Finding our Voice-In Our Writing and In Our Comments

“Response to Student Writing”

By Nancy Sommers

“Check your commas and semi-colons and think more about what you are thinking about” (151).

I actually L.O.L.ed when I read this quote, referencing one teacher’s command to his student. I found it hysterical that we are continuing to see these types of comments on students papers and expecting high quality revisions from our students in return.

In this article, Sommers begins by stating that “teaching writing, responding to and commenting on student writing” consumes most of our time as teachers. She later states that to defend teachers, most of us have not had proper training in responding to drafts to help students revise their ideas. I completely agree with this claim. When I think back to my training in undergrad, we were trained on pre-writing strategies, as well as the traditional structure of a five paragraph essay. I was not trained in the workshop model with conferencing, until I was exposed to professional development my school brought in, along with my training through attending Teacher’s College Summer Institute. Sommers makes the argument that we have been conditioned to write generic, rubber-stamped comments on student papers, which makes it difficult for the student to assess which needs should be addressed first. The student also falls under the assumption that their ideas are already there, meaning the the meaning they want to convey is already there and they only need to “clean up” their paper, such as focusing on grammar. In reality, most students need to strengthen and develop their ideas but are not given the instruction needed to do so.

I believe that students need to be trained to discuss their writing, and as a teacher at the middle school level, this is a constant struggle for them. When asking students to discuss their work, occasionally they are able to do so, but when I leave them to revise, they immediately turn to me and ask, “Wait, what do you want me to write?” They do not have any control over their writing and need to learn to take ownership over their ideas.

I found the study conducted regarding the program “Writer’s Workbench” where computers will comment on student papers. I wonder if students are more inclined to listen to a computer, because they are so programmed to use technology that they value those comments more than their teachers? If that is the case, I am worried about what our world will come to and what that says about the need for teachers in a technological world. From personal experience, I missed a few days of school due to an illness, but was able to create interactive presentations for the students, where the directions were posted, assignments were completed, and all was shared through Google Classroom. I was able to interact by commenting on the students slides, grading their assignments, and offering help all without leaving my bed. Now we have programs that grade and comment for us as well? Makes me wonder if this will undervalue teachers even more than we are undervalued now?

The article continues to discuss the idea that students are confused by teacher’s comments, but there is also confusion between process and product. Do we care more about how the student gets there or what the final paper is? This year I began to tell my students their final draft is really a “deadline” draft and that writing is never fully finished.

I also felt that this article critiqued teachers practice, but forgot about the students. Speaking again with a middle school background, teachers aren’t perfect, but neither are our kids. It’s time to put the learning back on the students and less about teacher’s comments to get the students there. Gone are the days were you assign a project or homework and the students simply come in with it done. Now we need to hold their hands. Students expect to just “find” the answers in a text or in writing, rather than coming up with their own answers and their own ideas. No amount of questioning from me as the teacher is going to make them any less lazy. If revision is a “sense of discovery”, our students need to be the ones to do the discovering.

“Reconsiderations: Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries”

By Peter Elbow

I enjoyed that Elbow begins by stating the story of voice, referencing the Greek philosophers. I agree with Aristotle’s claim refusing the either/or conflict regarding voice, essentially that “It helps to be trustworthy; but, if you’re skilled, you can fake it” (169). When we have control over our voice and our ideas, we are able to manipulate them, and in essence, manipulate our point.

Elbow brings up substantial points that voice is alive and thriving in both politics and through the Internet, whether it’s email, social media, or blogs. As a teacher, if I were to have students analyze voice in each of these media, my students would grasp the concept. They could identify their own voice in their writing outside of the classroom, as well as distinguish how they write from someone else. However, when it comes to writing in the classroom, I fear identifying voice is a lost cause.

I also appreciate Elbow’s claim that readers hear voice in text, using the example of saying “hello” different ways to create meaning. However, I immediately thought about voice in writing, which Elbow proceeds to explain. Elbow explains that this is challenging, which as a teacher struggling with this, I appreciate. He offers the idea of having students continuously read their writing aloud in order to develop or better hear their voice. It is possible, that they best way to teach voice in writing is to analyze it in reading extensively. If students can’t identify voice, and examples of it, then they can’t begin to identify and use their own voice. I find that students are able to find their voice more in the creative writing pieces we do, and less in the academic. In order to better teach this, I believe that finding academic essays to read in order to develop voice. However, if voice can mislead readers, how do we use it? How do I teach students to pay attention to voice and “push it away” at the same time? Do we teach them that there is a time and a place for paying attention to voice and pushing it away? Ultimately, the question this article left me with was is voice more helpful or harmful?

