thesisthoughts

Frager asks the important question: “how does a teacher’s opinion of herself or himself as a writer relate to teaching writing?” (p. 274).

The author cites several researchers and their reasons for teachers to write (or be writers?) – This is a question I still need to address. Is everyone who writes an writer? Is a writer automatically called a writer? What is the difference between an author and a writer. What do you call someone who writes but isn’t up to being named “a writer”?

Atwell (1991) – teachers who write can understand their students’ experiences

Susi (1984) – when teachers model writing, students learn

Gillespie (1987) – using the ski instructor metaphor, claimed that you have to practice all the time in order to know how it’s done and that as you wouldn’t want to learn to ski from someone who can’t make it down the slope, you wouldn’t want to learn writing…

Nathan (1991) – only when you do it yourself can you really appreciate the difficulty involved in writing.

Kohl, Lopate and Herndon, (all teacher writers) – you have more realistic expectations of pupils when you know what it’s really about.

Romano (1987) – if writing really is important then we can’t just talk about it.

Romano (and Graves and Murray and Atwell) say the learning is

1. through modelling and sharing
2. demonstrating techniques

These authors want students to feel the way teacher -writers do about writing, not that they should compose like them.

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 Frager expresses concern (p. 277):

“there is reason to believe that teachers who are themselves fearful and reluctant writers influence some students to share that apprehension about writing, for fear and aversion are feelings communicated and learned almost instinctively through nonverbal messages”.

Bruton and Kirby (1987, p. 92) – teachers should at least “comfort with writing to an extent that [one is] able to write quickly without fear” (p. 274).

 Frager describes the fine line between writing too well and intimidating your students and a “struggling writer who provides empathetic support” for pupils. He examines how teachers view themselves as writers in order to understand how writing affects their instruction abilities.

32 teachers took part in a workshop. One of the tasks was to find a piece of their own writing and bring it in for discussion. Teachers discussed the texts  and then wrote “myself-as-a-writer” papers.

3 separate identity-concept groups and a 4th miscellaneous group:

1. “reluctant writers”
2. “practical writers”  – “writers by need or necessity”
3. “integral writers”

Frager asks: “What prior experiences seem to be most instrumental in the formation of a teacher’s identity as a writer?”

From the teacher essays he recognized 4 different factors (p. 276):

1. criticism received about their writing in the past
2. opportunities (or lack thereof) to make significant choices about their writing
3. writing done in response to need at work
4. writing for a public audience

 The author concludes that “teachers might develop more positive identities as writers if they were provided with experiences that are quite different from ones encountered in many pre- and in-service teacher education programs. Few, if any, programs for teacher development examine and provide instruction for the various types of practical writing teachers do on the job, even though this writing may define a teacher’s self-image as a writer” (p. 276).

See the wonderful example of teacher writing “on the job”- in the “Tempered Radical” blog – March 17, 2008 – a letter home to parents.

http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/

See also nb’s brilliant reflection on co-authoring an article for a public audience with two experienced writers – Jan 28, 2008 -

http://myownidentity.blogspot.com/search/label/writing

Frager concludes that teachers need more (p. 277):

• writing workshop experience
• opportunities to write on topics of their choice
• writing for public audiences (see Parr, 2007)
• positive feedback on their writing

Maybe the most important question is: “Can a teacher’s self-image as a writer change?”

My answer is of course YES! YES! YES! (and hopefully my autoethnography will demonstrate that!)

Frager’s answer is yes but not in all teachers.

Frager, A. M. (1994). Teaching, writing and identity. Language Arts, 71(4), 274-278. Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/pubs/journals/la

  This morning I read the debate published in English Teacher in 1990-1991 on whether English teachers in high school should write or not. Karen Jost’s articles are remarkably well written for a teacher so adamantly against teacher writing. I enjoyed the debate and particularly enjoyed the variety of texts in the round table discussion.

I believe that I would hear many responses similar to Jost’s if I were to ask teachers in my school to write as part of their compulsory PD. It seems that writing as a means of professional self exploration and growth isn’t suited to all teachers.

If I am convinced of teacher-writing benefits, which are the best ways to expose teachers to the experience and its worth? Maybe the narratives on my personal road to writing will convince someone? Who knows?

  Jost, K. (1990). Why high-school writing teachers should not write. English Journal, 79(3), 65-66. Retrieved from http://links.jstor.org    

Jost, K. (1990). Why high-school writing teachers should not write, revisited. English Journal, 79(5), 32-33. Retrieved from http://links.jstor.org

BFN, McAuliffe, B., Jellum, S. R., Dyke, T., Hopton, T., Elliot, A. W., et al. (1991). Should writing teachers write? The conversation continues. English Journal, 80(3), 78-83. Retrieved from http://links.jstor.org 

Just as I was giving up on getting my hands on “Teachers as Writers” by Karin Dahl, I found the whole book of essays as a  PDF file on Eric:

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/24/06/c8.pdf

http://www.nwp.org/

 http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/doc/about.csp

From the NWP website:

NWP Core Principles

The core principles at the foundation of NWP’s national program model are:

• Teachers at every level—from kindergarten through college—are the agents of reform; universities and schools are ideal partners for investing in that reform through professional development.
• Writing can and should be taught, not just assigned, at every grade level. Professional development programs should provide opportunities for teachers to work together to understand the full spectrum of writing development across grades and across subject areas.
• Knowledge about the teaching of writing comes from many sources: theory and research, the analysis of practice, and the experience of writing. Effective professional development programs provide frequent and ongoing opportunities for teachers to write and to examine theory, research, and practice together systematically.
• There is no single right approach to teaching writing; however, some practices prove to be more effective than others. A reflective and informed community of practice is in the best position to design and develop comprehensive writing programs.
• Teachers who are well informed and effective in their practice can be successful teachers of other teachers as well as partners in educational research, development, and implementation. Collectively, teacher-leaders are our greatest resource for educational reform.

