Nulla Dies Sine Linea

“[T]o speak a true word is to transform the world” (87). Paulo Freire

 This article appealed to me for numerous reasons. It ties into the subject area that my group is presenting on. It clearly connects and even cites Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Most importantly it ties in with a central concept that my molds my teaching — the power of the spoken word.

In teaching Advanced Placement English and for that matter any language arts class, discussion and dialogue are essential components of instruction. We study language. We therefore must engage in using it, examining it, and shaping it to discover truths not only in the text, but in ourselves. If Rosenblatt is correct that a reader constructs a meaning by what they bring to reading as well as what the author has but on the page, then what do we create when we speak? If the “spoken word provides the teachers and students the opportunity to create meaningful relationships that lead to academic achievement” (Desai & Marsh, 2005, p. 72). Is it only the students that benefit from this interaction? I would argue, as I believe that Freire as well as Desai and Marsh are arguing, that teachers and instruction benefit from dialogue, but to listen to other voices we must first know what our own voices are saying to ourselves and others. We need to reflect on where our words are originating from. I still struggle with truly understanding my own biases, and it is readings like Desai and Marsh that force this type of reflection as I attempt to effectively teach.

I had a student this year that tried my patience. I felt that I had to spend fifteen minutes explaining something to her that everyone else got in five minutes, and I also felt frustrated because a few days later I would have to repeat it all over again. She was very resistant mainly because the reading requirements were too difficult for her. Often she wouldn’t read instructions, so instead of giving the highlights as I did in class I would have to laboriously go over every point with her not once but several times. She was very intelligent, but English was her fourth language and she had difficulty keeping up and writing in academic English. Her work was riddled with errors and she had an annoying habit of putting phrases in parenthesis within her writing. It took me a while to realize that my frustration was mainly born out of a feeling of inadequacy. How could I help her? It was through dialogue that I learned that I was missing her strengthens. In discussing the novel The Lovely Bones she made connection after connection that other students did not – the family eating lamb and how that ties into Suzie as the sacrificial lamb of the story, Harvey’s name and its similarity to harvest connecting with his killing of Suzie in the cornfield, and so on. I begin to see that discussion is not only important for students to develop their analytical skills it is a way for me to learn as well. Desai and Marsh pull from Freire the important lesson that “teachers must be willing to sacrifice their power in order to make possible the surfacing of student knowledge and voice” (74). I have to agree because it is a lesson I learned. When my student wrote in her Reader/Writer notebook, “Mr. Harvey’s house was much emptier than ours…” and then crossed out “house” and wrote “heart” below I could see what dialogue had allowed her to perceive in the novel.

This student as well as my students who struggle to codeswitch, yet write beautiful and evocative poetry show me that “without listening with our ears, minds and hearts, meaningful and powerful forms of discourse cannot take place” (Desai & Marsch, 2005, p. 86). As Freire asserts, if we lack humility as people and as educators, how can we be our students’ partners in learning? (Freire, 1970/ 2010, p. 90).

References

Desai, S. R. & Marsh, T. “Weaving Multiple Dialects in the Classroom Discourse: Poetry and Spoken Word as a Critical Teaching Tool” Taboo. Fall-Winter 2005, 71-90.

Freire, P. (1970/ 2010). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Mayra Bergman Ramos. New York, New York: Continuum.

Tags: Curriculum, Race, Students, Voice

“You do what you do. You say what they say. You always try to be everything to everyone… Why won’t you ever learn?” – “Everything to Everyone” Everclear

Do what I say and not what I do seems to be the fallacy that both Choi and Jay are holding a glass up to, and looking in the mirror is a face. The hard part is that Choi and Jay are insisting that I recognize that it is my face. White guilt is the burden we carry along with our “invisible knapsack” of white privileges, but the reality is that we constantly try programs of ‘multicultural’ education without examining ourselves (both white teachers and teacher of color) for our biases.

In fact Jay, citing Kincheloe and Steinberg (1997), argues that “multiculturalism is a term used as a code word for race.” The irony is that Jay is sharing her work in the publication Multicultural Perspectives. So is multiculturalism as an approach valid? Has multiculturalism become a way to further marginalize the experiences and realities of other cultures rather than an effective way to broaden our students’ views? My answer is yes and no. If we fail to approach cultural studies (language arts, humanities) in an inclusive way from multiple perspectives, then we do perpetuate hegemony. We also cause cultures that are not the White culture to be seen as something separate with the implication that it is less important. How can we ‘see’ the cultures around us as different, but refuse to see color and culture in our students? It is by reading both of these articles that I begin to make sense of Choi’s argument about the damaging nature of colorblindness.

