twittering obama

Does this remind you of highschoolers who refuse to part with their cell phones during class?

Washington Post Article: A Case of 140 Characters, Plus the Ones in Congress.

"...All of which raises a question: Should these guys maybe spend time fixing the country and leave the Twittering to somebody else?"

week five: somewhere in the middle

I have completely mixed feelings about technology. That might be obvious--I'm writing on a blog titled "paper & pencil" after all--but it's definitely something I think about, and struggle with, whenever the ideas of educational philosophy and technology come into contact and conversation. Why the struggle? Because I sit somewhere in the middle between wanting to live on a open-field farm with a rusty mailbox--or maybe an old dial phone--as my only mode of communication with the outside world (also, in this dream-life I wake up at 4 am, do satisfying chores, garden, cook from scratch, live sustainably, write and create, and spend most of my time outside), and absolutely loving the instant access to information, communication, culture, and basically whatever the hell I want that technology affords in my present life (and for some reason I associate city-dwelling, which I do adore and can't truly imagine leaving, with this side of the paradigm).

But, oh yes, this isn't about me. The ultimate question is, what's best (or maybe what's real, or most relevant) for my students?

I really enjoyed reading the Jenkins white paper (which, by the way, is: "An authoritative report or guide that often addresses problems and how to solve them. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions." Thank you Wikipedia). The three concerns--participation, transparency, and ethics--encompass the most significant of the issues surrounding technology and education. And maybe now I should take a look at my vocabulary, because I loved what Jenkins said about how a computer is often "discussed as a magic black box with the potential to create a learning revolution (in the positive version) or a black hole that consumes resources that might better be devoted to traditional classroom activities (in the more critical version)" (p. 7). I've seen both happen, and calling all of this "technology" negates the place of the user, the person. And of course, a computer "does nothing in the absence of a user" (p. 7-8). So I think that calling this a debate about "digital literacies," even though it's just a simple word switch, makes a difference here.

What stood out to me throughout the article was the call for students to be both critical consumers and creators. That resonates with me--it fits into my philosophy. Jenkins answered some of my questions when he said that:

...we do not want to see media literacy treated as an add-on subject. Rather, we should view its introduction as a paradigm shift, one that, like multiculturalism or globalization, reshapes how we teach every existing subject. Media change is affecting every aspect of our contemporary experience, and as a consequence, every school discipline needs to take responsibility for helping students to master the skills and knowledge they need to function in a hypermediated environment. (p. 57)

I hadn't thought all that much about media from this perspective, as a shift in paradigm rather than an add-on to curriculum and lessons. But this is the way to think about it, because our students live in a world where media is life, and it's our job to help them become skilled and critical thinkers and participators in that world. I'm in. I'm on board--I know it will be a challenge in a myriad of ways, but I'm convinced that digital literacies are as important as anything else we strive to teach in our classes.

But...I still have questions. And because Jenkins himself said that questions are okay, and that the puzzling of them is sometimes more beneficial than finding concrete answers, I'll just leave here some of my final, questiony thoughts.

• Sometimes I find myself resisting certain aspects of digital literacies, like online role-play, because I question the authenticity of those relationships, and what students actually learn about communication when they are sitting in front of a computer screen vs. having a conversation with a person--learning to read body language, facial cues, etc. There's an important difference, one that is only learned with practice.

• How much can we actually learn about other people and cultures in an online environment? Jenkins argues that through online role-play, gaming, or communities like facebook, students can "acquire skills in understanding multiple perspectives, respecting and even embracing diversity of views, understanding a variety of social norms, and negotiating between conflicting opinions" (p. 53). I question the depth of this learning. In any online environment you're comfortable and in control--even if there's conflict, you can disengage. How much discomfort (which is the beginning of understanding and empathy) can be created in a virtual reality? I think we as teachers just need to be sure this never takes the place of actual, real experiences with diversity in our students' lives.

