Computers and publishing

  I could see some valuable points in KKL about getting students to use computers for their writing. I think technology should be have an important role in education since most students will be required to have these skills for their jobs – and computers make it much easier to edit text.

  However, I think there are major flaws to using computers: first of all, the writing itself. We are trying to get students to be able to write, not to become publishers aware of what a commercial product should look like. Students can add colors, use special fonts and such on a computer, but it is still not as personal as a handwritten paper. Letting the students use a computer might seem like we giving them more freedom with their creativity, because it seems so easy and accessible to everyone. But I think a computer is only a tool for creativity, and it is not as easy to personalize as other tools.

  Along the same lines, publishing material online seems cold, and puts distance between the writer and the audience. It may seem easier to get feedback online, but in the end this cannot replace reading aloud one’s writing to another student. First of all because there is a more personal relationship, the student actually knows who is listening to the story, and secondly, there is so much amount of information online that the published material will quickly be forgotten and seems insignificant.

  This is why I think computers and the internet should be used to have students learn about technology, but it shouldn’t replace old fashioned handwriting.

New standards for a new generation

This post is based on the common core standards for college and career readiness for writing

Overall, the core standards seem fair to me, and define what seems important in education.  I saw a close link with the characteristics of the ‘millenial’ generation, and I think this reform looks like a good thing because it seems to be made especially for this generation, it takes features from their culture and what their lives should be like and applies it to writing – among other disciplines. Here are the main features:

Structure

The productivity in today’s workplace relies on its organization: each person has a specific task, and a company functions as a sum of these tasks. The classic criticism of this system is that it dehumanize the employees, but the model has proven to be efficient in term of productivity. These standards require students to be able to develop a text into a structured argument, and to be aware of their writing process. I think it helps them develop organizational skills that could improve their leadership abilities in the work environment they will experience. The students are also expected to be able to write on different time frames: I think this sounds like the different types of project an employee would be asked to work on.

Information

Along with technology, we have information, which has changed because of the way we can now transmit it. Children have access to everything, and fast – they can learn, and share their own information. The downside of this is that it is impossible to process information as a whole, this is why we need filters – for instance, I’m sure you can find the main information of the day on the homepage of your email address service. Children have to be able to discern what is important from what isn’t, how to look for it, and how to take their part in this system by then transmitting the information themselves.  The standards ask children to be able to write informative and explanatory texts: they are creating their own information and putting it out there. They also have to learn how to draw information from diverse sources: they are acting as search engines. The  standards mention technology, but also ‘traditional’ sources to draw information from, I think it would be interesting to see if there is a real difference in term of efficiency between a research on the internet and in books – anyway I agree that children have to be comfortable with all kinds of tools. And the standards seem to emphasize the content, children have to be able to answer to short questions with only what is needed. This reflects how information is treated today, almost as a merchandise, and this also reflects the ‘limited’ tasks that the children will be asked to perform in the workplace later, and develop their ability to summarize – but on the other end this also develops their attitude as consumers towards information, and makes it easier for them to be a target audience.

Technology

Technology is an obvious component of children’s lives today, they understand it better than their parents and use it in diverse ways and for diverse purposes. I hope that including the use of technology into these standards is not a mere attempt at making writing look more attractive and note so old-fashioned by giving it a more familiar face. I think this could make for an interesting writing tool, in term of publication and audience – and I think students should feel more at ease with writing on a computer (for revision for instance) than on paper.

Fiction

The standards also ask children to produce fiction, and I think than fiction, as much as real life, influences greatly this generation. Think of successes such as Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings movies, or the new Star Wars movies,… These are major cultural landmarks for this generation, and sadly I see this kind of fiction as being treated more like a product than art. I think that children will base their fictional writing on what they have been exposed to, and use this formula. I could be wrong and this could develop their creativity, but I’m afraid that they will be influenced by their cultural environment and learn how to become bestsellers and blockbusters writers.

I hate grades

I agree that grading is central to the school system, but I think that in some cases it is unnecessary, and even has a negative effect. I’ve had a problem with grades and assessment since career guidance in high school…

We had to take a skill test to determine which type of higher education would be right for us. There was a series of questions to answer on a computer, and the result scared me for life. The computer came up with a diagram shaped like a weird star. Each brand represented a type of skills and its size depended on how you scored for this type of question.

The people designing this test must have been full of good intentions, hoping that they could help young people make life changing decisions. The way I saw it, we were reduced to a bunch of numbers, and to a weird meaningless diagram. The next step was to find the perfect little box/job where our diagram would fit in perfectly and be another faceless employee.

This is what some of the grading methods for writing reminded me of, especially the Diederich scale. I hate this term of scale, as if we could weight and measure someone’s writing. I think that writing is something that brings out the student’s personality, their voices, their ideas, and because we are not that person we cannot judge it in any way. We can provide advice as a writer – and not as a teacher – for the student to improve the devices they use, but I don’t think we should have anything to do with the content itself.

Grades are needed because of official requirements, parents’ expectations,…But one of the role of school is to form independent thinkers. So why not ask the children this question: this assignment is not graded, but you need to practice to progress – and you will need writing a lot in your life. Is it wise not to take it seriously? I think making the children responsible and independent about completing the assignments would be more valuable to them than a report card.