In addition to this week’s reading, I was mulling over some ideas for my Genius Hour writing project. One idea I had was to get permission from my principal to videotape students and ask them “Why they write?”. I pride myself in cultivating a classroom environment of readers, but would like to cultivate one of writers as well. I was considering exploring what makes students write and how to foster their engagement. I was also tossing around some other ideas and answering a more focused question of: What can I learn about myself through writing? Or how does writing help us deal with issues? I bought a few books for my library that deal with teenagers suffering from OCD. I feel that I have some OCD tendencies but have shied away from reading these novels in case they trigger my OCD. I then thought about writing poetry or a novel from this perspective. I would possibly explore how reading about them or writing about real issues to me would help to overcome them?

Student Ownership of Writing

On Students’ Rights to Their Own Texts: A Model of Teacher Response

By Brannon and Knoblauch

This article begins by making the connection between professional and student writers, claiming that “The incentive to write derives from an assumption that people will listen respectfully and either assent to or earnestly consider the ideas expressed” (158). The authors claim that people will stay with a more intricate text, deciding that the text is difficult for them and become frustrated with the writer. The text claims that this “connection between a writer’s authority and quality of a reader’s attention is altered because of the peculiar relationship between teacher and student” (158). As a teacher of writing, I immediately got my guard up. I was weary of what direction this article was going to take.

The article continues to discuss how teachers are too quick to “correct” the ideas of a student and are less concerned with what the writer was trying to say. The article believes that the writing becomes more about the reader then and less about the writer’s message. I agree and disagree with this idea. I agree with this idea because we want our writers to see that the teacher isn’t their sole audience. We want them to think about the bigger picture and decide on their own who they are speaking to and what message they want to get across. I also agree with the idea that teachers tend to revise or correct papers to fit their ideas and care less about the students’. Sometimes we can attempt to force our students into a confined space where they need to produce what we expect. It is a fine line between completing an assignment and expressing ideas. This idea may work for college students, but my sixth graders are not capable of viewing their audience as anyone other than their teacher. In order to think in the bigger picture, you must learn the structure first.  It also brought into question the idea of grading. We live in a world where we have to grade students on their work and justify our grades to their ever demanding parents; therefore, we have a curriculum to follow. How do we assess students if it is all about what they want to produce? There has to be a compromise.

After reading some of my colleagues blogs, I was pleased to see that I had the same reaction as Sara. I was a bit offended by the articles assumption that we do not give student options. As a Language Arts teacher, we are encouraged, and evaluated on, our availability of student choice in our classroom. Students may have to produce the same type of content, but they are given options on what they want to produce and how they want to get there. My job is to coach them within the realm of the assignment, but to encourage them to find creative ways to do so.

Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

By Richard Fulkerson

Fulkerson’s article was a bit difficult for me to read. I found that I was getting lost in the translation of vocabulary and had to constantly reread sections of the text to create meaning. I found that this article pertained to college composition, which was maybe one reason I struggled to relate. I appreciate the theoretical lens Fulkerson used to express the shift in composition studies into different disciplines; however, I felt that it was drawn out and over explained. The article poses interesting questions about what is good writing and why are we teaching it? The article discusses how there is a different answer to these questions depending on your profession: teacher, dean, parent, and ultimately it’s the students who suffer from our lack of a coherent answer.

I did enjoy when Fulkerson discussed the Critical/Cultural Studies discipline being about liberation for a writer to develop tools to help them challenge cultural inequalities and to question their role in society. As a Language Arts teacher, I strive to expose my students to texts and variety of ideas that help them question the world we live in. However, this raised the idea of working across disciplines, with the social studies and science teachers, to expose our students to writing to make sense of the world in other classes as well. The article brings up this point and states that this work and this writing does not need to occur in solely the English Department, but history and sociology departments as well. I believe it is important for students to view writing as something they do outside of an English course, which most do not. Upon talking to my friend about his experience with writing in college, outside of his freshman English class, he took one other writing course, in technical writing for engineering majors, which he found beyond practical for his career. I think it is important for students of all ages to see writing through different lenses and through different disciplines, but all are important.

Responding to Student Writing

Check out my ideas about commenting on students' papers below! Check out my presentation and activity! Try it out!

Response to Student Writing through Commenting
Presentation

10/3 Teacher-Writer and Authentic Writing

Teacher-Writers: Then, Now, and Next

By: Whitney, Hicks, Zuidema, Fredricksen, and Yagaleski

I thoroughly enjoyed this writing piece! When I first read the title, I had so many questions. What is a teacher-writer by the authors’ definitions? What is the teacher-writer by my definition? And before I read, I answered the latter. To me, a teacher-writer is someone who is not confined to either titles. I am a teacher and a writer. I believed a teacher-writer was someone who, to quote the text wrote to “walk the talk” of teaching writing, one of my beliefs that encouraged me to begin this writing journey. I also believe that I can both write to show my students I am a writer, but to also write for myself. While reading this article however, I began to revise my thinking, something I’m working on teaching my students. I did not view myself as an advocate or someone who will use writing “as a stance as a means of resistance to current reform efforts that disempower teachers.” But after reading this eloquent and powerful line, I was enthralled. HELL YES I can do that. I can use my writing in other ways to bring about change, or foster understanding of my field. For me this was an empowering moment, and through this feeling, I was driven to read the article from a new perspective.

