development<br />
communityknown as the Northern Nevada Writing Project. While I had some<br />
familiarity with the Writing Project through my collaboration with Sondra Perl<br />
and Richard Sterling, the New York City Writing Project Directors, during my<br />
time at Teachers College, my experience was still quite limited.</div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">As part of my new position however, I was fortunate enough to be asked by the two </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">co-directors of the Northern Nevada Writing Project (both high school teachers) to </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">apply to the Bay Area Writing Project’s Invitational Summer Institute. I spent over </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">four-and-a-half weeks during the summer of 1984 in the company of 25 other </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">K–college teachers on the UC Berkeley campus, under the direction of Jim </span>Gray,<br />
founder of the Writing Project. Having now served as a director or co-director of<br />
28 subsequent invitational summer institutes, it seems clear to me that there is a<br />
compelling connection between the inspiration for attending to younger students’<br />
beginning writing development among the researchers at the University of New<br />
Hampshire and the concurrent founding of the Bay Area Writing Project at the<br />
University of California at Berkeley in the mid-1970s.</div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Both the University of New Hampshire program under Don Graves and the Univ-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">ersity of California Berkeley/Bay Area Writing Project program under Jim Gray </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">began with the perception that there were talents and abilities among their target </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">populations that had gone largely unnoticed because these quite different popula-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">tions </span>had not been given the opportunity to “see” the emergence of their own<br />
abilities in a concrete and convincing manner. In the case of young children, this<br />
was largely because most teachers believed that several small “steps” needed to be<br />
mastered before younger writers could “walk” with confidence as mature writers.<br />
In the case of practicing teachers, the worker-supervisor model under which the field<br />
of public school teaching continues to function today made it all but certain that<br />
administrators would fail to see their “teacher-workers” as valuable and insightful<br />
sources of knowledge. Looked at from this perspective, neither the young writers<br />
in Don Graves’ initial studies of elementary school children in Atkinson, New<br />
Hampshire, nor the mostly middle and high school teachers who made up the Bay<br />
Area Writing Project’s initial 1974 Invitational Summer Institute were accustomed<br />
to being heard or listened to with the idea that they had something important to say,<br />
something important to teach the rest of us.</div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">In the University of New Hampshire research studies, what gives young writers the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">confidence they have something to say is the time and the patience their teachers </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">provide for them to think through, draft, and revise their writing. In the Writing </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Project Summer Institutes, what builds this confidence in having something worth-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">while to say is the evenly allocated time that every participant is given to present </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">a workshop demonstration of a “best practice” in the teaching of writing to the </span>other<br />
participants in the institute. Both practices accomplish similar goals. They begin with<br />
individuals who are uncertain or deeply skeptical that their “words” are worth<br />
listening to, and they provide these individuals with an attentive and respectful<br />
audience that helps to bring forth the very “words of consequence” that the young<br />
writers or selected teachers are half-convinced they do not possess.</div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">It is no accident that both programs came around to a belief in the fundamental </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">impor</span>tance of teachers as writers. The forerunner to the Writing Project, as Jim Gray<br />
explains in <i>Teachers at the Center</i> (2000), led to the somewhat accidental creation<br />
of “afternoon writing groups” in which small groups of teachers write and get<br />
response to their writing. This now-standard feature of all Writing Project Summer<br />
Institutes was an unanticipated outcome (one which evolved during the pre-1974<br />
years when Gray’s summer programs were located on the UC Davis campus and<br />
were NDEA funded) of several high school teachers’ desire to “try out” some of the<br />
practices in the teaching of writing that had been presented during the morning<br />
sessions. Similarly, it was only in his later writings that Don Graves began to<br />
understand the importance of teachers consistently bringing their own experience<br />
as writers to their conferences and mini-lessons with their students. A major legacy,<br />
then, of Don Graves and Jim Gray is this focus on teachers as writers.</div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b>Don Murray and the Value of Attending to the Practice of Professional Writers</b></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I read Don Murray’s<i> A Writer Teaches Writing: A Practical Method of Teaching Composition</i> (1968), along with Janet Emig’s <i>The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders</i> (1971), in preparation for my interview for the English Education position at Teachers College. What struck me in Murray’s accounts of his own practices as a writer was how authentic and (not infrequently) moving they sounded. His words fairly leapt off the page, and it was clear to me that the urgency and vitality of what he had to say were directly related to the honesty with which he described, and often dissected, his own practices as he moved slowly and often painfully from initial draft to final product. The “lesson” conveyed by Murray’s book is twofold: writing is far more messy and labor-intensive than had been generally acknowledged by traditional approaches to the teaching of writing, and the most convincing and heartfelt instruction in this field of endeavor would come from someone who was himself or herself a passionate practitioner.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">It was Murray’s call to arms in this respect that led me to insist, in my “composition manifesto” to my Teachers College students, that we would all write, “including your instructor,” and that we would reflect on what we’d learned about our own writing in relation to our teaching of writing, as we progressed from draft to draft on our various pieces of writing. And it’s Murray’s message that reverberates in my mind today as I ask the participants in our San José Area Writing Project Summer Institutes to use their end-of-institute evaluations to describe their experiences with their afternoon writing response groups and to reflect on what they will take from these experiences to their classrooms in the coming year. Two of the participants’ responses from our 2011 summer institute indicate the power of the connection that teachers begin to make once they see themselves as writers teaching</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">writing:</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> "After we settled down and got a chance to get to know one another, we got </span><br />
along great. We discussed how we wanted feedback. Some wanted 50%<br />
positive / 50% constructive; another wanted it “ruthless”; another only wanted<br />
us to tell her she was a good writer. So we settled on 50/50 and nothing mean.<br />
It was healthy to compromise. After we read one another’s work aloud, passed<br />
it around, commented, made changes, brought it back—rinse, wash, repeat—<br />
we were all so much closer. We saw improvements and wonderful work come </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> from places we didn’t even know existed. It was amazing. I hope to create and </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> foster the use </span>of writing groups in my own classes this coming year because I<br />
feel it was such a valuable experience for finding out that I was a writer.<br />
Correction—that I am a writer. I have rekindled something long shoved off<br />
as youthful pretentiousness. I believe that if I can create a safe enough space<br />
within small groups, I can create a safer space in the whole classroom."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> — Melissa M, 11th–12th Grade Teacher</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> "My experience with my afternoon writing group was very cathartic. We </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> would meet after </span>each morning session and debrief everything. Most of<br />
our afternoons were spent talking and reminiscing. After writing and reading<br />
so much, but having little time to comment . . . most of us were bursting at<br />
the seams to share . . . anything and everything. We found ourselves sharing<br />
stories, life experiences, quotes, comments, concerns, etc. We would jot down<br />
ideas, etc. then parade home with “homework” and writing assignments. It<br />
turned out that this was what led to the majority of the creative spark for me.<br />
I would take most of this home, let it percolate, and then start my actual writing<br />
around 10 pm or so. I think the biggest experiences I will take to my classroom<br />
for this coming year are the options that were provided by our Afternoon Writing<br />
Group facilitator and the fact that, sometimes, you just have to talk about things<br />
before you write. Sometimes I assign things without talking through them. I think<br />
it would help to allow students to sit in writing groups of about 3 or 4 to bounce<br />
ideas off one another before they start writing. This could help get their creative<br />
spark lit."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> —Katie N, 9th–10th Grade Teacher</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Both of these responses demonstrate the significance of Don Murray’s insistence that </span><br />
teachers of writing not only “talk the talk” but also “walk the walk.” As we face the<br />
predictable onslaught of “hard-wired” approaches to the teaching of writing in our<br />
public school classrooms in the name of aligning our curricula to the Common Core<br />
State Standards, it is helpful to remember Don Murray’s frequent admonition that<br />
creating writing worth reading involves a process that is by nature messy, unpredic-<br />
table, and idiosyncratic.</div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b>Ken Macrorie and the Value of Bringing Voice to Research</b></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">If Don Murray represents the typical New Englander in his dedication to a strong </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">work </span>ethic shading toward dogged persistence, Ken Macrorie represents the<br />
irreverence of the typical westerner. He never met a grammar rule he didn’t like . . .<br />
to break. Born in the Mississippi River town of Moline, Illinois, Macrorie<br />
frequently evokes, both in his stance toward writing and in his own writing<br />
voice, the spirit and voice of Mark Twain: “Persons attempting to find a motive<br />
in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will<br />
be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order<br />
of the Author” (preface to <i>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</i>). </div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">It therefore comes as something of a surprise that Macrorie was a good deal more </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">involved than Murray, five years his junior, in working within traditional organiza-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">tions in the field of English Education. He was a Professor of English at Western </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Michigan University from 1961 to 1978, where his focus was on teacher training </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">(or “re-educating teachers trapped in unproductive teaching methods,” as he put it). </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">He served as editor of NCTE’s professional journal, College Composition and </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Communication, from 1962 to 1964, when it was regarded as the leader of the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">assault on the “current traditional” paradigm in writing instruction. And finally, </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">he served for 13 years, both before and after </span>his retirement from WMU, at the<br />
Bread Loaf Graduate School of English, a summer master’s program conducted<br />
under the auspices of Vermont’s Middlebury College, where he taught practicing<br />
high school teachers to become writers and to take that knowledge back to their<br />
classrooms.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">In terms of this chapter, however, it is Macrorie’s re-conceptualizing of the writing </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">of the traditional research paper that will illuminate his many contributions to the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">field of writing instruction. The book that introduced many to Macrorie’s boldly </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">original reconsideration of research writing was Searching Writing (1980), or as the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">book was more helpfully re-titled in 1988, The I-Search Paper. In Chapter 6 of this </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">book, you will read how middle school teachers Brandy Appling-Jenson and Carolyn </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Anzia, as well as high school teacher Kathleen González, have adapted Macrorie’s </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I-Search Paper strategies for their own classrooms. In this chapter, however, I focus </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">on the impact Macrorie’s original text had on my teaching of freshman composition </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">classes at San José State University. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Like most college level freshman composition programs, San José State requires the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">completion of a “research paper” as part of every student’s introductory level writing </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">requirements. On the one hand, I understood the rationale for this requirement, since </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">such “academic” writing would be routinely required of students as they moved to </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">higher-level university classes. On the other hand, I was all too aware of the pull my </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">students would feel toward simply “lifting” their material from previously published </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">sources. I was not unsympathetic to this pull. It’s one we have all felt to one degree </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">or another, after all, and it’s especially understandable when beginning level college </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">writers are placed in academic environments where they have very little notion of </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">what constitutes authentically compelling </span>academic writing.</div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">This is where Macrorie’s understanding of what it means to search, whether for an</span><br />
obscure bit of evidence that might illuminate a larger academic argument or for<br />
something as relatively mundane as the best price on a car stereo system, comes<br />
to the fore. I can’t recall if Macrorie also suggested a gallery walk to heighten<br />
interest in these initial searches, but that’s what I did with my San José State<br />
freshman classes. Everyone wrote down his or her research question on a large<br />
piece of poster paper (with one nervy freshman writing in his, “What is the meaning<br />
of life?”) and then everyone in the class did a gallery walk past these posters, writing<br />
graffiti-like comments on these easel sheets if one knew something about the content<br />
of the search or if one had a suggestion for the author about how he or she might<br />
pursue the search.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">The next steps were to “research one’s topic” and to keep a running record of the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">steps one took to move closer to discovering answers to his or her research question. </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">At least one interview with one informant was required for the search, and I custom-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">arily prepared for these by setting a question for the class as a whole and then bring-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">ing in an informant that the class could collectively interview. A further requirement </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">was for a “saturation report,” where the researcher would describe a setting that had </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">come to be significant in his or her search. As with the whole-class interviews, I </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">would generally take the class on a short “field trip” around the building in which the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">class was being held. Then I would ask everyone to select a setting they found mem-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">orable and describe that setting in a way the rest of the class might recognize.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">The culmination of the I-Search paper was for students to write a narration of their </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">pursuit of their question. They would start with what they knew or didn’t know </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">about their topic, follow this with an “argument” that explained to their readers why</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> the question they were pursuing was important to them, document the steps they </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">took to learn the answer(s) to their question, and conclude with a summary of what </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">they had learned by the time “the whistle blew” and they had to end their search. </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Needless to say, issues with plagiarism were simply non-existent with such a rich </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">and compelling experience of “researching” a question of one’s own choosing. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">What surprised me, however, was the vibrancy and liveliness of my students’ voices </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">in the papers they submitted. I sent a batch of these papers to Macrorie himself, then </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">living in retirement in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He wrote back a few months later, </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">explaining that it took him some time to read through what I’d sent him and asking </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">me to please send less next time. While he complained that he could not fully under-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">stand how my students managed to survive my “barrage” of instructions (a “running </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">syllabus” I provided for my students, made up of single-spaced narratives describing </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">each successive class), the papers they wrote clearly demonstrated that I must be </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">doing something right. “They are a delight,” he wrote. “So loose in the saddle, so </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">lively, so uncluttered with the usual hogwash of freshman compositions.” I could </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">hardly have asked for a more satisfying recognition of my students’ writing abilities, </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">nor a more compelling argument for the value of re-conceiving the research paper</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">as an authentic quest, placing the student writer at its center.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b>James Moffett and the Value of the “Ladder of Abstraction”</b></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">In focusing on James Moffett’s contributions to the field of composition instruction, </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I return to my early days teaching 10th grade in Wilmington, Delaware, then fast-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">forward to my final two years teaching Composition for Teachers of English at </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Teachers College. My purpose in doing so is to illustrate the profound influence </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">that the theorists discussed in this chapter have had, and continue to have, on the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">practice of writing at all levels, and also to illustrate how these theories might be </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">practically applied in actual, concrete teaching situations.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">In my teaching in Wilmington, I enjoyed and was stimulated by teaching my 12th </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">graders, but it was my 10th graders I truly loved. They were at such a volatile and </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">important stage in their intellectual and emotional development, and I came to </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">believe </span>that if I taught wisely I could make a significant difference in their lives.<br />
What was at issue, to my mind, was whether or not I could persuade my 10th<br />
graders to entertain more than one point of view on a given subject. What frustrated<br />
me in trying to come up with teaching practices that would serve to jostle my 10th<br />
graders from their often quite strong allegiance to a predetermined position was the<br />
pervasive influence of the five-paragraph theme. As described by Janet Emig in<br />
<i>The Composing Processes of </i><i>Twelfth Graders</i> (1971), the “Fifty-Star Theme,”<br />
as Emig nicknamed the five-paragraph theme, was both frustratingly persistent<br />
in the secondary level English lang<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">uage arts curriculum and wholly unrelated to </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">any real purpose or practice </span>in the larger world:</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> "Why is the Fifty-Star Theme so tightly lodged in the American compo-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> sition curriculum? </span>The reason teachers often give is that this essentially<br />
redundant form, devoid of content in at least two of its five parts, exists<br />
outside their classrooms, and in very high places—freshman English classes,<br />
business communication, and in the “best practices” of the “best writers.”</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> This fantasy is easy to disprove. If one takes a collection of writers who </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> current critical </span>judgment would agree are among our best, can one find <br />
a single example of any variation of the Fifty-Star Theme? The answer<br />
is no." (97)</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I found I could persuade my 10th graders to “inhabit” a point of view different </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">from </span>their own by engaging them in dramatic re-enactments; however, when my<br />
10th graders wrote an argumentative paper, all the intellectual and emotional<br />
suppleness they displayed in their dramatic re-enactments went out the window.<br />
Was Friar Lawrence to blame for Romeo and Juliet’s tragic deaths? He certainly<br />
was, argued any number of my 10th graders. To prove it I will devote my first<br />
paragraph to a thesis stating that he was guilty, then will write three body para-<br />
graphs in which I will locate details from the play that support my thesis, and will<br />
finish with a concluding paragraph that reminds you that Friar Lawrence was<br />
indeed guilty of the tragic deaths of Romeo and Juliet. While I found myself, not<br />
too surprisingly, assigning more and more dramatic re-enactments and fewer and<br />
fewer “opinion papers” for my 10th graders as I progressed from my first to my<br />
third year of teaching, I never found a satisfactory way of addressing the deeper<br />
question of how to persuade my students, at least in their writing, to unleash<br />
themselves from the safety and security of their predetermined positions.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Eight years later, at Teachers College, when I began teaching my "Composition for </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Teachers of English" course for a third time, I faced a similar but more vexing ver-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">sion of this same mind-set. My writing course now used both Peter Elbow’s <i>Writing </i></span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><i>Without Teachers </i>(1973) and James Moffett’s <i>Teaching the Universe of Discourse</i> </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">(1968) as its primary texts, and had become well enough known and highly enough </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">regarded to attract a small but vocal population of graduate students in the Teaching </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">of English to Speakers of Other Languages Program at Teachers College. “This </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">business of a student-centered approach to writing development is perhaps a defen-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">sible strategy for English speakers,” they argued, </span>“but it simply will not work with<br />
our ESL adult populations.” These TESOL teachers were quite clear that what their<br />
students needed were clearly structured lessons with a strong focus on grammar and<br />
conventions. “How are they going to avoid making mistakes in their writing unless<br />
we, as their teachers, point these out to them?” they would ask. “And if we were to<br />
put this Elbow nonsense to use in our classrooms, all we’d observe would be the<br />
blind leading the blind.”</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">While I did not agree with these strongly held opinions about the writing develop-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">ment of adult ESL students, I could not challenge them effectively as a practitioner </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">since my own experience was limited to a single summer’s teaching, many years </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">earlier, in Hong Kong. How might I introduce points of view that gently questioned </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">these quite plausible pedagogical certainties? How might I do so without claiming </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">more than I could reasonably claim on the basis of my own quite limited teaching </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">experience with adult ESL learners?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Appropriately enough, the answer came right from Moffett’s <i>Teaching the </i></span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><i>Universe </i></span><i>of Discourse</i>. “Start by understanding how difficult it is,” Moffett might<br />
be imagined as saying, “to theorize about best practices in the teaching of writing<br />
to ESL adults.” To do so convincingly, according to the theory set forth in<br />
Moffett’s book, involves not only imagining a large general audience of readers,<br />
but also the writer’s ability to hypothesize “what could happen” in many future<br />
ESL classrooms beyond those in which one has actually taught. These imagined<br />
admonitions come from a theory of discourse that Moffett had been developing<br />
since his early years teaching English to high school students in New Hampshire.<br />
As presented in the collection of articles that formed the basis of his book, this<br />
theory posits that all acts of written communication can be understood as occurring<br />
at one point or another on a “ladder” of increasing abstraction regarding the<br />
“distance” between the author and his or her subject on the one hand, or between<br />
the author and his or her reader on the other. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">A writer writing notes to himself or herself about an object or event that is close at </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">hand—“what is happening”—would be engaged in writing that represents the </span><br />
closest possible “distance” between author and subject. Conversely, a writer<br />
presenting a theory about “what might happen” in a periodical designed for a<br />
general readership, would be engaged in writing that represents the greatest<br />
possible “distance” between both subject and audience.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">It did not take me long to realize, given this perspective on writing argumentatively, </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">that I was asking my Teachers College TESOL students to write persuasively from </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">something akin to the farthest points “out” on both sides of Moffett’s abstraction </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">ladder. </span>I was asking them, that is, to tell “what happens” in adult ESL classes<br />
while addressing a wholly imagined audience of general readers.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Assisted by a sequence of mimeographed writing assignments then circulating </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">among </span>those familiar with Moffett’s work (later published as <i>Active Voice: A </i><br />
<i>Writing Program </i><i>Across the Curriculum</i>, 1981), I began to design a sequence<br />
of writing assignments along the lines suggested by Moffett’s “ladder of<br />
abstraction.” My primary purpose was to present a practical application of<br />
Moffett’s theory of discourse so that everyone in the class could experience<br />
this rather complex theory firsthand. I also hoped, however, that I might<br />
unsettle some of the fixed notions of conventional, grammar-oriented writing<br />
instruction that were held by my TESOL students.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">I started by asking my students to write from the perspective of a speaker on a soap-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">box in Central Park advocating practices in the teaching of writing that were the </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">opposite of those presently held by the author. What would such a speaker say to </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">defend his or her position? What arguments and examples would such a speaker use </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">to convince his or her listeners of the compelling nature of his or her point of view? </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Next, I asked my students to write out a dialogue between this strident soapbox </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">speaker and themselves, toning down the stridency of the speaker’s stance so that </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">the conversation might be civilized and even-tempered. Third, I asked my students </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">to imagine that the speaker moved upstate so that face-toface conversation was no </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">longer possible. I advised that the conversation be continued, but </span>this time as an ex-<br />
change of medium length letters (I suggested four; most students wrote six to eight).</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Finally, as this sequence of writing assignments evolved as I taught it for my fourth </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">and final year at Teachers College, I asked my students to step back and imagine </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">they had just discovered this exchange of letters and had decided to edit them for </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">publication. They would provide a preface in which they told readers something </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">about the backgrounds of the two writers, insofar as they had been able to “unearth” </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">these personal backgrounds in their “research.” They would also say something </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">about the importance of the topic these two letter writers were addressing—a level of </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">importance that led them to decide to publish this consequential exchange of views.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">As it turned out, I never did add the final step I had originally envisioned for this </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">sequence--transforming this final “edited exchange of letters” into a formal argu-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">mentative essay. I think what we all realized by the time we became “editors” of </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">these two correspondents’ exchange of letters is that the forcefulness of one or an-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">other of their opening points of view was far less interesting than what motivated </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">them to adopt their initially antagonistic stances and what led them to engage in ex-</span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">tended correspondence with one another. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">What I do know is that I stopped hearing about the indispensability of a grammar </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">based approach to the teaching of writing to adult ESL students, or to non-ESL </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">high school students in New York City public schools for that matter, and I did </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">hear a great deal about the “characters” that my students had brought into being </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">as a result of the seriousness with which they assumed their roles as editors.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">What I would say today is that this particular sequence of writing assignments </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">utilized </span>my 10th grade students’ ability to “inhabit” the role of someone other<br />
than themselves, putting this talent in the service of helping us all to view those<br />
holding opinions diametrically opposite to our own with greater understanding<br />
and sympathy. And isn’t that what “teaching toward adulthood” is all about? This<br />
is the contribution that Moffett helped us realize: we were all teaching writing in a<br />
wider “universe of discourse” where our roles were to help our students and<br />
ourselves come into greater awareness of our capacities not only as writers but also<br />
as more fully developed human beings.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b>Lessons Learned From the Founders of Passion and Practice</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">The chapters of <i>Teaching Writing Grades 7–12 in an Era of Assessment: Passion </i></span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><i>and Practice</i> that follow introduce a wide range of teaching practices that have </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">been </span>refined and modified over the years by middle and high school teachers<br />
committed, as were the founders I’ve just discussed, to the centrality of writing in<br />
their English Language Arts curricula and to the potential of each of their students<br />
as writers. While the last 12 years, with their emphasis on educational policy<br />
focusing exclu<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">sively </span>on “accountability” as measured by test scores, have<br />
unquestionably been difficult and frustrating times for these teachers, the teacher<br />
writers in this book have each found ways to “make their writing curriculum work<br />
for them,” to borrow Tim Gunn’s mantra from Project Runway. Since each of<br />
these teachers is also a writer, as well as a colleague with whom I’ve worked<br />
directly in one or another of the Invitational Summer Institutes of the San José<br />
Area Writing Project, they also represent a group about which I’m especially proud.<br />
Not only have they found a way to bring their passion for writing and the teaching<br />
of writing to their students, they have also found the time, energy, and commitment<br />
to bring what they have learned to the wider audience of this book’s readers.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><b>References and Resources</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Atwell, Nancie. <i>In the Middle: Writing, Reading, and Learning with Adolescents</i>. </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> Portsmouth, NH: </span>Boynton/Cook, 1987.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Barnes, Douglas, James Britton, and Harold Rosen. <i>Language, the Learner </i></span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><i> and </i></span><i>the School</i>. Hammondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1969.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Britton, James. <i>Language and Learning</i>. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> Books, </span>1970.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Calkins, Lucy. <i>Lessons From a Child</i>. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1983.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">_____________ . <i>Units of Study for Primary Writing: A Yearlong Curriculum</i>. </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> Portsmouth, NH: </span>Heinemann, 2003.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">____________ . <i>Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grades 3–5</i>. Portsmouth, </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> NH: </span>Heinemann, 2007.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Calkins, Lucy, Mary Ehrenworth, and Christopher Lehman. <i>Pathways to the </i></span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><i> Common Core</i>: Accelerating Achievement. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2012.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><i>College Composition and Communication</i>. Journal of the National Council of </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> Teachers of English. </span>Urbana, IL.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Elbow, Peter. <i>Writing Without Teachers</i>. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Emig, Janet. <i>The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders</i>. Urbana, IL: National </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> Council of Teachers of English, 1971.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Gardner, Howard. <i>The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand</i>. </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> New York: Simon & </span>Schuster, 1999.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Giacobbe, Mary Ellen. <i>Talking, Drawing, Writing: Lessons for Our Youngest </i></span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><i> Writers</i>. </span><span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Portland, </span>ME: Stenhouse Publishers, 2007.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Gladwell, Malcolm. <i>Outliers: The Story of Success</i>. Boston, MA: Little, Brown </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> and </span>Company, 2008.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Graves, Donald H. <i>Balance the Basics: Let Them Write</i>. Ford Foundation, Papers </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> on Reseach About </span>Learning, 1978.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">______________ . <i>Writing: Teachers and Children at Work</i>. Portsmouth, NH: </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> Heinemann, 1983.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Gray, James.<i> Teachers at the Center: A Memoir of the Early Years of the </i></span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><i> National Writing Project</i>. </span>National Writing Project, 2000.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Macrorie, Ken. <i>Searching Writing</i>. New Jersey: Haydon Book Company, 1980.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">____________. <i>The I-Search Paper: Revised Edition of Searching Writing</i>. </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/</span>Cook, 1988.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Moffett, James. <i>Teaching the Universe of Discourse</i>. Boston, MA: Houghton </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> Mifflin, l968.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">____________. <i>Active Voice: A Writing Program Across the Curriculum</i>. </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/</span>Cook, 1981.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Murray, Donald<i>. A Writer Teaches Writing: A Practical Method of Teaching </i></span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><i> Composition</i>. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1968.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Rief, Linda. <i>Seeking Diversity: Language Arts with Adolescents</i>. Portsmouth, </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> NH: </span>Heinemann, 1992.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">Romano, Tom. <i>Clearing the Way: Working with Teenage Writers</i>. Portsmouth, </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> NH: Heinemann, 1987.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;">* Portions of this chapter appeared in different form in the Winter 1996 and </span><br />
