Response for Class on 1/31

From pre-K through high school, I attended small, private schools. It was only once I started college that I got my first look into what public schools in Rhode Island are like. For the first time, I saw students who were given breakfast at school because they couldn’t count on eating at home. For the first time, I saw students so far behind grade level, they had to be removed from the classroom for most of the day for help from a specialist. Because I wasn’t a part of the public education system growing up, I had no idea how much poverty affects the education system.

In "Failing Still to Address Poverty Directly: Growth Mindset as Deficit Ideology" the author discusses the ever-popular “growth mindset.” In truth, I have learned about this idea in my education classes, so I went into this article assuming that it was the best way to approach learning in the classroom. While it is beneficial, Thomas makes a point that the growth mindset does have some flaws: it places blame on the student for bad performance, and doesn’t make efforts to solve the problem at the root. It portrays students who aren’t successful as missing something; once that something is identified, it is incorporated into the curriculum.

Thomas’ point about how, "...we routinely demand of children in the worst situations of life—through no fault of their own—that they somehow set aside those lives when they magically walk into school and behave in ways (growth mindset, “grit”) that few adults do who are also burdened by forces more powerful than they are," hits the nail on the head. There are often outside influences that are affecting students that we don't know about as teachers. A student who is dealing with personal issues may not perform as well as we would expect. Is this a reflection of the child and his or her ability to tough it out and get work done? Certainly not. Too often, it is forgotten that the children we teach are real people with real lives and real emotions.

If we teach our students that they have something missing that they need to succeed, they will never see that they are capable of growth. This leads in to the position statements on the NCTE website. One that stuck out to me in particular is: “Everyone has the capacity to write; writing can be taught; and teachers can help students become better writers.” I am so glad that a group of educators agreed to put this on the NCTE website. Teachers need to believe in their students almost as much as the students need to believe in themselves. One way to create a culture where everyone believes they can succeed in writing is to incorporate the students’ experiences in their writing. It helps to nurture a desire to write when you are able to draw from what you already know. I also liked how they stated that “writing and reading are related.” So often, this is not emphasized. If teachers want to improve a student’s writing, a good way to do it is to get them to read. In the same way, “writing can also help people become better readers.” This, I think, is a major goal of any English teacher. We want our students to have confidence in their writing as well as to grow their abilities in reading.

This brings me to the Cadeiro-Kaplan chapter, where the discussion is centered around the types of literacy we see in classrooms. I recognized each of the four types of literacy as ideologies I have experienced throughout my education. In particular, I noticed how easy it is to incorporate the functional literacy in the classroom, but it is not calling for our students to become deep thinkers. The idea is that a student’s goal is to “[learn] to read as opposed to [read] to learn.” I think that, while learning to read is an important part of becoming a functioning member of society, educators have shifted away from emphasizing the importance of reading for knowledge and understanding. It is not enough to recognize patterns of letters as words, but we must see the meaning behind them. It seems as though developing a curiosity for knowledge has been overshadowed by the strict rules of culture. This is why using a progressive or critical literacy style in the classroom is so beneficial: these ideologies encourage free thinking, analysis, and the development of a student's voice.

Response for Class on 1/24

My mother is a middle school English teacher, so you could say I grew up with a bit of an influence. I have always gulped books like they are coffee: addictive and possessing the power to keep your eyes open to the world.

In the same way, words have always been my best means of communication; I still have notebooks from when I was 6 or 7 years old with half-finished stories about Sprite bottles or rocks that were actually superheroes. It only made sense to pick a career in which I could do my favorite things all day.

I think I grew up having a preconceived idea of what being an English teacher means. As I read these texts, I realized that teaching in general is more complex than I originally thought. The situation that Christensen describes in Teaching for Joy and Justice about her student whose writing was not on grade level really struck me. Christensen speaks about Jerald, and how he "lacked the conventional skills" in his writing, "but he didn't lack intelligence." She attempted to teach him all the rules of punctuation in one go, marking his paper with flourishes of red pen.

Instead of helping Jerald, this discouraged him from his forward progress. Christensen says: "Instead of telling him how beautiful his writing was, instead of finding what worked in his piece, I found every single thing that was wrong." Going over Jerald's writing with a fine-tooth comb didn't cause him to achieve anything; he could only see the errors he had made and not the talent evident in his paper.

The message to take away from this is to "teach the writer, not the paper." I think this is a profound statement for English teachers and teachers of writing. Tearing down a student's confidence by covering their papers with red marks does little to teach them the mechanics of writing and nothing to show them that they possess the ability to write. Grammar and punctuation are important to a well-written piece of writing, but if a student does not see their talent in the act of writing, their desire to improve their skills will cease altogether. A class full of papers covered with red pen is not the mark of a competent teacher but one who does not understand that students need to know that they have potential in order to be successful. As the saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day; in the same way, students won't learn how to write the perfect paper in one go. The writing process is a continual cycle of steady improvement rather than a list of facts to memorize.

This idea leads into one of the Top Ten Writing Wrongs listed in Gallagher's Teaching Adolescent Writers. The second "wrong" listed says, "writing is sometimes assigned rather than taught." I feel as though many teachers don't understand the difference; I have certainly had teachers in high school who would fall into that category. If students aren't taught how to write, they will never see writing as anything more than something they are forced to do. Teaching them involves more than ensuring they have a firm grasp on the structure of various papers and citation formats. Teaching students to write includes helping them to develop their voice, recognizing that pulling out what they have to say is more important than their incorrect use of the semicolon.

This same message is present in the article, "To High School English Teachers (and All Teachers)." One of the lessons the author writes about is "teach[ing] students—not programs, standards, test-prep, or your discipline." Here again, we see the same point being made. Learning should be student-focused, not subject-focused. It is a long process, but it is one that is well worth it.

As future teachers of writing, it will be our responsibility to make our classrooms a space for growth. To do this, we must shift our focus from the work to the student. The reality is that we will not encounter a class with students who are all on the same level; to expect such a scenario is absurd. If we are only looking at the logistics of a paper and ignoring the quality of the content within it, it will only result in raising a generation of students who resent writing because they believe that they do not have the ability to do it. I want to believe in my students and make them believe in themselves. If I change writing for them, perhaps their writing will change the world.