• Does the fancyness of technology ever overshadow the beauty of slowness...or the alternate route? I thought of this when reading the Harry Potter example. Yes, Amazon.com is fast and efficient and ships things to your door. And cuts out the middle man. But what about that middle man? What about the community that vanishes completely the moment you stop going to your local bookstore, or your grocery store when you get food delivered...or any other choice you make for efficiency first? Think about the organic movement--mass farming and pesticides haven't done much good for our food and nutrition, but at first (and I guess still to lots of people) it seemed like the quick and easy way. We talk about process, right? It's why we take road trips, and write by hand, and buy real books, and take the time to speak with one another.
  

Are you as frustrated as I am that I can't seem to reconcile my thoughts? Time to take my dog for a walk in the snow.

LINK

The Connected Classroom Blog

The Connected Classroom Wiki

Two great resources for incorporating digital literacies into a constructivist classroom. And they're even in the form of our favorite web 2.0 tools! God I love wikis.

week four: learning to love it

Really? "For most of us, grading is the part of teaching we like the least" (Dornan et al., p. 181). Maybe I'm inexperienced, maybe I'm naive, maybe I'm just an eternal optimist (that I know is true). But I can't understand how the part of teaching where we actually get to read, experience, see, feel, etc. etc. etc., our students' hard work and creativity and ingenuity and brilliance, could be the part we like the least. What would be the point of going to work every day (for much less money than we deserve), spending all that time planning lessons and activities, not to mention dealing with the hormonal teenagers themselves, if we didn't absolutely love what the students can do? The actual, tangible, stuff that they produce, imperfect as it may be? And if we don't love it...what are we doing here?

I understand, of course, what the authors might be saying. They might enjoy the stuff, but they don't like assigning grades and administering high stakes tests and trying to fit real students into little standardized boxes. But right now (and this is where my optimism meets my also-constant impatience) I want to say: suck it up. Students need assessment. They need feedback. Rubrics are helpful. I actually like them, when done well. Stop thinking about THEM (those faceless drones who write and grade tests like the MCAs) and focus on your classroom, your texts and objectives, and your kids. If your goal is to teach students to be critical thinkers, include test-taking in that mix. Let them know that this test is a product of a culture, written by a certain group of people who think in certain ways. And the culture of "school" requires that we take these tests, and while the results are important, they are not complete measures of who we are. They are not even close to being complete.

To be honest, the Dornan text has always been a bit overwhelming and dry to me, and while the Adger article had some interesting insights into assessment, it mostly focused on vernacular language (which, although fascinating, isn't the focus of this post). So I turned to NCTE for a bit of clarity. Probably because they know how many confused and anxious English teachers there are out there in the world, roaming about, NCTE has published a "Guideline on Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing." It states:

1. The interests of the student are paramount in assessment.
2. The primary purpose of assessment is to improve teaching and learning.
3. Assessment must reflect and allow for critical inquiry into curriculum and instruction.
4. Assessments must recognize and reflect the intellectually and socially complex nature of reading and writing and the important roles of school, home, and society in literacy development.
5. Assessment must be fair and equitable.
6. The consequences of an assessment procedure are the first, and most important, consideration in establishing the validity of the assessment.
7. The teacher is the most important agent of assessment.
8. The assessment process should involve multiple perspectives and sources of data.
9. Assessment must be based in the community.
10. All members of the educational community -- students, parents, teachers, administrators, policymakers, and the public -- must have a voice in the development, interpretation, and reporting of assessment.
11. Parents must be involved as active, essential participants in the assessment process.

I do love this. Interest of student, fair and equitable, based in the community, reflecting and allowing for critical inquiry. The thing that strikes me the most, however, is that the "teacher is the most important agent of assessment." What would NCTE have to say to No Child Left Behind? I do not have the answer to the question of how to balance classroom-based authentic assessments and state-mandated standardized tests. It's a conundrum. But I do think that griping and complaining isn't doing our students any justice. I guess my goal right now is to think about how I can be an effective assessor and evaluator. The answer seems clear--I simply won't create summative assessments that will bore me. I'm in charge, so why not have my students do something interesting, for them and for me? And I still (optimistically) think that if I'm a good teacher and help my students to be good thinkers, readers, and writers, they'll do well on those required tests, annoying as they may be.