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"> Summer 1999 issues of </span>California English.</div>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _GoBack;"><br /></span>
</div>
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<br /></div>
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jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-51344374345820715322013-02-06T23:04:00.003-08:002013-02-06T23:15:33.154-08:00remarks at don rothman's memorial servive 1/26/13<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<span class="GingerNoCheckStart"></span>Remarks <span class="GRcorrect" grcontextid="for:0" grmarkguid="08a2ab6f-15de-4241-90cb-60498f0d58eb" gruiphraseguid="dcdb6703-e124-4807-8c4a-e7c06e1344e6">for</span> Don Rothman Memorial, UCSC, January 26, 2013<br />
<br />
Given Don’s own writings on the subject (see <a href="http://phren-z.org/donrothman.html">http://phren-z.org/donrothman.html</a>), it’s perhaps best to regard the following remarks as a pre-Valentine’s card from me to him.<br />
<br />
Dear Don,<br />
<br />
You’ll recall that, just before we lost contact, we were in the midst of a conversation about Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and particularly about that haunting and altogether curious song that Ariel sings to the recently shipwrecked Ferdinand in the first <span class="GRcorrect" grcontextid="act:0" grmarkguid="7640aa2b-3a73-4300-a4d6-393fedf8f218" gruiphraseguid="8e29be59-8230-4315-a181-2706b7163799">act</span> of the play:<br />
<br />
Full fathom five thy father lies,<br />
Of his bones are coral made:<br />
Those are pearls that were his eyes:<br />
Nothing of him that doth fade,<br />
But doth suffer a sea-change<br />
Into something rich and strange.<br />
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:<br />
[“Ding-dong” heard from afar]<br />
Hark, now I hear them—ding-dong bell.<br />
<br />
Haunting because of the strange notion of one’s father, thirty-odd feet down, being transformed into an icon—a literacy artifact, if you will. Curious because the song is a lie. Ferdinand’s father Alonzo is still very much alive, about to become the object of Antonio’s insistent mischief on the other side of the island.<br />
<br />
But what we were speculating about, you’ll recall, was why this song, this rumination on sons and fathers, had become so <span class="GRcorrect" grcontextid="powerfully:0" grmarkguid="dbbf7453-7f34-4a39-b0a4-65dd458ad820" gruiphraseguid="37a03a47-bb38-4443-aebf-b52ba182c424">powerfully</span> resonant with those of our particular generation, especially men. Men who had been born under the shadow of the nuclear bombs dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; men who experienced their initial years with their mothers as the predominant presences in their lives, their fathers having returned from war to a domestic world, a world of adult relationships between men and women, that they, the fathers, could not begin to comprehend.<br />
<br />
So I’ll use the privilege of my four months’ seniority over you, born as we were in May and September of 1945, to take a few moments to reflect on some of the reasons the lines of Ariel’s song might have stayed with us both with such tenacity over so many years.<br />
<br />
Since this is a song, might we perhaps call it the song of our fathers? And it needs to be disturbing to some degree—those eyes whose attention we craved now turned into sightless pearls—because the death of our fathers is disturbing. We don’t quite know who we are once there’s no longer a paternal presence to approve our successes, chastise our shortcomings. What are we meant to be, once we’ve been freed from the often benign but always persistent parental gaze?<br />
<br />
Perhaps this gets us closer to the reason these lines are so memorable to us both. We were meant to become a new sort of father. We would honor the memory and continuing presence of our own fathers—“Sea-nymphs hourly ring [their] knell/Hark, now I hear them; ding-dong bell”—but we would seek out programs and responsibilities that allowed us a to play a more nurturing role. A more “loving” role, as you would never tire of reminding me to call it.<br />
<br />
I suspect this was what attracted us both to the model of professional development that Jim Gray first introduced to a group of secondary level teachers in 1974, calling it the Bay Area Writing Project. Three years later you founded your own site here at UCSC, calling it the Central Coast Writing Project. As you wrote later, you were anxious to emulate the “unwavering commitment to respectful professional development for teachers” you observed and experienced <span class="GRcorrect" grcontextid="at:0" grmarkguid="f968f303-b175-4ed6-80b6-94206a469516" gruiphraseguid="19555260-db8c-4a9e-8e9b-5925d31ec8c7">at</span> Berkeley. You were equally committed, however, to fostering “a sense of optimism that, working together,” teachers could serve as an antidote to “the humiliation of silence” in the face of “cruelty and injustice.” The Central Coast Writing Project, you wrote, held the potential of becoming “a think tank for social change, using the teaching of writing as a point of leverage.”<br />
<br />
You’ll recall that we first met during those heady years of the late 70’s. I observed you with awe from my vantage point at Teachers College, Columbia University, where I saw intimate connections between the work you were doing with the Central Coast Writing Project and the Oakes College writing program, and the work that Mina Shaughnessy was <span class="GRcorrect" grcontextid="doing:0" grmarkguid="68e707e6-3225-4b74-9a60-96145b26c9db" gruiphraseguid="2c8bfe1a-8417-4bb9-bcd1-8547daceafde">doing</span> with basic writers on the campuses of The City University of New York. As I gradually drew within your orbit, first teaching at Berkeley and Davis, then at the University of Nevada Reno, and finally at San Jose State, we shared stories of teachers, of our growing children, and most importantly of our sense of who we were, essentially, and what we had to offer to the personal and professional worlds we’d increasingly grown to love.<br />
<br />
You began your remarks at your UCSC retirement party a few years back by recalling a dream you’d had the night before. I’d appeared to you in this dream, you said to those who’d assembled for this celebratory occasion, but when I approached it was quite clear that in the interim I’d grown significantly taller. “I wanted to see the world from a new perspective,” you recounted that I told you, “and I thought increasing my height would be an interesting start.”<br />
<br />
Dear Don, you’ve clearly outdone me, outdone your own dream version of me, on the question of enhanced perspective and elevation. And while I’m not about to imagine pearls replacing your perpetually lively, alert, and inquisitive eyes, I will quite happily imagine your bones become <span class="GRcorrect" grcontextid="coral:0" grmarkguid="7d813959-3203-4b38-bb70-2049badfcbad" gruiphraseguid="d3480f27-2f41-4dfb-9b3c-d4abc2b72e4a">coral</span>, your entire essence gradually sea-changed into “something rich and strange.”<br />
<br />
And our role? Why surely it’s to hourly ring your knell. [“Ding-dong” heard from afar]<br />
<br />
Hark, now I hear them, ding-dong bell.<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Jonathan<br />
<div>
<span class="GingerNoCheckEnd"></span><br /></div>
</div>
jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-54872426656278542992012-02-11T13:34:00.001-08:002012-02-11T13:34:48.709-08:002/11/12 cate session on brain design & lesson design<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">CATE session on brain design & lesson design</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">First of all, thanks so much for coming to this session and for putting up with the projector/computer glitches that we experienced at the beginning of the session.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you have any comments to make or questions to ask, feel free to use the comment/response segment of this blog to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your comments will not appear as part of this blog entry, but they will be revealed if a reader activates the “comments” segment of this blog following this entry.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Constructionist Manifesto in its full form (initial article plus quite an interesting group of responses from authors representing a wide range of different fields, can be found by activating the following link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/%7Eraha/CogSci600_web/Readings/wainwright1.pdf">http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~raha/CogSci600_web/Readings/wainwright1.pdf</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">or simply by googling “The neural basis of cognitive development: A constructivist manifesto.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The authors of this article wrote a subsequent book entitled Liars, lovers, and heroes:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>what the new brain science reveals about how we become who we are (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2002) that I personally find a good deal easier to read.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The other main author that Miles was referring to is Michael S. Gazzaniga.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His ideas are presented in their most accessible form in his six Gifford Lectures at The University of Edinburgh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can locate these six lectures by activating the link below:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEA9467E8E8D991AE">http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEA9467E8E8D991AE</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gazzaniga has also written a slew of books, with the most recent being Who’s in charge:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>free will and the science of the brain (New York, NY:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>HarperCollins, 2011).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For my segment of the session on mirror neurons and guided imagery:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The YouTube segment on using “mirror therapy” to treat chronic pain in phantom limbs can be located by activating the following link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL_6OMPywnQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL_6OMPywnQ</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The second YouTube I showed briefly, on using mirror therapy to hasten the repair of injured limbs can be found here:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhanBZQBwiY&feature=endscreen&NR=1">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhanBZQBwiY&feature=endscreen&NR=1</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And Miles and I are both very eager for you to watch the YouTube segment on Broca’s Aphasia, which provides an excellent quick overview on the notion of the brain’s plasticity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See that one here:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUTpel04Nkc">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUTpel04Nkc</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And finally, the May 2009 New Yorker profile of V.S. Ramachandran can be found at:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="">file:///Users/jonathanlovell/Desktop/CSC%2060-61/VS.%20Ramachandran--The%20New%20Yorker.webarchive</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Charlie Rose interview of Ramachandran can be found at:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10468">http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10468</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And finally for those who might be interested, there is an essay on Shelley’s Ozymandias that you will find on this very blog if you travel two blogs back, to Nov 1, 2011.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Thanks again for coming to our session.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We look forward to reading and responding to your comments!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jonathan & Miles</div>jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-86170105242536502302012-01-30T17:30:00.000-08:002012-01-30T17:30:08.663-08:00passion and practiceSomewhat to my surprise, Pearson Publications has accepted for publication a book that 7th-12th grade teachers in the San Jose Area Writing Project have been working on for the past five years, under the able guidance of my colleague Professor Mary Warner, who serves as Co-Director of the program. The book will be called Teaching Writing in an Era of Assessment: Passion and Practice. It's due out in the early spring of 2013. Since my own opening chapter addresses the primary focus of this blog, addressing the question of what practices in the teaching of writing might best reflect what we've learned over the years as concerned practitioners, I'm taking the liberty of posting it in its entirety in this blog entry. I hope you find the time it takes to read this long entry is time well spent.<br />
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">Chapter 1</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">Founders of Writing from the Heart:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Personalizing the Theoretical</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">by Jonathan Lovell</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">In introducing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Teaching Writing in an Era of Assessment:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Passion and Practice</i> with attention to the theorists and theorist-practitioners who served as pioneering founders in the teaching of writing from the heart, my goals are two-fold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am demonstrating the practical but profound influence these founders have had on our practices as teachers of writing, using my own experiences as a writing teacher as an example.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Additionally, I am also putting some flesh on the bones of these seminal thinkers, showing how what they wrote was deeply enmeshed in what they did as practitioners themselves, and in the often profound influence they had on other teachers at very practical levels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For those readers who were not fortunate enough to be participants in the profession during the time these founders were active, my hope is that the personal accounts I give of my interactions with this group of highly original and influential thinkers will provide an avenue for others to come to understand them and their work directly and memorably. It is especially important that this act of recollection and tough-minded homage be done during this “era of assessment,” since the broad, comprehensive, and inspiriting view of language growth that was/is uniformly espoused by these founders is in grave danger of either being marginalized, or even more tragically, simply forgotten.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">And so the story begins:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Scanning over the meager collection of books devoted to the teaching of English at the secondary level, my eyes lighted on a slim paperback publication entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Language, the Learner and the School</i>, by Douglas Barnes, James Britton, and Harold Rosen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was nearing the end of my second and final year of study at Oxford University, visiting Blackwell’s Bookstore for any help their collection might provide for a position I’d soon be assuming in the United States, teaching English to 10<sup>th</sup> and 12<sup>th</sup> graders at an independent day school in Wilmington, Delaware.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">The answer, I was discovering, was “not much.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Blackwell’s devoted only a small segment of its extensive Broad Street floor space to the general topic of education, only a shelf or so to English Education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There wasn’t much to choose from, but I had to start somewhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I bought the slim Penguin paperback and brought it home to my digs on Woodstock Road, just north of the university, to see what help it might offer.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">The perspective of the University of London Institute of Education researchers described in the book drew me in immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What happens, the researchers asked, when students move from being taught by the single teacher of their primary classrooms to the six or seven different teachers of their subject-centered secondary classrooms?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">How do students understand the sometimes conflicting “subject-centered” academic language used by these different teachers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And how does the language these different teachers use to describe and explain their different subject areas compare and contrast to the language the students themselves might use to explain what they’ve learned in their various classes?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I was so intrigued by the differences between the “expressive” language the seventh grade students in the study used to convey their understanding of what they had learned and the academic language used by their teachers that I vowed to conduct my own small classroom experiment as soon as I began my own teaching.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than tell students what I thought they should notice about the short stories we were reading for our 10<sup>th</sup> grade curricula, I would take out my notepad and write down what they said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I was prepared to wait quite a long time, in silence, before I said anything myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Otherwise, so I reasoned, I could not be sure if what I was listening to was my students’ own “expressive” language or their desire to sound as much as possible like their teacher.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">It turned out that my students did have to endure quite long spells of silence in those first few weeks of my teaching, and I’m not certain that I made very productive or beneficial use of the student-centered language that I learned as a result.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I did learn was that the majority of the students I taught were simply not very interested in talking about short works of fiction that had been “pre-packaged” by a publisher who cared little about what interested them, and who marched them doggedly through groups of stories according to what these works of fiction revealed about the salient characteristics of the short story genre.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It did not matter if I did not say a thing, in other words, since the organization and academic focus of the anthology we were using spoke volumes “on my behalf.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I gradually abandoned my experimental role as an observer and recorder of my students’ responses to the short stories they were reading, I did not forget the impact that reading those initial research studies had had on me as an eager and expectant young English teacher.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">When I returned eight years later to the work of this group of researchers, their writing had become much better known, both in England and in the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Led by the influential teaching and writing of James Britton, author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Language and Learning</i> (1972) and head of the English Department at the London Institute for Education during the mid to late 1960s, the world of English Education that I re-entered in the fall of 1977 was abuzz with discussions of “expressive writing,” writing-across-the-curriculum, and the development of writing abilities from the early to the later teenage years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had been hired for my first university level position at Columbia University's Teachers College in New York City that fall, and my job was to organize an MA program in English Education for prospective secondary level teachers and create new PhD programs in the teaching of reading and writing.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I was qualified, however, for neither of these roles, having managed to get through my interview by doing some quick research in the field of composition studies, and somehow managing to persuade my interviewers that I knew what I was talking about. When the spring semester came around, however, I was in deep trouble.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was responsible for teaching a course entitled "Composition for Teachers of English," and my audience was composed of both the dozen or so MA students I had begun to work with that fall as well as about thirty hardened New York City high school English teachers who were taking the course to move up a notch on their salary scales.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">What made teaching this course especially troubling for me, however, was my own writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was trying to complete the second chapter of my Yale University dissertation--a study of the work of the Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti--but what I was in fact doing was crossing out sentences and paragraphs I’d written months earlier, and feeling like I was sinking slowly and inexorably into an ever-deepening verbal morass.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I really needed to do, I remember thinking to myself, was re-title my course "De-composition for Teachers of English."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's a subject I knew something about.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I managed to make it through the first few Monday evening classes, making up the course as I went along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Following the graduate school model with which I was most familiar, I lectured to the class about the research described above by James Britton, John Dixon, and Douglas Barnes that I’d stumbled into before I began teaching at the high school level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As this research evolved in the late sixties and early seventies, it paid increasing attention to the disconnect between the "expressive language" students might use to convey their initial responses to what they read, and the overly dry, academic language they were required to use in their writing, especially as they moved from 7<sup>th</sup> to 12<sup>th</sup> grades.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">While this body of research was indeed quite important, the lecture-discussion style in which I presented it to my class was a disaster:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a modeling of just the sort of dry academic language that Britton, Dixon and Barnes were arguing against.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just how disastrous was revealed to me by a note my chair left on my desk a few weeks into the semester.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I thought I'd better pass along this letter written to Larry Cremin [the then President of Teachers College]," it read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I wouldn't take it overly seriously, but it does suggest problems that might be worth addressing."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A student in my class who was teaching at the innovative private day school to which President Cremin had sent his own children wrote the letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the letter, she referred to a lecture that Cremin had recently given on the need to bring a greater sense of professionalism to teachers at the K-12 level.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An excellent way to start in this direction, she suggested, would be to fire a recently hired assistant professor who was teaching a course entitled "Composition for Teachers of English."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I felt numb.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'd been found out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my imagination, visions appeared of a phalanx of emissaries from the president’s office coming into my next class, lifting me bodily from behind my podium, and carting me away. My students were cheering.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I was sitting disconsolately at my desk, expecting to momentarily find myself and my belongings unceremoniously dumped onto the street, when two of my graduate students walked into my office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"We heard you were having some trouble with that course in the teaching of writing," they told me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"We thought you might find this book helpful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We use it in our basic writing courses at City College and we’ve both found it very successful."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">The book was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Writing Without Teachers</i> (1973) by Peter Elbow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I figured that at that point I had nothing to lose, so I began reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What drew me in immediately was Elbow's account of himself as a writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like me, he’d had more and more trouble with his writing as he progressed from college to graduate school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What drove him into the world of teaching composition, he frankly admitted, was that he’d become hopelessly stuck in the writing of his own dissertation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since his inability to write disqualified him from any potential job he might get teaching English Literature at the college level, the only job he was qualified for, ironically, was as an instructor of freshman composition.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">But Elbow did more than write about his own travails as a writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More usefully for me, he outlined a program for addressing the deep-seated doubts and failures of nerve and confidence that he suggested we all face as writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Start by writing in short bursts, not letting your “editorial mind” prematurely censure what you’ve written.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Try writing these short bursts at unusual times of day and in places you’re sure you couldn’t possibly write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Writing in difficult circumstances" I came to call these writing exercises, practicing it by writing before I'd had my morning coffee, or on the New York City subway as it lurched its way from one end of Manhattan to the other.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">But equally as important as this focus on getting one’s writing going were Elbow's insights into the importance of getting response to one’s writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as the internal editor in our mind tends to censure our work prematurely, so do those who respond to our writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet getting response is crucial to discovering what we have to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"So rather than reading a writer's initial drafts silently," Elbow suggested,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"have authors read aloud what they’ve written."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once through a first time so listeners gain a sense of the content of the writing, then once again a second time so they gain a sense of its emerging shape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Elbow further argued, quite surprisingly and innovatively, that rather than having listeners suggest revisions to the writer, they should describe the after-the-fact effect of hearing the author's words read aloud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Listeners could start by recalling words and phrases they’d remembered from the piece, then they should summarize the piece as a whole, and finally they should tell the author what hearing the piece read aloud led them to think about as they were listening to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These “showing,” “telling,” and “metaphoric” responses should be written down by the listeners, Elbow suggested, then read aloud and handed to the authors who'd who had their pieces responded to in this interestingly non-judgmental fashion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this way, authors could decide how to revise their writing so that it produced effects on listeners that they liked, or that they admired in other pieces they'd heard in their small groups of writers and listeners.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I was fascinated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I decided to put Elbow's approach to the test, producing a “composition manifesto,” as my students came to call it, for my next class.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We will write each week,” I announced to my class, “including your instructor."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I went on to explain that we would form small groups of five or six, read our pieces of writing aloud to one another, and respond in the ways I'd just learned from reading this fascinating new book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we would document what happened to us and to our pieces of writing as we went through this process, using ourselves as objects of study to explore and examine this innovative method of writing instruction.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">And, at least for me and the students in the class that chose to stick it out, our writing--and more importantly our appetite for producing and revising our writing--did indeed improve. Steadily, obviously, and often quite dramatically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I later came to see that what I was doing as a teacher of composition was creating a community of respectful and skilled listener-readers as much as confident and competent writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's what those elaborate rituals of response were all about:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>educating ourselves to the discipline of becoming the readers we’d always hoped for as writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the process of becoming these listener-readers, I further came to understand, writing was “brought out” of us--writing that responded directly to, and was in a sense the creation of, this new community of readers and writers.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Four years later, however, my family and I moved cross-country from Connecticut to California. My wife had been offered a faculty position at UC Berkeley, and in response I left my tenure-track position at Teachers College, assuming a one-year position at UC Davis, where I'd be teaching freshman composition. I was by then in my mid-thirties, having become devoted over my past four years at Teachers College to the teaching of writing and the field of composition studies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought I was pretty hot stuff.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">At Davis, I wasn't.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">There, I was one of forty-odd composition instructors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some were graduate students in English, some were Davis residents, and a few like myself were PhD's in English looking for full-time tenure track positions elsewhere. Everyone taught the same course, using a session-by-session instruction manual based on Frederick Crews' <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Random House Handbook of Rhetoric and Composition</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My three trice-weekly freshman composition classes met in one of the enology labs on campus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A large lab table spread across the entire front of the class, where I would be greeted each morning by the smell of souring grapes, made redolent by the Davis campus’s 100-degree September heat.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">But the students. Products of California's affluent and protected suburbs, they treated composition instructors as service providers whose purpose was to insure that they, the service recipients, maintained their 4.0 GPAs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"What must we do on this comparison/contrast paper to get an A?" they would ask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or "Could you tell us exactly what you want on this descriptive writing assignment?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">They'd arrive at my office hours, graded papers in hand, asking me to show them which words, phrases, and commas they should change to upgrade their paper from a B minus to an A.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon, they were coming up to me as I walked into class, asking me with an edge to their voices if I might "make the next assignment clearer," so they would "know what I wanted" and could "give it to me.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I knew exactly what I wanted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wanted to go to bed, pull the covers up over my head, and assume a fetal position.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of all, I wanted to shake my students by their shoulders until their collective teeth rattled, saying to them:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Write about something that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">matters</i> to you, for the love of heaven, or I will go completely bonkers!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was not in the best frame of mind, that is, to be a conscientious and dutiful service provider for my ever-anxious freshman students.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I particularly recall driving to Davis one morning, numb with apprehension, with a pile of thirty "classification" papers sitting expectantly on the passenger seat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In these papers my students had been asked to "select a generic group of things and describe the features that distinguish the sub-categories that make up this group."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although I'd skimmed these papers the night before, I now had to re-read and grade them before my first morning class, one hour away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every single paper, it seemed to me as I sat at my enology lab table working doggedly to complete this task, described the bicycles ridden on the Davis campus, and the various sub-categories into which these bicycles might be classified.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">"What should we do, Sir, to get an A on this paper?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">"Write about something that matters to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me</i>," I wanted to scream, "or I assure you I will start swinging from the trees outside our classroom windows and loping across campus on my legs and forepaws."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I was in the middle of my first semester, my desk at home littered with piles of composition assignments I could not bear to look at, when I received a call from my former chairman at Teachers College.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because our decision to move to California was made quite late in the prior semester, my chair had decided to leave my position vacant for a year so that a departmental committee could conduct a proper search for my replacement.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">"We have an interesting candidate for your English Education position," my chairman said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I wonder if you could help us out."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He explained that while the candidate's research had been in the general field of English Education, she'd focused her studies on elementary level students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"But it's first-rate stuff," my chairman said, "really first rate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Could you give this candidate a call, perhaps have her send you her current work-in-progress, and write an evaluation to the search committee of her appropriateness for the position?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">"Glad to," I replied, trying to sound confident and in charge of my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Do you want me to be an advocate for the position as well?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would suspect she's being courted by other universities." My chairman replied that he’d be pleased if I would, describing the candidate as a “rare find."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I called her the following weekend, and in response to her asking if Columbia usually called candidates as parts of their searches, told her that hers was an unusual case.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">"'Unusual' good or 'unusual' bad?" she asked me.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">"'Unusual' good," I said, mentioning my chair's reference to her as a "rare find."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">"How would he know?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What's he read of mine he likes so much?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">This is more difficult than I'd anticipated, I thought to myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wonder what she has written?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I asked her about her research.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">She told me she was just now writing the fourth chapter of her dissertation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was an account of the two years she’s spent as a participant-observer in a third and fourth grade classroom in southern New Hampshire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As she described her research, her voice became animated, recounting in lively detail both what she'd discovered and some of the frustrations of conveying the excitement of these discoveries within the rigid rules governing the writing of an NYU dissertation.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I asked her if she might send me what she’d written so far, telling her I’d enjoy reading what she’d just described, and that it would help me write a letter for the Teachers College search committee on her behalf. "How do I know you'll write in my behalf?" she asked me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"You haven't read what I've written.