thesisthoughts

I heard about this new report, Writing in the 21st Century, by Kathleen Blake Yancey,  from Yankel on his blog and am very grateful for the link. The paper traces perceptions of writing and theories of teaching writing (Yancey uses the term ‘composition’) through  the 20th century and into the 21st century.

One of the main points she raises is that writing has never been respected or emphasized in society (and education) like reading. An interesting reason for this is presented. Yancey suggests that this is connected to the use of reading to convey messages (social, religious, political…). Reading is associated with control, writing can be used for self control.

Another interesting point is the place reserved for reading in the family and the community. Reading is associated with warm memories of story reading, church gatherings etc and memories of writing are more likely to be associated with difficulty or loneliness. The historical connection between writing and the labour of text production is also discussed.

The place of writing in testing  and the role of testing in the teaching of writing are explored.

I like the way each part of the report concludes with a remark about writing outside school. Despite what happened (or didn’t happen) in writing classrooms, people continued to compose. The same is true today. One of the challenges facing us  as teachers is to learn from our students what they are doing with writing outside the classroom in social contexts a) in order to learn from them about what interests them and motivates them to write and b) to force us to search for writing projects which are based in social contexts and are relevant and exciting.

New models of teaching writing must see writing as an intellectual activity done in social contexts. If we use the technologies available to us and believe in ourselves as teachers and our pupils as developing writers, the sky is the limit. The author uses a term coined by Deborah Brandt, “self-sponsored writing”. I wonder how we can give this writing more attention in the classroom in order to encourage it, applaud it and allow it to motivate our students in their “school sponsored writing”.

As I experiment with blogging in the classroom, I am convinced that that has the potential to form part of a new curriculum which takes into account that writing has changed, is changing and that many of our students are actually writers.

Last Sunday was the second meeting of the course at N. I began the meeting by requesting that the teachers write for five minutes about themselves as writers. I threw a few questions in the air like “What do you you write and when?” or “How do you feel about writing?” and left them to it. To my surprise, the few that arrived on time began writing without objection. Again I was aware of how long five minutes are when you are actually engaged in text composition. I stopped them before they finished and was sorry that I had not dared to ask for ten minutes. I wrote together with them.

The discussion afterwards centered around their reaction to the task, directions which emerged during writing and the place place of “real writing” in their lives. One of the teachers volunteered to read her piece to the group. One of the participants was surprised to realize that she hadn’t written anything personal for years. She said “I write all the time but it is only work related technical writing, nothing that is really personal”.

Afterwards I brought texts which grade six pupils had written on the same topic “I am a writer”. They were surprised to see that children can write reflective texts and that they know so much about what helps and hinders the writing process.

My lecture on “A new framework for understanding cognition and affect in writing” / Hayes* went well and lively discussion followed. Many questions were asked, some of them I promised would be answered in the next few meetings.

Towards the end of the session we talked about narrative and the benefits of writing and discussing teaching stories. I explained that our next meeting would not be face to face, it will be on the virtual campus. I presented the task that they will be required to fulfill there.

Yesterday I visited the classroom of one of the course participants. As we discussed her work she mentioned that the process she is undergoing with her pupils at the moment is the one she has chosen to write about in her narrative. I got the impression that the very fact that she knows that she will be writing about her work in this unit is influencing the way she works with her students and directs their learning. This is a question worth thinking and talking about.

 *Hayes, J. R. (2000). A new framework for understanding cognition and affect in writing. In R. Indrisano, & J. R. Squire (Eds.), Perspectives on writing: Research, theory, and practice (pp. 6-44). Newark, Delaware: International Reading Association.

Waiting…waiting…waiting! I’ve had enough of waiting and it’s making me nervous!

What am I waiting for?