I have one more thought, or question. Those who speak out against standardized testing, those who want to place methods of evaluation completely in the hands of the classroom teacher--they must have great faith in the ability and skills of that teacher. But I think we need to be careful here. One thing No Child Left Behind has done is raise the standards of our profession so that students are not being taught by people who don't even have college degrees, or so that math classes aren't being taught by music majors--so that there is more uniform accountability. I wonder, if we do leave assessment to the teachers, how will we guarantee that all teachers have high standards? I guess this is where my optimism hits a wall. I've met and have heard of enough teachers who've become apathetic, who've lost the will to care. I'll gladly put assessment in the hands of a passionate, committed teacher...but in the hands of those who've given up? Is that the hole standardized testing is trying to fill?

So many questions. I will say that I can't wait to read my students' essays, and yes, grade them.

LINK



















I typed this in my own handwriting...you can create your own font too!

week three: organic grammar

How do I explain my feelings about grammar? Personally, I love words. I love stringing them together, playing with them, forming them into sentences, both layered and simple, that not only express my meaning but look and sound beautiful. I know that good grammar is essential to good writing; even when I as a writer choose to break standard constructs, I'm doing it with intention and specific purpose. Most of all, I appreciate reading authors who really know how to use words to elevate their stories from simple narrative into something...more. Last month's issue of The Believer included a great tribute to the sentence, words, language, and (conveniently) revision--"The Sentence Is A Lonely Place" by Gary Lutz. He says it better than I can:

...what prompted this second lesson in language was my discovery of certain remaindered books—mostly of fiction, most notably by Barry Hannah, and all of them, I later learned, edited by Gordon Lish—in which virtually every sentence had the force and feel of a climax, in which almost every sentence was a vivid extremity of language, an abruption, a definitive inquietude. These were books written by writers who recognized the sentence as the one true theater of endeavor, as the place where writing comes to a point and attains its ultimacy. As a reader, I finally knew what I wanted to read, and as someone now yearning to become a writer, I knew exactly what I wanted to try to write: narratives of steep verbal topography, narratives in which the sentence is a complete, portable solitude, a minute immediacy of consummated language—the sort of sentence that, even when liberated from its receiving context, impresses itself upon the eye and the ear as a totality, an omnitude, unto itself. I once later tried to define this kind of sentence as “an outcry combining the acoustical elegance of the aphorism with the force and utility of the load-bearing, tractional sentence of more or less conventional narrative.” The writers of such sentences became the writers I read and reread. I favored books that you could open to any page and find in every paragraph sentences that had been worked and reworked until their forms and contours and their organizations of sound had about them an air of having been foreordained—as if this combination of words could not be improved upon and had finished readying itself for infinity.

Haven't you ever done that? Stopped in the middle of a novel just to appreciate the words themselves, the way they sit next to each other on the page, the way they build in anticipation, the way they sound in your mouth?

What terrifies me is how I will ever communicate this feeling to adolescents. I don't think it's something that was ever taught to me, so how will I teach it to others?

But I think if I look at the writing process as just that, a process, and grammar as another part of it, I am less intimidated. What Lutz touches on at the end of that excerpt is something that every article we read for this week emphasized--revision is essential for good writing, and by necessity good grammar. The rest of his article is given to careful dissection of specific sentences--why this word here, how that vowel impacts that consonant. I don't think we'll get to that level with our students, but the point--that careful attention must be paid--is so relevant.

I have never experienced the kind of total revision that Fulwiler talks about in his article, but after reading the transformations of the sample essays I am convinced. The idea of limiting the possibilities to set the writing free (like when Fulwiler asks his students to focus on one day, one setting) makes sense, especially for adolescents who seem to need limits sometimes to focus their thinking. The tools Harper provides to focus on specific elements, like internal thought, action, etc., seem like another great way for students to gain a tangible understanding of some rather difficult, abstract ideas, during the writing process.