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only listened to what I've said about it."</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I laughed, telling her she'd just have to take that risk.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">The manuscript arrived a week later on a Saturday: 300 pages wrapped in brown paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I started reading immediately. The content drew me in at once, fascinated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here were third and fourth graders writing exactly as I wanted my college freshmen to write:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>choosing topics of consequence to them: experimenting with different modes of writing--narrative, poetry, drama--to express what they knew or wanted to explore about these topics; getting thoughtful and respectful feedback on their pieces from both their teachers and fellow classmates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the writing that the students in these classrooms produced was absolutely stunning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Several years later, when I used the book that emerged from this dissertation, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lessons From a Child</i> (1983), as one of the textbooks for a college level writing course I was teaching, a student came into my office shortly after the class had begun, asking anxiously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"You don't expect us to write as well as the kids in this book, do you?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I wrote the author a postcard after reading the first chapter, telling her how much I admired what I had just read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Further responses followed, singling out passages for praise, raising questions, and occasionally making suggestions for revision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After every few chapters I wrote a longer response, summing up what I felt that section of the manuscript had accomplished and where I thought the author’s argument was taking me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the next two weeks, this riveting narrative, a study that focused primarily on the writing growth of one student moving from third to fourth grade, held my attention almost exclusively.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Finally, I was done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was as if I'd been in a kind of trance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I woke up, looked around, attended to the many papers that had been accumulating on my desk in my “absence,” and returned to the chore of teaching my Davis classes, now oddly at peace about my overly eager students and my own tepid commitment to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wrote an enthusiastic review of the candidate for my former department, which I first showed to my then middle school aged daughter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"It's well written, Dad," she remarked, "but this person does walk on the ground like the rest of us, doesn't she?"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">The author of that small but seminal volume, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lessons from a Child</i>, was Lucy Calkins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As it turned out, she was selected for the position at Teachers College, where she is still teaching today. Having written, among many other publications, the highly successful <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Units of Study for Teaching Writing</i> (K-2 and 3-5), and having directed the influential Teachers College Reading and Writing Project over many years, it’s now clear that she does indeed walk on the ground like the rest of us, only a good deal more sure-footedly and quite a bit faster!</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">In the spring and fall of 1982, however, the University of New Hampshire based group through which Lucy Calkins was introduced to the field of composition research was just starting to gain wide attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its leader was Donald Graves, known at the time primarily through his authorship of the Ford Foundation monograph <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Balance the Basics:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let Them Write</i> (1978).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this powerful study, Graves had pointed out that for every dollar spent on the teaching of writing, one hundred dollars are spent on the teaching of reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even more tellingly, he noted that for every dollar spent for research on the teaching of writing, one thousand are spent for research on the teaching of reading. His conclusion was that by not taking advantage of a child’s initial urge to write rather than to read, we significantly underestimate the power of the “output languages” of writing and speaking in favor of the “input languages” of reading and listening.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">This monograph, along with the fact that Graves was receiving the David H. Russell Research Award for authoring this study and concurrently publishing his seminal work <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Writing: Teachers and Children at Work</i> (1982), was creating quite a stir in the hallways and sessions of the 1982 NCTE Annual Convention in Washington, DC.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a rather wide-eyed attendee at this conference, I was greatly impressed with the energetic and dedicated coterie of younger scholars that Don Graves had drawn into his orbit: Lucy Calkins of Teachers College (discussed above), Nancie Atwell of Boothbay Harbor, Maine (soon to publish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In the Middle: Writing, Reading, and Learning with Adolescents</i> in 1987), Mary Ellen Giacobbe of Atkinson, New Hampshire (later to publish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Talking, Drawing, Writing:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lessons for Our Youngest Writers</i> in 2007), Linda Rief of Durham, New Hampshire (later to publish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seeking Diversity: Language Arts with Adolescents</i> in 1992), and Tom Romano of Edgewood High School in Trenton, Ohio (soon to publish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clearing the Way: Working with Teenage Writers</i> in 1987).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I was also impressed with what I took to be the fundamentally important perception about language growth on which much of the research and practice of this University of New Hampshire group was based.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">This perception might be expressed by observing that while most parents would never dream of putting their hands over their children’s mouths if they uttered the words “mama” or “papa,” telling them not to speak until they could say the words “mother” or “father,” something analogous was happening quite routinely in the teaching of writing in our nation’s public school classrooms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than recognizing and honoring children’s desire to write, as well as their confidence they had something important to say, and rather than learning the predictable patterns of “invented spelling” that children routinely use when they begin to write, teachers were closing the door on these nascent efforts at written communication, focusing their attention instead on handwriting, spelling, and the basic punctuation conventions of simple sentences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By imposing this adult perception of the “fundamentals” of written communication prematurely, teachers of younger children, and not a few older children, were unwittingly creating a nation of students who either hated to write or were convinced that they were terrible at the practice of this fundamentally important skill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was just as if those parents had indeed put their hands over their children’s mouths when they began to speak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The analogous result would be that we would have raised a nation of children who would have been essentially chastised into silence.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">That’s effectively what we’d done in our practices in the teaching of writing, specifically in this era of ever-increasing high-profile assessments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than capitalize on the simplicity and depth of Graves’ innovative understanding of how students might grow as writers, and how we might assist them more humanely and productively in our practices as teachers, we were increasingly focusing on segmenting writing into component parts that were “testable,” and in the process largely destroying our students’ urge or desire to write.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I had the opportunity to try out this understanding of language development with my own younger daughter the following spring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Holly was in the second half of her first grade year at a public elementary school in Berkeley, California, and was having a terrible time with her reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order to provide her with extra help at home, her well meaning teacher was sending short mimeographed and stapled together “children’s books,” with stories that contained only the words the first graders had learned in school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My daughter hated these dry, often nonsensical stories and would simply refuse to read them, despite all the gentle prodding her father tried to provide.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">After nights of frustration, I finally hit on the option that should have been obvious to me from my growing familiarity with the work of the University of New Hampshire researchers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had Holly tell me the story that she “heard” behind the bare bones of the restricted vocabulary children’s book she was being required to master.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As she told me the quite wildly invented “recreation” that was beginning to inform her understanding of her no-longer-so-simple story, I would write this longer narrative on the facing pages of her small mimeographed text.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a number of repeated readings, with much laughter, of this facing page “subtext,” Holly was gradually persuaded to “return” to the restricted vocabulary of her simple story and read it as a dim whisper of the story it was, so to speak, trying to become.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This personal experience of the difference that a teacher could make by attending to the language capacities of a young reader or writer, rather than his or her perceived limitations, deepened my conviction of the importance of the work being carried out during the 1980s by teacher-researchers at the University of New Hampshire.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">A few months after these enlightening experiments with my younger daughter, I applied and was selected for a position as an Associate Professor of English and Education at the University of Nevada, Reno.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The commute was not ideal—I’d fly up to Reno on Sunday and fly back to Berkeley Thursday evening—but the community of public school teachers and university faculty to which I was introduced was eye-opening and inspiriting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of my new position’s job requirements was that I collaborate with a group of K-college teachers who formed a professional development community known as the Northern Nevada Writing Project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I had some familiarity with the Writing Project through my collaboration with Sondra Perl and Richard Sterling, the New York City Writing Project Directors while I was at Teachers College, my experience was still quite limited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As part of my on-the-job training for my new position at UNR, might I apply for the Bay Area Writing Project’s upcoming Invitational Summer Institute?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did, and was rewarded with the richest and most consequential professional development experience I’d known since becoming involved in the field of English Education.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I spent over four and a half weeks in the summer of 1984 in the company of 25 other K-college teachers on the UC Berkeley campus, under the direction of Jim Gray, founder of the Writing Project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having now served as a director or co-director of 28 subsequent summer institutes, it seems clear to me that there is a compelling connection between the inspiration for attending to younger students’ beginning writing development among the researchers at the University of New Hampshire and the more or less concurrent founding of the Bay Area Writing Project at the University of California at Berkeley in the mid-70s.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Both the University of New Hampshire program under Don Graves, and the University of California Berkeley/Bay Area Writing Project program under Jim Gray, began with the perception that there were talents and abilities among their target populations that had gone largely unnoticed because these quite different populations had not been given the opportunity to “see” the emergence of their own abilities in a concrete and convincing manner. In the case of young children, this was largely because most teachers believed that several small “steps” needed to be mastered before younger writers could “walk” with confidence as mature writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the case of practicing teachers, the worker-supervisor model under which the field of public school teaching continues to function today made it highly unlikely that administrators would see their “teacher-workers” as sources of valuable and insightful knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looked at from this perspective, neither the young writers in Don Graves’ initial studies of elementary school children in Atkinson, New Hampshire nor the mostly middle and high school teachers who made up the Bay Area Writing Project’s initial 1974 Invitational Summer Institute were accustomed to being heard or listened to with the idea that they had something important to say, something important to teach the rest of us.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">In the University of New Hampshire research studies, what gives young writers the confidence they have something to say is the time and the patience their teachers provide for them to think through and draft and revise their pieces of writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the Writing Project summer institutes, what builds this confidence in having something worthwhile to say is the amount of time—generally about an hour and a half—that every participant is given to present a workshop demonstration of a “best practice” in the teaching of writing to the other participants in the institute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both practices accomplish similar goals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They begin with individuals who are uncertain or deeply skeptical that their “words” are worth listening to, and they provide these individuals with an attentive and respectful audience, an audience that helps to bring forth the very “words of consequence” that the young writers or selected teachers are half-convinced they do not possess.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">It is no accident that both programs have come round to a belief in the fundamental importance of teachers as writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The forerunner to the Writing Project, as Jim Gray explains in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Teachers at the Center</i> (2000), led to the somewhat accidental creation of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“afternoon writing groups” in which small groups of teachers write and get response to their writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This now-standard feature of all Writing Project summer institutes was an unanticipated outcome--during pre-1974 years when Gray’s summer institutes were located on the UC Davis campus and were NDEA funded--of several high school teachers’ desire to “try out” some of the practices in the teaching of writing that had been presented during the “practice oriented” morning sessions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Similarly, it was only in his later writings that Don Graves began to understand and stress the importance of teachers consistently bringing their own experience as writers to their conferences and mini-lessons with their students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A major legacy then of Don Graves and Jim Gray is this focus on teachers as writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">This same focus on teachers as writers marks the contributions of three final founders of “writing from the heart”:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Donald Murray, Ken Macrorie, and James Moffett.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All three exerted a profound influence on the ways that teachers of writing thought about their practice, and all three were models of the fundamental importance of linking the teaching of writing inextricably with the practice of skilled writers.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">It was Don Murray’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Writer Teaches Writing: A Practical Method of Teaching Composition</i> (1968) that I read, along with Janet Emig’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders</i> (1971), in preparation for my 1977 interview for the English Education position at Teachers College.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was not then familiar with the term “process writing” or with the notion that a piece of writing might go through several stages between inception and finished product.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What struck me in Murray’s accounts of his own practices as a writer, however, was how authentic, and not infrequently, how moving they sounded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His own words fairly leapt off the page, and it was clear to me that the urgency and vitality of what he had to say were directly related to the honesty with which he described, and often dissected, his own practices as he moved slowly and often painfully from initial draft to final product.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The “lesson” conveyed to me by Murray’s book was two-fold:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>writing is far more messy and labor-intensive than had been generally acknowledged by traditional approaches to the teaching of writing, and the most convincing and heart-felt instruction in this field of endeavor would come from someone who was himself or herself a passionate practitioner.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">While I was not fully aware of it at the time, I’m certain today that it was Murray’s call to arms in this respect that led me to insist, in my “composition manifesto” to my Teachers College students, that we would all write, “including your instructor,” and that we would reflect on what we’d learned about our own writing in relation to our teaching of writing, as we progressed from draft to draft on our various pieces of writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m equally certain that it’s Don Murray’s message that reverberates in my mind today as I ask the participants in our San Jose Area Writing Project Summer Institutes to use their end-of-institute evaluations, in part, to describe their experiences with their afternoon writing response groups, and to reflect on what they will take from these experiences to their classrooms in the coming year. Two of the participants’ responses from our 2011 summer institute indicate the power of the connection that teachers begin to make once they see themselves as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">writers</i> teaching writing:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 27.0pt; margin-right: 27.0pt; margin-top: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In the afternoon writing groups I discovered several important things. Most important to me was that I was able to express my thoughts and feelings through my writing and sharing with my group without hesitation or apprehension.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My group gave me positive feedback and useful ideas on how to improve my writing pieces. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 27.0pt; margin-right: 27.0pt; margin-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 27.0pt; margin-right: 27.0pt; margin-top: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Because of this positive experience with writing groups I will use this form of working in small writing groups or possibly with a partner in my classroom to help students get positive and useful feedback from their peers, of course, after a lot of modeling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Assigning a set time for our afternoon writing groups made it possible for writing to happen. In this way I will be sure to include in my lessons writing time, not just district writing on demand or reading prompts but good old fashioned “just write” about anything. </i></div><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: right;">--Mary C, First Grade Teacher</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 27.0pt; margin-right: 27.0pt; margin-top: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My experience with my afternoon writing group was very cathartic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We would meet after each morning session and debrief everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of our afternoons were spent talking and reminiscing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After writing and reading so much, but having little time to comment… most of us were bursting at the seams to share… anything and everything. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We found ourselves sharing stories, life experiences, quotes, comments, concerns, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We would jot down ideas, etc. then parade home with “homework” and writing assignments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It turned out that this was what led to the majority of the creative spark for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would take most of this home, let it percolate, and then start my actual writing around 10 pm or so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 27.0pt; margin-right: 27.0pt; margin-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 27.0pt; margin-right: 27.0pt; margin-top: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I think the biggest experiences I will take to my classroom for this coming year are the options that were provided by our Afternoon Writing Group facilitator and the fact that, sometimes, you just have to talk about things before you write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes I assign things without talking through them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think it would help to allow students to sit in writing groups of about 3 or 4 to bounce ideas off one another before they start writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This could help get their creative spark lit.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: right;">--Katie N, 9<sup>th</sup>-10<sup>th</sup> Grade Teacher</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-right: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">Both these responses demonstrate the significance of Don Murray’s insistence that teachers of writing not only “talk the talk” but also “walk the walk.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we face increasingly formulaic approaches to the teaching of writing in our public school classrooms, spurred on by concerns with whether or not we are preparing our students successfully for “writing-on-demand” statewide tests, it is helpful to remember Don Murray’s frequent admonition that creating pieces of writing worth reading involves a process that is by nature messy, unpredictable, and unceasingly difficult.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: windowtext;">If Don Murray represents the typical New Englander in his dedication to a strong work ethic shading towards simple dogged persistence, Ken Macrorie represents the constitutional irreverence of the typical westerner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He never met a grammar rule he didn’t like . . . to break. Born in the Mississippi River town of Moline, Illinois, Macrorie frequently evokes in his stance toward writing, and in his own writing voice, an echo of Mark Twain: “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author” (preface to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It therefore comes as something of a surprise that during his long career Macrorie was a good deal more involved than Murray, who was five years his junior, in working within traditional organizations in the field of English Education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was a Professor of English at Western Michigan University from 1961 to 1978, where his focus was on teacher training (or “re-educating teachers trapped in unproductive teaching methods,” as he put it).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He served as editor of NCTE’s professional journal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">College Composition and Communication</i> from 1962 to 1964, when it was regarded as the leader of the assault on the “current traditional” paradigm in writing instruction. And finally, he served for thirteen years, both before and after his retirement from WMU, at the renowned Breadloaf Graduate School of English, a summer master’s program conducted under the auspices of Vermont’s Middlebury College, where he taught practicing high school teachers to become writers and to take that knowledge back to their classrooms.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: windowtext;">In terms of the focus of this chapter, however, it will be Macrorie’s re-conceptualizing of the writing of the traditional research paper that will serve to illuminate his many contributions to the field of writing instruction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book that introduced most of us to Macrorie’s boldly original reconsideration of research writing was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Searching Writing</i> (1980), or as the book was more helpfully re-titled in 1988, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The I-Search Paper</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Chapter 6 of this book, you will read how two middle school teachers, Brandy Appling-Jenson and Carolyn Anzia, and one high school teacher, Kathleen González, have adapted Macrorie’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I-Search Paper</i> strategies for their own classrooms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this chapter, however, I focus on the impact Macrorie’s original text had on my teaching of my initial freshman composition classes at San José State University in the fall of 1987.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Like most college level freshman composition programs, San José State required the completion of a “research paper” as part of every student’s introductory level writing requirements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the one hand, I understood the rationale for this requirement, since such “academic” writing would be routinely required of students as they moved on to higher level university classes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other hand, I was all too aware of the pull my students would feel toward simply “lifting” their material from previously published sources, and was not myself unsympathetic to this pull.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s one we have all felt to one degree or another, after all, and it’s especially understandable when beginning level college writers are placed in academic environments where they have very little notion of what constitutes authentically compelling academic writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This dilemma is compounded for beginning level college students, moreover, by the fact that their instructor in a college classroom is often far more knowledgeable about a given topic of research than they are themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wouldn’t it make sense, in such a situation, to “make use” of writing that had already passed muster, so to speak, rather than venturing into the dark and uncharted waters of academic prose on one’s own?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: windowtext;">This is where Macrorie’s understanding of what it meant to search, whether for an obscure bit of evidence that might illuminate a larger academic argument or for something as relatively mundane as the best price on a car stereo system, came to the fore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He urged writing instructors to start small, to begin by making such searches interesting and relevant to the lives of one’s students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t recall if Macrorie also suggested a Graffiti Board Gallery Walk to heighten interest in these initial searches, but that’s what I did with my own San José State freshman classes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone wrote down their research question on a large piece of poster paper (with one nervy freshman writing in his, somewhat predictably, “what is the meaning of life?”) and then everyone in the class did a gallery walk past these posters, writing graffiti-like comments on these “Graffiti Boards” if you knew something about the search’s object or if you had a suggestion for the author about how he or she might pursue the search.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: windowtext;">The next steps were to “research one’s topic” (which I translated for my students into “find out what you can, over the next few weeks, about the object of your search”) and to keep a running record of the steps one took to move closer to discovering answers to his or her search/research question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least one interview with one informant was required for the search, and these I customarily prepared for by setting a question for the class as a whole and then bringing in an informant that the class could collectively interview.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A further requirement was for a “saturation report,” where the researcher would describe a setting that had come to be significant in his or her search.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As with the whole-class interviews with a pre-designated informant, I would generally take the class on a short “field trip” around the building in which the class was being held, and ask everyone to select a setting they found memorable and describe that setting in a way the rest of the class might recognize.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: windowtext;">The culmination of the I-Search paper was for students to write a narration of their pursuit of their question, starting with what they knew or didn’t know about their topic; an “argument” that explained to their readers why the question they were pursuing was important to them; the steps they took to learn the answer(s) to their question (including the interview and the saturation report); and a conclusion that summarized what they had learned by the time “the whistle blew” and they had to end their search; and what their next steps might be, should they be fortunate enough to take up this search once again at a later date.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Needless to say, issues with plagiarism were simply non-existent with such a rich and compelling experience of “researching” a question of one’s own choosing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What quite surprised me, however, was the vibrancy and liveliness of my students’ voices in the papers they turned in.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: windowtext;">I was so impressed with the papers I read that I sent a batch to Macrorie himself, living then in retirement in Las Cruces, New Mexico.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wrote back a month or so later, explaining that it took him some time to read through what I’d sent him and asking me to please send less next time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While he could not fully understand, he went on to write, how my students managed to survive my “barrage” of instructions (I used what I called a “running syllabus” with my students, writing a one page single-spaced narrative anticipating what we would be doing for each successive class), the papers they wrote clearly demonstrated that I must be doing something right. “They are a delight,” he concluded. “So loose in the saddle, so lively, so uncluttered with the usual hogwash of freshman compositions.” I could hardly have asked for a more satisfying recognition of my students’ writing abilities, nor a more compelling argument for the value of re-conceiving the research paper as a authentic quest, placing the student writer at its center.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: windowtext;">In focusing on the final founder of writing from the heart, James Moffett, I return to my early days teaching at The Tower Hill School in Wilmington, Delaware, then fast-forward to my final two years teaching the Teachers College course in “Composition for Teachers of English” described earlier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My purpose in doing so is to illustrate the profound influence that the theorists discussed in this chapter have had, and continue to have, on the practice of writing at all levels, and also to illustrate how these theories might be practically applied in actual, concrete teaching situations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: windowtext;">At Tower Hill, I enjoyed and was stimulated by teaching my 12<sup>th</sup> graders, but it was my 10<sup>th</sup> graders I truly loved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were at such a volatile and important stage in their intellectual and emotional development, and I came to believe that if I taught wisely I could make a big difference to their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What was at issue, to my mind, was whether or not I could persuade my 10<sup>th</sup> graders to entertain more than one point of view on a given subject.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I used to put it to myself in fairly simple terms: either I will be successful in this endeavor over the course of the year or my students would become . . . Republicans--a segment of the adult Wilmington population that I believed was already far too numerous.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What frustrated me in trying to come up with teaching practices that would serve to jostle my 10<sup>th</sup> graders from their often quite strong allegiance to a single pre-determined position was the pervasive influence of the five paragraph theme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As described by Janet Emig in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders</i>, the “Fifty-Star Theme,” as Emig nicknamed the five paragraph theme, was both frustratingly persistent in the secondary level English language arts curriculum and wholly unrelated to any real purpose or practice in the larger world:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: .25in; margin-top: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Why is the Fifty-Star Theme so tightly lodged in the American composition curriculum?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reason teachers often give is that this essentially redundant form, devoid of content in at least two of its five parts, exists outside their classrooms, and in very high places-- freshman English classes, business communication, and in the “best practices” of the “best writers.” This fantasy is easy to disprove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If one takes a collection of writers who current critical judgment would agree are among our best, can one find a single example of any variation of the Fifty-Star Theme? The answer is no. (97)</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I found I could persuade my 10<sup>th</sup> graders to “inhabit” a point of view different from their own by engaging them in dramatic re-enactments—a practice I took great pleasure in when I came to teach my unit on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Romeo and Juliet</i>--but when my 10<sup>th</sup> graders wrote an argumentative or persuasive paper, all the intellectual and emotional suppleness they displayed in their dramatic re-enactments went out the window.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Was Friar Lawrence to blame for Romeo and Juliet’s tragic deaths?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He certainly was, so argued my 10<sup>th</sup> grade students, and here is how we will prove it to you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We will devote our first paragraph to a thesis stating that he was guilty, then we will write three “body” paragraphs in which we will locate details from the play (or more likely from Cliff Notes versions of the play) that support our thesis, and we will finish with a concluding paragraph that reminds you that Friar Lawrence was indeed guilty of the tragic deaths of Romeo and Juliet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I found myself, not too surprisingly, assigning more and more dramatic re-enactments and fewer and fewer “persuasive papers” for my 10<sup>th</sup> graders as I progressed from my first to my third year of teaching, I never found a satisfactory way of addressing the deeper question of how to dislodge my students, at least in their writing, from the safety and security of their pre-determined positions.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Eight years later, at Teachers College, when I began teaching my “Composition for Teachers of English” course for a third time, I faced a similar but more vexing version of this same “I dare you to challenge my pre-determined opinion” mind-set.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My writing course now used both Peter Elbow’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Writing Without Teachers</i> (1973) and James Moffett’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Teaching the Universe of Discourse</i> (1968) as its primary texts, and had become well enough known and highly enough regarded to attract a small but vocal population of TESOL graduate students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“This business of a student-centered approach to writing development is perhaps well and good for English speaking students,” they argued, “but it simply will not work with our ESL adult populations.” These TESOL teachers were quite clear that what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their</i> students needed were clearly structured lessons with a strong focus on grammar and conventions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“How are they going to avoid making mistakes in their writing unless we, as their teachers, point these out to them?” they would ask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“And if we were to put this Elbow nonsense to use in our classrooms, all we’d be doing is having the blind lead the blind.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">While I did not think these opinions about the writing development of adult ESL students were necessarily correct, I could not challenge them effectively as a practitioner since my own experience was limited to a single summer’s teaching in Hong Kong in the mid-60s. How might I introduce points of view that gently questioned these quite plausible pedagogical certainties?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How might I do so without claiming more than I could reasonably claim on the basis of my own quite limited teaching experience with adult ESL learners?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Conveniently enough, the answer came right from Moffett’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Teaching the Universe of Discourse</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Start by understanding how difficult it is, I imagined Moffett suggesting to me, to theorize about best practices in the teaching of writing to ESL adults.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To do so convincingly involves not only imagining a large general audience of readers, but also the ability to hypothesize “what could happen” in many future ESL classrooms beyond those in which one has actually taught.