Teacher-Writers: Then, Now, and Next takes the reader through three different states of the teacher-writer across time. The article begins with “THEN: A Brief History of the Teacher-Writer” referencing researchers such as Atwell and Calkins, who view the teacher-writer in correlation with “process-oriented pedagogy” and writing workshop. The idea of teacher-writer grew to writing about inquiry and growing professionally. For example, we should write to generate knowledge of our field and increase our presence in research literature. Sounds a bit stiff to me: but it is a means of getting our voice out there. Although, when I first read this section I felt like it was more about showing face than what was being said. Today, we’ve moved into the third phase of teacher-writer, which is advocacy. This is where, as teachers, we should write as a form of resistance to the “measuring outcomes: and the market forces that are designing our education system. There is too much standardization, assessments, and privatization involved in our teacher, that our instruction has become less about the kids, even though we are told these “measuring outcomes” will help us address our students needs. Well, in a three week start of the school year, I have seen my students 15 times, and three of those have been required testing days. And in my spare time, I should analyze the data. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

It’s this line of thinking that made me realize teachers should become writers who get their voices out there. Be in an online blog, a newspaper column, or the PTO newsletter, it is our responsibility to write for the press, the parents of our students, and the public in general. I enjoyed how the article detailed different ways the authors are being teacher-writers as researchers and as facilitators of this conversation through multiple media. In essence, they are expressing how to co-create knowledge with other teachers, through various avenues such as blogs, the NWP, university courses, Twitter, and Google Hangouts.

It is important for us to claim our identity as writers and ask ourselves: What can our writing make possible and what are the constraints we’ll encounter? Are we fearful of how our writing will be perceived? Do we care? In essence, we have to BE writers. Simply put. Our writing and our experience writing and connecting to the world is what makes meaning, and what makes our writing meaningful.

Teaching Writing Authentically

When I first looked at this piece, it seemed a bit daunting. My printer read 63 pages and I started to sweat. I was worried I’d be reading another dry piece, but instead, I found this reading to be a quick and practical. As someone who has used Lucy Calkin’s Writing Units of Study for two years now, the concept of authentic literature and the ten minute mini-lesson are incredibly familiar. I couldn’t agree more that student will benefit from real, authentic activities and grow as writers, but I have to disagree that Lucy Calkin’s provides this. Calkins is quoted as saying, “We cannot teach writing well unless we trust that there is a real, human reason to write.” While I agree, the reading then proceeds to talk about how Calkins believes we should find writing that is meaningful and bring that meaning to life. However, through studying her units, I do not feel she does this. For example, she wrote a unit on Investigative Journalism, geared towards her 5th grade students in Harlem. My 8th grade students in white suburbia cannot relate or participate in this unit authentically, based on how she has set it up. I think there is a fine line between teaching the curriculum and finding ways to teach authentically.

One point addressed in this article is the idea of writing for an audience/creating a product for an audience. I enjoyed reading this section because this is one of my weaknesses as a teacher. I have not developed a sense of audience with my students. I have found myself telling them who their audience “would be” but I realize that is not enough. Through sources such as Letters2thePresident, or other online sources, I am going to find ways for students to view their writing as an experience with others. But in putting student writing out there, I always wonder if we need the school’s permission, or the parents permission. That is something I’ll have to look into. I would love to have PD ono getting our students writing out into the world, where maybe other students can view it and start a dialogue about each other’s writing.

Another point that resonated with me throughout the reading was Lori Rog’s model of the mini-lesson where she states it could take four forms: modeled writing, shared writing, interactive writing, or guided writing. I feel that sometimes my mini-lesson is not a true mini-lesson and I run over time. This is because I try to do too much at once. I have found that my most successful lessons were the ones that were truly a mini-lesson and I got to spend more time conferencing with my students. Being able to provide individual or small group instruction has proved immensely beneficial and something I strive to include every day.

In addition to that, last week in class we addressed how we are moving towards a more technological approach to writing, and most writing done in today’s world is published somewhere online, or through a technological outlet. In reading this piece, I couldn’t help think about my curriculum and the traditional five-paragraph essay. We begin the year writing literary essays, which provides me time to teach the traditional structure of writing in the five paragraph format. As much as we are deviating from that, and as much as I want my students to experiment and take risks, I do believe they need to be exposed to this structure first. You can’t run before you stand and I want to give them a foundation to stand on first. However, my goal for this year is to find outlets or ways for my students to express themselves outside of this structure: through blogs, or videos, or podcasts, anything that feels more authentic and based on real world application.