“[I]n the post-Jim Crow era, a good citizen is colorblind” (Choi, 2008, p. 56). Being White is an automatic ‘buy-in’ into the prevailing society: we are good citizens. Therefore to be White and perceive yourself as good, you default to the ‘colorblind’ setting, but the unsettling idea that we become faced with is that the myth of America is only true if you are White. The American Dream is available to varying degrees, and perhaps requires those of other cultures to assimilate and open themselves up to the own community’s accusation that they are acting White, but how do we change that? Is it simply acknowledging that we are not a meritocracy? We want to teach in a way that promotes success. What if we are “inadvertently complying with…this form of White dominance” (Choi, 2008, p. 58)? I have to take to heart what Choi exhorts. We must engage in a “serious critical assessment of these norms” (58). Being White results in us not questioning, not asking serious questions that might make us uncomfortable. ‘Of course, I’m not racist’ is what we say to ourselves, but if we as teachers are not willing to ask ourselves the hard questions of what our biases are how can we hope to question society?

Our society is not equal, so treating everyone the same does not give all an equal opportunity. To allow for a true attempt at success, we need not give differential treatment we need to give differentiated treatment. Lessons are scaffold to adapt to the learning differences of ELL, gifted, special education, genders, etc., so why is culture not added to the mix as a given instead of being seen as a special consideration or even worse a ‘dumbing down’ to deal with a supposed deficit instead of a difference. These articles provoke a great deal of thought and sometimes an uncomfortable examination of my whiteness. In the end I am still left with many questions, but perhaps that is the answer—questions. A person, a society, a world that still questions instead of having everything answered and catalogued has the freedom to change their mind.

References

Choi, J. (2008). “Unlearning Colorblind Ideologies in Education Class.” Educational Foundations, Summer-Fall. 53-71.

Jay, M. (2003). “Critical Race Theory, Multicultural Education, and the Hidden Curriculum of Hegemony.” Multicultural Perspectives. 5(4), 3-9. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

McIntosh, P. (1988). “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” excerpt from “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies.” Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.

Tags: Curriculum, Students

“In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap” (120).  Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

This year one of my African-American female students asked to add in an exploration of the psychology of young black females in her literary criticism research paper on Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. It was an interesting addition, and her examination went beyond simply using the psychological literary criticism lens on the characters in The Bluest Eye. She attempted to deal with some of the questions that Rollock poses about the marginalization of Afro-Caribbean and Black female students in Britain. Why does this happen? Why are Black female students often unseen in the classroom and in research? My student wanted to ask why do these girls feel invisible and Rollock attempts to explore how their gender gives them a legitimacy that results in a lack of surveillance that ironically makes them invisible in classroom instruction, while conversely their blackness confers visibility and negative reactions as they move through the space of the school.

Rollock used observational data from staff meetings, assemblies and achievement meetings; however, she was not allowed to observe classroom instruction. Why? This denial troubles me. It may be that the school decided that observations would disrupt the classroom instruction, but when I think of the number of observations that a teacher has to normally go through it does not seem to be a logical explanation. Were teachers resistant? Was the administration afraid of the possible results of such observations? Based on the teacher comments and the student comments, it seems apparent that instruction is as much on the manners society wishes to instill as it is on the academic skills. The math instructor that constantly checked boys appearance before instruction began did little to encourage his male Afro-Caribbean students to ‘buy in’ to the instruction. Rollock’s presentation of the Black female and male views of success clearly shows that boys are not learning that teachers will see them as successful if they ‘neaten’ their appearance. Rollock truly illustrates what Bourdieu theory looks likes when applied in research. The Black females have learned the ‘arbitrary values’ of this society and have assimilated. The boys have failed to learn these values and combined with the uneasiness that their size, maleness, and color engender they are shut out, but ironically receive more attention due to the perceived need to monitor them. Black females have stripped and bound themselves to their society’s arbitrary values, but Rollock illustrates that they may be ‘misrecognizing’ implicit value-systems. They are not the cream. In the eyes of the school, it doesn’t “get first pick, if [they] get able children, it’s sort of by chance really” (Rollock, 2007, p. 199). Thus the girls fulfill and internalize the arbitrary values, but they fail to realize that for many teachers they do not have the social capital to gain membership in the valued white group. Thus the female Black students are not a threat, so are not given the attention the male Black students receive, and they are not the “cream,” so they do not rise to the top of the teachers’ minds. As long as the “uninterrogated invisibility of whiteness” pervades the values of school and society, all students of color female and male will remain visible, but unseen (p. 202).