But we would still need to fulfill the requirement and provide a grade, I think the only thing that should be graded is this ability to be responsible and to manage their own learning.  I think a fair way to do that would be to have the students evaluate themselves, by reflecting on whether or not they have acquired this independence, or how far they still have to go.

Conferences and responses

  I found some valuable information in the textbooks about conferencing and teacher’s responses, but a few things bother me and appear as real challenges to me… In KKL it is said that the teacher’s response is a model after which the other students should shape their response. I agree that other students should learn from the teacher how to form an articulate and useful response – but I think most students are going to be tempted to give a response that is similar in content to what the teacher said.

   This leads to another problem, some students are saying, and writing, what they know the teacher is expecting them to say or write (or what they think the teacher is expecting…). And I think that with the conference, we have an intervention by the teacher at a stage where the student is into the creative process. Is the teacher shaping the student’s writing through conferences? Is it still the student’s voice?

  Another thing that bothers me is that the teacher is supposed to look for the positive. I understand this is important to motivate the student and help them improve, but anyone else besides the teacher is rather going to look for the negative. In the case of a mediocre piece of writing, the teacher is going to look hard for something that the student succeeded at, while anyone else would stop reading after two lines because of the bad spelling. My point is, a teacher’s response is different from what a ‘regular’ audience would say, and I think an honest response from anyone else besides the teacher is more useful – even if it can be harsh.

  These are the few negative aspects I am seeing, but I think there are far more advantages in term of students’ motivation in progress than flaws to these methods.

The writing workshop

  I was really interested by all the exercises and tips suggested in the textbooks, and I’m glad that I now have a more concrete way to actually apply these to a classroom, thanks to the writing workshop.

  I can see how it helps students by providing them a structure and a set of rules for writing – this reminds me of how some professional writers need to write in a special atmosphere or at a specific time of day. Besides it also seems to provide the interaction that the students need to improve their writing, both with their peers and with the teacher in conferences.

  But I can also see the downside of the workshop, and the main one is that it doesn’t teach the students how to write, it only gives them a structure in which to write, and I’m afraid that they will encounter difficulties when they write again outside of a workshop, for instance later in their professional life. Besides, is it good to give the students such a structure? It is designed to have them focus on their writing and allows them to analyze and exploit their ideas if they follow the different steps, but can we apply such a guideline to art? I think some children would be more productive if they were more free about their writing – but then I agree there would be discipline problems, and we would have no way of making sure that the students are actually writing.

  In the end, I think the writing workshop can be very efficient, but I intend on using it only occasionally, and to give to the students more freedom in where, when and how they write, and I think there would be a difference in content and style between something written in a workshop and something written by the students on their own. The piece produced in the workshop would have better grammar and structure, but the other piece would probably be more personal, since the student wrote without being influenced by peers, the teachers, or the guideline.

Language, culture and white guilt in the classroom

This is my post for oct. 21st, I’m sorry it’s late.

 I could see how these articles raised a valuable point and offered intelligent solutions, however, I see an inconsistency in term of policies regarding the criticism of our approach of Native American, and the issue of dialects in the classroom.

  It is suggested for African-american children who use a different set of rules than standard English that we should use code-switching to make them understand that they have to use a different discourse in the classroom. This is going against their culture, identity and voices, but it is helping them to conform to standards, especially later in the workplace.

  On the other hand, we have the issue of how Native americans are portrayed and even stereotyped. I feel like this is singling them out as a minority, and perhaps even out of touch with the current situation of the Native americans. I was in an anthropology class last year about Natives, and I discovered that today, celebrating their heritage is an important thing but it is also tainted with ‘pan-indianism’. This means that some tribes are now performing rituals or using dresses that are not traditional or representative of their culture, but rather belong to a more global approach of the Native culture (for instance: head dresses and sundance). I think that pan-indianism is based on white constructs, and that no matter what efforts we make in the classroom or outside to depict the Native culture more accurately we are still going to hit and miss – because we are influencing it as we do so.

  I also have the impression that the Native american issue (at least in the Midwest) is not as dramatic as we think. I have been to an Indian casino and was shocked to see how they were using clichés like totem poles in the decorations, it actually looked like disney land. This place is ran by Natives, so this makes me wonder if they care about their culture and heritage as much as we think they do. Along the same lines, I have had to analyze some instances of land claims and other type of protests gone wrong for an anthropology class, and found out that usually, the protest was based on a legal issue rather than a cultural one until it got media exposure and more radical lobbies joined them, bringing weapons and cultural protests, getting the whole tribe in trouble over an issue they didn’t especially care for in the first place.

   I think our approach to Native american culture is biased by a feeling of guilt because of the genocide and reservations – and there is also this same problem with the African- american because of slavery. I know this is easy to say for me since I’m not American, but before singling-out minorities in the classroom by giving them exposure, we should ask ourselves if this is what they need, or what we need to make this feeling of guilt go away.

Writing and literacy

Over these past weeks I have learnt a lot about theories and methods to turn the students into good writers, but I’m wondering if we will be able to use these methods in the teaching environment we might have to deal with.