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">These imagined admonitions came from a theory of discourse that Moffett had been developing since his early years teaching English to high school students at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As presented in the collection of articles that formed the basis of his book, this theory posited that all acts of written communication could be understood as occurring at one point or another of a “ladder” of increasing abstraction regarding the “distance” between the author and his or her subject on the one hand, or between the author and his or her reader on the other (see Figure 1 below).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A writer writing notes to himself or herself about an object or event that was close at hand--“what is happening”--would be engaged in writing that represented the closest possible “distance” between author and both audience and subject. Conversely, a writer presenting a theory about “what might happen” in a periodical designed for a general readership would be engaged in writing that represented the greatest possible “distance” between both subject and audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It did not take me long to realize, given this perspective on writing an “argumentative” paper, that I was asking my Teachers College TESOL students to write persuasively from something akin to the farthest points “out” in both directions of Moffett’s abstraction ladder: telling “what happens” in adult ESL classes while addressing a wide (although wholly imagined) audience of general readers.</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow";">Figure 1:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>James Moffett’s Ladder of Abstraction<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=30860520#_ftn1" name="_ftnref" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">*</span></a></span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 114.05pt;" valign="top" width="114"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(speaker, writer)</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 116.7pt;" valign="top" width="117"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;"> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 60.05pt;" valign="top" width="60"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="height: 204px; left: 0px; margin-left: 39px; margin-top: 3px; mso-ignore: vglayout; position: absolute; width: 159px; z-index: 251656704;"><img height="204" src="file:///Users/jonathanlovell/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_image001.png" width="159" /></span><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 101.65pt;" valign="top" width="102"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 114.05pt;" valign="top" width="114"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="height: 204px; left: 0px; margin-left: 75px; margin-top: 3px; mso-ignore: vglayout; position: absolute; width: 167px; z-index: 251657728;"><img height="204" src="file:///Users/jonathanlovell/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_image002.png" width="167" /></span><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 116.7pt;" valign="top" width="117"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 2;"> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 60.05pt;" valign="top" width="60"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 101.65pt;" valign="top" width="102"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 114.05pt;" valign="top" width="114"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #ff6600; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">DRAMA</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #ff6600; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(monologues, journals)</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 116.7pt;" valign="top" width="117"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 3;"> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 60.05pt;" valign="top" width="60"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 101.65pt;" valign="top" width="102"> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: green; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Self to self</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: green; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Inner verbalization</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 116.7pt;" valign="top" width="117"> <div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Recording what</span></div><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">IS HAPPENING</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="54"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 5;"> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 60.05pt;" valign="top" width="60"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td rowspan="2" style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 101.65pt;" valign="top" width="102"> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: green; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Self to another person (outer verbalization);</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: green; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">familiar, trusted audience</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div></td> <td rowspan="2" style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 114.05pt;" valign="top" width="114"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #ff6600; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">NARRATIVE</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: purple; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(story)</span></div></td> <td rowspan="2" style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 116.7pt;" valign="top" width="117"> <div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Reporting what</span></div><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">HAD HAPPENED</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div></td> <td rowspan="2" style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="54"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 6;"> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 60.05pt;" valign="top" width="60"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td rowspan="6" style="layout-flow: vertical-ideographic; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 32.35pt;" valign="top" width="32"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 5.65pt; margin-right: 5.65pt; margin-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 7;"> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 60.05pt;" valign="top" width="60"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 101.65pt;" valign="top" width="102"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 114.05pt;" valign="top" width="114"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: purple; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">EXPOSITION</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: purple; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(analysis</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: purple; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">definition)</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 116.7pt;" valign="top" width="117"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 8;"> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 60.05pt;" valign="top" width="60"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 101.65pt;" valign="top" width="102"> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: green; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Self to known group; familiar audience</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 114.05pt;" valign="top" width="114"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 116.7pt;" valign="top" width="117"> <div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Generalizing</span></div><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">WHAT HAPPENS</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="54"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 9;"> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 60.05pt;" valign="top" width="60"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 101.65pt;" valign="top" width="102"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 114.05pt;" valign="top" width="114"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: purple; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">ARGUMENTATION</span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 116.7pt;" valign="top" width="117"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 10;"> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 60.05pt;" valign="top" width="60"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 101.65pt;" valign="top" width="102"> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: green; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Self to anonymous group; remote audience</span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 114.05pt;" valign="top" width="114"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 116.7pt;" valign="top" width="117"> <div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Generalizing and Inferring</span></div><div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">WHAT WILL, MAY, COULD HAPPEN</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow"; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div></td> <td style="padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: .75in;" valign="top" width="54"> <div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Assisted by a sequence of mimeographed writing assignments then circulating among those familiar with Moffett’s work (soon to be published, in 1981, as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Active Voice: A Writing Program across the Curriculum</i>), I began to design a cumulative sequence of writing assignments along lines suggested by Moffett’s ladders of abstraction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My professed purpose was to present a practical application of Moffett’s theory of discourse so that everyone in the class could experience this rather complex theory first-hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My subversive goal, however, was to see if I might unsettle some of the fixed notions of conventional, grammar-oriented writing instruction that were held to so vehemently by my TESOL students.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">I started by asking my students to write from the perspective of a speaker on a soapbox in Central Park who was advocating for practices in the teaching of writing that were the opposite of those presently held by the author.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What would such a speaker say to defend his or her position?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What arguments and examples would such a speaker use to convince his or her listeners of the compelling nature of his or her point of view?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Next, I asked my students to write out a dialogue between this strident soapbox speaker and themselves, toning down the stridency of the speaker’s stance so that the conversation might be civilized and even-tempered.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Third, I asked my students to imagine that the speaker moved upstate so that face-to-face conversation was no longer possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I advised that the conversation be continued, but this time as an exchange of medium length letters (I suggested four; many students wrote six to eight).</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">Finally, as this sequence of writing assignments evolved as I taught it for my second and final year at Teachers College, I asked my students to step back and imagine they had just discovered this exchange of letters and had decided to edit them for publication.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They would provide a preface in which they told readers something about the backgrounds of the two writers, insofar as they had been able to “unearth” these personal backgrounds in their “research.” They would also say something about the importance of the topic these two letter writers were addressing—a level of importance that led them to decide to publish this consequential exchange of views.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">As it turned out, I never did add the final step I had originally envisioned for this sequence:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>transforming this final “edited exchange of letters” into a formal argumentative essay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think what we all realized by the time we became “editors” of these two correspondents’ exchange of letters is that the forcefulness of one or another of their opening points of view was far less interesting than what motivated them to adopt their initially antagonistic stances and what led them to engage in extended correspondence with one another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I do know for sure is that I simply stopped hearing about the “one right way” to teach writing to adult ESL students, or to non-ESL high school students in New York City public schools for that matter, and I did hear a great deal about the “characters” that my students had brought into being as a result of the seriousness with which they assumed their roles as editors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I would say today is that this particular sequence of writing assignments utilized my 10<sup>th</sup> grade students’ ability to “inhabit” the role of someone other than themselves, putting this talent in the service of helping us all to view those holding opinions diametrically opposite to our own with greater understanding and sympathy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And isn’t that what “teaching towards adulthood” is all about?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the contribution that Moffett helped us realize:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we were all teaching writing in a wider “universe of discourse” where our roles were to help our students and ourselves come into greater awareness of our capacities not only as writers but also as more fully developed human beings.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">The chapters of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Teaching Writing in an Era of Assessment:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Passion and Practice</i> that follow introduce a wide range of teaching practices that have been refined and modified over the years by middle and high school teachers committed, as were these founders of writing from the heart, to the centrality of writing in their English Language Arts curricula and to the potential of each of their students as writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the last twelve years, with its emphasis on educational policy focusing exclusively on “accountability” as measured by test scores, have unquestionably been difficult and frustrating times for these teachers, they have each found ways to “make their writing curriculum work for them,” to borrow Tim Gunn’s memorable dictum from Project Runway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since each of these teachers is also a writer, as well as a colleague with whom I’ve worked directly in one or another of the Invitational Summer Institutes of the San Jose Area Writing Project, they also represent a group about which I’m especially proud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not only have they found a way to bring their passion for writing and the teaching of writing to their students, they have also found the time, energy and commitment to bring what they have learned to the wider audience of this book’s readers.</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">References and Resources</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Atwell, Nancie. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In the Middle: Writing, Reading, and Learning with Adolescents.</i> Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, l987.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Barnes, Douglass; Britton, James; Rosen, Harold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Language, the Learner and the School</i>. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1969.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Britton, James. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Language and Learning. </i>Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1970.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Calkins, Lucy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lessons from a Child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1983.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">____________ . <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grades 3-5. </i>Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2007.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">_____________ . <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Units of Study For Primary Writing: A Yearlong Curriculum.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">College Composition and Communication</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Journal of the National Council of Teachers of English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Urbana, IL.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Elbow, Peter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Writing Without Teachers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Oxford University Press, l973.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Emig, Janet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Composing Process of Twelfth Graders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1971.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Giacobbe, Mary Ellen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Talking, Drawing, Writing: Lessons for Our Youngest Writers.</i> Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers, 2007.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Graves, Donald H.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Balancing the Basics: Let Them Write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Ford Foundation, 1978.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">______________ . <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Writing: Teachers and Children at Work. </i>Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1982.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Gray, James. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Teachers at the Center: A Memoir of the Early Years of the National Writing Project</i>. National Writing Project, 2000</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Macrorie, Ken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Searching Writing</i>. New Jersey: Haydon Book Company, 1980.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">____________. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The I-Search Paper: Revised Edition of Searching Writing</i>. Portsmouth, NH:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Boynton/Cook, 1988.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Moffett, James. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Teaching the Universe of Discourse</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, l968.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">____________. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Active Voice: A Writing Program across the Curriculum. </i>Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1981.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Murray, Donald.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Writer Teaches Writing: A Practical Method of Teaching Composition</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Houghton Mifflin, 1968.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Rief, Linda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seeking Diversity: Language Arts with Adolescents. </i></span>Portsmouth, NH:<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span></i>Heinemann, 1992.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">Romano, Tom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clearing the Way: Working with Teenage Writers. </i>Portsmouth, NH:<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span></i>Heinemann, 1987.</div><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><br clear="all" /> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /> <div id="ftn" style="mso-element: footnote;"> <div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=30860520#_ftnref" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference">*</span></a> <span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow";">From James Moffett. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Active Voice: A Writing Program Across the Curriculum</i>. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1981.</span></div></div></div>jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-58366772301100314382011-11-19T11:24:00.000-08:002011-12-18T13:40:04.654-08:00shelley's ozymandias: an appreciationJim Burke's EC Ning ran a contest last February challenging English teachers to think of a single work of literature--a novel or poem or whatever--they would teach if they could teach only one. Entrants to the contest were asked to write 2000 word essays defending their choice of "the only [book] in the world." Since it's not clear at this point if this contest will ever reach a conclusion, I'm taken the opportunity to post my own entry, on Shelley's Ozymandias, to this quite compelling topic. Here it is:<br />
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">Reading, Passion, and Decay: an appreciation of Shelley’s “Ozymandias”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is a singularly appropriate choice for a curriculum devoted to “the only book in the world.” It is a poem that is itself about human achievements, and what does and does not remain behind once the illuminating glow of their initial creation has long since faded away.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Since its publication in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Examiner</i> in January of 1818, however, Shelley’s poem has become so frequently anthologized, so familiar and beloved by readers, that the startling originality of its construction and the boldness of its assertions can easily be overlooked. It will be the purpose of this essay to argue for the seminal value of this remarkable poem by demonstrating some of the ways it achieves its cumulative power and resonance. This essay will go on to suggest, however, that in demonstrating the eventual demise of our most imposing architectural works, Shelley is simultaneously casting doubt on whether our greatest literary works are capable, as Shakespeare’s Sonnet #65 would have us hope, of holding time’s “swift foot back” with the “miracle” of their “black ink.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">First, the poem, from the Oxford University edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley</i>:</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">Ozymandias</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">I met a traveller from an antique land</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">Tell that its sculptor well those passions read</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">And on the pedestal these words appear:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.’</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">Nothing beside remains. Round the decay</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt;">Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 117.0pt; tab-stops: .25in;">The lone and level sands stretch far away.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">What strikes the reader immediately is how suddenly and abruptly he or she is introduced to this strange “traveller,” and how powerfully this traveler’s tale takes over the poem. After the first two words of the second line, everything that follows is exactly and solely what the traveler tells the narrator. The effect of this economical entry into the poem is to make it seem as if the traveler is declaiming directly not only to the narrator, but also to the reader, and the urgency of the tale he tells is greatly heightened in consequence.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">And why should a reader not feel this urgency, given the arresting nature of the image from the desert with which we are presented? Two gigantic “legs of stone,” supporting nothing, rise up from otherwise barren surroundings. A shattered stone head, once part of this imposing colossus, lies “half-sunk” on the sand nearby. And those words! On the pedestal supporting those “trunkless legs,” we read the defiant challenge of the once proud king: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” And we do look, of course through the eyes of the traveler, and what we see is that “nothing beside remains.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">To pay attention, however, solely to the traveler’s vivid image of “that colossal wreck,” and of the “decay” that now surrounds it, is to miss the crucial and quite unexpected force and importance of the poem’s second quatrain. In reading this poem for the first time, one might expect the “turn” in the second quatrain to focus on Ozymandias’s cruelty and heartlessness as a ruler. In fact the statue was originally accompanied by relief sculptures that did just this, depicting “mutilated captives being led away by the king after battle,” according to Diodorus Siculus, the first century Greek traveler whose account Shelley draws on for his poem (see Kenneth Neill Cameron’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Percy Bysshe Shelley:</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Selected Poetry and Prose</i>, pg. 497). Rather than using the second quatrain to sustain and deepen our focus on the king, however, Shelley takes us in an unexpected new direction, asking us to consider the crucially important role of the sculptor. It is only because the sculptor was so skilled at “reading” the king’s “passions,” the poem indicates, that he was able to represent these passions so skillfully and forcefully in the statue’s “frown,” “wrinkled lip,” and “sneer of cold command.” Perhaps even more remarkably, the sculptor was able to depict these passions in such a lifelike way that they “survive” in the mind of the traveler, even though the king whose heart “fed” these passions, along with the monuments he hoped would preserve his name, have long since passed away. And based simply on what the poem relates, the sculptor’s skill is of such an high order that these passions are alive to the traveler even though they are represented solely by a colossal sculpted mouth, since the remaining portion of the king’s “visage” is presumably either “half sunk” or “shattered.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">This focus on the role of the sculptor in showing such preternatural skill in “mocking” the king’s passions will occupy the second half of this essay, since it is this focus that lifts the poem from a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">memento mori</i> to earthly power to a more profound questioning of the lasting nature of any achievement, whether “written” in stone or words.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">One of the most important effects of turning the reader’s attention from the king to the sculptor in the second quatrain is make the reader question the authorship of the words on the statue’s pedestal. Because we have just been told that the king’s passions “yet survive” for the traveler because the sculptor “read” them and depicted them so skillfully and forcefully, the reader is artfully and persuasively led to carry this sense of artistic acumen “forward” and to think of the words on the pedestal as also created by the sculptor. The likelihood that one would read the words as self-consciously created with an attention to their verbal resonance, moreover, would have been more apparent to Shelley’s contemporaries than to today’s readers. Shelley’s contemporaries would have recalled that the following words were recorded by Diodorus Siculus (or more likely translated for him by an Egyptian guide, since he would not have been able to read Egyptian hieroglyphics): “King of Kings am I, Osymandyas. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works” (see Timothy Webb’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Percy Bysshe Shelley:</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Selected Poems</i> for an observation on how this inscription had become familiar enough to Shelley’s contemporaries to have become “an historical commonplace,” p.194). </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">For those contemporaries who followed the good-natured competition between Shelley and his friend Horace Smith, whose parallel sonnet on Ozymandias appeared three weeks later in the same periodical (see <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Treasury of English Sonnets. Ed. from the Original Sources with Notes and Illustrations</i>, by David M. Main, 1881, as cited in the quite helpful Wikipedia article on this poem), the contrast would have been even more apparent. In Smith the inscription on the pedestal is rendered in the following lines:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 117.0pt;">In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 117.0pt;">Stands a gigantic leg, which far off throws</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 117.0pt;">The only shadow that the Desert knows:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 117.0pt;">“I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 117.0pt;">“The King of Kings; this mighty City shows</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 117.0pt;">The wonders of my hand.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">It’s difficult to imagine a Londoner opening <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Examiner</i> on February 1, 1818 and reading these rather wooden lines without a smile at their unintentional humor. Conversely, however, the “stamp” that Shelley’s sculptor gave to these initially “lifeless” lines, and by association the contribution of Shelley the poet to the resonance of these lines, would become that much more apparent in the insistent cadences of:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 117.0pt;">“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 117.0pt;">Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">But the more important question to ask, of course, is why the poet should direct our attention so insistently to the “words,” and perhaps to the sculptor’s role in giving them “life,” as opposed to the architectural “works” that were intended to produce a sense of “despair” in the mighty king’s would-be rivals.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The beginning of an answer to this question, I believe, lies in another “turn” on the reader’s expectations offered earlier in the poem. The actual look on the faces of the statues of Ozymandias (Rameses II) portrayed in the popular <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Description of the East</i> (1743) by Robert Pococke (see John Rodenbeck’s impressively researched but somewhat pedantic and curmudgeonly January 2004 article “Travelers from an antique land: Shelley's inspiration for ‘Ozymandias’" in <span style="color: windowtext;">http://www.thefreelibrary.com)</span> was nothing at all like the realistic depiction so vividly described in the poem. The illustrations of the “king of kings” in Pococke’s book, portrayed in various stages of disintegration, all had the expression of serene benevolence so familiar to today’s student of nineteenth dynasty Egyptian sculpture. So why might Shelley have wished to present his readers, most of whom would have known that a colossal statue of Rameses was at that very moment on its way from Egypt to England, with such a different type of artistic achievement than the one they would soon observe in the British Museum?</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">One answer to this puzzle can be found in the way Shelley portrays the nature of the sculptor’s art. He “stamps” the passions of the king on the otherwise “lifeless” stone, and does so with such a careful “reading” of the king’s character, such passion on his own part, that the reality of king’s hubristic emotions “survive” the passage of over twelve hundred years. While the nature of such an artistic achievement is not at all consonant with Egyptian sculpture as it was practiced thirteen centuries before the Christian era, it is quite consonant with another sort of artistic achievement that would have been much closer to home for English readers, as well as being quite close to Shelley’s own deepest sympathies. This artistic achievement would have been the plays of William Shakespeare in general, and the histories and tragedies in particular. These are the works in which one could find the passions of monarchs “stamped” on the “lifeless things” of a book’s pages, and towards which one could turn for assurance that an individual of genius could create something of great power and significance, something that could perhaps “yet survive” the cruel ravages of time. It should perhaps come as no surprise, therefore, that Mary Shelley recounts in her journal that during the final months of 1817, when Shelley composed “Ozymandias,” he was also reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Macbeth</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antony and Cleopatra</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Othello</i> (see David Lee Clark’s “Shelley and Shakespeare,” PMLA, Vol. 54, No. 1, March 1939, pp. 261-287).</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">In contrast to this hopeful view of the lasting nature of the literary achievement of England’s most accomplished and revered writer, however, stands Shelley’s own deep skepticism as expressed through this poem. Just as the words on the pedestal that initially sound so absolute and resonant to the reader are now swept entirely away, only knowable through the recollections of a first century Greek writer, so “Ozymandias” as a whole puts in question the subtly assertive claim of Shakespeare’s Sonnet #65 that the “wreckful siege of batt’ring days” will destroy the narrator’s love for his young man “unless this miracle have might/That in black ink my love may still shine bright.” In fact the ending lines of Shelley’s poem seem to cry out for such a direct comparison. In the choice of vocabulary for the lines “Round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare” there appears to be a rather deliberate evocation of Sonnet #65’s “Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea . . . Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays.” Sadly for the reader of Shelley’s poem, however, and perhaps more generally those of us who hope there might be lasting power in our most significant works of literature, there is no “unless” at the end of Shelley’s poem. No miracle. No might. What we have is only the “lone and level sands” which stretch to the limits of our despairing imaginations.</div>jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-90297771702701485582011-04-01T16:06:00.000-07:002011-04-01T16:10:52.123-07:00learning from ray bradburyThe participants in our 2010 Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute met last Saturday for our spring semester follow-up meeting. There were a number of somber comments on the discouraging national climate regarding teachers' competence, the challenges that some in the group had faced recently from their principals, and the recent defunding of the National Writing Project. I thought it an appropriate moment to recall a blog entry I'd written back in July of 2006, when the participants in that summer institute were just about to disband. Here's what I read to the group:<br />
<br />
<br />
Learning from Ray Bradbury<br />
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Leah and others in the summer institute are greatly amused that I wear my sunglasses around my neck each and every day of the summer institute, the earpieces hooked together with a dark green Croakies strap.<br />
<br />
"Like, ah, at any moment the sun might burst through the fluorescent lighting of our fourth floor classroom?" Leah looks as if she wants to ask.<br />
<br />
Little do they know that I keep my sunglasses at the ready as an homage to our friend Ray Bradbury.<br />
<br />
Bradbury has bracketed our summer, beginning with Karen Winchester’s use of "All Summer in a Day" on day two of our participant presentations and ending with Nicola Kennedy's request that we read "The Long Rain" in anticipation of becoming Venusians on the final day of participant presentations.<br />
<br />
This was accidental but fortuitous, since Bradbury's stories are about nothing so much as the difficulty of remembering the sun in times of deep, heavy, continuous rain.<br />
<br />
Karen Winchester had us do an interesting exercise with "All Summer in a Day." She told us, first, to select one of the symbols we found in the opening paragraphs of the story, and to write down, quickly, the attributes of this symbol. I chose Bradbury's description of the sun as a "coin large enough to buy the world," listing its attributes "monumental," "memorable," "god-like," "overpowering" and "extraordinary." We then selected one of the characters in the story and described that character's attributes. I selected Margot, describing her as "timid," "shy," "an old photograph whitened away," and "ghost-like."<br />
<br />
But here's where the activity got interesting. "Now, how would you link the symbol and the character you've selected," Karen asked. "What one sentence would connect the two?"<br />
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After some thought, I wrote "Margot held a secret within her: a coin large enough to buy the world." When Karen next asked us to expand our paragraphs into short essays, I wrote:<br />
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"Margot has a huge secret within her, a knowledge of a coin large enough to buy the world. This secret is too much for her increasingly frail body to contain. It separates her from her fellow classmates, makes her feel alone and even uncertain whether her knowledge is real or just imagined. Margot's recollection of the sun is like the knowledge we all carry of a world before our birth, a prelapsarian world of expansive plenitude, a world where we were part of a larger whole. It is this prelapsarian knowledge, and the confidence in this knowledge, that the other children--Margot's postlapsarian classmates--must snuff out."<br />
<br />
While this seemed a wholly new perception to me at the time, an unexpectedly new way of looking at Margot in particular and "All Summer in as Day" in general, in hindsight it seems to have uncannily foreshadowed the great lesson that Bradbury was, as it were, trying his best to tell us all summer.<br />
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"You will have days of educational sunshine in the summer institute,” he was telling us. “You will have many of them; it will seem at times to you as if these days will never end."<br />
<br />
"But be wary. These days will end. The joy and camaraderie and great good humor you have shared together these past four weeks will fade, leaving behind only the fleeting smile, the brief nod of the head in pleasant recollection."<br />
<br />
"You will experience your return to school in the fall as Margot experienced her exile to Venus: incessant and unrelenting rain, the drum and gush of water, the crystal fall of showers and the concussion of storms so heavy they will seem to you like tidal waves."<br />
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"Your fellow teachers will belittle you when you try to tell them what it felt like to be in the sun. 'You're lying,' they will tell you. 'Such a place does not exist. You're making it up.'"<br />
<br />
"So follow Nicola and Karen's advice, and follow it now: remember exactly what being in the sun of the summer institute felt like, what it looked like, what it sounded and tasted like. While some of you will doubt, and some will find it too painful to recall, collectively you can remember; and you will."<br />
<div><br />
