Month: July 2010

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The Law of Distraction Gravity

The current Time Magazine ( August 2, 2010) reports on the so-called “summer slide” where the learning progress of lower income students has been documented to flatten out during the summer.  Although the enrichment enjoyed by students in the upper half of the economic spectrum is credited with maintaining their summer progress in learning, the interruption of regular literacy routines could easily account for the “summer slide” for any student.

Having witnessed this slide for twenty years of high school teaching, I love to theorize about its causes. But  there are perspectives to a summer vacation– what happens before and what happens afterward. What happens before is another good reason to shorten the summer vacation.

Clearly there is a lapse in literacy skills at the beginning of the school year.  Reading and writing are analogous to physical skills– they atrophy with lack of use.  I can even see this from my own experience as a reader and writer. When the baseball season begins, I often lose my grip on literacy. I watch baseball, read about baseball, listen to talk show chatter about baseball, and I might even write about baseball.  While I consider baseball a highly intellectual sport, I also notice that my reading and writing of professional or literary  content slides. Returning to other intellectual reading and writing is a struggle.  It is like taking a ramp up to the freeway. You push the accelerator, but everything is slower and more deliberate. My reading and writing are in first gear.  I would consider this analogous to the “summer slide.”

But there is also the effect of summer vacation on the month before it. Anyone who has taught in May or June in a K-12 school knows the “law of distraction gravity.”  When a large vacation approaches, the small mass called “concentration” is pulled toward that large body.  Concentration is always in danger of bursting into fragments as it approaches the large vacation. The same phenomenon exists with smaller bodies of vacation like Christmas or Spring Break, but the size of the body definitely affects the extent of fragmentation. I call this the “law of distraction gravity.”

With the saturation of media and technology in our lives, the distractions from the focused activity of reading and math are amplified all year around.  The dissemination of cell phones, MP3’s and laptops has created a battleground for students’ attention in January as well as June. This is not to say that new media may not be useful for formal learning, but it does create a competition between systematic learning and recreation for students at all ages. We even see it in college classrooms, where professors have felt compelled to require students to turn off their laptops just to engage their attention during class.

So now education is drifting through what might be considered an asteroid belt of media distractions that can draw concentration away from learning at any moment.  Nothing can resist this intensifying of media distractions, but they can be balanced all year around by learning to live with gravity. We live in a cosmos of constant distraction. This is our life. We must learn in it. So now comes year-around schooling.

If the K-12 academic year were constructed more like the college academic year–in three equal trimesters— we could balance our attention and inattention all year around.  There are three fifteen-week segments that split our three favorite vacations: Christmas, Spring and Summer. Each interval will be followed by two weeks’ break, in the summer three weeks. The final week of each trimester is an exam week, so there might be ways to extend even the fourteen days that interrupt the academic stretch. We will never leave school for more than four weeks, however, and the distraction gravity will be equally distributed over the entire 45-week cycle.

The idea is not new, but it has many cultural deterrents, not the least is how to pay teachers for 20% more teaching every year.  The cost is almost prohibitive, but there ought to be a way to compromise between increased salaries and increased released time for teachers. Teachers can be released on some afternoons for professional development, for intellectual projects, and for recreation, while paraprofessionals replace them in tutoring or study hall conditions.  Afternoons, it turns out, have a distraction value of their own. Students are often engaged better in one-to-one learning as the sun reaches it zenith.  Especially on Thursdays and Fridays, as the weekend approaches.

This proposal for year-around schooling is not a call for more intense learning, but for more consistent and rhythmic learning.  The Law of Distraction Gravity can not be defeated, but it can be exploited. Instead of  surrendering to Distraction before and after summer vacation, we can compromise with it all year around.  It sounds like a great theory, and I think I’ll call it the Theory of Learning Equilibrium.

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Figures Lie

The New York Times never fails to explore the nuances of the economy and politics, but it is surprisingly naive about testing. It rarely analyzes the results of achievement testing in the schools the way it scrutinizes the economic data that routinely lead the front page.

One of today’s editorials, entitled “Honest Testing,” begins “Congress did the right thing with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, when it required states to document student performance in yearly tests in exchange for federal aid. Parents and policy makers need to know how well their schools are doing.” (July 24, 2010). The editorial deplores the continuing decline in the rigor of the New York state math and English tests, compared with the NAEP  (National Assessment of Educational Progress) tests over the same time period.  It concludes that the only reason for eighth grade math scores to rise 20 percentage points in one year is that the test has become more predictable and easy to prepare for.  The Times may be right in this case, but there are dozens of reasons for the rising and falling of test scores, and the media seldom examines any but the most obvious ones.

One reason everyone respects the NAEP is its very cautious approach to reporting test scores, especially scores that compare states and cities.  While the reporting of local test scores may be greeted only with jubilation or dismay at the annual district trends in reading and math, the NAEP always qualifies results by reporting demographic and cognitive characteristics of the test takers. For example, it reported in the 2007 Nation’s Report Card on Writing, that the writing scores of eighth graders differed by 29 points based on the schooling level of parents (from “not finishing high school” to “graduated from college”). This tells us more about the scores than how one state fared against another. The gaps between these two groups is 30% higher than any other achievement gap studied, whether gender or race.

