BRINGING OUT THE JOY OF WRITING FROM MY STUDENTS

          After reading Michelle Kenney’s “The Politics of the Paragraph and chapter 2 of Linda Christensen’s “Teaching for Joy and Justice”, I could see the similarities between these writings. They both focused on improving students writing by making room for them to write on their own pace and derive joy from their writing. More so, the standards for writing set for students prevents them from expressing their thoughts and believing they are not good writers. The Politics of the Paragraph is a tale of a high school English teacher’s journey into and out of formulaic writing programs as her school struggles with high-stakes exams. We could see Erica in Michelle’s class, who felt that she is a crappy writer because she was trying to incorporate all her ideas into the five paragraph that limits the writer to three ideas, which is how she learnt it based on the standard/formula. Michelle assuring her to “trust (her) own ideas and (her) own judgement”, is just letting me understand that as a teacher of writing we need to make our classroom a “social justice classroom (where) narrative is the heart of the class. Students’ stories build community and connect their lives to the curriculum” (Christensen 61).

          The only way this can be achieved, is by allowing students to write with their heart with limited formulas put in place. According to Michelle, these Formulas that is packaged in form of an easy-to-remember acronym (such as TEETH, TISAS, PEA and also Jane Schaffer’s formula), are systems that “encourage students to produce shallow, fast-food versions of paragraphs that don’t allow much elbow room for creativity or critical thinking, yet lend themselves to speed grading by a standardized test scorer…” In as much as we need the standards for an organized way of writing, students should be allowed to be in charge of their writing, while the teachers become facilitators that guide them through as they write.

          In Christensen’s book, she points out that rigor and high expectations need not be the sacrificial lambs on the altar of literacy development. She built her students’ confidence in writing by going through series of text, and linking it to their own life experience and the society at large, thereby the students and the teacher “gain glimpses of the kind of society (they) could live in…” and students in turn learn the academic and critical skills needed to make it come to life. Students write narratives of their own experience using the text as a model. More so, she makes the students mark with different color highlighter, the elements in each of the text (like the use of setting, flashbacks, blocking, figurative language etc.), and thereby giving them “their own criteria for their essays based on the examination of the authentic models”. Furthermore, Christensen discovered that when students share their writings among their peers, they care more on how their writing will be perceived by their fellow peers when giving feedback. This reminds me of Peter Elbow’s “Sharing and Responding”, which shows that peer response can play a significant role in the writing process, especially if both writers and respondents are engaged. Receiving feedback from their peers in turn help develop their skill in writing. Also, the students use color highlighter to mark all the elements that is in their writing to see if they used “all the writing tools”. This is a way of giving the students the opportunity to determine where they need to revise and make their writing better before giving it to the teacher for feedback.

          As a new teacher in the Providence School District, I feel like our students haven’t been given the opportunity to explore their own imagination and experience and produce an essay or narrative based on their imagination or experience. We tend to strictly follow the standards and rubrics, without considering the voice of our students as part of the teaching process, and trusting in their judgement, in line with the standards. One thing I would love to introduce to my students, is the use of text as a model to enable them write with confidence, while knowing what is expected of them. Also, allowing the students to be in control of their own writing, and collaborate with my students in creating the writing criteria/rubric that their writing will be graded on. Lastly, I want to end with this statement by Michelle Kenney, which is something that we need to keep in mind as teachers, and school district;

“I look forward to the day when all teachers can banish the canned formulas and have discussions about schoolwide writing programs based on their shared knowledge, experience, and expertise as professional educators.”