Readings - week 1 authencity and voice

As this is my first ever blog...here goes. For me, the first week's readings coalesced (do they have a spell check on these things--yes! they do!) around three themes--implications of social class in literacy, importance of authenticity in assignment selection and in expressing voice.

Before reading the article by Payne-Bourcy and Chandler-Olcott, "Spotlighting Social Class..." I hadn't considered the implications of class in the types of responses to literature or the implications of literacy differences in transitioning to the expectations of college academic writing. Although Crystal had had a very successful high school career and received A's in English, she felt like an "outsider" when confronted with the more academic literacy expected in her courses and taken for granted by her middle and upper class peers. Crystal indicated that she modeled herself on her middle class friends families during high school; the types of literature she felt competent to explore (song lyrics, films, and TV programs) were not incorporated in her high school curriculum. She did not see "academic literacy as a set of practices to be learned," but as 'club' too exclusive for her to gain membership. The authors recommended that high schools address the ways in which social class affects literacy, and suggests instruction to "build a bridge" so working class students are more prepared for the types of writing required in post secondary educational settings. Jamesville-Dewitt has been holding teacher workshops focusing on Ruby Payne's Framework for Understanding Poverty; Crystal's reflections corroborated Payne's contention that people from poverty rely more heavily on narrative and relate stories in a non-linear fashion. Payne was focusing on families in poverty, rather than working class families, but there seem to be common issues in adapting to academic expectations of literacy.

The article on Exchanging Writing and Difference by Mahiri, Martin and Sullivan presented the idea of a writing exchange between high school seniors and grad students as a way of encouraging students not enrolled in honors classes to consider attending college. As the grad students commented on the high school student's persuasive papers and personal statements for college, they helped prepare the 12th graders for collegiate literacy expectations and provided a model of someone who had successfully made the transition. The idea of writing exchanges was effective for other reasons as well--not least among them the authenticity of writing to an for a specific person.

My favorite article this week was "Boys and Writing" by Michael Smith. He wrote about the effectiveness of planning real world authentic writing tasks as well, but stressed that teachers will inspire boys to write best by carefully analyzing a writing task and providing "practices in miniature" to teach each skill. Linking the first of these practices to something immediate (listening to a tape, watching part of a movie, etc.) will help boys be more successful than asking them to write from their imaginations initially. Smith's discussion of why the 'assign and assess method" is ineffective confirmed my subconscious suspicions of this method. When English teachers switched over to rubrics, my daughter was still in high school. "Mom, I only got a 3 out of 5 on Voice. How am I supposed to raise my grade when I don't even know what they're talking about." Another thing that struck me from this article was that boys reported that they avoid putting effort into tasks at which they perceive themselves as incompetent. This method of teaching and providing scaffolded practice with component skills maximizes a student's chance of feeling that he or she is a competent writer. I see this discouragement in the students I work with of both sexes--they see themselves as writing failures. My co teacher and I have done some similar task analysis and scaffolding of skills already this year. After reading this article, we will do more--and add more authentic pre-writing activities. If skills can be practiced separately, this should go a long way to building confidence in all our students.

I was interested in the article about the lost boys of Sudan ("From Storytelling to Writing..." by Kristin Perry) for the affirmation of encouraging student's to write in their own voice, even if the composition is far from perfect grammatically. Language delayed and LD students are not unlike students negotiating an unfamiliar language. When the paper comes back covered in red ink when they have worked hard on their composition..or when the ideas inside just won't express themselves on the page...their frustration is palpable. Techniques for helping ELL learners discussed in Fu's article "Teaching Writing to English Language Learners" include helping the student edit so his story can be understood, but the voice is the child's own. Sometimes over-editing a student's written work can indeed squelch his/her sense of ownership and voice. The Perry article interviewed three Lost Boys from Sudan, who moved from an oral tradition of storytelling to writing both to express their own stories, to raise awareness of the crisis in their country, and to persuade readers to help. Once again in these readings, writing for an authentic audience inspires the writer. Writing a comparative literary essay pales beside giving voice to one's own experience and story.

Hope this is a blog....I've entered the modern age (sort of). Barb