On the other hand, state scores take on greater significance when qualified by demography of the state.  One factor seldom examined in the media is “exclusion rates,” by which states exempt from testing  certain students with disabilities and second-language challenges that might invalidate their test performance.  Both No Child Left Behind and the NAEP have policies about excluding students from tests, but the states hold the ultimate power to exclude certain students from testing. Obviously the exclusion of large numbers of students from groups with language deficiencies will  have a positive effect on the average writing score within a given state.

With great delicacy NAEP cautions,

While the effect of exclusion is not precisely known, the validity of comparisons of performance results could be affected if exclusion rates are comparatively high or vary widely over time.  In the 2007 writing assessment, overall exclusion rates (for both students with disabilities and English language learners) were three per cent  at both grades 8 and 12, state exclusion rates at grade 8 varied from 1 to 7 percent, and the 10 urban school districts excluded from 2 to 11 per cent.” (“The Nation’s Report Card, Writing,   p. 7)

Suppose we compared the writing performance of eighth graders on the NAEP in 2002 and 2007? One state, let’s call it “Massachusetts,” showed an increase in scores from 163 to 167, while another state we’ll call “New York” showed an increase from 151 to 154. Both states exceeded the national average improvement, which was +2 points. In the media New York would be considered an also-ran, while Massachusetts would be honored for improving on writing scores already among the nation’s best.

But what if it was known that Massachusetts increased its percentage of students excluded for learning disabilities in 2007 from 4 percent to 6 percent, while New York decreased its percentage of LD students from 4 to 2 percent? What if the resulting increase gave Massachusetts an impressive average score of 139 among LD students, while New York, with its 120 average LD score,  was closer to the national average of LD students of 118. Wouldn’t a reasonable inference be that the increase in the overall writing score of Massachusetts students might be largely the result of excluding a larger percentage of students from taking the test in 2007?

It would be cynical to say that the 6% of students with disabilities in Massachusetts were unfairly excluded from taking the writing test.  Very likely they were legitimately excluded. But it would be just as unfair to claim the rise in the state writing score was attributable to the improvement of the teaching and learning of writing in the state’s middle schools.

For NAEP testing Massachusetts was among the highest three states in excluding for learning disabilities for middle school writing.  Massachusetts, Kentucky and Texas all excluded 6%. The national average for excluding students with learning disabilities on this writing test was 3%. If we were examining the eighth grade writing scores of Kentucky over  the nine-year period (1998 – 2007), we might want to consider that the state increased its exclusion rate from 2 to 4 to 6 percent over those nine years. While the exclusion rate was relatively stable in Texas over the same period, its writing scores declined with each administration, from six points higher than the national average to three points below it.

This is not the kind of test score analysis that fascinates the readers of the daily newspaper, but it is no more complicated than explaining what the changing unemployment rate might mean for real employment trends during a recession and no less significant for understanding raw data.  It is really a question of accurate reporting, not just writing for an audience of non-professionals.

It would be gratifying to read about educational test score trends in the national and local media with an intelligent analysis of reasons for the trends, rather than seeing it reported at face value like the pulse and blood pressure of a sick patient.

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Everyone a Writer– Of what?

What does it mean to be a proficient writer? Is writing of one genre more “rigorous” than another?

The brewing debate about whose standards are the most “rigorous” brought me back to the purpose of this blog– to increase the membership of self-proclaimed “writers” within the realm of readers.  I have referred to this movement as the “horizontal axis” of reform in literacy education, an axis more preoccupied with the inclusion of more writers than with the so-called “rigor” of writing. In no way does the inclusion of writers deny their development and maturation, however.

The “vertical axis” of literacy reform sometimes gets in the way of the “horizontal” one.  The reformers on the vertical axis have strong views of what constitutes “rigor” in writing standards, to the extent that Sheila Byrd Carmichael, founder of the American Diploma Project, has insisted that “It would be far more helpful to teachers to describe the expected characteristics of each genre listed, and to state which genres are most appropriate for study at each grade level” (see yesterday’s “Rigor Mortis” entry).  In Ms. Carmichael’s view, writing should be sequenced like algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus.  The rigor dial gets turned up each year until we reach “argument” as the ultimate “text-type” of writing.

The idea that “argument” represents the pinnacle of a writing hierarchy has been the implication of much standards-writing all along.  As the introduction to the Common Core State Standards states,”Evidence concerning the demands of college and career readiness gathered during the development of the Standards concurs with the NAEP’s [“National Assessment of Educational Progress”] shifting emphases: in grades 9-12 in the Standards , students continue writing in all three forms, but focus overwhelmingly on writing to argue and to inform or explain (p. 3).