</div>jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-66725802931969422262010-11-09T20:28:00.000-08:002010-11-09T20:41:31.603-08:00The challenge of thinking about worldwide poverty<div>I'm presently living in the central highlands of Mexico and participating, for a fall semester sabbatical leave from San Jose State, in an intensive Spanish language/homestay program. Our teacher this past month (our third in the language program) asked us to write short compositions each night on topics of significance that she assigned for us. The experience was illuminating for me. I found I could write these short compositions in Spanish (see below), and that their very shortness forced me to write with a sort of vignette-like concision. Here's one I wrote during the next to final week in the program. I'll copy and paste it first in English and then in Spanish. The topic given to us serves as the title of this blog posting. Enjoy!</div><div><br /></div><div>I'll start with a confession. The reason I did not write this composition yesterday was not just that I did not wake up in time for my alarm clock. It was also the subject itself: it made me feel very apprehensive.</div><div><br /></div><div>While I do not fully understand why I'm so apprehensive about this issue, I'm pretty clear about some of the reasons, so I'll start with them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Imagine a 20 year old young man who receives a summer scholarship to teach English in Hong Kong. The scholarship for the plane trip from Boston to Hong Kong includes the opportunity to visit some cities along the way. This young twenty year old decides to visit the cities of Delhi and New Delhi as part of his trip to Hong Kong.</div><div><br /></div><div>He arrives in New Delhi in mid-June. The air is so moist and the temperature so hot that it’s difficult to breathe. He is staying at a youth hostel in New Delhi to save money, and the hostel has no air conditioning.</div><div><br /></div><div>He remembers lying in bed at night and feeling the pressure on his chest from the heat and humidity. "Unless I consciously will myself to breathe in and out,” he remembers telling himself in the middle of the night, “I will stop breathing and I will die.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The next day, traveling by bus and walking to see the Taj Mahal in Delhi, the young man's experience was even more memorable.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was still hard to keep breathing in the heat and humidity, but now he saw the elderly on the side of the road that had lost the strength to keep going. These elders were lying beside the road. It was clear that they were about to die. "I am only one step away from these ancients," he remembers thinking to himself. "If I decide to give up and lie by the side of the road, I will die. I will be forgotten. I will vanish without a trace."</div><div><br /></div><div>I was that young man. Even after all these years, I can not forget my sense of closeness to those elderly poor in India, dying by the side the road. </div><div><br /></div><div>What is the value of my "western" sense of individual importance? Am I not, at a deep and important level, only one step away from those elderly Indian poor?</div><div><br /></div><div>These are the questions that haunt me when I think about the problem of world-wide poverty. Maybe all we are closer than we like to think to those elderly poor in India. Perhaps our desire to eradicate poverty is just an example of western pride, unable to cope with the essential insignificance of humans as individuals.</div><div><br /></div><div>Jonathan Lovell</div><div>October 2010</div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div><div>El desafío de pensar sobre la pobreza en todo el mundo</div><div><br /></div><div>Voy a comenzar con una confesión. La razón por la que no escribí esta composición de ayer no fue simplemente que no me desperté a tiempo por mi reloj despertador. También era que el tema en sí, me hacía sentir muy aprensivo.</div><div><br /></div><div>No entiendo completamente por qué estoy tan aprensivo acerca de este tema. Estoy bastante claro acerca de algunas de las razones, sin embargo, por lo que voy a empezar con ellas.</div><div><br /></div><div>Imagine que un niño de veinte años recibió una beca de verano para enseñar Inglés en Hong Kong. La beca para el viaje de avión desde Boston a Hong Kong incluye la oportunidad de visitar algunas ciudades a lo largo del camino. Este joven de veinte años de edad decidió visitar las ciudades de Delhi y Nueva Delhi como parte de su viaje a Hong Kong.</div><div><br /></div><div>Cuando llegó a Nueva Delhi a mediados de junio, el aire era tan húmedo y la temperatura tan caliente que le resultaba difícil respirar. Él se alojaba en el albergue juvenil de Nueva Delhi para ahorrar dinero, y el albergue no tenía aire acondicionado. </div><div><br /></div><div>Recuerda acostado en su cama durante la noche y sentir en su pecho la presión a la baja del calor y la humedad. "Sin me fuerza de voluntar, de manera consciente, la respiración y aspiración, iba a dejar de respirar y podría morir", recuerda haber me dicho a mi mismo en medio de la noche.</div><div><br /></div><div>Al día siguiente, viajar en autobús o caminando para ver el Taj Mahal en Delhi, la experiencia del joven fue aún más memorable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Era tan difícil seguir respirando en el calor y la humedad, pero ahora veía las personas mayores por el lado de la carretera que tenía la fuerza para seguir adelante. Estos ancianos se habían acostado al lado de la carretera. Vi que estaban a punto de morir. "Yo estaba tan sólo un paso de esta gente mayor", él pensó. "Si me decidiera a dormir a un lado de la carretera, yo también moriria. Yo también quiero querría olvidado. Nadie se daría cuenta."</div><div><br /></div><div>Yo era ese joven. Incluso después de todos estos años, no me puedo quitar de la mente mi sentido de la cercanía a los ancianos pobres de la India, muriendo al lado de la carretera. ¿Cuál es el valor de mi "occidental" sentido de mi importancia individual, si lo soy, a un nivel profundo e importante, tan sólo un paso de estos ancianos pobres?</div><div><br /></div><div>Esta es la pregunta que me atormenta cuando pienso en el problema de la pobreza en todo el mundo. Tal vez todos estamos más cerca de lo que nos gusta pensar a los ancianos pobres de la India. Tal vez nuestro deseo de erradicar la pobreza es sólo un ejemplo del orgullo occidental, incapaz de hacer frente a la escasa importancia esencial de cualquier individuo.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Jonathan Lovell</div><div>Octubre 2010</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-2772685331264462722009-08-04T15:24:00.000-07:002009-08-04T15:28:37.507-07:00writing and revelation<div>My older daughter Stephanie recently moved from Long Island to Berkeley to work as a Kaiser doctor in the departments of emergency medicine in Vallejo and Vacaville. She and her husband Mike are presently staying in the ground floor apartment of my ex-wife's home in Berkeley -- an apartment I helped to build shortly after we moved to Berkeley 27 years ago, in 1982.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mike, a carpenter and general contractor, is working on an enlargement of the apartment in exchange for the rent: a sweat equity deal of sorts that seems to be working out reasonably well. But there are issues. A big one has been what to do with the accumulated debris of 28 years of marriage and six moves. All those cardboard boxes in the basement! Some of them unopened since 1976, when my ex-wife Margaretta and I moved from East Haven to New Haven as I was completing my fourth year of graduate studies at Yale University.</div><div><br /></div><div>A compromise had been reached, I'd learned. Steph and Mike would tackle the job bird by bird. They'd open a few boxes, examine the contents, consult with Margaretta, decide what to keep, what to discard, and what to recycle, then move on to the next few boxes.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of these initial boxes, however, was opened, closed, and put aside. Its moving label read "Home Office. Books. His." Steph called me to ask if I might pick up the box as part of my upcoming trip to bring my "lobster pod" to Alameda Island. Why not?</div><div><br /></div><div>After I'd dropped off my boat at Soren Hansen's Woodcraft shop, and we'd had lunch at the Little House Café around the corner from Soren's boatbuilding operation, we headed up towards the Berkeley hills to retrieve my box. Mike, mindful of my weak lower back, hefted the box into the back of my car. I'd had no occasion, therefore, to examine its contents until later that afternoon, when I arrived back in San Jose and brought the box into our living room.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first items surprised and amused me: the subfusc gown -- a black vest really -- that I wore as a graduate student at Oxford when attending tutorials, a cute picture of me at about age five, a somewhat disorienting picture of my dad at a younger age, looking for all the world like a young girl, a college T-shirt, and my college BA diploma.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then came the books. As soon as I saw the top one I knew exactly what they were. The red cover with the words "poems," "ballads" and "sonnets"; and as one opened the cover, the oval lithograph of the poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with his large expanse of forehead, short beard and mustache, left hand holding a felt hat tipped provocatively "open" to the viewer, right clutching his dun colored vest, and deeply inset dark eyes looking menacingly out at me.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was back, almost instantly, to New Haven in the summer of 1979. Rossetti's "Poems, Ballads and Sonnets" were sitting on the high drafting table I used for a desk, and I was reading over a chapter of my dissertation that I'd written the previous summer. Even with my kindest critical eye, I could tell it was painfully convoluted and overwrought: a prime example of what Oxford's Dame Helen Gardner called the "lemon squeezer" school of literary interpretation.</div><div><br /></div><div>The house was quiet. Stephanie and her mother were abroad on a research trip to Paris and Venice. My younger daughter Holly was at a summer kindergarten program just a few blocks north from our New Haven home.</div><div><br /></div><div>My feeling in looking over my work of the previous summer, and reading over the poems that would serve as the focus of my next chapter, was of overwhelming nausea. As a poet and as a man, Rossetti was difficult to like. He was self-absorbed, obsessive, demanding of others' attention, given to long bouts of depression. His poetry seemed to me to reflect these qualities; it had a hot-house quality to it that I found particularly distasteful, requiring a degree of willingness to be drawn into the poet's lushly overwrought interiors. I did not wish to be drawn further into this world, either by Rossetti's poems or by his equally lush and overwrought paintings. So what in the world was I doing writing a dissertation on the poetry and paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti?</div><div><br /></div><div>What compounded my problems were the consequences of not finishing my dissertation. I'd just finished my second year on the faculty at Teachers College (Columbia University's graduate school of education) and I loved what I was doing in the related fields of English Education and Composition Studies. If I did not finish my dissertation this summer, or at the very least make significant progress on it, I could say goodbye to my Teachers College position, and for all I knew any future at all in higher education.</div><div><br /></div><div>These problems were of course further complicated by my back and forth movement over the past two years between teaching English Education classes at Teachers College during the school year, then returning each summer to the very different set of questions and problems posed by my dark-eyed poet/painter. How could I possibly find something worth writing about in the works of this little known Victorian artist, when my heart was increasingly drawn to the compelling issues faced by teachers at the secondary and college levels in the field of English Education?</div><div><br /></div><div>My day-to-day strategy for coping with my sense of distress was simple and satisfying. As soon as I completed a page of writing, I'd go out and shoot hoops in our backyard. I was getting some work done, very slowly, and my shooting percentage was certainly improving, but I could not help but feel the hoops were slowly gaining the upper hand.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was spending one hot and muggy summer morning gazing out at my backyard, thinking that perhaps this morning the hoops should precede the writing, when I chanced to pick up a book I'd read, rather cursorily, a number of years earlier. It was a study of Shelley's mythmaking, written by one of my teachers at Yale, Harold Bloom. It had grown out of his own dissertation on this subject, also completed at Yale University. For some reason the passage that caught my eye was a discussion of Shelley's "To a Skylark." I was familiar with its opening stanzas, as it was a favorite with anthologists of my parent's generation:</div><div><br /></div><div>Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!</div><div>Bird thou never wert,</div><div>That from Heaven, or near it,</div><div>Pourest thy full heart</div><div>In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.</div><div><br /></div><div>Higher still and higher</div><div>From the earth thou springest</div><div>Like a cloud of fire;</div><div>The blue deep thou wingest,</div><div>And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's vitally important, Bloom argued, to pay attention to the fact that the distance between the poet-narrator and the skylark is dramatically increasing with each successive stanza. In fact the bird has already soared so high before the poem begins that the poet can no longer see it, but only hear the "profuse strains of unpremeditated art" with which it sings. With each succeeding stanza, therefore, the poet must refine his capacity to hear, must re-train his ear to detect, the ever-receding melodies of the bird's unpremeditated song. To put it simply, the ceaseless soaring of the skylark is inextricably linked, for the poet, to the appeal of its "full hearted" song.</div><div><br /></div><div>And to put my own response to Bloom's argument equally simply: I'd never thought of looking at the role of the poet, or more generally of voice and inspiration, in quite this way. That we start by hearing an already distant air, and as we strain to hear its glad-hearted melodies, it is already growing getting more and more distant from us, soaring away from us we labor to hear its song. The speed of that skylark's flight, and the fact that it was flying upwards and away from the poet, even as the poet was attempting to capture and remember its song, presented a riveting and arresting picture for me of what Shelley was up to in many of his poems.</div><div><br /></div><div>And then I realized, quite suddenly and with a degree of comprehension that I find difficult to account for even today, that this was what Rossetti was up to in virtually all of his.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was a single moment, really, and of course I went on to write and re-write many subsequent pages and chapters, and to shoot many hoops, before I completed my dissertation the following summer. But it's as if I'd been given a gift, wholly unlooked for and in a sense wholly undeserved. As a result of this gift, I was able to see everything that in my previous study of my menacing-looking poet-painter had been vexing and harassing in an entirely new light. I experienced the writing of my final chapters as something pleasurable, something I looked forward to, something that I knew I could do with integrity and even with occasional insight.</div><div><br /></div><div>So what might we make of this story of writing and revelation, of perseverance well beyond the bounds of logic or probable success? I would suggest the following moral. That what we experience when we write is quite like listening for the full-throated, glad-hearted sound of that skylark. As I've discovered from co-directing a great many summer institutes, and being a full participant in two, we start by hearing only the dimmest echoes of our colleagues' and our own voices. But with a day-by-day training of our ears, and a growing faith that each of our colleagues, as well as ourselves, does indeed have a voice to be heard, we begin to hear them. And it's this very faith that helps to transform the hesitant whispers of those initial days into the full-throated howl of the final days of a summer institute.</div><div><br /></div><div>As Shelley reminds us in the concluding lines of his poem, what we learn over the days and weeks of the summer institute is that our colleagues, like the skylark, will "teach [us] half the gladness" that their "brain[s] must know." And that with this knowledge and heart, such "harmonious madness" from our own "lips [will] flow," the world will "listen then," just as we are "listening . . . now."</div><div><br /></div>jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-34737706922328082592008-11-21T17:03:00.000-08:002008-11-21T17:12:58.986-08:00responses to TKAM workshopAs those who attended the workshop I just gave with Jay Richards at the NCTE Conference will know, I'm attaching here, as promised, the responses of the K-College teachers who attended the Summer O8 Invitational Summer Institute of the San Jose Area Writing Project. The entire collection of vignettes that I use for this workshop (on Dill Harris, Mayella Ewell and Tom Robinson) can be found by visiting my entry entitled "TKAM at NCTE in NYC." Our Writng Project Tech Liaison also tells me that we an post Jay's PowerPoint on our SJAWP website and then I'll be able to link to it on this blog. So stay tuned. Now here are the responses:<br /><br />Responses of the participants in ISI 08 to TKAM workshop<br /><br />Dear Jonathan,<br /><br />Thank you for a very interesting lesson this morning. Trying to develop a character analysis in ten minutes was frustrating, even frantic, and I’m not surprised that high school students resent that activity. Still, after reflecting on the experience and “walking in students’ shoes,” I had perspectives on their experiences that I hadn’t expected to encounter.<br /><br />For one, I felt admiration for high school students, and not necessarily honors, who tackle such tasks routinely. True, they want to succeed and pleasing a teacher is primarily how they try, but writing on command is a daunting task and still they take it on. I also felt great empathy and respect for English Language Learners who wrestle such tasks to the ground in efforts to succeed. I imagine the staggering difficulties that ELLs, especially those newly arrived, have in trying to understand the character of someone like Mayella Ewell let alone writing about it. Still, they try.<br /><br />Tragically, aliteracy often begins in second-grade when young children are forced through lock-step pacing calendars, benchmark exams and stories not of their choosing or interest. Children who read successfully often choose not to because they associate reading with tests. Still, at the core, I believe that both elementary and high school students are asking the same essential question: “Why should I care about this story and/or character? (aside from trying to get the teacher off my back!) Today’s role play helped to answer that question as I asked, “Why should I care about Mayella Ewell? I don’t like what she does, and she wouldn’t be my friend!”<br /><br />Strangely, shockingly during the role play I fell into her character very easily. What we shared was not entirely clear, and I certainly didn’t agree with her, but I knew her well. What a surprise that was! Still, making that connection with Mayella helped me to grow both as a reader and a person. “What is in all people is in me,” it has been said. Role play in particular enables children, young and old, to use what they know very well--social relationships-to access the characters and ideas of the stories or novels. The various combined activities give students avenues to access the ideas that will help them grow.<br /><br />One last recollection. Years ago in an evening credential class, it was my task to teach Nancy Atwell’s In the Middle. To do that, I had brought in a box of books of YA literature to replicate Atwell’s “dinner party” approach to reading workshop. Suddenly, these groggy teachers came alive! Eyes gleaming as they excitedly riffled through pages of beloved books long forgotten, they furtively asked to borrow “their favorite books” to read over the week. (I’ve since come to learn that many teachers are aliterate.) Atwell addresses the issues of aliteracy as middle/high school students are consumed by innumerable issues that keep them from reading. Still, teachers had not forgotten the books that made them feel alive. This is all to say that children WANT to read. They just don’t know why. Application of lessons such as today’s help them see. Thank you for some great strategies! Constance Bruinsma-Kelly<br /><br />Dear Jonathan:<br /><br />Thank you for a wonderful workshop. I feel that engaging students with visual and auditory aids to enhance their reading experience, and in turn making them write well is a great idea. We always emphasize the importance of “show; don’t tell” in our classroom, and this is a perfect example. I will certainly be using this technique on a more advanced level in my English Composition courses next semester.<br /><br />My character is Mayella, and since I read To Kill a Mocking Bird a long time ago, I have to rely on the excerpt and my instincts to write my initial response or character analysis. Mayella seems to be a typical teenager at first. She is poor but has an aesthetic sense that she cultivates. Caring for the geraniums shows her softer side. Mayella also comes across as a vulnerable but outspoken girl. She speaks her mind but is just an insecure little girl inside. Mayella is loyal to her father who has a hold on her. She is scared of him and to cover her fear, she is angry and furious.<br /><br />This is as far as I got on the first attempt. After having worked my way through the workshop, I gained further insight into Mayella’s character. She is not just any teenager. At age nineteen, she is an extremely complex human being. She has to take care of her siblings and live in fear of her abusive, tee totaling father. Love and tenderness are sorely lacking in her life. I agree that there is a flaw in her personality. She has no integrity and she lies to frame Tom, a good and kind hearted man. Can we really understand what is going on in her mind? What are her values and morals? Is she raised with any? How can we be righteous and pass judgment on her?<br /><br />Beneath the hard exterior, we see some level of tenderness in Mayella. She looks after her “red geraniums.” They are “cared for as tenderly as if they belonged to Miss Maudie Atkinson.” Mayella loves her geraniums and nurtures them because they do not want anything in return. This is one aspect of her personality. In the courtroom, we see a distraught Mayella. She is vulnerable and insecure inside. She responds to Atticus’s questions with outbursts and eventually silence. She knows the consequence of incriminating Tom, but is willing to take that chance because she is pressured by society. In the end, she saves herself. Can we blame her for that? Mayella is selfish; she sacrifices Tom to save face, but her behavior is nothing but a true reflection of human nature at its darkest. Roohi Vora<br /><br />Dr. Lovell,<br /><br />It’s been a number of years since I’ve read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Tom Robinson’s character exudes kindness, gentleness, even tenderheartedness and he’s simply a fascinating character to study. I couldn’t help compare his daily reality of victimization and marginalization to that of most Afghan women. The latter is fresh on my mind after having reread The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad. Both Tom and Afghan women have limited value in the eyes of their communities and have little or no voice. To speak up would mean certain punishment and perhaps death.<br /><br />I found the first reading of the TR excerpt to be similar to that of reading a poem for the first time. For me, the first reading reintroduced the character and each of the subsequent activities added a deeper level of understanding. Interestingly, the most helpful activity was listening to the audiotape as it made the sections of dialogue, in particular, more real. I can see how helpful this creative process of adding layers of understanding would be to my students. Trish Murray<br /><br />Dear Jonathan,<br /><br />Today's workshop had a cumulative effect on my characterization comprehension. I'm one of those students who wasn't against reading a selection and responding in paragraph form, nor was I one hundred percent for the timed writing/comprehension assignment. I certainly was willing to try the assignment, trusting that the outcome would be interesting or perhaps it would be a lesson on how I could improve. I was right on both predictions of the result.<br /><br />My initial paragraph was a quick-write without much depth. It truly was a description matching the paragraph of Dill's personality. Digging deeper, to write about Dill, wasn't possible. In fact it wasn't possible until I had discussed the possibilities of the character, designed metaphor symbols, drawn them and participated in the role play. I learned that Dill was a deeply designed character, rich with metaphoric qualities. As a learner, I am primarily visual. I need to attach metaphors to most literary analyses in order to deeply understand. This approach to learning would match Howard Gardner's multiple intelligence theories.<br /><br />Here are my pre and post writings that reflect the above explanations:<br /><br />Pre-write: Dill, a summer visitor, to Maycomb was from Mississippi. He brought with him a sensitive approach to dealing with people. His family provided the necessary things he needed, yet he felt emotionally neglected by his parents. His self image was projected as a shy, humble individual. As he had not been nurtured, he projected an overly sensitive approach to his interaction with people, even complete strangers. Generally speaking, his personality seemed puzzling to his closes friend Scout.<br /><br />Post-write (continuing from the above): Dill could be metaphorically represented as a bird with a broken wing wearing a purple heart halo, crying. Symbolically Dill's broke bird wing represents his ill-equipped approach to flight through life. The purple heart shows the embattled sensitivity due to his neglectful background. The tears reflect his sensitive cry for fairness toward people. Dill is not aware of the cultural black versus white prejudices that exist during his lifetime. He seems to act, naively, as the conscience of right versus wrong. Perhaps his own lack of family nurturing created a searching, longing for a feeling of acceptance. It could be that his sensitivity radar crosses all lines of racial social etiquette at the height of black/white racism. his character represents the needed balance of characterization within the plot. Thanks for an insightful look into characterization. I truly enjoyed it! Julie Jenkins<br /><br />Hi Jonathsn,<br /><br />In response to the HW prompts, here are my thoughts after your workshop. In the pre-writng activity, I pegged Tom as a sitting duck, a target, a victim of circumstance due to the setting of the novel. I tried to process and write all of the information fast, as we were restricted on time. After participating in the several activities leading up to the post write, I really began to see that Tom's geneoristy, kindeness, and honesty is what ironically hurt him. How dare a black man feel sorry for a poor, white girl! It was his humanity which worked against him.<br /><br />As I reflect on the sequence of events, I felt that you started with a broad topic and really narrowed in or "zoomed in", helping us to truly focus on the character. (It all comes back to zoom!) We did an initial read and then wrote about our character. It was rushed, very broad, and I really wasn't sure wanted you wanted. Do I integrate and use blended quotes? Was this a test for me to use what we had previously learned? The Cumulative Graphic Organizer, started to focus our attention on the dynamics of the courtroom scene. This also helped us to look at the other key players in the scene. The character received a face, a voice, and became human. Next, moving into our character groups, we really started to hone in on this character that we read about and watched in the film. As we discussed our central symbol and various personal symbols, I learned that this is an individual with only a kind heart who has nothing bad to say about Mayella and answers honestly while trying not to hurt her feelings or calling her a blatant liar. He has accepted his place in society. During the gallery walk, we had a further chance to get into the skin of Tom as we shared our poster and listened to the perspectives of the other Tom group. We were analyzing him from the outside in. During the role play, we literally got into the character's skin. It was a good way to test our knowledge and share with our peers. I felt more empathy for Tom as I became him. I thought like him; heck I even tried to talk like him. After listening to the vignettes, we were able to do a partial second read of Tom, where I caught things I glossed over the first time. By the post write, I felt that I truly understood this character. He was an abstract painting from afar, but as I "zoomed in", I was able to see the brush strokes, the writer's ink which created the essence of Tom. See you tomorrow. Tara Holcomb<br /><br />Dear Jonathan,<br /><br />Today I learned that Mayella Ewell, my character of study from To Kill a Mockingbird, was no lady. She was a victim, a fighter, a survivor, and a bully. Abused, impoverished, and trapped by her role as a woman and the oldest child in the bleakest of scenarios, she scrounges for what little power she can seize within her existence. Mayella’s world is loaded with injustice and abuse. What coping skills could she know for survival? In her loneliness and helplessness, she chooses her victim, Tom Robinson, to project onto her own inner turmoil. Living in the deep South before the Civil Rights Movement, an isolated black man is an easy target for Mayella to use psychologically for working through her own loneliness and sexuality, her feelings of helplessness in a dire situation, and her fear of an abusive father. Tom becomes her scapegoat, her relief. When he is there, she feels powerful over someone. <br />And why should she care what happens to him? No one seems to care what happens to her! In the trial, she screams out in desperation and anger, wanting someone to care more about her than the black man. Her ego desperately needs to pull rank. To her it doesn’t matter if it isn’t fair. Since when has she seen any justice given to her? This neglected, broken girl is starving for recognition that she matters, that she is not the same as the trash that she lives in. She is the vulnerable geranium in the garbage dump and there is hope in her if only someone, anyone would take the time to care for her. Tom is the only one who takes that time, so in her desperation, she takes advantage of his vulnerability, publicly humiliates him, falsely accuses him of her own sins, and feels justified in her anger.<br />During this workshop time, I learned that I can learn almost anything in almost any modality. However, if I am given the opportunity to learn in every modality, the knowledge acquired becomes engrained. I also learned that I get frustrated with a common learning attitude of “just do what’s required,” and the excuse, “I can’t do that, I wasn’t born with the talent.” It makes me want to scream, “well, you might be able to if you just took the time to practice it!” I take great pride in my work, and I rarely do anything half-ass. I wasn’t born with talent, only potential. The only time I do something half-ass is when something major interferes. I can’t even relate to keeping things casual and simple. Seems lazy, bland, and offensive to me, like the people involved aren’t worth the time or effort. I’m driven, and I care. I want the whole experience without missing a beat. The whole sha-bang. And I think that generally people don’t try hard enough. There is nothing I respect more than a learner who tries hard and has a positive attitude. I don’t know why.<br />Yet, I generally don’t voice that opinion, because I also think it’s rude and offensive. But that’s often the way I feel inside. That drive makes me want to take charge and do assignments individually. Realistically, most work in life requires a team. So I have a whole set of inner mantras that I tell myself during group work so that I refrain from monopolizing activities, overwhelming others, or the worst, having someone think that I am better than someone else, a show-off, or hoggish. I hate those assumptions and accusations! I’m just trying my best, and that’s all. I’m not trying to make anyone else feel bad or intimidated or competed against or overwhelmed or miffed in any way. I’m really a nice person, and as a learner, I’m an intense, passionate, voracious tiger. Just know that about me. Thanks for asking, Laura Cain<br /><br />Dear Dr. Lovell,<br /><br />I really love Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and I really enjoyed your workshop today. My assigned character was Dill Harris and when I started I wrote a half a page response that was very “scientific.” I took Dill and explained all the aspects of his personality and character that I gathered from the passages you assigned, but the response did not elicit much empathy for him. <br /><br />I really think the activity with the posters and the role play activity is a fabulous method for students (and teachers!) to gain further insights into the characters being studied and to help us gain more empathy for the character we've been assigned. I really felt far more compassionate toward Dill after completing the sequence of activities that you had us go through. I know it’s because the activities had me metaphorically walk in Dill's shoes, as Atticus Finch tells Scout near the beginning of the novel. My second attempt at a character response was more than double the length of my first and it was far more empathetic and in depth and I am proud of it!<br /><br />I know that I am a learner who appreciates both visual and audio cues and also appreciates the occasional kinesthetic activity to get me moving around, which was provided when we did the poster and gallery walk. I had seen your presentation previously when I was your student in the Methods class for the credential program, and I want you to know that I use your cumulative graphic organizer when I teach TKAM and it really helps to set up the courtroom scene for the students and I want to thank you for that excellent idea. Thank you for your presentation! It was even better the second time around :-) Sincerely, Jeanette Craff<br /><br />Dear Jonathan,<br /><br /> My first take on Dill was extremely limited because I was putting up the metaphor posters, the non-linguistic representations, made by previous workshop participants. So I skimmed the text excerpts very rapidly. I did manage to link some attributes of Dill’s dreaminess with my own vibrant inner life as a kid. I got his sensitivity as well as his story-telling acumen.<br /><br /> What changed my understanding the most, however, consisted in two things. The first was the very articulate conversations my team group made over what central metaphor to create for our poster. I felt as if I were meeting a real person, unlike the bits of information that were strewn in my head from a quick-read and an attempt to summon memory from other workshop experiences. We had, alas, little visual of Dill from the movie. . I could relate to the childhood journey into fantasy when the parents and home life aren’t connected with the child. <br /><br /> The second piece that brought Dill more to life in my understanding was the tidbit that Jonathan explained about the author, Harper Lee, having used Truman Capote (whom she knew in childhood and as an adult author) to create the character of Dill. Such an enigmatic character – Dill the curiosity—became my acquaintance when I remembered the movie “Capote” I saw several years ago. My understanding of Dill shifted from my own southern upbringing experience of the racism to the quandary Truman presents in his autobiographical film. “Ah haa!” I thought. I’d say he’s a genuine eccentric, not just a curiosity. In any case, the boy Dill in TKAM became more accessible to me as a result.<br /><br /> So, do I really I learn more from movies and visual arts than reading? Maybe. Maybe it is the combination that is so effective. I observed how much more acutely-formed my own images were while listening to the reader on tape. Her phrasing and intonation was beautiful. I am reminded of the true power of a good read aloud. <br /><br /> Thank you for the carefully crafted, explicit roles and tasks for us. You already know how impressed I am with cumulative graphic organizers, and today, I realized I could actually do a literature experience like this with fifth graders, with the right novel. Laura Brown<br /><br />Dear Jonathan,<br /><br />I really enjoyed your presentation today. I think I really missed discussing a character in a classroom setting, with me as a student. It reminded me of the MA years when, pencil in hand (a habit I still have), I would read closely and carefully, trying to understand the characters in the fictional works we were assigned. Today, with your help and the help of my colleagues, I had the opportunity to discover Dill. The first things I noticed when reading the excerpt from Harper Lee's novel were his otherness, his vulnerability, his acute need for a family and for friends, and also the richness of his interior life. Working in groups and constructing the poster got us all closer to the character and made us speculate about his role. We felt quite satisfied with the results of our twenty minute contest with pens, pencils, markers and erasers, and gladly shared our finished visual symbol character poster with our other Dill group. Having us listen to a reading of the excerpt was, I think, a very useful technique. The narrator was successful in creating a certain atmosphere that may be difficult to perceive at a first glance. The stress she placed on certain words when describing Dill, the change in accent when Dill speaks with Jem and Scout, Dill's faltering voice when questioned about his father, all made the text come alive, drawing the reader into the story. I think the role play was not my forte, but it was a useful exercise in that it made me try to see the world through his eyes, and ultimately understand him better. Thank you for a really great workshop! Sincerely, Oana Melnic<br /><br />Dear Jonathan,<br /><br />When I read Mayella initially, my first thoughts were that she was extremely poor, defensive, and had a sense of despair. She also had a chip on her shoulder, yet as I read the excerpts I felt that this “chip” was warranted. Her family life was full of hardship. She had an alcoholic father, who probably beat her and raped her, a man that has robbed her of basic parental gifts (love, compassion, protection, guidance, etc.). She had no friends and I thought a part of her viewed Tom as a friend. She liked that someone in the world actually cared for her and subsequently took care of her, even if it was her who asked him to complete various odd jobs around her home. The slop jars holding the “brilliant red geraniums” appeared to be a symbol of hope, amongst all the garbage there was something of value. In my initial character analysis, I wrote that these were a symbol of the vulnerability in the character. After all they were the only thing of beauty in a yard full of random collectibles. These were a small positive gleam of hope and the one thing that she could truly call all her own.<br /><br />The beginning activity was terrifying for me. A timed reading and writing assignment: was I back in high school taking standardized tests? Did I step into a time machine? Would I be in the blue birds or red robins? Being a product of an At Risk study done in the 1980s, I have developed serious test anxiety, which had lain dormant for the last 2 years until today.<br /><br /> After going through your workshop, Mayella became more alive. She was not just some poor defensive girl: she had strength and courage. While she might not have protected Tom, she continued to live in an environment that was rotting her internally and hurting her physically. It was interesting to hear my group’s perception of her because while we had all read the same material, our personal schemes affected our view of the material. The text-to-self drawings are a strategy I plan on using during the school year.<br /><br />All the activities, TKAM movie, active group work with the graphic organizer, listening to the book on tape; I realized once again that I truly am a visual and auditory learner. Actually, I think all three learning styles (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic) are important in my learning; hence I try to incorporate them into my lessons. The series of activities (movie, poster, role play) all served their purpose of “getting to know” the character, which assisted me in my post-analysis writing. Using a variety of mediums to engage us “the students” reminded me that I need to stay on my toes when it comes to engaging my students. After experiencing these workshops, I realize this has been the missing link in my professional development. Super Saturdays here I come! Breanne Romano<br /><br />Dear Jonathan,<br /><br />I have read To Kill A Mockingbird approximately 30 times. Of course we focus on Mayella and Tom, but I've never focused that much on Dill. After really discussing who this little boy is, what struck me was how much Dill is the conscience of the town, how much perspective he lends to the text, and how he is the only impartial observer in the book. I also never thought about why Dill might not be touched so much by the institutionalized racism that touches all the other Maycombians. (Even Scout, who should know better, is numb to the bad treatment of Tom by Mr. Gilmer). It came out in the role playing when I was playing Dill that one of the reasons for this is that he is so immersed in the fantasy world that he escapes to, that reality doesn't affect him like it does others.