• The grade for my thesis – I still have a few weeks to go before I’ll hear any feedback. There is nothing I can do to make the time pass and I certainly can’t do anything at this stage to improve my mark so…I will just have to keep waiting patiently! 
• Narrative article that I sent to journal A – I haven’t heard anything – not even if they received it by email and I sent it off over a month ago. Wait! Maybe I should check if they got it? I don’t know if that isn’t being pushy. I will definitely keep waiting.
• Narrative article that I sent to journal B – I know it was received and read and that it will probably be accepted. Again, I have to wait and see.
• The beginning of the school year – In Israel, schools open on the 1st of September, next Monday. This year I will be working full time at our school (instead of leading PD in other schools two days a week). After school, one day a week, I will teach two PD courses for teachers, both according to the principles discussed in my thesis.

At school it will be a mixed year. I will have many hours in my role as vice principal, about 8 hrs in my role as head of teaching and leader of PD, 8 hours teaching ESL to two grade 6 classes, 2 hours teaching bible studies to grade 6, and 2 hours participating in a digital comics competition which brings together religious and secular pupils as they learn about other cultures and tolerance (last time one of my pupils came second in the final). I will also have 4 hours with groups of stronger pupils in our striving for excellence program. Together we will experiment with blogging – something new to me, our school and Israeli primary schools in general. I have lots of plans and am waiting for it all to begin.

 I still can’t decide if I should keep blogging here or open a new work blog. Let’s WAIT and see.

Free image from: http://www.imageafter.com/image.php?image=b12scripts000.jpg

Today I reread the first chapter of Doecke and Parr and was surprised that the notes I had made previously didn’t make the blog or the methodology chapter.

Points I will add are:

• Through writing teachers can explore their professional lives and “refine their understandings of the complexities of teaching and learning” (p. 9).
• “This is obviously of benefit to the students in their classes, although those benefits do not necessarily translate into tangible outcomes that can be easily measured” (p. 9).
• “… qualities that teachers value most in their students’ learning-intellectual curiosity, a willingness to engage in exploratory talk, imagination, a preparedness to collaborate while also accepting a degree of autonomy, a capacity to engage in metacognition and reflexivity-are the very same qualities that characterize their own professional learning. Teachers who engage in practitioner inquiry are much more likely to be able to generate a ‘culture of inquiry’ in their own classrooms” (Reid 2004, p. 12 as cited here p. 12).
•  writing 3 fold: writing as artefact, writing as process, writing as medium – see p. 13. I can link the writing in my thesis to these concepts.

Doecke, B., & Parr, G. (2005). Writing: A common project. In B. Doecke, & G. Parr (Eds.), Writing = Learning (pp. 1-16). South Australia: Wakefield Press.

I just realized that I haven’t used this article, one of the first I found when I started getting into the teacher-writer question.

The authors did a study of 7 Australian secondary teachers, “four of whom write with their students and three of whom don’t. The aim was to see if there were differences in the way they teach writing.

The authors define teacher writers as teachers who write outside of school hours, regardless of the purpose or the audience of the writing done.

Assumptions formulated by the authors before the study were:

1. Teacher -writers possess a “stronger knowledge base “than non writers
2. Teachers who write are better able to understand difficulties faced by pupils and respond from personal experience
3. Teacher-writers can better motivate students to write as a result of their own passion for writing

All teachers in the study were known as successful writing teachers.

Study:

• teachers observed teaching
• 2 interviews
• questionnaire on beliefs and practice

The study only researched the teaching of personal and imaginative writing.

The 4 teacher-writers held different views on the influence of their own writing experience on their teaching.

No clear correlation between the degree of teacher intervention with individual students, the stages in the writing process at which teachers intervened, and the writing background of the teachers”

“…no clear pattern” in the amount of explicit instruction

There were marked differences in the field of feedback to students but theses did not reflect the writer/non-writer background of the teachers.

Not one of the participating teachers believed that teacher writing improves writing instruction.

Ros one of the participating teachers argued:

“Teachers who were highly attached to their identity as writers might be too prone to have fairly narrow, self-confirming notions of good writing in ways that might be counter-productive for some students” (p. 47).

Small sample

No clear findings in practice which separate teacher writers from non-writers.