While it is true that the 2011 NAEP will test only 20% on the writing goal “To convey experience,” that is not the same as relegating narrative writing to the lower grades, as some standards writers do. “To convey experience” is assessed in grades 4, 8, and 12, even though 10% less in grade 12 than grade 8.

In fact, NAEP emphasizes that writing should be for a variety of  purposes and always reports one writing score as a composite of its three main purposes. “Informed by writing research and theory, the NAEP writing framework emphasizes that good writers can communicate effectively in a variety of styles. . . . The framework specifies that students’ writing skills be measured by asking students to write for different purposes and audiences. Tasks on the assessment require students to inform, to persuade and to tell stories–real or imagined–and to do so for a range of audiences, among them teachers, newspaper editors, potential employers and peers” (The Nation’s Report Card, 2007, p. 4).

So, while the NAEP shifts its emphasis on persuasive, informative and expressive writing through grades 4-12, it continues to assess all three general purposes and reports them as one score.  This is an integrative, rather than a hierarchical view of writing, one that suggests all kinds of writing are in play for the entire span of our schooling.

Why is this important for the recruitment and inclusion of more writers into the larger realm of readers? Because writers should be writing and succeeding at all grade levels, not just at the grades that feature their most comfortable genres.  And writing for one purpose easily morphs into other purposes, just as a writer might relate his romance with baseball and later argue that performance-enhancing drugs undermine the accomplishments of players who have achieved without them. Writing for varied purposes allows more readers to feel confident as writers and to write with passion, as well as logic and precision.

The National Council of Teachers of English also supports this integrative view of writing in its “Belief Statement on the Teaching of Writing.”

Often, in school, students write only to prove that they did something they were asked to do, in order to get credit for it. Or, students are taught a single type of writing and are led to believe this type will suffice in all situations. Writers outside of school have many different purposes beyond demonstrating accountability, and they practice myriad types and genres. In order to make sure students are learning how writing differs when the purpose and the audience differ, it is important that teachers create opportunities for students to be in different kinds of writing situations, where the relationships and agendas are varied. <http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/writingbeliefs>

If we keep the “myriad types and genres” in play throughout K-12 schooling, we can expect more participation and more success in writing, even on standardized tests.  We should not allow the dubious notion that the purposes of writing form a hierarchy overshadow the glory of “Everyone can write.”

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Rigor Mortis

Got rigor? Michigan does not apparently. We took a “D” on the chin from the Fordham Institute.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute released a report on Wednesday (July 21) ranking the state standards in English language arts and math according to rigor and clarity. The New York Times used the occasion to report that 27 states had already adopted the Common Core Standards and that even Massachusetts, the gold standard of standards, would soon adopt the Common Core. The Times concluded its lead article quoting conflicting claims about which standards were more “rigorous,”  the Massachusetts document or the Common Core.

Yet unexamined are the reasons the Fordham Institute found the standards  of 39 states in English language arts and the standards of 37 states in math less “clear and rigorous” than the national standards. Educators and concerned citizens should challenge the assumption that a conservative think tank might control the discussion of whose standards are more rigorous, yours or mine.

For some reason the word “rigor” has become the supreme value in describing educational standards, this despite the leading synonyms  in the dictionary entry are “strictness,” “severity,” and “harshness” and the derivation from the Latin meaning “stiffness” (Webster’s Unabridged, 2003).  These are words we could approve in the quality control of prescription drugs and fire extinguishers, but in the evaluation of the learning of human beings?

At the same time “rigorous” in casual conversation might mean “challenging,” and no one would object to “challenging” educational standards.  No doubt this is the sense the Fordham Institute intended to convey in its press release. However, if you study their critique of state standards, you find the operational meaning of “rigorous,” is “measurable.” “Rigorous” and “measurable” do not belong in the same sentence, not even this one.

Hoping not to take its assessment personally, I’ll review what Fordham has to say about the Michigan High School writing “standards” (We call them “Content Expectations”).

The author of the Fordham critique, Sheila Byrd Carmichael (founder of the American Diploma Project) writes,

In high school, writing is addressed in a strand called, Writing, Speaking and Visual Expression. Explicit writing expectations are often missing. One unmeasurable “writing attitude” standard is included; it simply exhorts students at each level from K-8 to “be enthusiastic about writing and learning to write”

The ultimate criticism of  the “rigor” of the standard is it is “unmeasurable” ( a word my spell-checker and Webster’s rejects). Because we don’t have standardized tests to measure “writing attitude,” it must lack rigor as a standard. As a writing teacher, I can assure anyone who cares to listen that “attitude” is supremely important in writing, whether I can objectively measure it or not.

Ms. Carmichael reserves her strongest criticism for what she call’s Michigan’s “hybrid” standards for writing. Such standards offend by mentioning a variety of genres or purposes of writing in the same statement. Here is the standard singled out for being “devoid of content.”

