Challenging the Status Quo

Upon reading "Stasis and Change: English Education and the Crisis of Sustainability" by Robert P. Yagelski, one thing immediately struck me on the very first page. When he wrote about a conversation he had with his colleagues, he spoke about coming away from the conversation "feeling overwhelmed by the power of institutionalized education and the pervasive and resilient culture of schools" (262). This is something that really catches me because I feel that a lot of the focus on

education in college, at least in my experience, focuses on the institutionalized problems that a lot of teachers and students face. I've seen my fellow students weeded out because of the negative image that surrounds schools of our generation, and it worries me. The fact that the author of this article speaks about feeling overwhelmed with the type of culture that exists in modern schools strikes a nerve with me because I often feel overwhelmed, too. Going into a profession that challenges institutionalized norms can feel like a huge weight on our shoulders, and I appreciate the things that this author has to say about it all.

Products of the Institution

Another really important point that Yagelski brings up in his article is the fact that often teachers have no problem fitting into the institutionalized culture that exists in schools because we are, in fact, products of that very same culture. This ends up creating a cycle of teachers who fail to challenge the norms. Teachers who bring nothing new to the table.  Teachers who simply "go with the flow", as Yagelski writes. This is one thing that I feel really passionate about, and I hope that as a new generation of teachers comes into the picture, we can change the status quo. 

School, the #1 Influence

I know we've all heard the cliche: "children are the future"...But in all reality, it's true. So when "But schooling ... is perhaps the single greatest influence on how we understand the world around us and our places in it..." (263), it's important to take note. What are we doing with this influence? We must prepare our students to understand the world they're walking into. However, the world is constantly evolving, and if we don't update our schooling to match this ever-evolving world, we are ultimately failing our students.

Yagelski writes,

Then, English comes into play. Yegelski continues, "...and English instruction ... constitutes perhaps the most powerful vehicle for shaping our sense of ourselves as beings-in-the-world"(263). So where school very generally influences how our students see and understand the world, English helps our students find their voice in that world. This is why we, as English teachers, are so very unique and crucial to the children, to the future.

No More "Don't Worry About It"!

"Don't Worry About It"

I don't know about you, but I can certainly remember free-writing in middle and high school, with teachers telling us, "Don't worry about the grammar and mechanics for these...Just write!" — But Jeff Anderson in Mechanically Inclined brings up a great point about this. While we shouldn't necessarily worry about the grammar and mechanics, it should certainly matter. Those conventions aren't just so arbitrary that we throw them out whenever we please. Instead, Anderson tells us to:

"EXPERIMENT with spelling, punctuation, and grammar" (32)

This is great because it allows our students to actually free-write. It's truly free! What we're really telling students here, when we tell them to experiment with conventions, is to use the skills we've been learning and try to use them in your own writing. Certainly, our students shouldn't worry about these conventions being perfect, but they should be mindful of them! There's a huge difference between worrying about it and just being mindful.

Free-Writing Rules

While it might seem a little oxymoronic to talk about rules for free-writing, I'm a big fan of the rules that Anderson lays out in Mechanically Inclined (32), which includes the experimentation which I talked about above. Here's his full list:

1. Write. Just write. Keep your hand moving. 
2. Experiment with spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
3. Go wherever your writing takes you. (If another story comes to mind, maybe that's what you should be writing about. Go for it.)
4. Be specific. (As you teach strategies like naming concrete nouns ... , encourage those things in first-draft freewriting by praising them when read aloud.)
5. As Natalie Goldberg says, "You are free to write the worst junk in America (1990, p. 4). (Students need to know that everyone has doubts about their writing...)

Trust the Gush

As I read the above list, especially #1, I was reminded of Tom Romano's Crafting Authentic Voice, which I read earlier this semester. He kept saying, "TRUST THE GUSH"!  This is especially important and relevant when talking about free-writing because it's not truly free-writing if you're not trusting the gush. However, we have to make sure we have our students keep those conventions in mind when they're gushing. Like I said, be mindful, but as Anderson says, experiment! :-)

"Reading like a Writer"

"...Students will begin to read like writers"

First of all, I hope you love that as much as I do. So often, we talk about ourselves as learnin to write by first reading, and then writing as readers; however, Jeff Anderson's Mechanically Inclined turns that on its head. He says, "We can't expect our students to be flexible enough to apply these conventions if we don't cycle them in front of our students in various ways. By discussing the dash and figuring out what it does in authentic, well-crafted texts, students will begin to read like writers" (23). Once you understand the function of certain conventions, you can pick them out in reading and understand how it contributes to both style and meaning, which leads us to...

Making Meaning

I'm totally guilty of considering meaning of a text separately from its style, craft, and mechanics, but Anderson says this isn't necessary (or even right). Certain grammatical structures help a writer convey important details, and those details can make the difference between meaning one thing and meaning another. So it's naturally important for us to consider them in the same breath. The way a writer describes something (by using subordinate clauses, for example) is almost always deliberate, so it's important to consider why the writer did that. However, we can't consider why without understanding first how it works. This is why we've got to focus on the functions before we can really read like writers.

"What sticks with you?"

