It's the Great Writing Debate, Charlie Brown!

Do you ever have those times where you feel like every conversation you have and every article you read somehow relates to what you're thinking about?  No?  Maybe it's hyper-awareness, or just plain paranoia.  But anyhow, I just see so many experiences in my life for the past week leading me back to the question of the role of writing in the classroom.  So here's how it started off:

The classes that I'm observing at Reagan High School are called "Creative Writing."  That's right--not a "required" English class, per se, but one that the students don't necessarily choose to be in.  The students who take the class are in 10th grade, and they're also taking an English 2 class, but they performed poorly or failed the end-of-year test in reading/writing.  They're pretty much required to take the class, in the hopes that by the end of the year, they'll be completely caught up to where they're supposed to be for 9th and 10th grade.  But it's not called a remedial class...it's "creative."  I see that being a strength and a weakness.  The strength is that they're not having to test and re-test a bunch in this class, so there's a freedom from the pressure of outside curriculum requirements.  Also, they are working on writing short stories or character sketches, instead of having to work within the typical structured argumentative essay format.  I really like the atmosphere of the class.  The students aren't necessarily thrilled about having to write in the first place, but they seem to enjoy being given the space to experiment with explorations of their made-up character and finishing the dialogue of a break-up in the school hallway.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that they take the class very seriously.  Like I said, they're also required to take English 2, which seems to negate some of the validity of their "creative writing" course.  It's sad, since I think they almost view it like an elective; however, it seems like the methods used in this class would actually encourage more engagement with the development of their reading and writing skills.  On Tuesday, the class did an exercise where they looked at different YA novels' first lines.  They were supposed to notice which ones grabbed their attention, so that they could structure their own stories with a hook at the beginning.  One of the students read a first line, and he kept on reading.  He came in on Thursday, distraught that one of the main characters died.  My CT was astonished that he read the entire book in two days.  This kind of engagement with a text seems new for these students, so I'm not sure if they're given the same kinds of opportunities for reading and writing for pleasure in their "real" English classes.

That gets me to part of the reading from Bomer from this past week.  In his chapter on writing that supports readers, he mentioned that "we should not build English classes where every reading event has to be commodified into a product that can be graded" (152).  And that makes so much sense to me!  When every little thing that we do in a classroom has a grade attached, there's also the possibility of failure.  How can we promote the idea of reading for pleasure or reading as a part of everyday life if it's always attached to the concept of achievement?  I think it's difficult to find this common ground.  Sure, a good idea is to assign each student a reading/writing journal.  So should you be able to grade the reading journal to make sure there's some sense of progress in a student's reading life?  Or is a fear of failure inherent in the action of a teacher looking over a student's writing?

The other issue from this chapter on that has resonated with me throughout the week is the concept of formulaic essays.  I love this quote:

"With that kind of writing [formulaic writing], students are not actually communicating with anyone, but they're not really writing to think either.  They're too connected with being explicit about their claims and their relationships, with providing evidence, and with maintaining a cohesive text that avoids any digressions into new thinking.  So they're not really using writing to think or to communicate, just to comply.  We can do better." (160)

This is my daily struggle!  As a writing tutor in the community college setting, I work with a lot of students in basic composition classes that are requirements for liberal arts degrees.  You would think that I would have a new challenge everyday, but sadly, most of the teachers work off of a sort of essay formula.  Even for a class that is centered around reading and responding to short stories, the formula is simple: summary; central idea of the story; statement about how three elements (maybe tone, setting, and character) exemplify the central idea.  Each subsequent paragraph addresses one element, with quotes and explanations of the quotes in a certain order.  I even tell students that as long as you have the formula, you should be fine in the class.  Do the students learn anything?  Sure, they eventually learn how to pick a central idea out of a story (but even then, they know that there are certain central ideas that aren't quite "right").  But there is no sense of communicating with anyone, or actually thinking about the story that they've read.  They're just following the formula.

And then I came across this series on writing from The Atlantic Monthly.  Check out "The Writing Revolution" along with a pretty handy response.  Basically, New Dorp High School decided to change their writing curriculum because the school was doing so poorly in testing.  They emphasized the basics of grammar and sentence structure, to the point of actually giving students a specific word order in which to answer questions in class.  It also emphasizes "fundamental" analytical essay structures, and the school reported improvements in test scores.  But here's the problem: is the school actually enabling students to become better writers, or is it teaching students how to write for the standardized tests that it wants them to pass?  I posed this question on Facebook (the arbiter of all real debates), and a lady who went to grad school with me for English stated that I wouldn't have been in higher education if I didn't know these "formulas" for writing.  She's probably right.