Compose written, spoken, and/ or multimedia compositions in a range of genres (e.g. personal narrative, fiction, biography, essay, poem, drama, autobiography, and creative nonfiction); that serve a variety of purposes (e.g. expressive, informative, creative, and persuasive) and that use a variety of organizational  patterns (e.g. autobiography, free verse, dialogue, comparison/ contrast, definition, or cause and effect).

The least problem of a standard listing seven genres, four purposes, and six “organizational patterns” is a lack of “content.”  There is plenty of that.  What is lacking is “measurable” content, a single genre that could be tested on its own. Ms. Carmichael recommends, “It would be far more helpful to teachers to describe the expected characteristics of each genre listed, and to state which genres are most appropriate for study at each grade level.”

Presumably Ms. Carmichael admires the way the Common Core Standards list “argument” as a primary “text type” of the study of writing and then adds five traits or “outcomes” that delineate a good argument. Perhaps she is less pleased that the same three text types (“argument,” informative/explanatory,” and “narrative”) are addressed in each grade, 9-12, in the Common Core, because it does not “state which genres are most appropriate for study at each grade level.”  To this I say “bravo” to the Common Core Standards, because they  make very little differentiation of genres and outcomes over the four grades of high school, just as the Michigan standards for writing do not isolate one high school grade from the others. They acknowledge that the challenging kinds of argumentative, expository and expressive writing taught in high school require (4) years of practice and increasing sophistication of content. It is a rigorous program, even though it does not isolate one kind of writing from another by grade level.

Returning to Michigan’s “hybrid” standard: “Compose written, spoken, and/ or multimedia compositions in a range of genres (e.g. personal narrative, fiction, biography, essay, poem, drama, autobiography,and creative nonfiction); etc.” The intent is clearly to advocate a “range of genres” instead of limiting the curriculum to single genre in each grade. Could this be less “rigorous” than addressing one particular genre in each grade? Could this be less “rigorous” than denying the writer the power to find the best genre for the message she wants to convey?  Less rigorous than never experimenting with alternative genres to convey that message?

Of course these are rigorous challenges for writers,  but with so many genres in play, how will we measure the accomplishment of this standard? (Ms. Carmichael will be asking). And yet such a “hybrid” standard could be evaluated by a portfolio of writing in several genres. No doubt the Michigan standards writers had this in mind. Doubtless Ms. Carmichael could not have a portfolio assessment in mind, if she calls this standard “devoid of content.”

When the Fordham Institute claims that standards lack “clarity” or “rigor” or are “unmeasurable” or  “devoid of content,” the media and educators should be furiously decoding their messages. Chester Finn and his colleagues should not be allowed to control the conversation about standards, just because they have assumed the tedious task of reviewing all the standards of all the grades in all the states. Just because their dream of national standards has come to pass does not mean we have to fulfill it in every detail.

My dictionary accepts only  “immeasurable,” but I won’t be “rigorous” about it.

All citations from “Michigan” at  http://edexcellence.net/index.cfm/news_the-state-of-state-standards-and-the-common-core-in-2010

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Teaching Together

Who is really accountable for good teaching, the teacher or the school she teaches in?

The Draft of the Model Core Teaching Standards (published July 19) suggests that accountability might be shared between the teacher and the school, by emphasizing “collaboration,” “communication,”  and “using data to support learning.”

A literal reading of the document shows that every statement begins with “the teacher” as if accountability rested solely on the individual, but much of what the teacher does to achieve these standards depends on collegiality within the school.  If you count up the “performances” that rely on “collaboration” or “communication,” they show 39% of teaching (25 of 64) is collaborative.  Standards 9 (Reflection and Continuous Growth) and 10 (Collaboration) are particularly rife with collaborative performances.

This is a far cry from holding teachers solely accountable for their students’ performances on standardized tests and using those results for tenure or promotion decisions.  In fact, regarding assessment, the document states, “The teacher uses multiple and appropriate types of assessment data to identify student learning needs and to develop differentiated learning experiences” (Standard #6e). The critical descriptors “multiple and appropriate,” applied to assessment, suggest that a single number will not be adequate to evaluate student performance and certainly insufficient to evaluate teacher performance.

If this document were taken as seriously as the Common Core State Standards for learning, it would revolutionize schooling, especially secondary schooling, in the United States. It would mean smaller classes, shared students, common planning time, and  strategic and consistent professional development focusing on identified student needs. It would require a huge transfusion of funding to hire more collaborative teachers, more funding to develop effective formative assessment, more professional development to “independently and collaboratively examine test and other performance data to  understand student progress and to guide planning” (6b).  For most secondary schools in this country, it would be a transformation of school culture.

You can not blame the fragmented school culture on teachers, because they are indoctrinated with collaborative education in their teacher preparation, almost to the consternation of their mentor teachers when they first observe their  student teachers.  Collaboration is not practiced in many secondary schools as it is preached in schools of education.  It is often a function of the size of classes and student load and the flexibility of the school schedule. Secondary schools tend to reinforce the Lone Ranger model of teaching.