Morrison, T. (2007). The Bluest Eye. New York: New York, Knopf.

Rollock, N. (2007). Why Black girls don’t matter: exploring how race and gender shape academic success in an inner city school” Support for Learning, Vol. 22, No. 4.

Tags: Race, Students

“We read to know we are not alone.” C.S. Lewis

The overpowering view of cultural capital as a White property is an important reason to shift the Critical Race Theory (CRT) lens “to ‘see’ multiple forms of wealth within Communities of Color” (Yosso, 2005, p. 82). After exploring the “unearned entitlement” that is a legacy, even a property in White culture, it is heartening to think of the ways in which Communities of Color can actively band together to engender social justice (McIntosh, 1988, p. 79). Yosso’s exploration of the evolution and impact of CRT on the layers of identities and oppressions minorities, and specifically people of color face, illustrates the confusing multiplicity of identity.  Yasso’s emphasis in illustrating that these identities and the oppressions that each have endured should be seen as a contest resonates (Yosso, 2005, p. 73). It is true that so often our society breaks down the race conversation to Black/White, which is another form of color blindness—one that refuses to see the multiplicities of people of color. Also the implication is that the White culture is the norm, and that all other cultures must be contrasted and judged against it. This denies the acknowledgement of the authentic voice of other cultures simply reducing them to the ‘other.’

Yosso’s compelling case that American society’s assumes that White is norm and that others who differ from what White culture values have a deficit clearly illustrates why students of color are less likely to be in gifted programs and over-represented in special education. Children of color cannot mirror back what our White middle-class society values and thus are not seen as valuable until they can do so. An even more negative perspective might be that those in power wish to limit the amount of dominant culture that a minority student can mirror back in order to limit their advancement and maintain their place of power. However, it is clear from Yasso that CRT is not an attack. It is not trying to set up a ‘them versus us’ dynamic. CRT’s goal is that of social justice. As educators it is essential that we act in a social responsible way in that students will reflect the lessons of the educational environment we create. CRT provides a forceful examination of our assumptions as educators. Often I have taught works that I have considered essential works in the literary canon, but while we have enlarged the canon of literature to include writers; such as Sherman Alexie, Sandra Cisneros, Ralph Ellision, Toni Morrision, and Amy Tan (to just name a few), we teach them on a limited basis and often under the heading of multicultural literature. ‘Multicultural’ so often becomes code for not as significant as ‘important’ writers in the canon; such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Twain, and Steinbeck. Today a teacher asked me to watch nine students from her college prep class that had not completed their review sheet for their British Literature final. They were to work on finishing it while their class reviewed. More importantly they were in my room because they had been slackers all year, and the teacher was fed up. The students were all male. Two were African-American and the rest were Hispanic. Why didn’t they value the British Literature they were supposed to be learning this year? Perhaps tying in the colonial British writer’s protest of cultural dominance would have connected to their voice. I don’t know, but I do agree with Paulo Freire in believing that our goal should not be to superimpose our values onto students. Our goal should be that of cultural synthesis rather than cultural invasion, a process in which we come “to learn, with our [students] about [their] world” instead of simply trying to “transmit” our values (Freire, 2010, p. 180).

References

Freire, P. (2010). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Mayra Bergman Ramos. New York, New York: Continuum.

McIntosh, P. (1988). “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” excerpt from “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies.” Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.

Yosso, T.J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, Vol. 8, No. 1, March. 69-91.  

Tags: Race, Students, Voice

“It is not up to you to finish the work, yet you are not free to avoid it.” Pirke Avot 2:16

Critical Race Theory is a call to action more than a lens with which to look at the interaction between society and education. CRT “scholarship should employ ‘any means necessary’ to address the problem of inequity in education” (Dixson and Rousseau, 20005, p. 22). Therefore, no one person, scholar, teacher, administrator or politician can change societal values, but the clear message from the views expressed by Gloria Ladson-Billings, Adrienne D. Dixon and Cellia K. Rousseau is that one must try. If we do not address the inequities in education how can we expect students to engage in learning when they feel disenfranchised?  If we do not provide a fruitful learning experience for our varied student populations how can we expect for all our students to grow and engage in a society that has made them feel like an outsider? As Landon-Billings points out the connection between property, voting, and even citizenship has long been interconnected in defining one’s status as an American, and this definition has been limited to those who are white and male for most of our country’s history. Critical Race Theory offers up a compelling argument that our idea of legal color-blindness and American ideal of equality is not the same as equity. The “‘misequating the middle passage with Ellis Island’” leaves African-American and Native-American students “with the guilt of failing to rise above their immigrant status ‘like every other group’” (Ladson-Billings, 1998, p. 22). However, the CRT “stance that presumes that racism has contributed to all contemporary group advantage and disadvantage” (Dixson and Rousseau, 20005, p. 9) is too sweeping a perspective. Where is the individual responsibility? Can the legacy of the past become a self-fulfilling prophecy of the future? To me this is still unclear, but I do feel that race is an artificial construct that we as a society and as individuals have ‘bought’ into. If not, why would it be so important to categorize our students based on ethnicity and as adult list it on so many official documents? Race matters. It shouldn’t but trying to neutralize it stops any real conversation about it leads to the belief that white is the norm and that by default non-white is abnormal (Dixson and Rousseau, 20005, p. 16).