All this is to say, yes, I wholeheartedly agree with Bomer, that we should not teach formulas for writing.  But is there a point at which we're doing our students a disservice by not offering them this "get out of jail/get into college free" card?  Maybe there's some kind of middle ground that can be reached.  I'm hoping that I get to witness some of that middle groundedness this semester.

Let's not even mention when Nancy Drew goes to college...

This is the book to blame for all my current hoarding issues.  I began reading Nancy Drew mysteries when I was seven, and I wanted all of the series.  All fifty bajillion ghost-written Carolyn Keene books.  However, my family lacked the resources to pay for those yellow-spined jewels, so I had to settle for the local library.  My family also refused to buy me books when I was younger because they complained that I read them too quickly, many times before getting out of the car when we got home.  As an adult, I've done a bit of over-compensating for my neglected childhood desires, buying so many novels that I'm currently keeping some of them at a friend's house.  But this book-broken road has been legitimized by Bomer; he tells me that I need a well-equipped classroom library, so BOOM.  I'm so excited.

I really enjoyed that he spent an entire chapter on environments for supporting reading, since I think that it's important for encouraging a reading life that continues to occur outside of the classroom.  If a classroom's library is only comprised of class sets of books, it makes reading seem like something you can only do at school, under close supervision.  Don't get me wrong: lending out my own books makes me a little nervous (yes, I am a book hog, I know), but it encourages independent reading as well as a sense of trust.

So, on the subject of independent reading, I liked the presentation of tiered levels of classroom reading.  These three levels include independent reading, small group reading, and whole class reading.  Bomer mentions accomplishing whole-class reading by having the teacher read the text aloud or recording it (which seems like that could get pretty time consuming), and I actually like the idea of reading the text aloud to the class.  I don't remember having teachers read anything aloud after I got out of middle school.  Still, I think it's an interesting way for students to interact with a text.  It's also comforting in a way, because it could call to mind being read to as a child.  And I don't think it would be too childish, either, because you're calling on the students to practice a different kind of listening, which could also help them with interpreting the text (which I'll get to in just a bit).

Moving on to the next couple of chapters, in which Bomer discusses the practices involved in inhabiting and interpreting the text, there are some interesting teaching strategies to consider.  The chapter on inhabiting the text is pretty straightforward, and it covers the some of the basic strategies involved in active reading (picturing the text, listening to the text's voices, creating relationships with characters, and so on).  The most helpful chapter to me talks about how to teach interpretive reading.  What strikes me is how he emphasizes that when we're teaching reading, we're not necessarily teaching content.  Instead, we're teaching how to recognize your own reading practices and how to question the text.

The notion of teaching how to question really resonates with all that I've been learning about critical pedagogy in my Multicultural Curriculum class, in that in order to provide students with critical thinking skills, we must focus on the how and why instead of the what.  And that's what Bomer is getting at as well with his steps of interpretive reading--all of the steps culminate in critiquing the text, looking at the groups within a text, who does and does not have power in the text, and looking at issues of injustice.  From there, the text does not remain merely something to be read inside a classroom; it permeates students' perceptions of the world, allowing them to think about their lives and their communities in a different way.  I think this is why these chapters seem like a very helpful bridge to me--they link the theory with the practice in a useful way.

Well, I had even more to write about, but this post is getting pretty overwhelming.  I'll leave you with this: have you ever checked out the Best American Nonrequired Reading series?  A group of high school students are selected each year to be on the committee to pick out short works from that year's publications (from magazines and journals, generally).  These can include short stories, essays, graphic fiction, and even silly lists.  I always buy the book when it comes out because it introduces me to new authors and essayists.  It also picks up on some interesting political themes and social issues from the year.  I think that it'd be worth it to check out the series, since one of the short stories or essays from one of the books could possibly be used as a whole-class text that Bomer mentioned.  Also, they're all picked by high school students!  Yay, classroom library time!!

FYI: My literacy log, for the period of September 12-15.  Not only have I discovered many different literacies that I never considered previously, but I realized that I waste a lot of time!  Life lessons on both accounts, I guess.