The Coalition of Essential Schools provides good models of collaboration in secondary schools by limiting class size and giving autonomy to the principal and teachers. In their “Core Principles” (http://www.essentialschools.org/items/4), they include

Personalization Teaching and learning should be personalized to the maximum feasible extent. Efforts should be directed toward a goal that no teacher have direct responsibility for more than 80 students in the high school and middle school and no more than 20 in the elementary school.

and

Resources dedicated to teaching and learning Ultimate administrative and budget targets should include student loads that promote personalization, substantial time for collective planning by teachers, competitive salaries for staff, and an ultimate per pupil cost not to exceed that at traditional schools by more than 10 percent. To accomplish this, administrative plans may have to show the phased reduction or elimination of some services now provided students in many traditional schools.

The details of this vision are better explained on their web site < essentialschools.org>

There is much to celebrate in the Model Core Teaching Standards, especially because they promote the importance of teaching together.   In this sense it is a true school reform document, one that deserves the attention of the educational foundations that place excellent teaching high on their agenda.  It will require the kind of financial transfusion that foundations can supply to implement these standards one school at a time.

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If Writing Were a Celebrity . . .

If writing were a celebrity, it would have a public and private image called “transactional” and “expressive” writing respectively.  The teaching of writing over the last forty years has been the struggle of the private persona to keep up with the public.  James Britton, who coined this distinction between the transaction and the expression, first reported in 1975  (Britton, Burgess, Martin, McLeod and Rosen) that the majority of writing in the British secondary schools was transactional.

In the public eye, writing is about business and politics, the power brokers of society.  Just peruse the Common Core Standards for Language Arts, published in June, 2010 and see the prominent text types are “Information/ explanation” and “Argument,” the staples of business and politics respectively.  Oh yes, Narrative was inserted in the three position, after some lobbying from literacy educators over the last year. But Narrative, as described here, is what Britton called “poetic” writing. If writing were a celebrity, “poetic writing” would be her avocation or hobby.

I realize personifying writing as I have, as a marriage partner (July 15) and as a celebrity, is a bit incredible and romantic, but the media personifies all kinds of objects today, from sports to music to decongestants, and it seems to convey their status and identity in society, not to mention attract consumers. And I am all about attracting consumers, or rather, practitioners, to writing.

Britton’s classification of writing’s facets has helped us understand how it works in our lives.  He allows the reader,  the consumer of the writing, to define what it is.  So if the reader is concerned with the information and message of the writing foremost, he calls it “transactional.” If the reader is most interested in the craft or technique of the writing, he calls it “poetic.” If the reader is most intrigued by the writer, the composer of the writing, he calls it “expressive.”

These personas of writing are really a continuum, in which one merges with the other, but Britton thought the most generative, the one that allowed writers to move in and out of the other personas, was “expressive.”  Expressive writing tells us about who the writer is, as he rambles in a journal, in a notebook, in reflection, in writing to explore an unfamiliar subject.  It is the entry point when writing is difficult or when a subject is being learned. It is the facet most interesting to the writer, himself, and to the teacher of writing. It is not typically published writing.

But the private lives of celebrities do attract the snooping public.  Although the proper subject of business and politics is the trends in the economy and in reforming legislation, we are very curious about the people who negotiate these changes.  Sometimes we begin to comprehend the arcane procedures of business and government by understanding the people who wield that power. And so it is for transactional and expressive writing.  We understand the transactional by our familiarity with the expressive facet of writing.

Returning to the writer of expressive writing, she finds everything easier to write about expressively and sometimes she even finds joy in writing in a diary, a reflective journal, a trip log, or a workout journal.  Unless her career depends on transactional or poetic writing, her satisfaction comes from the expressive mode that arises in daily life.  With the proliferation of e-mail, texting, and blogging, this daily writing becomes more and more recreational, something that gives the writer pleasure in the act itself. She is not concerned with work accomplished by expressive writing, because she feels satisfaction in merely writing.

Writing’s pleasurable, expressive identity is key to its gaining social and cultural prominence. While readers know they will find pleasure in their favorite genre, whether political columnists, graphic novels or mystery or romance, writers may know the pleasure of writing by indulging in its expressive forms. The rigors of grammar and convention are eased in expressive writing, and the writer has the privilege of exploring his favorite subject– himself and what he thinks.

The public persona of writing, the transactional, is a little disdainful of the private one. The private persona is not visibly productive or powerful in the commerce of society.  It seems self-indulgent and self-absorbed.  It does not deserve to be considered “serious” writing.  So it struggles for equity in the celebrity’s personality.

The struggle between the public and private persona of writing has continued lo, these forty years. Can this be a healthy struggle, a personality torn by conflict? More on the celebrity we know as  “writing” in the next installment.

Reference–

Britton, J., Burgess, T. , Martin, N.,  McLeod, A.,  and Rosen, H. (1975). The development of writing abilities of , 11-18. London: MacMillan.