We must talk about our different cultures to illustrate that white culture as the standard loses the vitality of other cultures when it marginalizes them into ‘the other,’ ‘the outsider.’  We must hear these voices. As the articles by Gloria Ladson-Billings and Adrienne D. Dixon and Cellia K. Rousseau stress voice and storytelling are the key tools of the CRT researcher. As teachers we must engage students in their cultural stories in a real way. The critique that schools engage in multiculturalism through superficial examinations such as singing songs and eating ethnic food is valid. Teachers who fail to research the multicultural literature they share with students in the classroom can also be guilty of providing stereotypical views of other cultures rather than authentic voices. Students must also express their stories in writing. Student writing allows students to find their voice and share it. It is through these voices that individuality and the cultural values that have shaped it can be engaged in a substantive way. However, writing is often a stumbling block as students do not always write in standard English. Black Vernacular English and Spanglish are not allowed in formal writing, but reasons for this prohibition and avenues for students to write in their culture’s voice must be found. We do need to teach code-switching, but we cannot devalue a student’s cultural voice. Tradition educational standards and traditional curriculum are not race neutral and our job as teachers is to question the traditions.

References

Dixson, A. D. and Rousseau, C. K. (2005). And we are still not saved: critical race theory in education ten years later. Race Ethnicity and Education, Vol. 8, No. 1, March. 7-27.  

Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? Qualitative Studies in Education, Vol. 11, No. 1. 7-24.

Tags: Race, Students, Voice

Q: What forms and outlets are available and beneficial for students’ development as writers?

Never forget the “naked, blazing power of print” (Kirby, Kirby, and Liner, p. 255, 2004).

Print is powerful and I do want to have my students experience the power of see their own writing in print, to see their own power. I have been struggling with ways to have students move beyond the walls of our school to publish their writing. The walls outside my room are frequently adorned with their work and many of their fellow students stop to peruse it, but I’d like to broaden their horizons.

The virtual classroom of Edmodo.com this year and the class Ning of next year allow students a place to publish and share their writing with their peers. It is a good step, but I see this type of sharing is more beneficial for building a workshop community to works towards revision.

One possibility I wanted to toy with is pushing my students to submit at least one piece to Teen Ink. I think it would be a good avenue for them to share their writing. Sometimes I feel that I should do more to get a literary magazine started at our school, but to be honest I can’t see adding something else to my load. I am curious, if other teachers work at schools with literary magazines, how sucessful it is within your school. What support do you have from your English department, your school, and your students?

I have also been intrigued about using Print on Demand. An article by Heyer “Students Are the Living Authors: Publishing Student Work Using Print on Demand” that came out in The English Journal has had me thinking about using Lulu as a way to allow student to have a published copy of their work and that of their classmates and also allow others to purchase copies: family, friends, perhaps even people who have never met them. It would also work as a way to give authenticity to students’ work in maintaining a portfolio. It would push them to review their work to see what piece or pieces they would like to revise for submission.

I also think I am going to have to model this myself and risk submitting my own writing for print. We will have to see how it goes.

Sources:

Heyer, Z. L. (January 2009) ”The Students Are the Living Authors: Publishing Student Work Using Print on Demand” English Journal. Urbana, Illinois.

Hicks, T. (2009), The Digital Writing Workshop.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Kirby, D., Kirby, D., & Liner, T. (2004). Inside out: strategies for teaching writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Tags: Students, Voice, Writing Process

Q: What direction should we take in grading/ evaluating student writing? How do we prepare students for statewide assessments through authentic writing?

The key phrase for me is the NCTE’s guide of  ”multiple measures” (Hicks, p. 105, 2009). Many arguments abound on the legitmacy and worth if grading, but grading is part of school and should grow out of assessment. Where are my students? Have they improved? If I only assess them in one type of writing or through multiple choice passage tests, I am missing other elements. Creative assessment, discussions (with discussion prep notes), research papers, literary analysis papers, blogs, group presentations all work together to form a more complete picture of my students’ strenghts and weaknesses.