<br /><br />The role playing was something that I've never really done myself, but our role playing really worked. In fact, I was actually getting uncomfortable when the person who was playing Tom was grilling Mayella and I was getting defensive when Tom was asking me what I was so upset about because I had a way better life than he or Mayella did. I guess the most important thing that I took away from that is that I need to keep an open mind about different ways that I can learn. I always look for ways to diversify for my students, but when it comes to my own learning, I tend to only stick to what I think works. I'm definitely a believer in role playing now. Dawn Nelson<br /><br />Jonathan,<br /><br />I think you need to know some background about me. I am embarrassed to admit it, and I am not sure if I should really tell you this information, I never read To Kill a Mockingbird. What a tragedy. I have seen the movie several times, does that count? And while I am being honest, I also think that in high school I may have been one of the aliterate students. I read the required text, but I never read more than I needed. It was not until my adult life that I realized that I loved to read. Okay, don't spread the news, I am not proud to admit it.<br /><br /> Though the eyes of a new reader to the book: when you began today I was completely turned off to just reading and then responding. I could do it, yet the response was labored and dry. I felt like after we saw the video clip that I was especially tuned into my character. This idea was brilliant to me. Show a bit of the movie, who would have thought. WOW! After this I really understood the character. I learned from this experience and from the collaboration of others. When we did the posters and talked about what picture we would do in the middle, the character became clearer. I reluctantly did the role play. I explained to my group that usually when role play comes it is my cue to use the bathroom. Well I will admit it, the role playing was very powerful. I dreaded the whole 5 minutes I was in the hot seat. After all the activities my second draft was 100% better than the first. I could relate to my character in a far deeper way than I could in the beginning.<br /><br />I was especially impressed by the way you front loaded the book. I have always just began with a picture walk or maybe just a quick tell of what the story was about. The way that you front loaded the book was also a way to get the students excited about the book and understand the characters. I bet this strategy leads the students to want to know what happens next. It made me want to read the book. It also helps those students that have a hard time making mental images as they read. I can't wait to use these ideas in my readers workshop. I was also thinking that these same strategies can be used for my read alouds, such as James and the Giant Peach. I really think that the 2nd graders would enjoy making the posters and maybe role playing, we will see how brave I get. I also may tweak the ideas and use them for book groups and complex group instruction. Thank you for the ideas. Amy Ayalla<br /><br />Jonathan,<br /><br />First, I have to admit that I have not read the examples at the back of the packet. I find that often, I am an imitator, rather than an original thinker, and I would like to present you with a genuine me.<br /><br />Mayella as a character has always angered me. I have always accepted that she is he unfortunate victim of an unfair dealing of life's cards. It has always seemed to me that, despite her situation, she is supposed to be the hope for her siblings. Her ability to read and write, her ability to cope, should be the way to save her family from itself. As the oldest, she should have felt the responsibility to her siblings that I feel: nothing is asking too much. Mayella seemed to me to lack what I consider a natural "mother bear" instinct toward the Ewell brood. For this, I have always privately condemned her.<br /><br />After your seminar today, I am able to see Mayella in a new light. During the gallery walk, I quietly held my peace. No one likes someone who dislikes Mayella. I wasn't until the role play that I felt blind-sided by compassion. In answering questions from a very thoughtful Tom (played by Melanie) I became Mayella. I was quiet. I didn't want to answer the questions, though I knew the answers. The answers said that I was going along with my father because it was the only way to protect my siblings. Like the slop pots that hold the geraniums, I had to be degraded and dirty to allow my siblings the chance to flourish.<br /><br />I will not bother typing my final draft here, but in rereading the opening for Mayella, I came upon a whole new approach to my essay. Harper Lee includes so many words that evoke a prisoner, finally presenting Mayella as the prisoner with the last words of the passage -- her care of the geraniums and her siblings. I was stunned that I have missed it for so many years, including the 2 that I taught the book!<br /><br />As an individual who functions through emotion first, and rationale second, this experience with Mayella has fundamentally changed the way I will approach literature with my students. In the course of our race towards the CST, we often forget that what matters the most is the connection between readers and characters. To have empathy. To share their joys and sorrows in such a way that, while reading like Luther, alone and silent, we laugh out loud and reach for our Kleenex to stop the tears. Exercises like the ones presented today gave me new ways to connect my students to literature in the same ways that I do! Thank you for your passion, your wisdom, and your inspiration. Authentically yours, Brandy Appling-Jensen<br /><br />Dear Jonathan,<br /><br />I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation on To Kill a Mockingbird, even though it was the second time around. Although I had listened to and participated in this well-planned and executed workshop in your methods class, I found new insights and usable techniques in your presentation. It does grow on one. Now that I'm out of middle school and heading towards high school, I might actually get to teach TKAM (but of course the learning from your workshop can apply to introducing any literature we might assign to --what was it?-- aliterate student populations.<br /><br />As evidence of my learning today, I've typed up below and am sending you my analysis (redux) of "my" character from TKAM, Tom Robinson. Despite Nancy and Laura's frequent admonishments to "save all your drafts," I did not save that first pathetic "timed" attempt from the beginning of the workshop. At any rate, reading this new and improved version should reveal much of what I learned from the workshop, and also what I hope to do to "re-mediate" students needing more effective verbal/visual introductions to required (and desirable) texts.<br /><br />"Tom's Character" (post-workshop Enlightenment Version)<br /><br />Tom the dignified African-American. Tom the tireless worker. Tom the dedicated husband and family man. Tom the object of a confused, oppressed white girl's desire. Tom the accused rapist. Tom the victim of prejudice and injustice. Tom the symbol of the potential-and pitfalls- of the American dream.<br /><br />At this point in our exploration of the novel TKAM, Tom is all of these things, and more. We saw over ten different representations of this deceptively simple man drawn on our group posters. We also discovered that Tom the character does not exist in isolation, and chameleon-like, he changes as viewed and experienced by other people, as revealed in our role play exercise. For on thing, he represents the injustice and irrationality that makes Dill feel sick. He is also both a magnet for poor, lonely Mayella and the cause of her subsequent deceit and self-abasement. These layers upon layers of all the characters, and especially Tom, were made painfully clear in the video segment of the trial scene from the novel. The audio tape we listened revealed even more about Tom: he had run afoul of the law once before, but was punished more severely than a co-lawbreaker simply because he couldn't pay his way out of trouble. Tom is a such a paradox: both his own best friend and worst enemy. His overall goodness and honesty, his naivete about the world in which he lives, have landed him in this court of law, falsely accused, and apparently doomed.<br /><br />If not for the color of his skin, and his circumstances living in a repressive small Southern town, or if he had ignored his good heart and walked on by Mayella's house that day (and the many before it), he might be a teacher sitting among us today. Tom Robinson could also be the CEO of a multi-natonal corporation. He might even be running for president of the United States. Instead, in this novel, he is trapped in a witness chair in a hostile courtroom, sweating as he tries to tell his side of the story, and listening to everyone except Atticus turn all his words against him. His fate appears sealed, and it is not a good one. He is an outsider that not even any of the town's other outsiders are capable of saving. But without all of these other insider and outsider presences in the courtroom, and their individual stories and interactions, Tom would not be a real character we can empathize with or learn from. That is what we learned from this lesson, and what will keep us reading, because we know what is going on, and we care what happens to people like Tom. Thanks again, Barbara Saxton<br /><br />Jonathan -<br /><br />Okay, it's 6:20 AM and I'm just beginning to write this. I'm sorry. As you remember, I've seen this presentation before, but I still had a good time walking through the steps. Since I saw it the first time in Methods, I've used the overhead/audio reading when I could borrow the audio from Sharon Leach. I find that the students, especially my slower readers, react to pre-recorded audio well because it takes the burden of making meaning of the complex sentences and all of the phrasing. Cissy Spacek'S already done the chunking for them, so there's nothing left for them to do but listen and create a visual in their heads. I'm surprised every year by how many kids can't or don't get visual images in their minds as they read, and I know that this strategy is one that allows them to do so more readily.<br /><br />Although I normally feel like a hot shot whenever someone uses TKAM for their presentation (I've read it so many times, I've read so many teacher articles about it, I've seen so many lesson plans about it), I still learn things about the characters each time. I think I did have Mayella last time, and I did this time, too, but that doesn't mean I didn't deepen my understanding of her. I knew all of the things that we talked about Mayella during the presentation, but I don't remember the sheer hopelessness of things without saying it out loud. <br /><br />I'm not going to share my writing with you either pre or post because, frankly, it's terrible. It's been a long time since I've written a response to lit, and that's something I've taken away from all of these presentations. Although I often write an opening paragraph or follow along with the students privately, I guess I need to carve out time to complete my own homework. Another way to build empathy. Debbie Navratil<br /><br />Jonathan,<br /><br />I enjoyed your workshop today (or now yesterday as I've stayed up all night indulging my perfectionist tendencies in the finalization of my workshop presentation and am just now getting to sending you this e-mail). I particularly like the term "aliterate" - it describes those uninterested students perfectly. I could definitely see how the interactive activities you presented could help engage those students. I was certainly engaged during the activities. I thought the opening exercise was a great illustration of how our students probably feel most of the time during timed writing or in-class essays. I know I felt I had some ideas by the end of the time but was just truly beginning to develop them when you said "time's up". However, I might have had an advantage since I've read and taught To Kill a Mockingbird and so knew the context of the passages. From just those passages, I concluded that Tom is not formally educated but observant and intelligent and that he is patient, kind, and modest. I particularly focused on the dialogue and Scout's phrase "soft black velvet" in my analysis.<br /><br />Watching the courtroom scene and then having to create a visual representation of Tom just relying on that courtroom scene made me realize that the actor who played Tom Robinson was able to communicate Tom's character and emotions more clearly than Scout's naive narration in the text (at least in my opinion) and so the movie could truly help students come to a deep understanding of Tom's character before they picked up the book. Tom's tears and controlled, polite speech seemed particularly effective. However, I can also see that this activity could be problematic if an actor's or director's interpretation is not supported by the actual text. I suppose you could warn students about the difference and then they would be primed to look for it when reading - which could produce a different sort of motivation.<br /><br />I found that then creating the visual representation for Tom was a more powerful activity than I realized. Just having to come up with and then justify a symbol made me aware of inferences I hadn't realized I'd made about Tom and helped me articulate those inferences. I chose a golden retriever as my symbol because I believe Tom is loyal, kind, eager to help others, and do the right thing, and positive and understanding in the face of misfortune (like a golden retriever). Also, like a golden retriever, Tom is viewed by others as less than human or less than other humans despite his admirable characteristics. I realized after I created the symbol that it could really become a powerful reminder of Tom's characteristics. Now, every time I think of Tom Robinson, that golden retriever picture pops up in my mind. I can see how this activity would give students something to hold onto as they read the text (at least if their brain works like mine and latches on to visuals).<br /><br />I found the role-playing more uncomfortable but also helpful in forcing me to articulate my inferences about the character. In my second attempt to write about Tom Robinson, I found I had much more to say and that much of my analysis now referred to the actor's actions in the movie rather than the text I initially read. I expanded my analysis and came up with the statement "he has been literally and figuratively crippled by a racist society yet remains compassionate and kind". I found my second analysis focusing more on Tom's kindness and compassion rather than less emotional aspects such as level of education - indicating that I felt more connected to and invested in the character now. I can see how a student who felt similarly emotionally invested would now want to read the book to follow "their" character. Through this exercise I rediscovered the power visuals, and especially visual symbols, hold for me (something I knew about myself but had somewhat forgotten). I also realized that despite having read the book before, I could still become more attached to a character - a sign of great literature.<br /><br />I particularly thought the reminder about the saved vs. the damned was helpful. In teaching honors English, I tend to fall into the trap of teaching my students how to be part of the saved (since after all, that's how they're probably going to be treated in college, right?) rather than consistently expanding their understanding through more kinesthetic or visual exercises such as the ones you modeled. I will definitely try to include more such visual activities in my lessons in the future as I experienced first hand how effective they are. Thank you for a great presentation. Hopefully, I can live up to the example. Best, Brook Wallace<br /><br />Hi Jonathan,<br /><br />So I am embarrassed to say that I forgot to respond to your presentation last week and that I am equally mortified to be turning my response in late. Perhaps I can make it up to you by sharing how much I really enjoyed your lesson. First off, I have to tell you that I love how you explain the history of so many of the terms and strategies that we have in education, I am continuously learning from you these juicy tidbits of information and hope that I can remember them. The cumulative graphic organizer was great and I love the incorporation of the video. The role playing was very valuable to me as a student and as a teacher. It really made me think through who the character was and helped me prep myself for the character sketch that followed. I know that I will use the cumulative graphic organizer and I will be using the role playing more often as well. Thank you for setting such a high standard for us (I might not have said this if I'd written this on Thursday night before I gave my own presentation! ) Your presentation was so well informed and well rounded and I thoroughly enjoyed my learning experience. Thanks again. Sarah Thistlethwaitejonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-15711307659773175392008-11-20T20:35:00.000-08:002008-11-20T20:42:46.992-08:00ncte 08 presentationHere's the material I promised to post from my Nov 21 presentation at NCTE in San Antonio:<br /><br />Rethinking 'Old School' Practices: Fostering a Love of Books in an Age of Technology<br />Friday, Nov 21, 2:30 pm - 3:45 pm<br />NCTE 98th Annual Convention in San Antonio, TX<br />"From Martin Luther to Walt Disney: engaging aliterate secondary level students with what they read"<br /><br />A presentation by Jonathan H. Lovell<br /><br />Professor of English & Director of the San Jose Area Writing Project<br />San Jose State University<br />San Jose, California<br /><br />Agenda<br /><br />3:05 - 3:05 participants read vignette focusing on Dill Harris from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and write the opening sentences of a character analysis essay<br />3:05 - 3:15 J Lovell reads essay on Martin Luther and Walt Disney as teachers of reading<br />3:15 - 3:20 J Lovell provides demonstration of "cumulative graphic organizer" [his own invention!] as a pre-reading strategy, focusing on courtroom scene from film version of To Kill a Mockingbird (henceforth TKAM)<br />3:20 – 3:25 participants view visual symbol posters of Dill Harris character on the overhead, then discuss with a partner what they now understand about their character<br />3:25 – 3:30 J Lovell discusses use of role play activity, with Dill, Mayella & Tom in mixed character groups, with one character in the "hot seat" and the other two asking questions of that character<br />3:30 - 3:35 participants listen to vignette of Dill from audio version of TKAM, while large print version of this vignette is displayed on the overhead projector screen<br />3:35 - 3:40 participants discuss what they learned about Dill Harris by experiencing this sequence of activities<br /><br />Dill Harris<br /><br />Dill was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending the summer with his aunt, Miss Rachel, and would be pending every summer in Maycomb from now on. His family was from Maycomb County originally, his mother worked for a photographer in Meridian, had entered his picture in a Beautiful Child contest and won five dollars. She gave the money to Dill, who went to the picture show twenty times on it.<br /><br />"Don't have any picture shows here, except Jesus ones in the courthouse sometimes," said Jem. "Ever seen anything good?"<br /><br />Dill had seen Dracula, a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning of respect. "Tell it to us," he said.<br /><br />Dill was a curiosity. He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair was snow white and stuck to his head like duck-fluff; he was a year my senior but I towered over him. As he told us the old tale his blue eyes would lighten and darken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in the center of his forehead.<br /><br />When Dill reduced Dracula to dust, and Jem said the show sounded better than the book, I asked Dill where his father was: "You ain't said anything about him."<br /><br />"I haven't got one."<br /><br />"Is he dead?"<br /><br />"No . . . "<br /><br />"Then if he's not dead you got one, haven't you?"<br /><br />Dill blushed and Jem told me to hush, a sure sign that Dill had been studied and found acceptable.<br /><br /><br />Martin Luther and Walt Disney as Teachers of Reading<br /><br />Because part of my job at San Jose State is to serve as a university supervisor of beginning teachers of English, I've spent a great deal of time over the past 22 years observing students in classrooms at the middle and high school levels reading and responding to what they read. Often, as I observe these classrooms, it seems to me that teachers are behaving as if the Lutheran revolution is the only game in town. You know the general story: Luther directly challenged the whole notion of the purpose of reading and who should be allowed to learn to read. Prior to the Lutheran revolution, readers of texts were largely monks and priests, while the rest of the population acted primarily as listeners to the Biblical narratives told by this priestly class. These readings were frequently supplemented by visual versions of these same tales, often depicted as frescoes on nearby church walls.<br /><br />Luther changed all that. "You must be a reader yourself if you are ever to understand your true relationship to God," he proclaimed. Even more somberly for today's students, he suggested that if you could not understand what you read, you were meant to be damned. Damned eternally. Oh my.<br /><br />As a student growing up in the late 50's, I was a child of Sputnik. Surprisingly, the sudden and quite unanticipated launching of this orbital satellite had the effect on American education of driving us back to the basics of the Lutheran revolution. Shortly after the Soviets launched sputnik in the fall of 1957, American students' reading comprehension began to be tested both systematically and frequently. Depending on one's comprehension level, one was placed in either higher or lower level classes: "saved" or "damned."<br /><br />For me, the logical culmination of this system came in my senior year of college. I was taking a class in the modern British novel by a Professor I greatly admired. All of us "saved" students in English were sitting in the first two rows of the small lecture hall, laughing at the professor's jokes and nudging each other as we pointed to passages we'd underlined in our texts and comments we'd written in the margins. I chanced to turn around one day to look at the back of the room. There, on the far side of the back row, hunched down in his chair, was one of my classmates -- a good friend and a fellow member of my residential hall. He was looking rather desperate, peering over the top of his book, clearly hoping the professor would not notice him. I knew this particular classmate was extremely bright. In fact, he later went on to Oxford University and then Harvard Law School. What sort of system could lead to his conviction that he was not among the saved, at least as far as reading of works of modern British literature was concerned?<br /><br />But that was the consequence, I later came to realize, of identifying those with different academic aptitudes early in an educational system, then nurturing these talented individuals at the expense of those not "meant" to be saved. The cluster of the saved, of course, got smaller and smaller as one rose up through the educational ranks. Eventually, in English studies, it became a matter of fewer and fewer people talking more and more loudly to one another.<br /><br />In my third year of graduate school in English, as I was observing this process of increasing selectivity taking place, and wondering when I would be the next to be pushed off the plank, I was asked to take over the leadership of an undergraduate seminar made up of English majors who had a different take on the purpose and value of the study of English. These were students who were planning to enter post-BA credential programs in the state of Connecticut. Since I'd taught 10th and 12th grade at a private school in Delaware prior to beginning my graduate studies, I was asked to become the seminar leader for this group of undergraduates. And as it turned out, the questions they were asking fascinated me: how should the field of English be re-defined when it became the one field of study required of all students in each year of their public schooling? As significantly, how should this field of study be understood when one's students are there by law rather than choice?<br /><br />And here's where Walt Disney came in. What if we decided to look at how kids understood "texts" when they were good at it? Wouldn't this give us a different perspective? What purpose was served, after all, by observing kids suffering through the ever-more-selective reading programs whose primary effect was to increase the disparity between "good readers" and "poor readers" in each successive year? Since I was leading this seminar as an adjunct to a Children's Literature course for which I was serving as a TA, it seemed sensible to define reading as a matter of making sense of texts that were both visual and verbal. Isn't that what any good elementary teacher taught day in day out: stories in which the illustrations gave the reader as much information as the words?<br /><br />In pursuing this line of inquiry, we learned that prior to Disney's creation of the first 90 minute full length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1937, it was widely assumed that "talking animated cartoons" could only sustain the attention of the average child for about ten minutes. Sound familiar? Disney and his animators challenged this conventional thinking, asking themselves what might make children want to sustain their attention for longer periods of time. Telling a good story was obviously a key ingredient (hence the choice of Snow White), but so was the appeal to our universal delight in sound, song, movement and a bit of irreverence (hence the Seven Dwarfs). By drawing on these attributes of what made kids variously talented and smart, might the supposed "shortness" of kids' attention spans be significantly stretched? As we all know today, Disney and his animators proved the skeptics wrong. Kids could pay attention to what they were viewing for a good deal longer than 10 minutes. It was all a matter of knowing in advance what might interest and engage their attention, then incorporating these elements systematically and consistently into this uniquely modern version of visual and verbal "story telling." Were it not for the launching of Sputnik, perhaps this Disney "vision" of kids as diversely talented readers and viewers might even have prevailed in American education. Sadly, however, this vision of the later 1930's gradually faded as school once again became more academic, rigorous, and relentlessly selective. And so it is today.<br /><br />In today's presentation, however, I'll return you briefly to the world of Disney and introduce you to an approach to reading comprehension that draws on the many ways both kids and adults are uniquely talented. After starting with the most traditional of exercises -- reading a short passage from Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird describing Dill Harris and writing about that passage -- we'll approach at this same text through a variety of different media, using a technique that John Elkins and Allan Luke have called "re/mediating adolescent literacies." I'll only be able to give the briefest of overviews of the sequence of exercises I've developed over the years to help students and teachers rethink "old school" practices in reading and responding to traditional texts. If you would like to gain a fuller understanding of the practices I will be introducing you to over the next several minutes, however, as well as to read the responses of a group of K-college Writing Project teachers who experienced this sequence of execises this summer, I invite you to visit my blog by googling "jonathan's edutalk" and reading what I've posted on my entries of 11-20-08.<br /><br />Materials and Methods Used in this Workshop<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Graphic organizers used to prepare students for reading or viewing a verbal or visual text</span><br /><br />Graphic organizers are one of the most effective ways to introduce students to a verbal or visual text that they are about to read. Good books for helping teachers do this at the secondary level are Jim Burke’s Tools for Thought: Helping All Students Read, Write, Speak, and Think (Heinemann, 2002) and Fran Claggett and Joan Brown’s Drawing Your Own Conclusions: Graphic Strategies for Reading, Writing, and Thinking (Heinemann, 1997). For elementary level teachers, I’d recommend Elaine McEwan’s Teach Them ALL to Read: Catching the Kids Who Fall Through the Cracks (SAGE, 2002), Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis’s Strategies that Work: Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Understanding (Stenhouse, 2000), and Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader's Workshop by Susan Zimmermann (Heinemann, 1997).<br /><br />I use a 'cumulative graphic organizer' as a pre-reading strategy in this workshop, anticipating that participants will be able to make better sense of the courtroom segment in general, and Dill's role in this segment in particular, if they are ‘pre-introduced’ to this part of the TKAM narrative through the use of a graphic organizer. Student-generated graphic organizers are also terrific ways for kids of all ages to represent what they have already read or seen, and to exhibit this knowledge to their classmates. I also like the idea of using overhead transparencies to portray strong central images, or metaphors that characterize segments of a narrative, and then "embellishing" these central images with successive "layers" of meaning.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Video versions of narrative texts</span><br /><br />I’m always on the lookout for good video versions of novels and plays, either for classroom use or for use in workshops for teachers. I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit, however, that I do not know how to dub selections from a DVD version of a novel onto a new DVD. I therefore just select a segment of the film I’m focusing on for my workshop, or use the "select scene" on the DVD player, to move from one segment to the next.<br /><br />What I think is important about the use of visual narratives in general is to regard the video version of the work you are reading as equal in importance to the print version. In other words, regard both versions as two interestingly different renditions, two "re/mediations," to use the clever term that Professor Donna Alvermann borrows from the research of John Elkins and Allan Luke,1 of the same "deep story." Don’t treat the video version as a way to make the experience of reading the story or play more palatable, but rather as a chance to discover the compellingly different ways that great stories can be told. I also think that it’s a good idea to realize that for our students digital media provide their primary way of understanding and responding to stories, while most teachers tend to regard print narratives as the "higher" form of story telling.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Visual Symbol Posters based on characters in a story</span><br /><br />Visual symbol posters are especially effective as a way to lead students "into" the characters of a story they are about to read, but they can also be used as either a "through" or "beyond" exercise, capturing what readers or groups of readers are learning about their characters.<br /><br />What’s exciting about these visual symbol posters is how much they teach the students, as they are creating these posters and talking together, about the characters they are describing, and how stunning they can be when posted on the classroom wall for all to see. Gallery walks are especially effective as a means of exhibiting these artworks to the class as a whole.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Role Playing of Characters</span><br /><br />Having small groups of three participants role play different characters, as with the characters of Dill Harris & Mayella Ewell & Tom Robinson, has the advantage of lowering the apprehension that participants might feel if asked to sit in a "hot seat" before the class as a whole, role playing a single character. Similar in power and effectiveness to the use of guided imagery, role playing also has a similar danger: it can become so engrossing that students forget these are fictional characters they are representing. It is therefore a good strategy, when asking your students to engage in role-playing, to set clear guidelines for your students as both role-players and question askers. It’s also important to debrief them carefully and sensitively afterwards. That being said, I know of no more powerful means of helping aliterate readers (those students who can read but chose not to) to become engaged in what they read than the "paired" exercises of creating visual symbol posters and then role playing their character.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Audio Versions of Novels</span><br /><br />There are several excellent recorded book companies now making recorded books for both children and young adults, and I've been pleased to observe that several adopted textbook series include recorded versions of their narrative texts as well. If you do not want to spend the money to purchase a recorded version of a book, however, you can often find these versions in your local public library, often in the section for the hearing impaired.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Dubbing selections from your recorded book for use in your classroom</span><br /><br />Prepare to take some time if you wish to follow my practice in the final segment of my workshop, but to be rewarded with a tape that you can use for many years to come. I start by listening to the recorded version of a novel or play while I’m driving, making a mental note of which selections I think will work well for “into,” “through,” and “beyond” exercises. For my Mockingbird selections, I was thinking about providing middle adolescent readers with a “window” into the three characters I’d chosen to focus on prior to their reading of this novel.<br /><br />After selecting and making a mental note of my selections from the audio version of a novel or play, I then begin the process of locating and recording them in the order in which I intend to play them in the classroom. Once I’ve located each segment, I dub this selection to a fresh audiotape, so that the resulting new tape is one that I can play in a classroom. The bad news is that this process takes time: the good news is that once one has made one of these tapes, one can use it over and over again.<br /><br />1 Alvermann, Donna, "Seeing Themselves as Capable and Engaged Readers: Adolescents and Re/Mediated Instruction," Learning Point Associates, Naperville, IL 2003jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-67164049026886043292008-02-02T11:22:00.000-08:002008-02-02T11:24:52.432-08:00pre-reading R&J for ELLsNote: Using this as an "into" for the play will be especially helpful for ELLs in becoming more comfortable with the language of this play. Prepare for this oral/choral reading by having the whole class recite the "all" passages together, preferably twice, then having pairs of students, preferably mixed ability, practice their individual #1 through #18 "parts" before the oral/choral reading.<br /><br />ROMEO & JULIET<br /><br /><br />Teacher: The minute this play begins, you know that there are two families in a town in northern Italy named<br /><br />all: Fair Verona!<br /><br />They hate each other, and this hatred is old and bitter. Folks are yelling<br /><br />all: Down with the Capulets!<br /><br />while other folks are yelling<br /><br />all: Down with the Montagues!<br /><br />There is a brawl so violent that the Prince of the town has to come out and lay down the law.<br /><br />all: If ever you disturb our streets again,<br />Your lives will pay the forfeit of the peace!<br /><br />Then we see Romeo wandering around and learn that he has been staying out all night and sleeping all day because he is<br /><br />all: In Love!<br /><br />with a lady named "Rosaline," who does not love him back. And we meet "the boys" -- Romeo's friends Benvolio and Mercutio -- who are headed for a party at<br /><br />all: The Capulets!<br /><br />It's a masked ball, so they can sneak in wearing costumes and no one at the ball will know that they are from the hated<br /><br />all: Montagues!<br /><br />Benvolio is excited because going to this ball will give Romeo a chance to get over his infatuation with the proud and aloof Lady Rosaline.<br /><br />#1: GIVE LIBERTY TO YOUR EYES. EXAMINE OTHER BEAUTIES!<br /><br />When the boys arrive in disguise, Lord Capulet does not recognize them as his enemies<br /><br />all: the Montagues!<br /><br />and so welcomes them.<br /><br />#2: YOU ARE WELCOME, GENTLEMEN! COME, MUSICIANS, PLAY!<br /><br />It is at this party that Romeo first sees young Juliet. He does not realize that she is the daughter of his hated host. He is blown away by her beauty!<br /><br />#3: O SHE DOTH TEACH THE TORCHES TO BURN BRIGHT!<br /><br />They dance. They kiss. Juliet says:<br /><br />#4: YOU KISS BY THE BOOK<br /><br />Only at the end of the party do they learn that the other is one of the "enemy."<br /><br />But they don't feel like enemies. After the party, Romeo escapes from his buddies, climbs the wall into the Capulet family orchard, and delivers his famous lines:<br /><br />#5: BUT SOFT, WHAT LIGHT THROUGH YONDER WINDOW BREAKS?<br /><br />Juliet comes out on the balcony. Without knowing that Romeo is right below her, she says:<br /><br />all: O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?<br />Deny thy father and refuse thy name<br />And I'll no longer be a Capulet!<br /><br />They talk passionately of love, but then Juliet hears her mother calling. Romeo says:<br /><br />#6: WILT THOU LEAVE ME SO UNSATISFIED?<br /><br />Juliet is no fool. She replies:<br /><br />all: If that thy bent of love be honorable,<br />Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow.<br /><br />You would think that marriage between these two would be unthinkable because of the feud between their families.<br /><br />all: But Love is Love!<br /><br />They enlist the help of Juliet's nurse and Friar Lawrence, a local member of the clergy who hopes their union will bring an end to the feud. In secret, Friar Lawrence marries them. But the families, knowing nothing of this marriage, continue their feud. In the town square, Tybalt<br /><br />all: A Capulet!<br /><br />and a hot-headed cousin of Juliet's, comes looking for a fight with<br /><br />all: A Montague!<br /><br />Romeo's equally hot-headed friend Mercutio takes him on, saying:<br /><br />#7: TYBALT, YOU RAT-CATCHER, WILL YOU WALK?<br /><br />Tybalt yells back:<br /><br />#8: I AM FOR YOU!<br /><br />They fight. Mercutio dies and Tybalt flees. But look:<br /><br />all: Here comes the furious Tybalt back again!<br /><br />Romeo will not let his friend Mercutio die in vain. Even though Tybalt is Juliet's cousin, Romeo kills him, and regrets it almost immediately. In despair over his action, he laments:<br /><br />#9: O, I AM FORTUNE'S FOOL!<br /><br />The Prince <br />all: Of Fair Verona!<br /><br />banishes Romeo to the nearby town on Mantua, but before Romeo leaves, he spends a night with Juliet. As he leaves, he says:<br /><br />#10: THEN WINDOW, LET DAY IN, AND LET LIFE OUT!<br /><br />But moments after Romeo leaves, Juliet's mother enters to inform her daughter that Lord Capulet has arranged for Juliet to marry an older man named Count Paris, a local nobleman. She expects her daughter will be very happy with this news, telling her that:<br /><br />all: Early next Thursday morn,<br />The gallant, young and noble gentleman<br />The County Paris, at Saint Peter's Church<br />Shall happ'ly make thee there a joyful bride!<br /><br />But even though Juliet has been an obedient daughter in the past, she says:<br /><br />#11: NOW BY SAINT PETER'S CHURCH, AND PETER TOO<br /> HE SHALL NOT MAKE ME THERE A JOYFUL BRIDE!<br /><br />Her father does not like his daughter's tone of voice one bit. He says:<br /><br />#12: HANG THEE YOUNG BAGGAGE! DISOBEDIENT WRETCH!<br /><br />Juliet is desperate. With the help of Friar Lawrence, she comes up with a plan to take a special drink that will make her appear to be dead. That way her parents will put her body in the family tomb, and after that Friar Lawrence will fetch her and take her to Romeo in Mantua.<br /><br />As Juliet drinks the special potion, she says:<br /><br />#13: ROMEO, I COME! THIS DO I DRINK TO THEE!<br /><br />It works. Juliet's nurse and her mother Lady Capulet find her in the morning.<br /><br />#14 & 15: ALACK THE DAY! SHE'S DEAD! SHE'S DEAD! SHE'S DEAD!<br /><br />And they put her body in the family tomb, just as Juliet and Friar Lawrence had planned.<br /><br />Unfortunately, one small detail has been left out. Romeo has not heard of the plan! All he hears is that Juliet is dead.<br /><br />Many people head for Juliet's tomb. Romeo, who stops to buy some poison, is going there to join Juliet in death. Friar Lawrence is going there to get Juliet and take her to Romeo. Count Paris is going there to mourn for his almost-wife.<br /><br />Paris gets there first. Romeo finds him there and kills him. Count Paris says:<br /><br />#16: O, I AM SLAIN!<br /><br />Then Romeo sees Juliet's body and takes the poison he has brought with him, saying:<br /><br />#17: HERE'S TO MY LOVE! . . THUS WITH A KISS I DIE!<br /><br />Friar Lawrence arrives just too late, finding Romeo dead and Juliet just waking up. As usual, he has great advice for Juliet:<br /><br />all: Come, come away.<br />Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead<br />And Paris too. Come, I'll dispose of thee<br />Among a sisterhood of holy nuns!