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Writing With and Without Teachers

In the beginning, or about 1974, a hierarchy kept all writers and teachers of writers in their place,  and the place was called “blame.” The blame for shoddy writing descended from the teachers of graduate school to undergraduate school to high school to junior high to elementary, and ultimately to students at every level.  The infamous “Why Johnny Can’t Write” was published in the December 8 issue of Newsweek, 1975, and it had been foreshadowed by a Time Magazine article the previous year called “Bonehead English.”  (references below)

“Thinking back on those early days, I understand that much of the early success of the writing project can be traced to being in the right spot at the right time” (Teachers at the Center, p. 58). For James Gray, founder of the National Writing Project, the right time coincided with the national dismay at the state of writing in the nation’s schools.

At the University of California at Berkeley there had been a lot of pondering in 1973 about the number of students who could not pass the writing test to place out of “Subject A,” the remedial writing section.  The class offered no credit hours and no student could escape it until he or she could pass the three-hour writing test.  As a student teaching supervisor, Gray knew a number of writing teachers at the high school and the college level, and he brought them together them on a retreat that year.   At their first meeting  “Blame for the sorry state of affairs was lobbed, like a hand grenade, back and forth across the table, and at times it was vicious. The university teachers said ‘If you had taught them how to write, we wouldn’t have this problem.’ And the school teachers said, ‘They’re your students, so why don’t you teach them how to write and stop blaming us?’ (p. 46)

A year later, in the summer of 1974, some of these same teachers and professors convened with others at UC Berkeley to share their own methods of teaching writing in the first institute of the Bay Area Writing Project.  As teachers shared their demonstrations, the atmosphere changed, and a spirit of inquiry prevailed.

The Bay Area Writing Project model created an environment where both academics and classroom teachers could appreciate each other. Professors of English and English Education worked as partners and colleagues of classroom teachers. For teachers, BAWP was a university-based program that recognized–even celebrated–teacher expertise.  For academics and teachers alike, the Bay Area Writing Project model managed to reverse the top-down, voice-from-Olympus model of so many past university efforts to school reform. (56)

BAWP had breached the hierarchy near the top, at the stratum between high school and college teachers of writing. The summer institute had been constituted to give every participant a share in the teaching, each accorded academic respect. Thirty-six years later the National Writing Project continues to sponsor similar summer institutes, some 200 or more annually, in the same shared spirit of inquiry among college and K-12 teachers.

If Gray was the apostle of equity among writing teachers, Peter Elbow was the prophet proposing the liberation of writers from domination. In his Writing Without Teachers (1973), he explained how teachers were miscast as readers of authentic writing:

“What I mean is that though [the teacher] can usually understand everything you are trying to say (perhaps even better than you understand it); nevertheless he really isn’t listening to you.  He usually isn’t in a position where he can genuinely be affected by your words.  He doesn’t expect your words actually to make a dent on him.  He doesn’t treat your words like real reading. He has to read them as an exercise. He can’t hold himself ready to be affected unless he has an extremely rare, powerful openness” (127).

To dissolve this unproductive relationship, Elbow proposed the “teacherless writing class,” consisting of seven to twelve members, none of them specialists or schooled in a specific kind of writing.  The best grouping would be writers of diverse purposes and genres:

The poet needs the experience of the businessman  reading his poem, just as the businessman needs the experience of the poet reading his committee report. If each thinks the other’s writing has no meaning or no value, this is an advantage, rather than a disadvantage. Each needs to experience what it was like for the other to find the writing worthless and where the other sees glimmers (79).

This reconstitution of the writing classroom chopped at the foundation of the hierarchy. Writers were to be given ultimate authority over their own writing, only to admit their dependence on honest readers who could report how they heard or received the writing. Teachers were sent to the sidelines, if not quite out of the game completely.

The unrelated events of the publication of Writing Without Teachers and the first summer institute of the Bay Area Writing Project set the stage for the curtain of shame descending on the nation, the publication of “Why Johnny Can’t Write” and its successors. So blame was about to be apportioned, and the hierarchy was unshaken.

But some innovations survived the 1970’s, along with the hierarchy that stood unbowed.  In 2008 the National Writing Project had 7,000 active teacher consultants who reached 92,000 other teachers with some form of professional development that year. Peter Elbow continued to write eloquently of the dignity of the writer, culminating in his anthology of work Everyone Can Write (Oxford University Press, 2000).

Blame has continued to rain on teacher and student alike, but the writer has become a more accessible and desirable role in the realm of literacy.  The day of the writer is at hand

Return to:  http://postcognitions.wikispaces.com

References

Sheils, Merrill. “Why Johnny Can’t Write.” Newsweek 92 (8 December 1975): 58-65.

Stone, Marvin. “Bonehead English.” Time 106 (11 November 1974): 106.

Stone, Marvin. “Due Dismay about Our Language.” U.S. News and World Report 86 (23 April 1979): 102.

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Saying What I Mean

It was on July 14 that I launched a campaign to proclaim “the democratization of writing.” I sorely regret it.  Not the campaign, the “democratization.” That is an arid, scaly, bureaucratic word that discredits the glory of “Everybody can write!”