“Do we evaluate to grade or grade to evaluate?” (Kirby, Kirby, and Liner, p. 215, 2004).

I believe that process assessment must have as much focus as product assessment. Students in my classes just finished an intense seven to nine page literary criticism research paper/ project. If my only assessment occurred at the end, what would be the point? Students would feel ineffective and demoralized. Instead a great deal of focus was spent on assessing through writing workshop mode in which I, the student, and the student’s peers all provide feedback and assessment of the thesis, outline, and drafts leading to the final paper. I have just finished grading the assignments and the students, even my weak writers, who participated in the workshop process did markedly better than those who did not turn in drafts and did not seek feedback. The writer writes allow, but assessment allows the writer to grow and improve if it focuses not only on the final product but on the messy process of writing.

“Practice activities” (Kirby, Kirby, and Liner, p. 220, 2004) which you do grade are a way to develop confidence. I also suggest the revision expectation. I have students complete a monthly poetry paper. They receive a grade of 100 if they complete it and turn it in on time. They keep that 100 if they complete the revision (it could be more than one) I ask for the paper. If they do not complete the revision their grade drops to 70. Thus students paralyzed with the thought that it is not good enough are encouraged to give the writing assignment an attempt.

Kirby, Kirby, and Liner’s suggestion of portfolio’s is a valid tool for evaluative assessment. I am still struggling with using portfolios effectively. I am trying to structure a way for them to develop out of a required blogging assignment I will be putting in place next school year. I am a firm believer of using rubrics and providing students with examples of completed writing assignments for new modes they are unfamiliar with. I like using an online discussion component to my class because I believe it allows for my to assess how students are writing and what they are understanding about our literature study.

The problem I see is how to use authentic writing as preparation for state tests? I believe all writing aids the students in developing skills, style, and voice, but I feel that the state tests are so artificial by nature that direct preparation can create non-authentic writing instruction in our classroom. It is a juggling act. This is the first year that I do not have any classes with state standards and I only have the Advanced Placement test to prepare students for. It is freeing. Still I have prepared juniors for the GHSGWT and I can see that focusing on authentic persuasive writing and strengthening students understanding of what constitutes support would support prep for this writing test.

Sources:

Hicks, T. (2009), The Digital Writing Workshop.Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Kirby, D., Kirby, D., & Liner, T. (2004). Inside out: strategies for teaching writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Tags: Assessment, Students, Writing Over Time, Writing Process

Teaching Writing: Writing About Literature / Writing Through Literature

 Q: What are the ways to teach writing through a response to literature?

 To discuss that question we need to first realize that many teaching texts act upon the assumption that students should write about literature, but is it beneficial to write about literature?

Kirby, Kirby, and Liner in INSIDE OUT point out that reading and writing is a reciprocal process. “Good Writers write with their readers in mind, and good readers read with the writer in mind” (173). This reading writing connection is at the core of many views of this topic. Carol Booth Olson’s book, THE READING/WRITING CONNECTION, explores this in great depth. Her focus on this connection brings up the inherent recursive nature of both reading and writing. “When readers and writers go back to go forward, they are attempting to respond to the text from different perspectives” (5). Francine Prose’s argument as the title of her book shows, READING LIKE A WRITER, is that “[w]hat writers know is that, ultimately, we learn to write by practice, hard work, by repeated trial and error, success and failure, and from books we admire” (4). Rozema and Webb focus on using the interactive nature of the web through blogging and digital media to allow students to not only connect with literature but with their teachers and peers in making meaning. As the 2001 Langer study cited in WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE shows successful teachers created interactive social contexts for student learning (Johannessen, Khan, and Walter 14). Students need to talk about texts they are reading and writing in order to make meaning and develop their cognitive strategies.

So what strategies do you think should be used in writing through literature?

Examples from Kirby, Kirby, and Liner, INSIDE OUT:

Creative Response (CR) p. 178-9, Imitation in Kind (Vignettes) p. 180-1, Shifting Points of View p. 185-6, Nonwritten Responses to Literature p. 187-8

Examples from Booth Olson, THE READING/WRITING CONNECTION

Marginal Notes and Questions while reading, Clustering/ Mapping, Dialectical Journals/ Reader Response Journals, Finding the author’s Golden Lines, Graphic responses to texts, Postcard Activity, Framed Found Poem Activity

Examples from Burke, TOOLS FOR THOUGHT and WRITING REMINDERS 

Graphic Organizers: Episodic Notes, Plot Notes, Conversational Roundtable, Target Notes; Reader Response notes; Weekly Poem analysis; Author Study; Poetic Cycle

An important thing to acknowledge is that a great deal of writing in the classroom is transactional—writing that serves a purpose, an end, and is more product based. There is a clear need for expressive writing in which writing serves as a strategy for learning rather than simply as an assessment (Booth Olson 119-120). By blogging about what they are reading students think through writing while working in a collaborative setting—the virtual classroom of a listserv, blog, or Ning.