Day 1:     Wednesday, September  12                                     

Driving: 1 hour and 10 minutes

Reading for Multicultural Curriculum: 1 hour and 30 minutes

Fire Drill: 30 minutes

Checking e-mail: 25 minutes

Instructing students on computer applications/how to print: 55 minutes

Tutoring writing/Discussing essays with students: 3 hours

Taking notes for Multicultural Curriculum: 40 minutes

Making a collaborative chart/explaining the chart: 20 minutes

Class group work: 30 minutes

Watching Netflix: 40 minutes

Reading a novel: 15 minutes

Looking at band posters in a bathroom: 5 minutes

Texting: 15 minutes

Figuring out a Christmas travel budget: 20 minutes

Day 2:   Thursday, September 13

Driving: 1 hour

Looking at Twitter: 10 minutes

Looking at Instagram: 15 minutes

Making notes in my planner: 10 minutes

Listening to NPR: 30 minutes

Watching Hulu: 1 hour

Facebooking: 45 minutes

Reading food blogs: 20 minutes

Pinterest-ing: 15 minutes

Cooking lunch: 20 minutes

Checking/sending e-mail: 30 minutes

Reading for Adolescent Literacy: 3 hours

Listening to music: 40 minutes

Texting: 5 minutes

Reading short stories in an anthology: 25 minutes

Reading news articles online: 20 minutes

Day 3: Saturday, September 15

Driving: 45 minutes

Facebook messaging: 15 minutes

Checking/sending e-mail: 20 minutes

Figuring out directions on Google: 5 minutes

Reading food/design blogs: 15 minutes

Yoga: 45 minutes

Grocery shopping: 30 minutes

Attending an art show (The Sketchbook Project): 25 minutes

Watching a movie projected outside an art space: 20 minutes

Texting: 20 minutes

Looking at a menu: 5 minutes

Reading for Adolescent Literacy: 1 hour

Looking at Instagram: 15 minutes

Writing funny notes to a friend in her journal: 10 minutes

Reading others’ funny notes: 10 minutes

Coming up with silly song lyrics: 30 minutes

I hope you enjoy perusing my sometimes pointless, ever-literate daily activities.  Watch out for another post, coming to you in just a few.

Initial Musings and Explanations

Testing, testing!  (I'm pretty sure that's how you're supposed to start every new blog, right?  Just trying to use my prior knowledge (also, boom!  New vocabulary term.).)

So, a few words about the title of my blog and the url I came up with...

The articles and book chapters that I've been reading about the definition of literacy/literacies and how they affect all aspects of our collective lives are really blowing my literary mind.  I think that I've always been conditioned to think of "literacy" as the ability to read well, and I've never struggled in that area.  I learned to read when I was four years old, and I was an insatiable reader from then on out.  In addition, I always ascribed to the idea of a "cannon" of what is "good" to read and what is shameful to read.  For example, I LOVED V.C. Andrews when I was in middle school (Flowers in the Attic, anyone?  Disgusting and fascinating.).  However, when I got older, I felt like I couldn't let myself read anything that wasn't sectioned off in the "Literature" shelves in the bookstore.  I refused to read Harry Potter until I was 25 years old, and then I found that I loved that series of books more than most of the novels I was assigned to read in grad school for literature.

All that is to say that I'm really intrigued by looking at literacy and literacies in a different light; rather than looking at literacy as the practice of making sure a 9th grader can read The Epic of Gilgamesh, and instead, focusing on incorporating students' already burgeoning literary lives, I think that academic and social revolutions can begin in the classroom and carry over into the community.

And I'm excited to look at and utilize this new-to-me information about literacy with different eyes, not new ones.  I mean, after all, my eyes/experiences bring something unique to the table that I don't just want to let go of.

As far as the Notorious B.I.G. lyrics go, I feel like that's pretty self-explanatory.  I mean, isn't that why people crave communicating with others, pursuing oral and written conversations?  Sometimes others' words do hypnotize us; they capture how we're feeling or they sound so beautiful that we want to savor them.  Or they persuade us that Biggie's flashy ways are great.  (That was probably an over-academization of those rap lyrics, but isn't that what blogs are for?)

Also, for anyone interested in rap and hip-hop (as I am), a really great book to check out is Dirty South: Outkast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop.  There's an interesting section on Houston rappers and DJs, and I feel that if you're interested in the genre, it might be good background reading material for understanding some of the rap/hip-hop scene in this area.  (This also relates to the Susan Weinstein article on the pleasures of rap as a literate practice--I think knowing about a region's hip-hop history could be useful in connecting with some students' at home literary practices.)

So, hopefully those ramblings show a bit of my current (early) understanding of literacy and literacy practices, and I hope to get a bit more coherent (and arguably more interesting) in the near future.

--Holland