Recanting deserves more than a paragraph, because this coinage (“democratization”) is an example of the language that the public abhors or should abhor.  E.B. White, one of my stylistic heroes, warned me sternly about applying the “-ize” suffix in the “Words and Expressions Commonly Misused” chapter of Elements of Style.

Never tack ize onto a noun to create a verb. Usually you will discover that a useful verb already exists. Why say “moisturize” when there is a simple unpretentious word “moisten”? (50-51)

White was not always right, but on this I think he nailed it.  Writers have a wanton attraction to bombast, and they are well-served by E.B. White or some trusted reader, who can advise them when they are lifting off from the solid ground of meaning into the gust of affectation.  Even that sentence was a stylistic leap that might bear scrutiny.

But my concern today is “democratization.” No word that begins with “demo-” (people) should end with “-ize.” If I were annotating White’s famous style book, I would add that admonition.  For the same reason I would not advocate “humanizing” anyone, although the word “dehumanizing” sounds just right.

Instead I searched for a natural metaphor for the recruiting of more writers into the realm of literacy, and I came up with the word “saturation.” Websters Unabridged defines “saturation” as “soaked, impregnated or imbued thoroughly; charged thoroughly or completely; brought to a state of saturation.”   This sounds more like a completed process than a goal for literacy, but I like the image of one substance being full of another. We begin in the realm of literacy, but we wish to populate it more and more with readers who identify themselves as writers.  It would not be enough to “infiltrate” this realm of literacy. No it must be “saturated.”

So allow me the writer’s privilege of revising my campaign, calling it the “saturation” of writing in the realm of literacy. I welcome reader participation in the coining of terms for this campaign, because it is, after all, a popular movement to give writing it due place.  Perhaps this is what I mean, but not what we mean.  I would be mindful of that.

So this is much ado about meaning, and I promise not to make a habit of it. But I felt some repentance was called for, especially since I think writing and meaning should be soul-mates. Writing is  often a prodigal child (in more ways than one) and needs to return home to the welcome of meaning at every opportunity.

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Days of Our Reading and Writing (continued)

In our last episode we left reading and writing in the plight of many marriages: can’t live with them and can’t live without them.  We saw that many who call themselves “readers” resist the name of “writer,” but that the writer enriches the life of the reader. Thus, the question persists: Can this marriage be saved?

Many adults, who would be humiliated to confess they could not read, might freely admit they could not write.  And not because they couldn’t fill out a traffic accident report, but because they could not write with flair and conviction and grammatical precision. Such writing would be for the chosen few. On the other hand, to read meant to understand important information and to live a fulfilled life. The option of not reading at all would be unthinkable.

In contrast, writing has always been attributed to professionals whose living depended on writing. The writing process was considered mysterious.  Grammar and style were viewed as arcane subjects best left to experts.  Probably the most memorable declaration of the ground-breaking reform document The Neglected “R” was “Writing today is not a frill for the few, but an essential skill for the many” (11).  That was a consequential pronouncement.

Recognizing that our jobs often required a different kind of reading than our personal lives, theorists combined the many forms of literacy in the term “lifelong literacy,” with the goal of reading to become “lifelong readers.”  Reading has played so many roles on the stage of life, that to confine it to functional literacy, critical literacy or personal growth missed the point.  Reading was pervasive, and the way we read shifted relentlessly in the kaleidoscope of 21st century literacy.

A lifelong reader understands that reading impinges on every moment of living, from reading the side effects of the pill taken after breakfast to deciphering the manual for a new cell phone to reading a favorite political writer in the online edition of the newspaper.   Reading pervades life and has become indispensable in a literate culture.

In contrast, writing has been regarded as a skill of the workplace. Even the groundbreaking The Neglected “R” and its successors described writing in its public roles: in school, in business, and in government. These reports raised the profile of writing as a tool of productivity, but not as an essential  part of living. Reading has continued to overshadow writing in the realm of “lifelong literacy.”

Why should we care whether writing is number one or number two or equal in significance to reading? Primarily because reading and writing are less efficient as singles than as a couple. It is a little like consumption and production in the economies of life. One must offset the other. Or to return to the competitive and noncompetitive sports analogy (see yesterday’s blog), we have to nurture both kinds of urges, the competitive and the noncompetitive, and not let one overwhelm the other. So, if we are planning to be lifelong readers, we should also put lifelong writing on the agenda.

To gain “lifelong” status, writing has to be acknowledged as pervasive and self-fulfilling in the same way reading has been.  More than for its art and for making transactions, writing has to make a case for enriching the lives of literate people in the same way reading makes this claim.  Traditionally writing has not taken this central position in life, unless in the lives of writing teachers. And writing teachers struggle to sell this image of the “lifelong writer” to their students.