Example responses from a Chapter 1 online discussion of THE GREAT GATSBY:

 ____________________

GREAT GATSBY Ch. 1 Posting Topic

FROM: Mrs. Gardner SUBJECT: Ch. 1: TOM, DAISY, JORDAN GATSBY’S HOUSE/ WEST & EAST EGG

What does wealth symbolize? Compare and contrast West Egg and East Egg, and consider how Fitzgerald uses east and west as symbols. The traditional American frontier was the West. Why do the main characters travel from West to East? What does the “single green light” symbolize?

POST: Based on our class discussion what do you now know? What are you still confused about? What connections are you seeing already with Eliot’s “The Waste Land”?

 FROM: Z. SUBJECT: Great Gatsby ch. 1!

Today during the discussion, I was able to observe many connections of this chapter to “The Game of Chess” of Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Just like in “The Game of Chess,” the lives of Daisy and Tom seems to be fake. When Daisy is introduced, everything around her is white including the environment. Although, this might seem elegant and pure, in reality it is being used to hide the truth behind the “white.” The one thing which caught my interest the most was the single green light. We could conclude that the green light is coming from Daisy’s dock. To me this symbolizes that Gatsby is reaching out to Daisy, maybe for her love and support. What does it mean to you? As we started discussing in class, East and West will play a major role in understanding the novel as we move along. Although Gatsby and his mansion describe what Nick does not like, he takes him as an exception because he think that there is “hope,” but in reality there seems to be no hope.

 FROM: P. SUBJECT: Chapter 1

Today in class we discussed the differences between the East Egg and the West Egg. The East is more traditional and social, while the West is based on people who did not become rich depending on their social status. One’s wealth does not necessarily determine how educated one is. Gatsby is a mystery since not much information is given. We can conclude he has greater signficance later on because of the single green light. In the Fire Sermon it states “She turns and looks a moment in the glass, Hardly aware of her departed lover. Daisy is unaware that her husband Tom has departed from her. Tom is having an affair with a women in New York. This will lead their relationship to a downfall.

FROM: V. SUBJECT: The Great Gatsby Chapter 1

Through today’s class discussion I understood the differences between the west and the east and also the symbolism shown in the first chapter. White was a repetitive symbol, however like water in the wasteland, white was not represented as pure but instead corrupt. You can see this in the novel when Nick first arrives to see Daisy and Jordan who happen to wearing white. The only problem is they are not really pure like the color white. However I do have some questions about some of the things I was confused about. Firstly, is the rose a symbol that it is significant because he refers to it on pages 14, 7, and 11? Secondly, I was wondering what is the significance of Jordan Baker because we really did not discuss her in class.

FROM: A. SUBJECT: The Great Gatsby: Chapter 1

During our class discussion today we went into great detail on the differences about the West Egg and East Egg. From my reading I had already noticed that the west was more on the lines of new money, where the east was old money. There was also a sense of fashion and aristocracy in the east, where the west was less fashionable. However, today during class I came to a conclusion that the main difference between the East and West egg is that even though the east is in fact older than the west, the west is more traditional where the people in the east have become corrupt. The Green Light was brought up in class, but we did not go into much detail on this symbol. When reading I saw that there would be a significance of this light in the rest of the story. However, when I read that Gatsby was reaching out to the ocean in the direction of the light I saw it as him trying to capture a dream or hope that he has that we just might be introduced to later on. At the discussion today I also learned about some relationships among “The Great Gatsby” and “The Waste Land”. There were many reoccurring themes in the story that matched up to Eliot’s “A Game of Chess” and “The Fire Sermon”. There was a part in “A Game of Chess” where the lady’s jewelry is described as synthetic giving a sense of unnatural. Fitzgerald used this as well in his story giving an unnatural persona for Daisy and Tom.