<br /><br />This does not sound like any sort of a plan to Juliet. Friar Lawrence then flees from the tomb and Juliet decides to join Romeo in death. Since there is not enough left of Romeo's poison to kill her, she stabs herself, saying:<br /><br />#18: O HAPPY DAGGER. THIS IS THY SHEATH!<br /><br />Romeo and Juliet are found in the tomb by their feuding parents, who finally realize that their quarrels have gone too far. They vow to make peace, concluding sadly that:<br /><br />all: Never was a story of more woe<br />Than this of Juliet and Romeojonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-87024135256076784692008-01-21T23:59:00.001-08:002008-01-22T00:05:57.706-08:00what is a cumulative graphic organizer?In my response to John's comment in my last post, where he asked what I was referring to as the "cumulative graphic organizer" I used to help set students up for their viewing of the courtroom sequence of TKAM, I provided the following explanation:<br /><br />I start with a visual of courtroom as seen from the judge's perspective, showing the desk for the lawyer for the accused on the right, the desk for the lawyer for the state (or the plaintiff) on the left, and the balcony above (transparency #1)<br /><br />I overlay this with simple stick figures by the desks and up in the balcony: the lawyer for the accused (AF) by the right side desk, the lawyer for the state (Mr G) by the left side desk , and, up in the balcony, Scout and Jem Finch and Dill Harris. I color code these stick figures: half red and half black for Atticus, half green and half black for Mr G, all green for Scout and Jem, and half green and half red for Dill (transparency #2).<br /><br />I next overlay simple stick figures for Tom Robinson (red and black) behind the desk to the right, and Mayella Ewell and Bob Ewell (red and black) by the desk to the left (transparency #3).<br /><br />I finally overlay a transparency showing a throng of stick figures in green on the ground floor and a smaller throng of stick figures in red up in the balcony.<br /><br />I then have a final overlay that explains that the color coding refers to the following:<br /><br />green = Maycomb's "insider" population, largely white<br /><br />red = Maycomb's "outsider" population, largely black (but notice the exceptions)<br /><br />black= the accused,his accusers, and their lawyers<br /><br />What this cumulative graphic organizer helps to do is set students up to view the courtroom scene from the film, not only situating the main characters in relation to the "geography" of the courtroom but also anticipating something of the roles they will play in relation to one another.<br /><br />I hope this is helpful to others who might have had a similar question to John's.jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-17048857515527833032007-11-14T22:56:00.000-08:002007-11-14T23:09:07.551-08:00TKAM at NCTE in NYCI'll be giving a panel presentation tomorrow morning at the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention in New York City. In this presentatiion I'll be giving a streamlined version of the workshop on To Kill a Mockingbird that I describe in my entry entitled "martin luther and walt disney as teachers of reading." Since I've never typed out the Dill Harris, Mayella Ewell and Tom Robinson exerpts that I use in this workshop, I thought it would be helpful to do so in this entry. Following thse excerpts, I'll reproduce my most recent version of the agenda for this workshop. Here goes:<br /><br />Dill Harris<br /><br />Dill was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending the summer with his aunt, Miss Rachel, and would be pending every summer in Maycomb from now on. His family was from Maycomb County originally, his mother worked for a photographer in Meridian, had entered his picture in a Beautiful Child contest and won five dollars. She gave the money to Dill, who went to the picture show twenty times on it.<br /><br />"Don't have any picture shows here, except Jesus ones in the courthouse sometimes," said Jem. "Ever seen anything good?"<br /><br />Dill had seen Dracula, a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning of respect. "Tell it to us," he said.<br /><br />Dill was a curiosity. He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair was snow white and stuck to his head like duck-fluff; he was a year my senior but I towered over him. As he told us the old tale his blue eyes would lighten and darken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in the center of his forehead.<br /><br />When Dill reduced Dracula to dust, and Jem said the show sounded better than the book, I asked Dill where his father was: "You ain't said anything about him."<br /><br />"I haven't got one."<br /><br />"Is he dead?"<br /><br />"No . . . "<br /><br />"Then if he's not dead you got one, haven't you?"<br /><br />Dill blushed and Jem told me to hush, a sure sign that Dill had been studied and found acceptable.<br /><br />*********************************************************<br /><br />"Dill, you ain't telling me right--your folks couldn't do without you. They must be just mean to you. Tell you what to do about that--"<br /><br />Dill's voice went on steadily in the darkness: "The thing is, what I'm tryin' to say is--they do get on a lot better without me, I can't help them any. They ain't mean. They buy me everything I want, but it's "now-you've-got-it=go-play-with-it. You've got a roomful of things. I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it." Dill tried to deepen his voice. "You're not a boy. Boys get out and play baseball with other boys, they don't hang around the house worryin' their folks."<br /><br />Dill's voice was his own again: "Oh, they ain't mean. They kiss you and hug you good night and good mornin' and good-bye and tell you they love you-- Scout, let's get us a baby."<br /><br />"Where?"<br /><br />There was a man Dill had heard of who had a boat that he rowed across to a foggy island where all these babies were; you could order one--<br /><br />"That's a lie. Aunty said God drops 'em down the chimney. At least that what I think she said." For once, Aunty's diction had not been too clear.<br /><br />"Well that ain't so. You get babies from each other. But there's this man, too---he has these babies just waitin' to wake up, he breathes life into 'em. . . . "<br /><br />Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of a grey house with sad brown doors.<br /><br />"Dill?"<br /><br />"Mm?"<br /><br />"Why do you reckon Boo Radley's never run off?"<br /><br />Dill sighed a long sigh and turned away from me.<br /><br />"Maybe he doesn't have anywhere to run off to. . . ."<br /><br />*********************************************************<br /><br />This was as much as I heard of Mr. Gilmer's cross examination, because Jem made me take Dill out. For some reason Dill had started crying and couldn't stop; quietly at first, then his sobs were heard by several people in the balcony. Jem said if I didn't go with him he'd make me, and Reverend Sykes said I'd better go, so I went. Dill had seemed to be all right that day, nothing wrong with him, but I guessed he hadn't fully recovered from running away.<br /><br />"Ain't you feeling good?" I asked, when we reached the bottom of the stairs.<br /><br />Dill tried to pull himself together as we ran down the south steps. Mr. Link Deas was a lonely figure on the top step. "Anything happenin', Scout?" he asked as we went by. "No sir," I answered over my shoulder. "Dill here, he's sick."<br /><br />"Come on out under the trees," I said. "Heat got you, I expect." We choose the fattest live oak and sat under it.<br /><br />"It was just him I couldn't stand," Dill said.<br /><br />"Who, Tom?"<br /><br />"That old Mr. Gilmer doin' him thataway, talking so hateful to him--"<br /><br />"Dill, that's his job. Why, if we didn't have prosecutors--well, we couldn't have defense attorneys, I reckon."<br /><br />Dill exhaled patiently. "I know all that, Scout. It was the way he said it made me sick, plain sick."<br /><br />"He's supposed to act that way, Dill, he was cross--"<br /><br />"He didn't act that way when--"<br /><br />"Dill, those were his own witnesses."<br /><br />"Well, Mr. Finch didn't act that way to Mayella and old man Ewell when he cross-examined them. The way that man called him 'boy' all the time and sneered at him, an' looked around at the jury every time he answered--"<br /><br />"Well, Dill, after all he's just a Negro."<br /><br />"I don't care one speck. It ain't right, somehow it ain't right to do 'em that way. Hasn't anybody got any business talkin' like that--it just makes me sick."<br /><br />Mayella Ewell<br /><br />Maycomb's Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin. The cabin's plank walls were supplemented with sheets of corrugated iron, its roof shingled with tin cans hammered flat, so only its general shape suggested its original design: square, with four tiny rooms opening onto a shotgun hall, the cabin rested uneasily upon four irregular lumps of limestone. Its windows were merely open spaces in the walls, which in the summertime were covered with greasy strips of cheesecloth to keep out the varmints that feasted on Maycomb's refuse.<br /><br />The varmints had a lean time of it, for the Ewells gave the dump a thorough gleaning every day, and the fruits of their industry (those that were not eaten) made the plot of ground around the cabin look like the playhouse of an insane child: what passed for a fence was bits of tree-limbs, broomsticks and tool shafts, all tipped with rusty hammer-heads, snaggle-toothed rake heads, shovels, axes and grubbing hoes, held on with pieces of barbed wire. Enclosed by this barricade was a dirty yard containing the remains of a Model-T Ford (on blocks), a discarded dentist's chair, an ancient icebox, plus lesser items: old shoes, worn-out table radios, picture frames, and fruit jars, under which scrawny orange chickens pecked hopefully.<br /><br />One corner of the yard, though, bewildered Maycomb. Against the fence, in a line, were six chipped-enamel slop jars holding brilliant red geraniums, cared for as tenderly as if they belonged to Miss Maudie Atkinson, had Miss Maudie deigned to permit a geranium on her premises. People said they were Mayella Ewell's.<br /><br />*********************************************************<br /><br />"Miss Mayella," he said, smiling, "I won't try to scare you for a while, not yet. Let's just get acquainted. How old are you?"<br /><br />"Said I was nineteen, said it to the judge yonder." Mayella jerked her head resentfully at the bench.<br /><br />"So you did, so you did ma'am. You'll have to bear with me, Miss Mayella. I'm getting along and can't remember as well as I used to. I might ask you things you've already said before, but you'll give me an answer, won't you? Good."<br /><br />I could see nothing in Mayella's expression to justify Atticus's assumption that he had secured her wholehearted cooperation. She was looking at him furiously.<br /><br />"Won't answer a word you say long as you keep on mockin' me," she said.<br /><br />"Ma'am?" asked Atticus, startled.<br /><br />"Long as you keep on makin' fun o'me."<br /><br />Judge Taylor said, "Mr. Finch is not making fun of you. What's the matter with you?"<br /><br />Mayella looked from under lowered eyelids at Atticus, but she said to the judge: "Long's he keeps callin' me ma'am and sayin' Miss Mayella. I don't have to take his sass, I ain't called upon to take it."<br /><br />*********************************************************<br /><br />"Miss Mayella," said Atticus, in spite of himself, "a nineteen-year-old girl like you must have friends. Who are your friends?"<br /><br />The witness frowned as if puzzled. "Friends?"<br /><br />"Yes, don’t' you know anyone near your age, or older, or younger? Boys and girls? Just ordinary friends?"<br /><br />Mayella's hostility, which had subsided to grudging neutrality, flared again. "You makin' fun o'me agin, Mr. Finch?"<br /><br />Atticus let her question answer his.<br /><br />"Do you love your father, Miss Mayella?" was his next.<br /><br />"Love him, whatcha mean?"<br /><br />"I mean, is he good to you, is he easy to get along with?"<br /><br />"He does tollable, 'cept when--"<br /><br />"Except when?"<br /><br />Mayella looked at her father, who was sitting with his chair tipped against the railing. He sat straight up and waited for her to answer.<br /><br />"Except when nothin'," said Mayella. "I said he does tollable."<br /><br />Mr. Ewell leaned back again.<br /><br />"Except when he's drinking?" asked Atticus so gently that Mayella nodded.<br /><br />"Does he ever go after you?"<br /><br />"How do you mean?"<br /><br />"When he's -- riled, has he ever beaten you?"<br /><br />Mayella looked around, down at the court reporter, up at the judge. "Answer the question, Miss Mayella," said Judge Taylor.<br /><br />"My paw's never touched a hair o' my head in his life," she declared firmly. "He never touched me."<br /><br />When Atticus turned away from Mayella he looked like his stomach hurt, but Mayella's face was a mixture of terror and fury. Atticus sat down wearily and polished his glasses with his handkerchief.<br /><br />Suddenl Mayella became articulate. "I got somethin' to say," she said.<br /><br />Atticus raised his head. "Do you want to tell us what happened?"<br /><br />But she did not hear the compassion in his invitation. "I got somethin' to say an' then I ain't gonna say no more. That nigger yonder took advantage of me, an' if you fine fancy gentlemen don't wanta do nothin' about it then you're all yellow stinkin' cowards, stinkin' cowards, the lot of you. Your fine fancy airs don't come to nothin'--your ma'amin' and Miss Mayellerin' don't come to nothin', Mr. Finch--"<br /><br />Then she burst into real tears. Her shoulders shook with angry sobs. She was as good as her word. She answered no more questions.<br /><br />Tom Robinson<br /><br />Thomas Robinson reached around, ran his fingers under his left arm and lifted it. He guided his arm to the Bible and his rubber-like left hand sought contact with the black binding. As he raised his right hand, the useless one slipped off the Bible and hit the clerk's table. He was trying again when Judge Taylor growled, "That'll do, Tom." Tom took the oath and stepped into the witness chair. Atticus very quickly induced him to tell us:<br /><br />Tom was twenty-five years of age; he was married with three children; he had been in trouble with the law before: he once received thirty days for disorderly conduct.<br /><br />"It must have been disorderly," said Atticus. "What did it consist of?"<br /><br />"Got in a fight with another man, he tried to cut me."<br /><br />"Did he succeed?"<br /><br />"Yes suh, a little, not enough to hurt. You see, I--" Tom moved his left shoulder.<br /><br />"Yes," said Atticus. "You were both convicted?"<br /><br />"Yes suh, I had to serve 'cause I couldn't pay the fine. "Other fellow paid his'n."<br /><br />*********************************************************<br /><br />"Tom, what happened to you on the evening of November twenty-first of last year?"<br /><br />Below us, the spectators drew a collective breath and leaned forward. Behind us, the Negroes did the same.<br /><br />Tom was a black-velvet Negro, not shiny, but soft black velvet. The whites of his eyes shone in his face, and when he spoke we saw flashes of his teeth. If he had been whole, he would have been a fine specimen of a man.<br /><br />"Mr. Finch," he said, "I was goin' home as usual that evenin', an' when I passed the Ewell place Miss Mayella were on the porch, like she said she were. It seemed real quite like, an' I didn't quite know why. I was studyin' why, just passin' by, when she says for me to come up there and help her a minute. Well, I went inside the fence an' looked around for some kindlin' to work on, but I didn't see none, and she says, 'Naw, I got somethin' for you to do in the house. Th'old door's off its hinges an' fall's comin' on pretty fast.' I said you got a srewdriver, Miss Mayella? She said she sho' had. Well, I went to the front room an' looked at the door. I said Miss Mayella, this door look all right. I pulled it back'n forth and those hinges was all right. Then she shet the door in my face. Mr. Finch, I was wonderin' why it was so quiet like, an' it came to me that there weren't a chile on the place, nat a one of 'em, and I said Miss Mayella, where the chillun?"<br /><br />*********************************************************<br />"Robinson, you're pretty good at busting up chiffarobes and kindling with one hand, aren't you?<br /><br />"Yes suh, I reckon so."<br /><br />"Strong enough to choke the breath out of a woman and sling her to the floor?"<br /><br />"I never done that, suh."<br /><br />"But you are strong enough to?"<br /><br />"I reckon so, suh."<br /><br />"Had your eye on her a long time, hadn't you, boy?"<br /><br />"No suh, I never looked at her."<br /><br />"Then you were mighty polite to do all that chopping and hauling for her, weren't you, boy?"<br /><br />"I was just tryin' to help her out, suh."<br /><br />"That was mighty generous of you, you had chores at home after your regular work, didn't you?"<br /><br />"Yes suh."<br /><br />"Why didn't you do them instead of Miss Ewell's?"<br /><br />"I done 'em both, suh."<br /><br />"You must have been pretty busy. Why?"<br /><br />"Why what, suh?"<br /><br />"Why were you so anxious to do that woman's chores?"<br /><br />Tom Robinson hesitated, searching for an answer. "Looked like she didn't have nobody to help her, like I says--"<br /><br />"With Mr. Ewell and seven children on the place, boy?"<br /><br />"Well, I says it looked like they never help her none--"<br /><br />"You did all this chopping and work from sheer goodness, boy?"<br /><br />"Tried to help her, I says."<br /><br />Mr. Gilmer smiled grimly at the jury. "You're a mighty good fellow, it seems--did all this for not one penny?"<br /><br />"Yes suh. I felt right sorry for her, she seemed to try more'n the rest of 'em--"<br /><br />"You felt sorry for her, you felt sorry for her?" Mr. Gilmore seemed ready to rise to the ceiling.<br /><br /><br />Agenda<br /><br />Inquiry Question: How might we draw more effectively on different learning modalities to help all our students gain access to our core English curriculum texts?<br /><br />4:15 - 4:20 participants read excerpts concerning Dill Harris, Mayella Ewell or Tom Robinson from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird <br /><br />4:20 – 4:25 participants write first paragraph of a character analysis essay on their assigned character<br /><br />4:25 - 4:30 J Lovell provides overview of the sequence of activities & purpose of workshop<br /><br />4:40 - 4:40 demonstration of 'cumulative graphic organizer' as a pre-reading strategy, focusing on courtroom segment of To Kill a Mockingbird (henceforth TKAM)<br /><br />5:40– 5:05 watch courtroom segment from 1963 movie version of TKAM <br /><br />5:05 - 5:10 gather in 'character’ groups -- Dill Harris #1 & #2, Mayella Ewell #1 & #2, Tom Robinson #1 & #2-- according to character you wrote about initially<br /><br />5:10 - 5:25 create a visual symbol poster of your character and post it on the wall<br /><br />5:25 – 5:40 BREAK!<br /><br />5:40 – 5:55 ‘gallery walk’ of visual symbol posters in character groups; meeting in character groups to discuss questions you'd like to ask the other two characters<br /><br />5:55 – 6:10 in 'mixed character’ groups of 3 or 4, students role play Dill, Mayella or Tom while the other two participants ask questions (5 minutes per character)<br /><br />6:10 - 6:30 participants listen to same excerpts that they responded to in print form at the beginning of the workshop, this time from Recorded Books’ audio version of TKAM, while large print versions of these excerpts are shown on the overhead (shortened excerpts only to give the flavor of listening vs reading)<br /><br />6:30 - 6:45 participants begin reflective writing on what they learned about their characters, and about themselves as learners, by experiencing this workshop.jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-40415761097737747972007-07-19T14:32:00.000-07:002007-10-04T18:08:37.582-07:00chicken soup for the professional delelopment soulNow that you've all completed this summer's ISI, it may surprise and perhaps startle you to recall how difficult and challenging it was to persuade all of you -- twenty K-college teachers of writing -- to give up four and one half weeks of your hard-earned summer vacation to participate in this highly memorable and deeply inspiriting summer program. This difficulty in recruiting participants is true no matter what university or college a Writing Project site calls "home," or how consequential and long term its reputation as a Writing Project site. Having been the primary recruiter of new participants to the ISI's of the San Jose Area Writing Project over the past 18 years, I believe I know why.<br /><br />Somewhat surprisingly, I trace my understanding of why K-college teachers need to be persuaded to participate in programs like the one you've just completed back to my mother: to behaviors in her that I both observed and to some degree inherited. She had what today would be called a "depressive personality," more usefully referred to as a "bi-polar disorder." More usefully because the visual image of bi-polarity does such a good job of conveying the most puzzling and vexing aspect of this mental condition: when you are living in one of its "polarities," say the exuberant or sunny hemisphere, you simply cannot imagine, or even recall in any concrete sense, what it feels like to inhabit the dark or depressive hemisphere. And similarly, when you're groping around in the dark, trying to remember what made you feel so buoyant yesterday and made getting up in the morning something other than a struggle, you simply cannot believe that a sunny "polarity" exists, much less that you were actually living there but "moments" ago. In its extreme form, such bi-polarity can be described, as I'm sure most of you are aware, as clinical schizophrenia: the inability of one "hemisphere" to recognize the other as part of itself.<br /><br />While I would not wish this frustrating mental condition on anyone, it does have its advantages in helping me understand and to some degree anticipate the recruiting challenge I refer to above. It helps because it reminds me that, as teachers, we have all learned to cultivate what are essentially schizophrenic-like personalities. We are one sort of learner when we are in our own classrooms; we are generally an entirely different sort of learner when we are attending a professional development program. To expand a bit on this "classroom personality," it's one where we feel we have some control over the conditions and climate for learning that we create. This ability to create attractive learning conditions within the four walls of our classrooms, of course, is what brought many of us into the profession of teaching in the first place. However pessimistic our take on the possibility of rational and compassionate action in the "outside" world, we could create within our own classrooms an alternate reality of sorts, a sunny place. That's why teachers tend to find stories like Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day" so deeply disturbing. Here is a teacher who had the responsibility to ensure that at least a short glimpse of the sunshine be afforded all her children, and yet she failed the one child--Margot--who needed this glimpse of sunshine the most.<br /><br />In the latter--that hemisphere or state of mind I'm choosing to call the dark side of our schizophrenic-like teaching selves--we generally revert to being skeptics at best or grudging and dispirited followers of the wills of others at worst. We expect that the primary purpose of professional development programs will be tell us what to do, what "mandated curriculum" to implement, by those who claim to know more than we do about our kids, about what they need to learn, and how to reach and teach them most effectively. My favorite example of teachers in this skeptical "professional development" frame of mind comes from Among Schoolchildren--Tracy Kidder's account of the year he spent as a "big fifth grader" in the classroom of a teacher of that grade level in South Holyoke, Massachusetts. Attending an after-school "professional development program" on the textbook series the district had just adopted, he observed the commercial salesman for the series trying his best to extol its virtues to the K-6 teachers at the school. Midway through the workshop, the teacher in front of him turned to his partner, whispering rather audibly, "Yeah, right. And it also dices and slices."<br /><br />The reason that the two hundred or so summer institutes of what is now the National Writing Project are generally not programs that can be ridiculed and dismissed as "dicing and slicing" in this fashion is both useful to know and somewhat surprising. When the Writing Project's founder, Jim Gray, was asked to conduct a summer seminar on the teaching of writing for high school teachers, he was asked to hold this professional development program on the UC Davis campus, using National Defense Education Act ("post-sputnik") funding for this enterprise. The federal government's expectation was that he would come up with a reasonably credible "slicer and dicer." He was the author of a short NCTE pamphlet on paragraph writing, after all, and employed by the School of Education at UC Berkeley as a university supervisor of prospective high school English teachers. Shouldn’t he be able to tell the eager applicants to his summer program what practices to follow, what theories to learn, in order to improve their students' writing abilities?<br /><br />Very likely he could have done just this, but he chose not to. "You are all bright teachers," he wrote to them. "Collectively we know a good deal more about the teaching of writing than any of us, including me, know individually." So he urged them to come to the UC Davis campus that summer bringing a lesson they believed had made a difference to their students' abilities as writers. The content of their summer seminar, he told them, would be the teaching of these lessons to one another, followed by whole group discussions of what made these lessons effective. This was how the basic format of the morning sessions of the writing project's summer institutes began. The afternoon sessions evolved quite naturally when many of these same teachers became eager to try out, on their own writing, some of the practices they'd been introduced to in the morning. To quote from the title of Jim Gray's book on the birth and growth of the writing project, this quite unconventional professional development program began out of a desire to place "teachers at the center."<br /><br />So keeping in mind this highly unusual and surprising history to the Writing Project, what can we say about our shared experience in this summer's Invitational Summer Institute? More particularly, borrowing a leaf from the conclusion of Ari Taub's workshop on developing more consequential curricula for our students, what practical and manageable lessons might we draw from this shared experience? And how might we apply these lessons not only to our classrooms but also to the professional development programs organized by the schools and districts in which we work? In considering this question during debriefing sessions following the third and fourth weeks of our program, Pam and I thought that one useful approach would be to deconstruct the summer institute itself, making its procedures and practices as transparent, and accessible to all of you, as possible. Just as we asked you all to reflect on both of our workshop demonstrations during the first week, asking yourself what helped make these workshops effective for you as professional development experiences, we would now like to lay bare what we consider to be the essential "inner workings" of the ISI. Here goes:<br /><br />The first thing we wanted to do was to make sure that every participant in our professional development program felt recognized and respected as soon as he or she walked in the door. In the ISI this summer we began to create this climate of respect on our first day by asking participants to bring in an object, a piece of 'realia,' that indicated something significant about them. Our introductions to one another via these objects turned out to be insightful and at times startling. We learned about Juan's reverence for his mother as a cotton picker in Texas, about Becky's commitment to looking out for her own health, about Anne's being thankful for the sight she has rather then being embarrassed about the glasses she must now wear, about Mine's conversations in English with her Garfield stuffed animal, the one friend she had after recently moving from Ankara, Turkey to the San Jose area.<br /><br />Beyond that, we asked you to bring in a prompt for your initial writing experience that we knew would be accessible to everyone: a family photograph. By asking you to share these photographs among yourselves in your afternoon writing groups (hereafter AWGs) prior to writing about them, we anticipated that everyone would not only have plenty to write about, but that the participants in the afternoon writing groups would begin to get to know each other. And that's the reason, of course, for using the AWGs to handle the majority of the "housekeeping" details that keep the institute well fed and functioning smoothly. By asking each of the AWGs to contribute directly to the "running" of the summer institute, bringing morning snacks and supplies and end-of-week potluck picnics, the members of the afternoon writing groups not only get to know one another in a variety of different ways, but also begin to see themselves as important and consequential parts of the institute as a whole.<br /><br />This sense of the value and importance of each person's contribution to the group is directly related to the focus we place on the emergence of each participant's "voice" as a writer. This is the component of the Writing Project as a professional development program that sets it most distinctly apart from other "subject matter programs" and that gives it its greatest strength. That is, while we gradually involve participants in institute-running responsibilities that convince each person of his or her unique importance to the functioning of the program as a whole, AWGs are involved in precisely that same enterprise regarding each participant's unique and individual "voice" as a writer. For the past several summers we've enlisted the help of four former institute participants--one for each group--so that each of the AWGs can move as swiftly and effectively as possible to that quite magical moment when each member of the group not only contributes to but becomes almost viscerally embodied in the sound and the substance of the writing of each of its members. We do this in part because we believe that a writing teacher must be a practitioner of his or her craft just as surely as a violin or Scottish Country Dance instructor must be. Just as importantly, however, we focus on the development of each participant's writing because we believe that an authentic writing voice is an indispensable part of realizing the collective authority we possess as a "teacher-centered" professional development program.<br /><br />Over the years, we've learned to respect and heighten the role that Scribe Notes play in the development of the individual voices of institute participants, along with their gradually increasing sense of their contribution to the group's collective authority. After having the two forms of Scribe Notes--one from notes and one from memory--modeled by the co-directors, the Scribe Notes themselves become the primary means for each participant to move from the more private writing space of the AWGs to the more public space of the institute as a whole. The responsibility of each institute participant to write one set of Scribe Notes from notes and one set from memory, and for reading his or her particular set of notes aloud to the group as a whole on their assigned morning, serves as a concrete and daily affirmation of two essential truths. This practice affirms that each of us has his or her own unique voice and way of transcribing or recalling events, and that this rich array of perspectives contributes enormously to our sense of the importance and consequence of the journey we are collectively embarked upon as we move from week to week to our final day. <br /><br />Alongside the development of this belief in our individual and collective value as teachers who practice what we preach, whose voices are not only worth hearing but often highly entertaining, we focus simultaneously on the development of each participant's unique, and uniquely important, professional voice. The primary method we use to achieve this goal, of course, is to ask each participant to prepare and present a 90-minute workshop demonstration for the group as whole, generally starting after we've had several former participants model these workshops in the first two weeks of the summer institute. We added a new feature to this component of the institute this summer: a self-conscious emphasis on debriefing the elements of an effective workshop after Pam and I gave our "model workshops" on Thursday and Friday of our first week. It was especially important that we held ourselves up for critical analysis and collective scrutiny in this way, since we expected that everyone in the institute had something worthy to say, and we wanted to help each participant say it as effectively as possible. Since everyone knew that they were going to have their own "90 minutes in the sun," it was crucial to make sure that the process of planning and giving an effective workshop was clear and transparent. This would be similar to making sure that your students are given plenty of opportunities to practice and reflect on what constitutes effective performance before you evaluate them in a classroom setting. Because there is an even greater desire among summer institute participants than among students in a regular classroom to be successful in their workshop demonstrations, it was especially important to make sure everyone was set up for success.<br /><br />As we were conducting these morning debriefing sessions after our workshops, we were simultaneously beginning our afternoon coaching sessions with each of our participants. Our objective here was similar to the fostering of personal voices that were promoted by the realia introductions, the writing and reading of scribe notes, the readings from Bird by Bird that began each day's session, and of course the writing and responding that were taking place in the afternoon writing groups. Our coaching sessions were devoted to listening for that teacher's voice that was both passionate and professional. Once we thought we detected this voice, our job was to reflect it back to the participant in a distilled form, filtering out the static, so that the person we were coaching could begin to hear himself or herself at a more essential and fundamental level. This part of the summer institute is always the most demanding for us, since it involves helping participants gain the confidence to amplify their own voice, rather than planning a workshop that "we," as co-directors, would like to "hear" them give. That's why it's both so hard and so necessary. While it's understandable that "good students" want to "please" their "teachers," what you need to do as a summer institute co-director is listen for the distinctive and essential voice of each teacher, the "honest" voice of the person behind the teaching, the voice that's so often buried or suppressed by state and district mandates or curriculum "guides." <br /><br />But it isn't simply a matter of having your professional voice heard as a teacher that's important. It's just as important to have sympathetic but rigorous coaches help you structure the organization and delivery of this voice -- that is, your workshop demonstration -- so that it comes across as both "loud" and "persuasive." I'll use two coaching sessions with participants from this summer, to whom I'll ascribe fictional names and topics, as examples. Barbara started with a workshop idea based on the way she taught her primary students the "water cycle." By working with her, seeing the possibilities for an engaging jigsaw exercise based on teaching this particular content, we came up with a more compelling way for Barbara's "voice" to be heard. Similarly with Sharon: what started as a portfolio-keeping workshop that relied too heavily on a walk-through of the writing process became a workshop devoted to helping participants with their own portfolios. "What you want to provide participants with is a strong and compelling portfolio-keeping experience," we argued. "Until institute participants are led to experience portfolio-keeping as an engaging and compelling activity, they will not be motivated to figure out ways to provide this experience for their students."<br /><br />For all our focus on the development of confident and persuasive professional voices among institute participants, however, the core of the institute emerges in its final days: participants own writing and their reflections on themselves as writers. By insisting that five pages of "finished" writing be submitted to an institute anthology just prior to the end of the institute, and that five to fifteen "portfolio pieces" be selected and described in an annotated table of contents on the next to final day of the institute, the writing project summer institute requires participants to walk the walk of practicing what we preach. But it's more than simply "going public" with one's writing and reflecting on one's sense of self as a writer that's at stake here. What participants' individual writing portfolios and end-of-institute anthology pieces declare most importantly is that we all have both professional and personal voices, that these voices have grown and matured during the summer institute with a lot of help from some very good friends, and that these voices will not be silenced. As we hear from the "one-pager" reflections that preface each portfolio on the second to last day of the institute, and as we listen in wonder, and not infrequently in tears, to the pieces of writing that have emerged from the supportive environment of the afternoon writing groups, what we experience is an almost magical transformation. A group that began four and one-half weeks ago as a collection of quite ordinary-seeming K-college teachers of writing has become something quite extraordinary: a chorus of twenty two voices, distinct yet interdependent, proclaiming both their marked individuality and their achievement of a collective voice and collective vision. This voice and vision give new life, I would suggest, to the promise and possibility of authentic and memorable professional development programs.<br /><br />And to honor Ari's challenge of making such a transformation both manageable and practical, here are five things that each of us can do, this coming academic year, to change the way professional development is understood and practiced at our school site or district office:<br /><br />• Before school begins, ask your principal or department head if you can begin your first faculty meeting with introductions of one another through personally meaningful realia<br />• At the beginning of the school year, show your colleagues your anthology and portfolio pieces; describe the institute experiences that led to these "documents'; explain their influences on how you plan to go about teaching writing in the coming year<br />• Initiate a faculty forum on writing by bringing drinks and snacks for colleagues interested in discussing this topic; begin by discussing what you learned from your ISI professional book; suggest forming a book club to meet regularly, with snack responsibilities rotating around the group, to discuss this book or related professional books<br />• Form a writing group with three or four teachers, selecting topics for writing in as open-ended a manner as possible; midway through the year, discuss what you are learning about writing and what implications this learning might have for your teaching of writing<br />• Discuss your practices in the teaching of writing with a teacher who teaches at a different grade level or subject area; figure out where you are similar and different in your practices and why; discuss your conclusions with your fellow teachers during lunch<br /><br />Hope that's sufficient to munch on and mull over. Pam and I wish you the very best for an engaging, invigorating and perhaps even a transformational year with your departmental, school and district colleagues.jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-86639095227746226202007-03-24T13:34:00.000-07:002008-02-10T14:36:37.085-08:00the notion of exceptionality: pros and consThe penultimate lines of Robert Frost's "Directive" read as follows:<br /><br />I have kept hidden in the instep arch<br />Of an old cedar at the waterside<br />A broken drinking goblet like the Grail<br />Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,<br />So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.<br /><br />Frost is referring here to a curious passage in the Gospel according to Mark that reads:<br /><br />Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water's edge. He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: "Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times."<br /><br />Then Jesus said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."<br /><br />When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, 'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding'; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!"<br /><br />(Mark 4: 1-12, text from the New International Version)<br /><br />Scholars in the Jesus Seminar think the parable is probably genuine, although the interpretation Jesus gives to this parable shortly afterwards (the birds are Satan, the thorns are "the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things") probably not.