According to Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell (Guiding Readers and Writers, Heinemann 2001), lifelong writers exhibit certain social and personal characteristics:

  • Writers write voluntarily and often
  • Write in a wide variety of genres
  • Have confidence in themselves as writers
  • Present themselves as writers to others
  • Use writing as a tool for thinking
  • Write to communicate on personal and professional levels
  • Write to share experiences or information with others
  • Are sensitive to other writers, noticing techniques and styles
  • Invite comments on, responses to, and critiques of their writing
  • Draw on literary knowledge as a resource for their writing
  • Use  organized sets of information as a resource for their writing
  • Explore favorite topics and genres

Starting with “Write voluntarily and often,” these characteristics suggest daily living outside of the workplace, and such traits as “communicating,””sharing,” and “exploring” suggest self-fulfillment rather than productivity. Although these traits are integral to many K-12 school curricula, it would be overstating their importance to say they pervade the lives of average citizens. Becoming a lifelong writer is hardly a shared value of literate citizens in the United States. Me, a writer? Are you kidding?

So, as we leave the aging couple, lifelong reader and lifelong writer, we see that one (the reader) is much more prepared for retirement than the other (the writer).  The writer is infatuated with productivity and his or her role in the workplace, while the reader believes that reading is a continuous, pervasive activity from workplace to self-fulfilling recreation.  This is not merely an issue for retirement, but an issue of balance and compatibility. The question persists for another day of our lives: Can this marriage be saved?

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Reading and Writing: Can This Marriage Be Saved?

Are Readers from Venus and Writers from Mars?

As a teacher of future secondary English teachers, I am always struck by the many  future teachers who proclaim themselves readers, but not writers, especially writing they call “creative.”  It is just this distinction that has inspired many reform documents, such as The Neglected R, to recommend that “Statewide policy and standards should require that teacher preparation programs provide all prospective teachers with exposure to writing theory and practice” and to “provide support for multiple workshops and other opportunities that encourage teachers already in the classroom to upgrade their writing skills and competence as writing teachers” (26).

Considering that English Language Arts is defined as the integration of reading, writing, speaking, listening and viewing, it is surprising how many English teachers identify themselves as readers, but not writers.  Writing teachers should be writers, just as reading and literature teachers are readers, but in reality, not so much. Why should this be? I would  venture an explanation with the analogy of competitive and non-competitive sports.

First, obviously competition is a function of individuals, more than sports. There are some who could make a competition out of coin flipping (you know who you are) and some who can play basketball without keeping score (not even in your head).  So, these are admittedly crude analogies.

Reading is like a non-competitive sport, such as jogging or biking or swimming. There are many readers who receive intrinsic pleasure from the act itself and enjoy sharing their experiences with a few trusted friends, especially readers of the same genres, such as mystery, romance, sports, or political expose.  We can choose to count the books we have read and choose to share with opinionated types, but we could be content just to read and not expose ourselves to the competition.  This is not to say there aren’t plenty of competitive readers, but we don’t have to talk to them.

Writing is like a competitive sport, such as soccer, basketball, or tennis. You play to keep score and you declare winners and losers.  The competition arises from committing your own words to print and allowing indiscriminate readers to review them.  You can protect your privacy and receive personal satisfaction like Emily Dickinson, but generally writers like to be read. If no one is reading them, their motivation wanes. Yet if critical readers vivisect their writing, it can be just as destructive to their motivation, and reading writing reflexively calls for criticism.

You might think, when I say “critical readers,” I am alluding to professional critics of writing (teachers, editors, reviewers); they are indeed a fearsome audience for a writer. But the imminent danger for writers comes from friends, family and fellow students, people we thought we could trust.  Those we trust with our writing can be most critical, merely because they have been raised in a culture where writing is described by its deficiencies.  (Q. What do you think of this poem, Mom?  A. Very nice, but did you know you misspelled “sincere”?) Writing is perceived as a competitive sport and to excel, we must constantly be reminded of our weaknesses. When we remind writers of their weaknesses, we also exert some temporary power over them.

Reading, therefore attracts both the competitive and non-competitive in the realm of literacy, but writing tends to attract those who believe they have a competitive advantage and can escape the most scathing criticism.  The upshot is that most of my pre-service English teachers declare themselves readers, while many declare themselves writers of only the most formulaic texts. Everything else they label “creative writing,” as if outlining the perimeter of an abyss.

So our history records that all literacy is divided into two parts: reading teachers and writing teachers.  Research continues to report this as a tragic mistake for teaching and learning. Most recently a report from the Carnegie Corporation “Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading” (Steve Graham and Michael Hebert, 2010) validates ways in which writing about a text could increase comprehension gains on standardized tests.

So all evidence indicates that reading and writing should be intimate partners, in spite of the incompatibilities of their proponents.  Like all marriages, this one can be saved only if the spouses learn to respect the virtues of the other partner.  And like most marriages, it may thrive more without intense competition. Writing, in particular, needs to appropriate the non-competitive culture of reading.

What will this mean for our conversations about writing and how we treat writers? Stay tuned.