 ____________________

Posting/ Discussion Forum Rubric

Blogging Rubric

Hick’s THE DIGITAL WRITING WORKSHOP’s Chapter 4 “Examining and Author’s Craft Through Multimedia Composition” presents the idea of digital storytelling, but what about the idea of digital analysis? Students can explore tone and meaning through the physical manipulation of a poem, short story, or novel’s text in an Illuminated Text (visit www.awaytoteach.net for examples) or through a podcast or video. Also the presentation of a scene from a play or novel demonstrates student interpretation of character and theme. Many of us teach a Shakespearean play. Do students perform a scene to demonstrate understanding?

So another question emerges. Does writing about literature act as a way to help create better writers or better readers? Is literature based writing a tool to improve writing or reading skills?

Carol Jago the current president of NCTE sees writing as an important vehicle to understanding literature. In her press release, Crash! The Currency Crisis in American Culture. She cites Robert Scholes’ Textual Power that states “Reading is the first step in all thought and all communication. It is essential; but it is incomplete in itself. It requires both interpretation and criticism for completion” (58). Jago believes that “the best method for helping students learn how to interpret and criticize literature is through writing,” and that:

“Writing about literature invites them to construct personal interpretations and then support their interpretations with evidence from the text. Such writing requires students to pause and think hard about what they have read. While some teachers (and many students) feel that having to write an essay about a book ruins the reading experience, I think otherwise. Knowing that they will be writing an analytical essay about what they are reading often lends urgency and intensity to our classroom conversations.” Writing becomes a vehicle for exploring students’ understanding of what they have read.” (Jago 3)  

Kirby, Kirby, and Liner stress that some readings should simply be for fun and should not have the requirement of writing connected to them, so is writing in school a vehicle for learning literature and real work on writing has to be done separately from literature study? I think it would be dangerous to act on this belief. The greatest writing teachers of all time lay between the covers of books. I want to share Shakespeare, Austen, Fitzgerald, Morrison, Achebe, and so many others with my students. They deserve more than my example of how to develop as writers.

So how do we work through literature to write? Close reading and modeling are a key way. Nancy Dean’s VOICE LESSONS: CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES TO TEACH DICTION, DETAIL, IMAGERY, SYNTAX, AND TONE and DISCOVERING VOICE: VOICE LESSONS FOR MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL has students examine passages from great writers and then model them. A pastiche assignments in which students are asked to add a scene to a work being studied by modeling the style of the writer also asks for students to interpret and develop as writers.

Does student writing need to always be textual? Art Spiegelman’s MAUS won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. It is a graphic novel and thus relies as much on image as it does on words. Last week we explored multi-genre writing and how it can be used to interpret and respond to literature. What about nonverbal writing? Kirby, Kirby, and Liner stress nonverbal representations in INSIDE OUT. The use of creative presentations and visual representations may provide the key to seeing that the interdependent nature of reading and writing means that both abilities are being served when writing and literature are used to aid each other rather than being taught in isolation. For example, in teaching some works of literature, I ask to students to create a work of art—a creative mix of student created images with student selected text from the work of literature being studied. This “Art of Analysis” illustrates student understanding. The requirement of having students write an explanation as an artist of what they were attempting to achieve illustrates both literary understanding and writing ability. This activity works as an assessment, but having students use graphic organizers to combine image and text as they read and make meaning works to strengthen their analytical writing and to find their voice through reader response. Jim Burke’s TOOLS FOR THOUGHT provides many useful graphic organizers and illustrates the use of them as well as does his book WRITING REMINDERS.

Should students write about literature? No. Should student write through literature? Yes, at least that is my answer. Literature allows us to live lives we would never have and see perspectives we have never thought of and through these worlds we see ways to create our own writing or own voice. We enter into the eternal conversation and through these writers we become thinkers and writers in our own right. Schools will always teach literature, and so students will write about literature but choice must play a factor when it is feasible. Student choice of texts, student choice of topic, and student choice of product are all avenues to allow students to become invested in writing and to engender critical thinking.

Sources and Resources:

Barcus, J. (2004). “English Education: The Critical Imagination, Terror, and Totalitarianism.” Clearing House, 77 (4), 132. Retrieved from ERIC database.

Booth Olson, C. (2007). The Reading/Writing Connection: Strategies for Teaching and Learning in the Secondary Classroom. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

Burke, J. ( 2003). Writing Reminders: Tools, Tips, and Techniques. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Dean, N. (2006). Discovering Voice: Voice Lessons for Middle and High School. Gainesville, Florida: Maupin House Publishing.

Dean, N. (2000). Voice Lessons: Classroom Activities to Teach Diction, Detail, Imagery, Syntax, and Tone. Gainesville, Florida: Maupin House Publishing.

Hicks, T. (2009), The Digital Writing Workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Jago, C. (2009). Crash! The Currency Crisis in American Culture. A Report from NCTE, April 2009. Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English.