“All participant teachers perceived writing oneself and teaching writing as quite separate skills demanding quite different techniques” (p. 48).

Teacher writing is one way of acquiring a knowledge base for the teaching of writing. It may help to understand the task of writing but teachers need far wider knowledge than that.

“No necessary link between becoming a writer and teaching writing better” (p. 48).

Gleeson, A., & Prain, V. (1996). Should teachers of writing write themselves?: An Australian contribution to the debate. The English Journal, 85(6), 42-49. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org

While writing this thesis I was running a professional development program for teachers of grades two to six. The name of the twenty eight hour course was “Improving Literacy in a Heterogeneous Class”. The teachers voluntarily signed up.  I began the course by asking the fourteen teachers participating to fill in a questionnaire about themselves, their teaching experience and their expectations of the course. I included a list of possible topics and asked them to mark those most relevant and important to them. I was not surprised to find that the most pressing topic for all of the participants was the teaching of writing and supporting struggling writers.  I opened the third meeting by asking the teachers to write for ten minutes in silence, the topic being an experience they have had teaching writing. I told them that we would be discussing those pieces after the writing period was over.  One teacher immediately left the room, a toilet or coffee break I assumed. Another took out her cell phone and began clicking furiously. Others doodled quietly in their notebooks, began listing points or began to fill lines with Hebrew script.  I sat and watched them, uncomfortable with the squirming that was going on in several of the seats. Each minute that went past was like five, my watch didn’t seem to move. I forced myself to wait ten minutes, resisting my urge to cut the time down to seven or eight minutes.  Silence was kept in the room for most of the time, although occasionally there were embarrassed giggles or a whisper.  When the time was up, some of the teachers were still busily writing their narratives and were sorry to stop. Others looked relieved and were waiting to get on with the seminar.  In the discussion that followed I was interested in hearing what had happened to the participants in those ten minutes, what they had felt and what they had experienced and done in that time.  Many of the teachers commented that they are unused to writing on demand and that they felt uncomfortable. Some confessed that they are not used to writing at all. Several remarked that the time limit and the expectation of sharing their writing pressured them. At least two of the teachers didn’t write at all in the ten minute period. Only two or three confided that they enjoyed the writing experience.  We looked in detail at what had been done in that time and saw how the writing process is different for different people. Afterwards we discussed the implications for these differences in our classrooms. One of the teachers who didn’t write anything, an experienced grade six teacher, explained to the group that she isn’t a writer. “People are either born writers or they aren’t, I’m not” she said. The group discussed this statement. Is it true? If it is, what does it mean for the teaching of writing? I added that this is one of the major misconceptions held by struggling writers in our classes.  I asked the teachers if anyone was willing to share their text with us. Two of the first volunteers started to tell their story without looking at the page. I stopped them and reassured them that it is clear to everyone that this is the roughest of rough draft but that we want to hear what is on the paper.  Two of the pieces we heard were well structured, interesting stories. We were amazed by the writers’ style and clarity. At the end of the session I explained that our next meeting would not be face to face, that we would be meeting on the virtual campus. Each teacher was required to do three things, firstly to revise her story about the teaching of writing (or write another story) and to post it on the assigned private discussion board. The second task was to reflect on the teaching story and on the experience of writing one, I supplied possible directions for this. The third task was to read stories from other group members and respond.  It took ages and lots of encouragement for the first teacher to post a story. She wrote about a poetry anthology she had successfully produced at her school. The poems were all connected to Israel’s sixtieth birthday. This teacher told how she had created a poetry unit suitable for each different age group, chosen appropriate poetry to teach, and encouraged the children to write. Every child in the school had writing published in the festive booklet. She told her story modestly but proudly and expressed her personal excitement and satisfaction with the project. A few days after this story appeared, comments began to appear, most of them congratulating the teacher on her success in the project but also on being the first to contribute a story. Questions also appeared. Gradually a few other stories appeared on the site and the discussion was lively.  