<br /><br />The focus in this gospel on what most readers would acknowledge to be a bizarre interpretation of this unusual four-episode parable, and the insistence this places on the effect of Jesus's speaking in parables so that "the wrong ones . . . can't get saved," embodies one of the most resonant and memorable examples I know of the notion of exceptionality.<br /><br />The Jesus Seminar scholars believe the interpretation segment of the gospel was probable written in about 80 AD, when the early Christian church was facing severe persecution by the Romans, and believers who openly prefessed their belief were putting their lives at peril. This makes sense to me. One way to keep the faithful true to their faith is to convince them that they can hear what others were not meant to hear, see what others were not meant to see.<br /><br />And of course there is tremendous power in this notion of exceptionality. It fairly leaps off the screen in the altogether arresting portrayal of Erin Gruwell by Hilary Swank in the movie "Freedom Writers." For exceptional teachers like 23 year old Erin Gruwell to overcome the barriers that administrators and long-practiced school routines place before them, they are almost required to believe in their own exceptionality: able to "hear" what others cannot hear, "see" what others cannot see. Where else could they derive the strength and peserverance to continue their uphill climb against odds that have crushed so many other initially idealistic and hopeful young teachers?<br /><br />And yet there is a downside to this understandable and perhaps necessary notion of exceptionality. It's become apparent to me in the last few weeks because of the difficulties our Writing Project has experienced forming a long-term partnership with a charter high school in our area.<br /><br />The mission of this high school is extremely ambitious: to take students, mostly Latina or Latino, who are scoring in the bottom third of their 8th grade classes and to prepare them, by the time they reach the 12th grade, for entrance into one or another of the campuses of California's "top tier" public universities. To bring them, in other words, from the bottom 33% to the top 10% in four years.<br /><br />It's no wonder, given such an ambitious and altogether laudable a mission, that this school tends to attract young teachers who are a lot like Erin Gruwell--convinced of their exceptionality, convinced that their personal mission is to do what older and more "veteran" teachers have long given up on, or perhaps never thought possible at any time in their teaching lives.<br /><br />But such singularity of purpose comes at a price, it seems to me. When we've tried to encourage this young group of teachers to join with us "wisened veterans" in working collaboratively to improve our students' academic writing abilities, they've looked on us with a more-than-skeptical eye. "What would you know," they seem to be saying, "about taking ninth grade students with 2nd to 5th grade reading abilities and whipping them into shape over a four year period for entrance into UC campuses."<br /><br />And I have to all but bite my tongue to avoid responding that in fact we know very little individually, but quite a bit collectively.<br /><br />"And you?" I'm tempted to respond. "What about you?"jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-79262054147902866292007-03-12T04:26:00.000-07:002007-03-12T05:45:55.931-07:00dirty dog david: reflections on "whole class intelligence"Lewis Thomas has a rather remarkable essay, I believe in Lives of a Cell, that he calls simply "Living Language." He starts the essay, quite improbably, by recounting some recently conducted research on the nest building abilities of termites.<br /><br />It seems that termites have the most advanced building abiliities in the animal kingdom. Outside of humans, of course. Termite nests in South America can run up to ten feet in diameter and several feet deep. That's about the size, Thomas notes, of New York City, relatively speaking, to the size of an individual termite. And these dwellings are not simple structures. They have sleeping rooms, food storage rooms, a room for the queen and her retainers, and so forth. Yet individual termites have a miniscule brain--the original pinheads. So how do they know how to build these elaborate underground structures?<br /><br />To answer this question, a researcher studied smaller and larger collections of termites under laboratory conditions. Turns out that when a few termites were placed in a small dish with soil and pellets, they would rush around moving their pellets randomly from place to place. More termites, more random moving about of pellets. But when 25 or so termites were placed in the dish, they'd start building columns of pellets, and when these columns were built close enough to one another, the termites would connect them with a neatly finished off arch. And that arch, of course, was the basic "building block" of their elaborate underground edifices.<br /><br />Termites could not build these edifices individually, the researher concluded. There had to be certain number of termites before they could "discover" their collective intelligence. It's like the English language, Thomas muses in his essay. There is no one author of this magnificent "acheivement"--it's the product of many many individual intelligences working collectively, feeding intellectually off one another.<br /><br />I think the same thing is true of classrooms of students. Certainly we all have had classes where one or two students stood out as particularly gifted or talented in one way or another--most often linguistically in English classes. But what's far more impressive to me is how intelligent classes can become when they are encouraged to perceive themselves collectively rather than as a random collection of individuals.<br /><br />I play a "name game" with my students at the beginning of each semester. Every student must not only tell the class his or her name, but must repeat all the names of all those who have already said their names. To enable students to do this, I tell them to the class their first name, then follow this with something they like or dislike that begins with the sound of their first name's letter or letters. So Diana dislikes dinasours, Lizzie likes lizards, and so forth. The next week I have them do the same thing, but now with an alliterative phase or pair of words that begins with the sound of the letter or letters of their first name.<br /><br />In week two of the methods class I'm presently teaching, Diana began the Name Game by telling us she disliked dirty dogs. They are smelly, she explained, and they make a mess of your carpet. The class nodded, and proceeded. We came round to the final student--an older student named David who had informed us a week earlier that he enjoyed hiking in Denali National Park.<br /><br />"I'm David," he told the group, "and I AM a dirty dog."<br /><br />Classroom intelligence/jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-20132459116111656762007-01-26T15:39:00.000-08:002007-01-27T10:15:09.443-08:00martin luther and walt disney as teachers of readingBecause part of my job here at San Jose State is to serve as a university supervisor of beginning teachers of English, I've spent a great deal of time over the past 19 years observing students in classrooms at the middle and high school levels reading and responding to what they read. Often, as I observe these classrooms, it seems to me that teachers are behaving as if the Lutheran revolution is the only game in town. You know the general story: Luther directly challenged the whole notion of what reading was for and who should be allowed to learn to read. Prior to the Lutheran revolution, readers of texts were largely monks and priests, while the rest of the population acted primarily as listeners to the Biblical narratives told by this priestly class. These readings were frequently supplemented by visual versions of these same tales, often depicted as frescoes on the walls of the church.<br /><br />Luther changed all that. "You must be a reader yourself if you are ever to understand your true relationship to God," he proclaimed. Even more somberly for today's students, he suggested that if you could not understand what you read, you were meant to damned. Damned eternally. Oh my.<br /><br />As a student growing up in the late 50's, I was a child of Sputnik. Surprisingly, the sudden and quite unanticipated launching of this orbital satellite by the Russian government had the effect on American education of driving us back to the basics of the Lutheran revolution. Shortly after the launching of Sputnik in the fall of 1957, American students' reading comprehension began to be tested both systematically and frequently. Depending on our comprehension level, we were 'placed' the following year in either 'higher' or 'lower' classes: saved or damned.<br /><br />The logical culmination of this system, at least for me, came in my senior year of college. I was taking a class in the modern British novel by a Professor of English that I greatly admired. All the group of us 'saved' students in English were sitting in the first two rows of the small lecture hall, laughing at the professor's jokes and nudging each other as we pointed to passages we'd underlined in our texts and comments we'd written about these passages. I chanced to turn around one morning to look at the back of the lecture hall. There on the far side of the back row, hunched down in his chair, was one of my classmates, a good friend and a fellow member of my residential hall. He was looking rather desperate, peering over the top of his book and clearly hoping that the professor would not notice him. I knew this particular classmate was extremely bright. In fact, he later went on to attend Oxford and then Harvard Law School. What sort of system could lead to the conviction on the part of such a student that he was not among the saved, at least as far as the reading of works of modern British literature was concerned?<br /><br />But that was the consequence, I later came to realize, of identifying specialized talents in diverse fields of study early in a system of schooling, then nurturing these talented individuals at the expense of those who were not 'meant' to be saved. The field of talented individuals, of course, got smaller and smaller as one rose up through the educational ranks. Eventually, in English studies, it became a matter of fewer and fewer people talking more and more loudly to one another.<br /><br />In my third year of graduate school in English, as I was observing this process of increasing selectivity taking place, and wondering when I would be the next to be pushed off the gang plank, so to speak, I was asked to take over the leadership of an undergraduate seminar made up of English majors who had a different take on the purpose and value of the study of English. These were quite bright students who were not planning to pursue studies in English at the graduate level, but rather to enter post-BA credential programs in the state of Connecticut, where they were studying. Since I'd been a 10th and 12th grade private school teacher for three years prior to beginning my graduate studies, I was considered an appropriate instructor for this group of undergraduates. The questions they were asking in this seminar fascinated me: how should the field of 'English' be understood when it became the one field of study required of all secondary level students in each year of their public schooling? Even more importantly, how should one re-envision this field of study when the students one is teaching are there by law rather than choice?<br /><br />And here's where Walt Disney came in. What if we decided to look at how kids 'read' when they are good at it? Wouldn't this give us a different perspective? What purpose was served, after all, by observing kids suffering through reading programs whose effect, if not intention, was to increase the disparity between "good readers" and "poor readers" in each successive year? Since I was leading this seminar as an adjunct course to a class in Children's Literature that these same students were taking, it was a relatively straightforward matter to turn from understanding 'reading' primarily in terms of decoding print text to understanding 'reading' as a matter of making sense of 'texts' that were both visual and verbal. Isn't that what any good elementary teacher taught: stories in which the illustrations gave the reader as much information as the words?<br /><br />In pursuing this line of inquiry, we learned that prior to the creation of the first full length Disney animated film (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937), it was widely assumed that "talking animated cartoons" could only sustain the attention of the average viewer for about ten minutes. Sound familiar? Disney and his animators challenged this conventional thinking, asking themselves what made viewers want to sustain their attention for longer periods of time. Telling a good story was obviously a key ingredient (hence the choice of Snow White), but equally imporant for sustaining the attention of the "reader" was the appeal to our universal delight in sound, song, movement and a bit of irreverence (hence the Seven Dwarfs). By drawing on these attributes of what made kids variously talented and smart, might the supposed "shortness" of kids' "attention spans" be significantly augmented? As we all know today, Disney and his animators proved the skeptics wrong. Kids could pay attention to what they were being 'taught' for a good deal longer than 10 minutes. It was all a matter of knowing in advance what might interest and engage their attention, then incorporating these elements systematically and consistently into this uniquely modern version of visual and verbal story telling. Were it not for the launching of Sputnik, perhaps this Disney "vision" of kids as diversely talented readers and viewers might even have prevailed in American education. Sadly, however, this vision of the later 1930's gradually faded as school once again became more 'academic,' more 'rigorous,' more relentlessly 'selective.' And so it is today.<br /><br />In a workshop I've given for a number of years on the teaching of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, I return workshop participants to the world of the early Disney and introduce then to an approach to reading comprehension that draws on the many ways both kids and adults are uniquely talented. We start with the most traditional of exercises -- reading short passages that provide vignettes of the characters of Dill Harris, Mayella Ewell and Tom Robinson, then writing about what we understand about the characters based on these what these passages convey.<br /><br />But we move from this quite traditional exercise in reading to a range of alternative ways of responding to these same passages. We start, in acknowledgment of Walt Disney, by viewing a segment of the 1963 film version of Harper Lee's novel. I introduce workshop participants to a way a pre-reading a visual text by "scaffolding" what one is about to see with a "cumulative graphic organizer" designed to help the viewer understand the roles played by the different characters they wrote about in relation to the larger society of Maycomb County, Alabama of which they were a part.<br /><br />Then I have participants work in small character groups, creating visual symbol posters of the particular characters they have written about at the beginning of the workshop. We then do a "gallery walk" of these visual symbol posters, and I then gather participants together in mixed character groups of three, where each participant role-plays their assigned character as the other two members of their group asks them questions.<br /><br />Finally, we re-experience the same excerpts that we read in 'Lutheran' fashion at the beginning of the workshop (i.e. silently at one's desk), but this time in pre-Lutheran mode, listening to them as excerpts from the Recorded Books version of this novel. I follow this final experience of listening by having participants write on their assigned character a second time, reflecting on what they learned by comparing their initial 'character study writing' with this final piece of writing.<br /><br />By and large, participants enjoy these exercises and find them interesting and insightful. Not only in terms of their own sense of themselves as readers, but also as teachers of reading and writing who work with students with many different talents. The point I wish to make in this workshop is that we can all deliberately and systematically draw on the various ways we know our kids are smart. That is, we can draw on their various talents as readers, listeners, responders to and shapers of their world. In doing so, we can significantly enhance the experience of reading and writing for all our students, countering the drive towards year by year "progressive differentiation" that is, perhaps unconsciously, built into the systematically structured reading programs that are presently required in the great majority of California classrooms today.jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-1154401985168226712006-07-31T18:50:00.000-07:002007-01-16T02:09:05.416-08:00the ash street inn revisitedEllen and I are back at the Ash Street Inn in Manchester NH for an afternoon and evening before flying west to Buffalo NY and driving from there to Niagara-on-the-Lake for the Canadian segment of our vacation.<br /><br />It seems a good moment to reflect further on what thoughtful service providers do to provide a welcoming environment for their clients, and what we might learn from such attitudes and actions as we prepare for the beginning of the coming school year.<br /><br />What strikes me this time around is how thoroughly our innkeepers, Darlene and Eric, have not only anticipated our conscious needs but even some we weren't aware we had. There's the coffee & tea, cookies & fruit on the dining room counter, as I've indicated. But once we reach our second floor room, there's also a comfortable small work table with a soft but bright energy-saving fluorescent light, a collection of "Ash Street Inn" ball point pens in a small round wire-mesh container, an outlet right by the desk so that I can easily plug in my computer and get right to work.<br /><br />Now it happens that today is the deadline for my 'authorization' of the writing project data we've entered this quarter about our programs and participants. It's no small matter, therefore, that this comfortable and quiet little 'business center' has been set up in this room for use by guests, and no small matter either that the Ash Street Inn is a wireless environment that makes access to the internet both speedy and uncomplicated. It's small touches like these that allow me to enter the needed information, and check the data that's already been entered, with time to spare before the early evening deadline, when this particular online information system closes down for keeps.<br /><br />That's what I mean by anticipating the unanticipated needs of one's guests. My guess here is that Eric and Darlene have had a number of business travelers who've entered this B&B facing similar deadlines, coming with a deer-in-the-headlights look in their eyes, wondering how they could possibly meet these deadlines. They prepared their room 'accommodations,' that is, with these guests in mind. The result is one feels a sense of support, and welcome and encouragement, just as if one has been given an unexpected 'leg up' on an arduous climb.<br /><br />Now wouldn't it be startling if this was the environment and this was the attitude that greeted us as we walked into our first day of school? You have critical deadlines to meet, right? How can we help you meet those deadlines? You're worried about teaching that 9th grade SDAIE class you've never taught before, yes? What can we do to make you feel supported, encouraged to face this class with a sense of eager anticipation? You've been assigned a disproportionate share of special needs students, students who failed this class last year, or just all-around trouble makers, perhaps because you have a reputation for being an effective teacher for such students. How can we help you manage these students, how can we help alleviate your sense that not everyone is pulling on their oars with the same effort that's expected of you?<br /><br />As my last two examples might suggest, I think that fellow teachers, and especially veteran teachers, can do a lot to promote such a welcoming and supportive environment. Certainly it would take some special effort and some special school site based before-the-school-year investigations. Which of the relatively new teachers has been given particularly challenging teaching assignments? What students have you had that your colleagues will now have, and what can you tell them about teaching these students effectively? What resources for English Learners have you discovered at the school and district level -- both people and curriculum resources -- that one of your colleagues will benefit from learning about? Might you tell your colleague that that especially difficult class at that particularly difficult time of day is one that you have also taught, and that you have survived?<br /><br />I remember discussing approaches and attitudes such as these when I was co-teaching a series of workshops for the Northern Nevada Writing Project, for which I served as university-based Director from 1983 to 1987. The question we kept asking ourselves is how much time we could afford to 'sacrifice' from the content of our grade level specific workshops in the teaching of writing at the elementary, middle and high school levels for such 'community-building' or 'maintenance' activities. The conclusion we reached, after several years of offering these five-session-only workshop series, was that we never allocated sufficient time for setting the 'climate' for the under-appreciated, wary and skeptical teachers who attended these workshops. My conclusion now is that we could have and should have devoted one quarter of our time -- all of the first three hour session and the beginning of second -- to the sole purpose of making sure these teachers felt welcome, to making sure they knew we understood and appreciated the work they were doing, to providing them with a quiet and comfortable desk, easy access to the internet, and a wire-mesh basket of pens reading "Northern Nevada Writing Project -- a small gift to you for the great job you're doing."<br /><br />Honestly, would creating such a welcoming environment at your school be all that difficult? Wouldn't the pay-off in teacher productivity and collegiality more than compensate for the time and effort spent on helping to bring such a opening climate of enhanced expectations into being?jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-1154094060804953852006-07-28T05:00:00.000-07:002006-07-29T22:59:16.650-07:00anticipation and the ash street innWhen Ellen and I arrived at our B&B on Ash Street in Manchester New Hampshire yesterday afternoon, the innkeepers were not in. There was an envelope on the desk in the vestibule, however, reading "Ellen & Jonathan." Inside was a note, reading as follows:<br /><br />"Good Afternoon Ellen & Jonathan: Welcome to the Ash Street Inn. Sorry we missed your arrival. We have gone to the coast [of Maine] to run some errands.<br /><br />"Enclosed is your key, which will open the door in front of you, with the stained glass, as well as your room. Your room, #207, is on the second floor, top of the stairs to the right.<br /><br />"At the end of the hall on the first floor is the dining room. There is bottled water in the refrigerator as well as snacks on the counter should you be hungry. Please make yourself at home. We should be returning by 4 PM, and will look forward to meeting you then. Darlene & Eric"<br /><br />What struck me about this note, and the welcoming disposition it represents, is how frequently we encounter this attitude and this approach among teachers (more often those teaching at the elementary than at the secondary level, I will grant) as they prepare their classrooms for the coming school year.<br /><br />What also struck me is how rarely we encounter such attitudes, such welcoming dispositions, among either teachers or school administrators with regard to their own colleagues or teaching staff. When was the last time you walked into a pre-school year inservice day and found a note from a school administrator reading "Dear [your first name]: Welcome back to school. There is bottled water in the refrigerator as well as snacks on the counter should you be hungry. Please make yourself at home."<br /><br />We don't receive such notes, nor do we think of composing them for our teaching colleagues, because we do not see ourselves as "clients" for whom the school is providing a "service." We are the ones being paid, after all. We should be the ones providing services, we reason, rather than the ones receiving them. And so we prepare our rooms, we think about what we learned last year or over the summer that might be used to modify the learning opportunities our students will encounter in the coming year, and we prepare our school year curricula.<br /><br />What would happen if we applied this same "disposition of heightened expectations" to one another? What would happen if school administrators brought the same anticipation of the year to come to their teachers as these same teachers routinely bring to the students they will be teaching?<br /><br />Isn't the analogy pretty compelling? Prior to the beginning of the school year, we prepare our classrooms and our curriculum materials in the way we do because we anticipate that our students will be more successful as learners because of the modifications and alterations we make in their "learning environments." Why shouldn't the same be true of ourselves as learners? Wouldn't we also be more disposed to see the coming school year as an opportunity for learning something new, for change and growth, if we were regarded just as we regard the students we teach?<br /><br />What might we do, among ourselves, to bring such beginning-of-the-school-year dispositions into effect? As a start, how about following the lead of Darlene & Eric and writing short notes to our colleagues, welcoming them back? How about talking with your school administrators about the activities they are planning for those inservice days prior to the beginning of the school year? Might everyone on the staff bring in a family photo and write about the event commemorated by this photo; might everyone bring in "something round, something funny, and something they have read" that has special significance to them, and create a short 'speech' about this artifact; might everyone bring in an object from their family's past that has been brought from some prior country and/or culture to their present place of residence, and write about the 'journey' this object has taken?<br /><br />Why don't we routinely think of such 'community building' exercises as what we expect at the beginning of the school year? Can't we learn to regard our colleagues with the same affection, the same sense of heightened expectation, as we do our very own students?jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-1153911988315369162006-07-26T04:01:00.000-07:002006-07-26T06:23:06.873-07:00practicing what I'm preaching: the power of modelingIn response to my 7/24/06 post called " taking a shot at connecting the dots"<a href="http://jonathanlovell.blogspot.com/2006/07/taking-shot-at-connecting-dots.html"> (here's the link) </a> Anonymous BR (Blog Reader) wrote:<br /><br /> "I find your idea of school-site-based blogs intriguing (especially the notion of "noticing and describing"), but difficult to enact. Here are a few thoughts:<br /><br /> "1) School's "egg crate" design make it next to impossible for me to see (and so notice and describe) what my colleagues are doing with kids that contribute to their achievement; I can only describe what I hear them say they are doing. I think that blogging on their self-reported actions might be more of a PR job than an inquiry that is really thoughtful and helpful.<br /><br /> "2) And you compare teachers at a site with teachers in an invitational summer institute. But this comparison has lots of differences. "Invitational" already alerts us to the fact that these teachers have a certain perspective and motivation that other teachers at their site don't have; ISIs involve a trust element that school-sites often don't have; ISIs are not all teachers from one site, which diffuses their common power; communicating with all teachers at your site insinuates a kind of power move which, in my experience, would not be welcomed by administrators.<br /><br /> "Edublogs are often anonymous, because of the problems with a teacher speaking out publicly. Do you have examples of school-site-based blogs where teachers are doing what you propose?<br /><br /> "I appreciate your interesting ideas and will continue to check back."<br /><br />So having read Anon BR's comment above, I slapped my hand to my forehead. Of course! How does a any teacher go about enabling a student to accomplish a complicated and challenging task? She or he models that task for that student, of course. So given that the enterprise of creating school-based blog sites to strengthen teachers' capacities as advocates for educational change (read 'school reform') is a "complicated and challenging task," how would I go about modeling its accomplishment?<br /><br />Here's what I propose. I've been working over the past academic year at Silver Creek High School in the East Side Union High School District in San Jose. I've been visiting this high school about every two weeks for the purpose of supervising one of the Intern Teachers in English who has been and will be teaching there. A big part of my role as a university supervisor of beginning teachers is to do just what I've suggested that the postings on a school-based blog site might do--notice and describe what a teacher does that promotes her or his students' learning, and figuring out how that might happen more often for more students. Within the classroom, that is, the beginning teacher and I are working together to promote 'educational reform' at the 'local level.' in fact at the classroom level.<br /><br />So what I propose is that I continue to do just that in the coming year, but that I enlist the support of other English teachers at that school with whom I've worked over the years -- Todd Seal, Laurie Weckesser, Debra Navratil -- visiting their classrooms every two weeks or so to do just the sort of 'noticing and describing' that I've been doing with the Intern teacher described above. And of course posting these observations, with the permission of the teachers I've observed, on our newly created school-based blog site.<br /><br />It would be a start, would it not? I'm not sure at this point how such 'noticings' would be similar to or different from my "observational notes" of student teachers -- notes I've been writing and 'publishing,' by making photocopies for the department chair(s) and building principal every time I visit, for the past twenty-seven years. My guess is that they'd pay more attention to how the learning environment in a given classroom was either enhanced or impeded by various external conditions: such things as testing schedules, availability of textbooks and/or computer stations, consistency or lack of consistency of students' attendance.<br /><br />And in discussing such 'external' conditions there would of course the risk, as Anon BR points out, that administrators will become uneasy at this voice for teachers speaking 'out of turn' in this rather public arena. But I suspect the risk is quite minimal -- not much greater than the risk I've been running for years when I've discussed such 'external' conditions in my photocopied "observational notes" on student teachers.<br /><br />Compared to this risk, it seems to me that the potential gains are enormous. What administrator, and what teacher for that matter, would not want a more open and consequential discussion of what conditions promote and impede the learning of students in a given school setting? Even if the question were posed solely in terms of students' performance on statewide tests, wouldn't most teachers and administrators wish to consider what factors favored and which impeded higher performance on these tests? Not that I'm an advocate of using such tests as the primary measure of 'more effective' and 'less effective' learning environments, but it does seem likely to me that one consequence of improved learning environments generally is going to be higher performance on statewide tests. And I'm certainly not above using such arguments if the goal is a greater voice for teachers, a more considered and consequential voice, in those aspects of their classroom and school learning environments that most effect their teaching.<br /><br />Shall we, perhaps, to begin?jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-1153835593016905362006-07-25T06:48:00.000-07:002006-07-28T01:56:32.893-07:00is there a hawthorne effect on the 'noticer'?Having gone on and on a few blogs ago about how important it is for bloggers to cite their sources if they wish their arguments to be taken seriously, I'm now going to do just the opposite: rely on your faith in my recollection and basic integrity as a blogger.<br /><br />Here goes.<br /><br />A number of years ago Peter Elbow described an interesting experiment conducted by one of his colleagues in the composition program at SUNY Stony Brook, where he was then serving as Composition Program Director.<br /><br />Seems this colleague wanted to know whether positive comments only, positive and negative comments, or negative comments only led to the greatest improvement in her students' papers.<br /><br />This was classroom-based research at its very best, in my opinion: an interesting question, pretty clear ways to measure the results to the satisfaction of the researcher, and immediate consequences in terms of changed behavior, should the results conclusively indicate the value of one way of proceeding over another.<br /><br />So she started by writing positive comments only on the papers of one of her freshmen composition classes, and a mixture of positive and negative comments on the papers of another of her classes.<br /><br />The results: both groups of students improved about equally in their writing, and both seemed to value the types of comments that were written on their papers about equally. The difference was not in the performance of the students, but in the attitude of the composition instructor herself. "Writing positive comments only on one set of papers was the best form of professional self-renewal I've ever experienced," she claimed. I'd look forward to reading that set of papers as a challenge--even as a contest between me and the students in that class. Could any of them write one paper that was so bad I'd find nothing positive to comment on, at least with a genuinely positive comment?<br /><br />"Each time I'd sit down with those 'positive comments only' papers I've have a sense of thrill, a sense of expectation. What would I encounter with this set; how successfully would my students try my capacity for discerning and writing about something genuinely positive in each of their papers?<br /><br />This not-so-surprising version of a "hawthorne" effect <a href="http://jonathanlovell.blogspot.com/2006/07/hawthorne-effect.html">(see July 9 post)</a> on the teacher who is 'observing' her students has interesting implications, it seems to me, for the sorts of 'appreciative noticings' I've suggested might initiate a school-site based blog site. It suggests that there might be a value to doing this 'electronic noticing' even if you sent out invitations to this particular party and none of your school colleagues deigned to 'appear' at your electronic party.<br /><br />More practically, this informal research finding on the ameliorating effects of making positive comments on the person making these comments suggests that there is a strong reason for doing so, whether or not one envisions or believes in the larger vision of educational change that I've argued for in previous posts. You should do so because you'll feel better about your job and your working environment if you do. And does anyone really doubt that a more positive attitude on the part of a teacher has anything but a salutary effect on her or his students' learning?<br /><br />I'll end this blog entry with a post I just received from EdWeek, since it relates in such an interesting way to what I've been talking about above, and because it involves one of the teachers who has been doing, for many years, just what I have been suggesting with his classes. Noticing what goes right when things go right, and talking about it electronically (as well as, quite voluminously, in more traditional print forms). The teacher is Jim Burke, an high school English teacher at Burlingame HS in Burlingame CA (just south of the SF airport), and the site he uses to discuss his educational suggestions is <a href="http://www.englishcompanion.com/">(check it out!)</a><br /><br />Dear Jonathan Lovell,<br /><br />LIVE ONLINE CHAT:<br /><br />Getting Ready for the New School Year: Advice for Teachers<br /><br />When: Wednesday, July 26, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., Eastern time<br />Where: http://www.edweek-chat.org<br /><br />Submit questions in advance: <br />http://www.edweek-chat.org/question.php3#question<br /><br />Join us for a special live Web chat for teachers on preparing for the new school year. Our special teacher-guests will take your questions on what to expect in the early weeks of school, what teachers need to before school starts, classroom-management and instructional strategies, and much more. This is your chance to get a jump on planning and get feedback on your ideas and potential problem areas. <br /><br />Guests:<br /><br />* Jim Burke, an English teacher an Burlingame High School in California, is the author of "Letters to a New Teacher: A Month-by-Month Guide to the Year Ahead" (Heinemann). He is also the recipient of the 2000 Exemplary English Leadership Award from the National Council of Teachers of English.<br /><br />* Hanne Denney, a career changer starting her third year as a special education and social studies teacher at Arundel High School in Maryland, writes TEACHER MAGAZINE'S blog "Ready or Not." She recently received a master's degree in leadership in teaching. Read her blog here:<br />http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/hdenney/<br /><br />Please join us for this special discussion:<br />http://www.edweek-chat.org<br /><br />Submit questions in advance:<br />http://www.edweek-chat.org/question.php3#questionjonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30860520.post-1153747344678215312006-07-24T05:47:00.000-07:002006-07-24T06:22:24.993-07:00taking a shot at connecting the dotsOK, I know, I know. I wrote initially on this blog that school site 'hosted' blog sites might be used for those 'electronic indications of appreciation'--simple observations or 'noticings' by teachers of contributions to the improvement of the learning environment at the school--that contribute to everyone's sense of well-being, and in fact contribute directly to the improvement of the 'productivity' of both teachers and their students <a href="http://jonathanlovell.blogspot.com/2006/07/hawthorne-effect.html">(see 'the hawthorne effect').</a><br /><br />And then, before you know it, I'm arguing that teachers should be mounting the barricades, blogsites in hand as it were, to argue for school change at both the local and regional level. Teachers unite! You have nothing to lose but your learned helplessness! All power to those who are actually doing the work, teaching in the trenches!<br /><br />Yeh, yeh, it's hyperbolic I know; not a little reminiscent of that stale sounding 60's rhetoric many of us have rightly learned to listen to with a wary ear. We've been there before, as I pointed out in my 'blogging and the isi' post, and we're not likely find invitations to return anything less than off-putting.<br /><br />But might there be a connection between the low level 'electronic noticings' I spoke about earlier and the higher level advocacy role I've been suggesting for school-site based blogs in my more recent postings?<br /><br />I'd like to propose the following: that as teachers get better at first noticing and then describing, in the semi-public forum of a school-site based blog, what genuinely contributes to enhancing the learning environments in which teachers teach and learners learn, they will be taking the first initial steps towards becoming effective advocates for local and regional educational reform.<br /><br />I do realize, of course, that the first and most difficult step to take in that first one--committing yourself to making that first observation, that first act of 'electronic appreciation.' You don't want to look foolish, after all. And you don't want to end up sending out invitations to an electronic party, only to discover you're the only one in the virtual room. Right?<br /><br />But here's where the ISI experience, or any other profound experience of heightened professional colleagiality with one's fellow teachers, can play a vital role. You know what it feels like to be in such an environment, yes? And you know how much this 'feeling' contributes to your desire to become an even more effective teacher than you already are. Right? And you even know something about how to describe what you're doing so that others will understand why you use the particular teaching strategy you do, yes?<br /><br />So why not take the chance? Why not try setting up that school-site hosted blogspot? Why not try committing yourself to one of those 'electronic indications of appreciation' of one of your fellow teachers, and see what happens?jonathanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12428776624768329928noreply@blogger.com1