One final thing that stuck with me in Chapter 2 of Anderson's Mechanically Inclined was this question. "What sticks with you?" Anderson says, "It simplicity is its genius" (18), and really, it is. Asking students this about a long text wouldn't be so helpful, as they get bogged down with messages and themes. On the other hand, asking this about a short text (even just a single sentence) can indicate the qualities of the individual conventions that really catch the students' eyes.

Teaching Grammar Deliberately

This week, my classmates and I discussed the importance we place on grammar and mechanics. Much of the class said it's "somewhat important". But I lean towards the pretty-darn-important side of Mechanically Inclined is pretty interesting to me. Call me a grammar geek, but I find all the little intricacies of grammar and mechanics to be actually kind of intriguing. (Although after taking a little grammar and mechanics survey in class, I'm kind of ashamed to say how little I apparently know, oops!)
the spectrum, honestly, which is why Jeff Anderson's book,

One conclusion I've taken away even from the first chapter of Mechanically Inclined, though, has been that teaching grammar and mechanics has to be a balance between teaching a grammar lesson singularly...and teaching grammar as a side-bar to whatever else we're teaching. Basically, it's possible to teach grammar and mechanics both in context and workshop-style. Anderson gives a list of ways to do this. I've simplified it a little bit:

1. Using the shortest mentor text possible
2. Teaching one thing at a time and applying it to our daily writing
3. Adding quick daily doses of grammar and mechanics experiences with short mentor texts and editing
4. Providing rich experiences in the writer's notebook to play with mentor sentences

I really love the idea of mini workshops in the classroom, and I think this is what Anderson sort of achieves, especially by doing quick daily doses of grammar and mechanics. For me, that teaches students that grammar and mechanics are important on a daily basis, not just on the occasion that we might be talking about it. Because we can just talk about it and think about it almost every day.

Why Teachers Need This

One thing that really caught my eye in the beginning of Anderson's Mechanically Inclined was why he thought he had to write this book. He cites that our generation of teachers doesn't feel confident about teaching grammar and mechanics, and he's SO right. Sometimes, I feel insecure about my abilities to teach grammar and mechanics because sometimes I feel like I should know more. I often think, Oh my goodness -- I need to take a class on this stuff...
But Anderson makes me feel a little better about this. He says that grammar and mechanics is a "creational facility rather than a correctional one". And one thing I've come to learn about myself is that I am a great writer, and in turn, a great creator, so I know I can help my students do this and see it this way.

Crafting Authentic Voice... So what now?

At this point in time, a couple of my classmates and I have now completed a teacher in-service regarding Tom Romano's book, Crafting Authentic Voice. The book is all about how to bring out our students' voices in their own writing. One of the biggest over-arching ideas that I kept coming back grade all of this. In an ideal world, we could just have our students continuously work on creating voice in writing and never worry about rating their work on a scale, but unfortunately, that's not how it works.

A lot of us teach students that voice is crucial and that voice is meaningful, but that doesn't always seem to come out in our grading habits. So, how do we create a rubric that grades voice? That grades something so undeniably unique to every single student? I think the answer to that lies in creating a rubric that includes a lot of room with which to work. 

** I think it's also time for a side note to you, my reader. I totally understand that you probably haven't read Crafting Authentic Voice (I did link you to its listing on Amazon at the top of this post and I suggest reading it when you have the chance). It's therefore pretty hard for me to ask you, "Hey, what would YOU put on your 'Voice Rubric'?" So, instead, I'll give you a short overview of things that Romano cites as being a big part of voice, and then create my own Voice Rubric. I then encourage you to read Crafting Authentic Voice and thinking about creating your own Voice Rubric, or you can, of course, always use mine :-) 

Romano's Idea of Voice

Here's just a short overview of what Tom Romano sees as contributing to authentic voice:

• A unique lead or hook
• Perception aka Sensibility aka Style
• Mind pictures
• Appeals to the senses
• Evidence of surprise (both the author experiencing surprise during the writing process and things that might surprise the reader)
• Humor when possible and appropriate
• Breaking the confines of the old five-paragraph-essay
• Sometimes breaking the traditional rules (like using fragments, lists, double voice, etc.)
• The writer understanding who he or she is as a person
• A rhythm or cadence to the sound of the writing
• Metaphors and other figurative language
• Unique word choice (including words that aren't well known, invented words, verbs with muscle, etc.) and words that make an impact
• Uses strategies like key words or a counter-punching key word to make an impact
• Varying sentence length

Grading Voice

First of all, YES -- I know. That's a lot of bullet points. There's no way we can grade on all of those things, nor can we expect students to just take all of this in and regurgitate it back onto their paper. On the flip side, though, we can absolutely pick out some of these important concepts and also combine a few of them.
So if I had to create a rubric to grade voice, here's what it would probably look like...

 


Now, it's so important to keep in mind that every student's voice is different. For some students, it might seem weird and awkward to use humor. For another student, it might seem awkward for them to use invented words. This is what makes it so hard to grade voice. What really matters is monitoring progress and teaching students various methods to express their own voice.

Another great idea is to create assignments that work on one "Voice Tool" at a time. That way, students are able to develop and improve these ways of expressing voice over time.