Kittle, P. (2008), Write Beside Them: Risk, Voice, and Clarity in High School Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Kirby, D., Kirby, D., & Liner, T. (2004). Inside Out: Strategies for Teaching Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Richardson, M. (2004). “Who Killed Annabel Lee? Writing about Literature in the Composition Classroom.” College English. Retrieved from ERIC database.

Rozema, R., & Webb, A. (2008). Literature and the web: Reading and responding with new technologies. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Weinsheimer, J. (1982). “Writing about Literature, and Through It.” Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture, 10(3), 69-91. Retrieved from MLA International Bibliography database.

Tags: Literature, Students, Voice, Writing Process

TEACHING WRITING: WHAT ARE WAYS OF TEACHING POETRY AND THE ESSAY?

“The impact of poetry is so hard and direct that for the moment there is no other sensation except that of the poem itself. What profound depths we visit then – how sudden and complete is our immersion! There is nothing here to catch hold of; nothing to stay us in our flight…. The poet is always our contemporary. Our being for the moment is centered and constricted, as in any violent shock of personal emotion.”

– Virginia Woolf, “How Should One Read a Book?”

Poetry…I love its sounds, its meanings, its rhythms, but when I was in high school I don’t remember loving it (with the exception of the verse within Shakespearean plays). I liked writing my own poetry in my journal, but poetry by ‘real’ poets did not appeal.  Now I find such pleasure in it, but often I feel like Billy Collins worse nightmare — tying a “poem to a chair with rope” to “torture a confession out of it.” Still analysis can be a critical and generative process rather than a destructive one and I try to walk that line with students. Poetry Out Loud has been very useful this year. Each student had to memorize a poem. Students who wanted to compete in the national competition recited before judges and we sent our school winner to the semi-finals. The site has also been useful for finding new poems to introduce students to. I have a Perrine’s text, but I like to give students a copy of a poem or project one much as Rozema and Webb do by creating their own anthologies. I am not as green as them. I do tend to kill trees in the process. I want students to annotate poems as they will have to on the AP exam for the poetry essay. Still I do not want analysis to be my students only interaction with poetry. In reading chapter 11 of INSIDE OUT, I enjoyed Kirby, Kirby and Liner’s many great examples of how to allow students space to develop creative voice through writing. However, their exhortation to “remove restrictions, give them their heads, and be receptive to their efforts” is not always feasible. In my classroom other concerns have to be balanced. I try to give room for creative exploration and expression but it occurs at I use it as a tool to teach the poetic form. I teach poetic forms and allow students to creatively apply their learning through a creative poetry assignment using a chosen poetic form. Still the knowledge that there is not a creative writing course in my school makes me feel that students are always writing in the service of literature rather than for their own motivations. One consoling thought is that some of the greatest works of art in the Renaissance were created with restrictive forms placed upon the artist. Is it possible that limiting choice can actually focus creativity?

The essay form is with me daily. Students are preparing to write 3 timed essays within a 2 hour block of time after taking a multiple choice passage test. We spend a great deal of time on the essay, but it is a stripped down essay. What would be truly considered a great first draft in the writing process. If this is all my class did, it would be a disservice to them as writers. We write longer papers. We do quick writes. We write with the idea of revision as part of the process. We read and write, write some more, read some more and start the cyclical process all over again. Writing is always in the service of literature. That is the course, but I do hope that students write for themselves. I hope they take a creative writing course in college, journal, blog, and explore their own voice. I just feel that I often can’t give them the vehicle to do this, but still examining the great writers can also be a wonderful way to find your own voice and style.

 I am also going to be brave and share my own recently written poem:

There is something in me that enjoys

The melancholy longing for spring

Looking out the window the hazy

Morning lights, a grey backdrop

To gently swaying trees that are

All branch limbs denuded

Of their green no bloom but

A promise

The soft scratching if the limbs

Against the window

The soft whisk of pencils on paper

The gentle turning of page

February ACT morning

So wet, so grey outside

Warm and dry and slightly stuffy

Within

The quiet anxiousness fills the room

But only a patient calm fills my corner

Looking out the window longing for spring

The spring that is waiting outside and inside to bloom…

Sources:

Kirby, D., Kirby, D., & Liner, T. (2004). Inside out: strategies for teaching writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Rozema, R., & Webb, A. (2008). Literature and the web: Reading and responding with new technologies. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Strand, M. & Boland, E. (2001). The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Tags: Students, Voice

Collaboration is an important part of writing, and I agree with Hunt that

Tags: Students, Writing Process