Most exercises described seem very interesting but they rely a lot on the students’ motivation, on their ability to work in groups (for the editing part for instance). We are supposed to trust them to actually write in their journals, to do some extra-work at home, to take pride and get involved in what they are writing.

I would absolutely love to do that, but on the other hand I want to stay realistic:

According to the National Adult Literacy Study, 21% of the adults had poor reading and comprehension skills in 1993. A similar study was conducted in 2006 and showed no real improvement – this is enough time for a new generation to have been through school. In some states (Georgia), some areas have a literacy rate lower than some African countries.

35 million people speak Spanish – only half of those people can also speak English.

Those are only a few issues among many, but those seem of particular interest in the context of teaching writing. How are we to teach students how to become good writers if they are struggling to read and form their letters, or don’t have a good grasp of the language?

This seems like a desperate task, however I think that putting a text together could actually help those students. There would have to be an adjustment of the level for most of the activities of the textbooks, but having an illiterate student produce a text might help them get a better grasp of orthography, sounds,…Producing a text in English is also a good exercise for language-learner to see the structure of the language, and gain some vocabularies.

I’m seeing a new dimension to teaching writing, challenges and goals different than the ones described in the textbook.

Is writing about reading taking the focus away from literature?

For this week’s post I would like to draw on my personal experience as a student in french schools. I come from a school system where I barely had to write anything about the books assigned. I remember one single book report in 7th grade, something similar to what is criticized in the textbooks: the assignment was a disaster in term of grades.

The reading/writing test to graduate from junior high school was a series of questions on text comprehension – all to be answered in less than three lines.

Writing about literature was finally introduced in 10th grade, with the ‘composed commentary’: the students are expected to give their interpretation of a literary text based on four criteria (structure, figures of speech, punctuation, and the use of sounds).

So any form of creative writing about literature is a new idea to me, and I can see how it would motivate the students to read and write, and help them improve their reading and writing skills as well as expressing their opinions, and developing analytical skills.

However, I see a flaw in most exercises mentioned in the textbooks: I have the impression that the focus is taken away from literature itself. The students are encouraged to ‘expand’ the reading experience by continuing the story, telling it in a different point of view, etc…Those seem to be ‘peripheral’ activities, which are valuable in the context of writing, but perhaps not in the context of literature. Here literature is a starting point for a different exercise, but where is the exercise about literature?

Voice vs correctness

    After reading the assigned chapters for this week, I would like to ask this question: how are we to help the students find their own voices, while at the same time playing a role in structuring, editing,…their writing?

  I would like to take the example of Zora Neale Hurston, a major African- American writer, and how she developed her own voice. Here is an extract of her book  Their eyes were watching God:

‘Yes indeed. You know if you pass some people and don’t speak tuh suit ‘em dey got tuh go way back in yo’ life and see whut you ever done. They know mo’ ’bout yuh than you do yo’ self. They done ‘heard’ ’bout you just what they hope done happened.’

‘If God don’t think no mo’ ’bout ‘em than Ah do, they’s a lost ball in de high grass.’

   This dialogue is not grammatically correct, however, I never felt the need to grab a red pencil and start correcting my paperback. Because this is correct in the context of the voice.

  Now If we expect from a first grader to develop his or her own voice – shouldn’t it be similar to the way a 6 year old speaks? On page 60 of Writing Essentials there are examples of first grade writing – and below them, the edited and corrected version, which almost seems like a translation in some cases. I can hear a 6 year old voice saying this: “ Im jolis that my sistre gise to go to jimnastic and I cant.” while there is nothing characteristic of a 6 year old’s speech in the corrected version.

   Of course the primary role of the educator is to make sure the student is using the language correctly, because this is one of the expectations – but how can we, at the same time, expect to find a voice? To me this is a contradiction. Maybe writing correctly and finding a voice should be two different exercises?

Under pressure

  After reading the assigned chapters for this week, I felt that an issue was left out: the pressure. There is a theory according to which, in language classes, students will make more progress if they feel there is no pressure when it comes to speaking out. The theoretical solution for this is to avoid public corrections, to have non-graded assignments, and to try as much as possible to have a non-inhibited environment, for instance by having the students chose alternative names,… (Johnson, 2008).

It is suggested in KKL and RR to have students share memories with their peers, to read in public their final text, and to submit it to the teacher for corrections…To me, the way writing is introduced in the classroom according to these textbooks would be a stressful thing for the students – so stressful in fact that a part of the students’ work will probably suffer from it.

I don’t think it is possible to have a completely stress free environment, however I feel like some methods have less pressure than others. For instance, reading a draft to a smaller group of students, or rather not reading the draft but the final version, or having the students chose which pieces they wish to submit from a larger portfolio,…

Something else bothers me: the textbooks mention a stage where the teacher should suggest corrections and revisions to the student’s draft. This makes sense when it comes to grammatical mistakes or inexactitudes in the content in a research paper, but if we consider writing to be a form of art, is it really the role of the teacher to judge what works and what doesn’t?

Sources:

Johnson,K, Introduction to foreign languages learning and teaching, Pearson Longman, 2008