Drawing all this together, it makes complete sense to me to include grammar organically in the writing and revision process. If we ask students to pay attention to their words, they will understand why grammar is important (to communicate meaning)--a feat that is never accomplished by diagramming sentences on the board. As the students grow, as they write more and more, their grammar skills become embedded in their cognitive and critical thinking skills, their expressive abilities and word play.

When I read Gary Lutz's article a few weeks ago I thought the whole time of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek--my favorite book of sentences. When I loaned my copy to a friend (written in, dog-earred, water-damaged, food-stained), he made fun of me for loving such a la-ti-da piece of nonsense, but whatever. He's a lawyer, I'm an English teacher, enough said. Her sentences are bold and over the top and make fearless declarations about the world and her place in it. I read them over and over.

And the bell under my ribs rang a true note, a flourish as of blended horns, clarion, sweet, and making a long dim sense I will try at length to explain. Flung is too harsh a word for the rush of the world. Blown is more like it, but blown by a generous, unending breath. That breath never ceases to kindle, exuberant, abandoned; frayed splinters spatter in every direction and burgeon into flame. And now when I sway to a fitful wind, alone and listing, I will think, maple key. When I see a photograph of earth from space, the planet so startlingly painterly and hung, I will think, maple key. When I shake your hand or meet your eyes I will think, two maple keys. If I am a maple key falling, at least I can twirl.

LINK

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves PUNCTUATION GAME! Warning: trickier than it looks.

week two: flexible and fancy free

It's probably no surprise that I love the 5 paragraph rebellion. As bold as it is, I think Wesley's bonsai metaphor (along with her entire article) makes such an important point: we who have become complacent are the ones stunting our students' growth, limiting their potential. I've always wondered why the 5 paragraph essay holds such a place of esteem in English departments. Why not something better? Why not more?

It's important to note, though, before we get carried away and react like Novick does (who for some reason thinks that Wesley and the other authors in the English Journal that month wanted to do away with all scholarly writing and have students play all day)--rebelling against the 5 paragraph essay doesn't mean rebellion against form and structure. But how can we expect students to be critical learners and thinkers when we ask the content of their essays to conform to numbers, outlines, prescribed rules? Shouldn't, as Dornan talks about in Within and Beyond the Writing Process, the content of the essay shape its form? Yes, intro, body, and conclusion are important, but for their rhetorical possibilities, not because of the organizational function they fulfill.

Wesley says that "the rigidity of the five paragraph theme actually dissuades students from practicing the rhetorical analysis necessary for them to become critical thinkers" (58). I completely agree, and experienced this today during my observations at South: as students worked on peer-editing their essays on Beloved, I overheard a boy complaining about his conclusion paragraph. He was frustrated because the point he wanted to end with he'd already said in the intro and one other place, but thought the "rules" mandated he restate it again at the end. He said something about wanting to do something different with his ending, but knew he "wouldn't get the points." Aside from the fact that he probably shouldn't just restate the same point three times anyway, and that Corinth (my cooperating teacher) doesn't prescribe a number of paragraphs or a rigid form, the idea that this student really thought he was being graded more on form than content made me both angry and sad. It's the system--he's probably been taught that way most of his life. There are better ways to write, and to teach.

As much as I enjoyed reading Romano's book on multigenre writing, and hope to experiment with it someday in my own teaching, I think we need to be careful not to see these two forms (5 paragraph essay and multigenre creation) as a dichotomy, the only two answers to a complicated question. As Wesley says, every writing assignment poses a unique rhetorical problem. I love the idea of cracking open the essay, exposing students to all the wonderful literature that has been and is being written. What about Wendell Berry? Annie Dillard? David Foster Wallace? Anne Fadiman (she wrote a whole essay on ice cream!)? David Sedaris? V.S. Naipaul? Hundreds more? All unique in their own styles, but all write the essay.

LINK

www.mcsweeneys.net
A fantastic lit mag, online for your own enjoyment as well as use in the class (essays too). On the front page right now: "Rod Blagojevich Writes 25 Things About Himself on Facebook."