Unfortunately only five of the participants took part in the discussion. At our next meeting, I devoted time to the oral reading of those stories posted on the campus and gave those teachers time to share their experiences with the group. I was sure that my enthusiasm, together with showing the participants that it is possible to complete the task, would motivate the others to write and share their stories. A few weeks later, I am still waiting… Although I know that time is a central factor in any work I do with teachers, here I know that the type of task assigned was significant in the low rate of participation.  I am continually aware that these teachers have not been asked to write anything of this nature for a very long time, some of them since they were at school. Another factor is that in a twenty eight hour course many of the teachers do not know each other and may feel vulnerable as a result.  I have tasted this kind of work with teachers and find it far more meaningful than choosing a topic, planning a lecture or a workshop, giving them my knowledge or experience and going home.  When I read the stories written, I was greatly aware of what I have been learning, that every teacher has something to say, that each teacher possesses professional knowledge which can be a wonderful starting point for collaborative learning. S, a second year teacher, had been very quiet and reserved in the first two sessions. We discussed writing in the third meeting and I brought examples of authors talking about the writing process and about how laborious composition is. Suddenly, S shyly told the group that she keeps a personal diary and that because she lives alone she comes home and pours her day into writing. She confessed that writing is an important part of her day. The narrative S wrote and posted was written in very simple language but told a very powerful story of her battle to get her second grade pupils to write. She told us how she used to spend each Sunday morning hearing stories from her class about what they had done on the weekend. She was frustrated that it was always the same children who related experiences and that many remained silent. She told that it was difficult for many to choose just one experience to share.  One day, S gave her pupils special notebooks and told them that they were going to write what they wanted to share from their weekend and that afterwards those that want to can tell their story. She was shocked by the result. Firstly, everybody wrote, including those who usually don’t share and her struggling writers. Secondly, many more children were willing to tell their stories. S, excited by this lesson, decided to continue.  In the weeks that followed, S asked her pupils to write every Sunday morning and was happy that the children wrote willingly and that the texts produced were more and more complex. More and more pupils asked to share their work. As a result of the reflection S did when writing her narrative for our group, she started asking the class to write on other occasions, after recess for example. Another addition was that she herself started writing while her class was busy with their heads down. She used the time for reflective writing on teaching issues. In the weeks that followed, writing became an accepted mode of communication in S’s class. When children were involved in an argument or had a problem, she asked them to first organize their thoughts by writing them in the notebook and that afterwards she would be happy to listen to them. It worked. When S got to school after her day off, she would find a pile of notes waiting for her on her desk. Subject teachers who taught the class were surprised when they began to receive written communication from the young children.  S received positive feedback on her work from the members of our group and also heard ideas for continuing and expanding her work. I found it very satisfying that through this activity she realized that she has something significant to share with a group of experienced teachers. Many of the veteran teachers certainly had something to learn from this shy and nervous early career teacher. I realized that S was similar to her shyer pupils, those that only dared to share a story when they had it firmly on paper.  There is no tradition of composing teacher narratives and collaborating on them in this part of Israel. There are presently no formal options for professional learning through dialogic writing and discussion. Despite the fact that this small scale experience was only partly successful, I am optimistic that significant learning frameworks can be established for Israeli teachers in this direction.  In order to succeed, I believe teachers need to know ahead of time that this will be the framework of the seminar and that they know they will be committed to experience the writing and discussing of teacher narratives. A mix of experienced and early career teachers is likely to be preferable – building on the enthusiasm and burning need for collaboration amongst newer teachers and the experience and knowledge of veteran educators.  I have already taken the first few steps. I have surprisingly managed to convince the coordinator of language and literacy in the northern area of Israel, that this is the way we should be going in our PD for next year. Most of the courses we will be offering will deal with the teaching of writing and they will all be structured around teacher collaboration and the writing and sharing of narratives.  If we begin with a respect for the knowledge the teachers bring with them and their honest desire to raise the achievement levels of their pupils in writing, I hope they will sign up and then be open, flexible and active participants.