Am I a writer? Are all bloggers writers? Are teachers who write narratives about their experiences writers? Are students writers? Are all academics writers? These questions have been keeping me busy over the past few days as well as those concerning the contribution of teacher-writing in the teaching of writing.

Now that the first draft of my methodology chapter is on paper, I am moving on. I have written a few narrative pieces and have also found some wonderful blog posts containing teacher narratives on writing and the teaching of writing. More about that later…

Frank writes about herself as a teacher before and after she discovered that she could and should write and also about the writing courses she runs for teachers. She proposes that teachers who do not see themselves as writers often have difficulties teaching writing to children. In her experience, teachers who do not write are less inclined to spend time on writing instruction and respond more to “lower-level corrections” (p. 185) in their students’ texts.   

The article mentions “writing apprehension” a term coined by Daly and Miller (1975, as cited in Frank, 2003).

Frank runs courses in which she uses a technique of neighborhood mapping to evoke personal childhood memories in preparation of writing narratives. In her experience, as a result of the writing experience and the group collaboration involved in the process, teachers begin to see themselves as writers and in turn improve their teaching of writing.

Frank describes her own story and I saw that in several ways it is similar to my own. I could have written the following few sentences about myself:

“I defined writing in narrow terms, believing that authors were gifted human beings. Because I did not see myself as ever being able to write like the authors I was reading, I did not identify myself as a ‘writer’” (p. 185-186).

Frank quotes Blau (1988) who explained that the difference between “basic writers” and “experienced, capable writers” is that the accomplished writers believe that what they want to say is significant enough to warrant writing about it.

Studies on how personal narrative and autobiographical writing can enhance elementary teachers’ lit instruction:

• Blake, 1995
• Brinkley, 1993
• Florio-Ruane, 1994
• Meyer, 1993
• Wimett & Blachowicz, 1997

Frank quotes Blau (1988, p. 31):

“A central principle for the NWP is “that writing teachers must write: that their authority as teachers of writing must be grounded on their own personal experience as writers – as persons who know firsthand the struggles and satisfactions of the writer’s task”" (Frank, 2003, p. 187).

Frank observed that as the teachers in her courses gradually began to see themselves as writers, they began to take risks and concentrate more on the content of their writing than on mechanics. They became less apprehensive as they saw writing as a process, that revision could always improve a piece later.

As I read I was reminded of Parr’s distinction between private and public writing. Many of the pieces created in Franks courses began as private pieces and went on to further empower their writers as they transformed into public texts.

Again quoting Blau (1996), Frank writes:

“In his theory of revision, Blau (1996) acknowledges that writing is a difficult frustrating, and time consuming process that inexperienced writers see as evidence of their own incompetence. On the other hand, experienced writers know that frustration and feelings of incompetence are among the most difficult challenges of writing” (p. 192).

I think the most important point is made by Frank on page 193 . She proposes that it is not enough for a teacher to become a writer in order for him/her to improve their writing instruction, teachers must write and reflect on their writing process in order to bring about change in their classrooms.

“Learning about writing pedagogy andidentifying themselves as writers who could reflect on the difficulties of the writing process enabled them to change instructional strategies within their own classrooms…” (p. 193).

Frank, C. R. (2003). Mapping our stories: Teachers’ reflections on themselves as writers. Language Arts, 80(3), 185-195. Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/pubs/journals/la

Wonderful slideshow on blogging as PD made by Graham from Teaching generation Z blog. I would like to do something similar for the teachers at my school, looks like a great way to introduce them to the idea of blogging as a way to organize and develop teacher reflexivity.

http://www.slideshare.net/grahamwegner/melbblogging

My first draft of the methodology chapter is almost finished…

Probably be back to blogging here next week.

“We are not positing that writing a weblog will change the articles we publish in scholarly journals. We do argue that blogging influences the way you think about thinking, and that it may change the process of research. To some extent it might even change the method”. (p. 254).

 “Both of us however experienced that writing the thesis became easier and the writing more focused after we started blogging” (p. 273).

Mortensen, T., & Walker, J. (2002). Blogging thoughts: Personal publication as an online research tool. In A. Morrison (Ed.), Researching ICTs in context. InterMedia Report, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, March, 2002. Retrieved from http://imweb.uio.no/konferanser/skikt-02/docs/Researching_ICTs_in_context.pdf

Dyson discusses the methodology of auto ethnography (he writes the term as 2 words) and the use of metaphors in narrative research writing.

Some of the issues dealt with in the article:

• The advantages and disadvantages of researching areas in which the researcher is involved professionally and emotionally.
• The question of objectivity – should research of this kind portray objectivity?

The author describes the process through which he understood that research through personal narrative is legitimate: