No Fighting, No Biting, These are my thoughts about Teaching Writing

It’s my senior year here at GVSU and even though I’m going into secondary education, I haven’t once been asked to sufficiently grade a paper…until now, that is. I don’t think I realized just how much time and concentration goes into grading essays. By the way, when I say “grading” I don’t just mean checking for misspelled words and subject-verb agreement—that’s included of course, but I’m talking about making sure grammar, usage, and punctuation are used correctly, as well as ensuring that the students have a thesis, back up that thesis with concrete evidence, implement good word choice, have organization and structure within their paper, and anything else that would make a good paper great. Let me tell you, it’s strenuous work! Therefore, I have decided not to become an English teacher anymore…just kidding. On a more serious note, aside from the thoughtfulness that goes into grading papers, I also was surprised at how horrible these three essays that I was required to grade were! The highest grade I gave was a C and I still couldn’t pinpoint what this student was trying to say in her essay. However, her grammar and sentence structure were superior to the other two essays that I assigned D’s to previously, so by comparison, I was actually impressed when I first started reading her essay. Of course, “first” is the key word in the previous sentence.
Anyway, this whole process made me wonder about the standards we set for our students and how these standards evolve. The first two essays I thought were utterly horrible. The students didn’t use examples to support their claims and there was no backbone to the essays. It was like reading a testimony to something the author didn’t even witness, which therefore created a jumble of incoherent sentences and an array of surface errors. Thus, when I got to the third essay, I was so pleased that the writer used specific examples from the poem she was writing about and that her first paragraph made perfect grammatical sense! For a moment, this made me forget about the fact that she didn’t explain how and why these examples supported her thesis and even more, what her thesis was! After that, I began to wonder, do we as teachers lower standards for our students because of those so-called “bad” papers? Do those poorly written papers make the average writer seem stellar because average writers possess the grammar and usage skills any standard 10th-11th grader should have? I don’t think this should be the case. I believe we should set high standards for all students so that they have something to strive for and so that as a whole, we can educate our students to be effective writers. Maybe I was little harsh on the writers because I was unaware of what the assignment was, but I truly believe all three of these essays were lacking in significant areas, such as content, usage, punctuation, sentence structure, and the essay’s structure in general. I don’t like giving students bad grades; it makes me feel bad and if I was their teacher, I would feel that part of their failure was due to my not being as good of a teacher as I should have been. However, if I have to feel bad and give below average grades to make my students more effective and thoughtful writers, then I might as well get the Prozac now.

In the 18th chapter of Tom Romano’s book titled, Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers, I feel that he has pinpointed the true purpose of writing multigenre papers. Romano describes the importance of indelible moments and says, “When we render them, we show what our subject values, we show what lasts, what has positive meaning that buoys these characters through life.” (pp. 123) It is through these moments that students are able to share a part of their personality and even discover things about themselves they didn’t know are there. As Romano alludes to in the last chapters of his book, this is precisely part of the reward and the purposes of writing a multigenre paper; to have students share a piece of themselves and to have students explore and discover more about themselves as individuals. To elicit the writing of indelible moment from students, Romano suggests instructing the students to think of specific moments, such as “As I baked in the sun on the Lido deck, I reached into the fresh glass of ice searching for a cube that I could smear across my burning body” as opposed to, “my Caribbean cruise during spring break of senior year”. I thought having the students focus on specifics was a great way to portray the characters in their pieces and also to allow the students to sift through the moments they find memorable in their lives.
Another area I found interesting was Romano’s discussion about the use of the repetend in multigenre papers. A repetend is the unexpected repetition of a word, phrase, sentence, or passage. What essentially makes a repetend different from a refrain is that the repetend is unexpected, while the refrain makes regular (i.e. expected) appearances. I really enjoyed the examples Romano presented about the repetend especially the poems about rhyme and Marilyn Monroe and the example of the compass from Mr. Holland’s Opus. At the Bright Ideas Conference, incorporating popular culture into the classroom was a trendy technique and I think showing parts from Mr. Holland’s Opus (or even just describing it as Romano did) would be a great way to demonstrate the repetend to students who are writing multigenre papers. The reason I really liked the repetend in the multigenre papers is because they seemed to unite the paper as a whole, which is probably one of the most difficult aspects of writing a multigenre paper. In addition, the repetend gave the pieces a cyclic feel and often left a powerful image in my mind. The repetition of Annie’s hands in Romano’s last example of the repetend I thought was especially effective and chilling to read. Romano was moved by this example as well and he says, “The combination of meaning, recurring, image, and craft is what did it to me.” That’s what did it for me, too!

At the Bright Ideas Conference held at MSU on March 18, 2006, one of the speakers I listened to was Rob Petrone. He gave a talk titled, “Before Steinbeck, there was Springsteen; Before Salinger, then Simpsons: Popular Culture, Critical Literary, and High school English.” During this talk, Petrone convinced his listeners that using popular culture to teach English is great idea because it helps the students gain access to texts and concepts. In other words, relating popular culture to English makes the texts memorable for the students. Furthermore, Petrone tells us that using popular culture in the classroom provides an “anchor text” and experience, builds engagement and motivation with course content, and it builds on the students’ prior cultural experiences and textual practices. There was one particular example that Petrone introduced to teach the concept of dramatic irony that I really liked. He suggested using the film There’s Something About Mary to show the concept of dramatic irony, which could then be related to the play Romeo and Juliet. In There’s Something About Mary, there’s a scene where the audience knows the police are interrogating Ben Stiller’s character because they think he murdered someone, but Stiller’s character thinks he is being questioned about picking up a hitchhiker. In Romeo and Juliet, the audience knows Juliet isn’t dead at the end of the play because she took a special potion, but Romeo isn’t aware of this, so when he wakes up he thinks she’s dead and then takes his own life. I thought this was a great example because you are able to relate concepts from a classic to a modern text. It also showed how dramatic irony can work in two different situations; in There’s Something About Mary, it was used for humor, but in Romeo and Juliet, it is used in a serious scene and for suspense. This is a technique I definitely plan to implement in my classroom because I think students will be able to recall concepts more readily if they are able to relate the texts to popular culture.
Another session I attended at the conference was titled, “Media Studies as a Practical Framework for Engaging Critical Pedagogy in the Classroom.” I really enjoyed this talk given by Kelly Merritt and Jim Garrett because they talked about how their main goal is to ultimately have the students read themselves as they would a text. Furthermore, I’d say these teachers wanted to ensure their students were challenging ideas from others, from the media, and from themselves. The students have to think to themselves, “Am I going to accept the reality presented to me? Or should I break out and challenge those things that don’t seem right or safe?” I think it is a very important skill to be able to critique the media because young people are taught that what they perceive on T.V. and in the media is reality, and we rarely stop and question the validity of the mass media’s claims. It seems that Jim and Kelly strive to give their students empowered voices, which I think is great for engaging student interest and for teaching students how to be well-informed and critical individuals.
Another interesting session I attended was titled, “Forum Theatre: Exploring Multiple Solutions through Role Play.” Forum Theatre is a strategy used so that students can imagine possibilities and understand consequences in a low-risk setting, become aware of values and assumptions, form alternate interpretations, and become more sensitive to others through direct experience. This works by having the students stage a scene where others can intervene one at a time to explore various resolutions. Afterwards, the class discusses the positive and negative consequences of these choices. I thought this would be a fresh way to put students into the mind of a character from a text that the class is reading. You could see how different students perceive the character from a text or you could have the students guess what character another student is playing based on textual clues. This could also be used to introduce a controversial issue and have the students think about where they stand, as they are able to try out different positions through role-play. Afterwards, the students could write on which position they choose.
Overall, I’d say the conference was an enjoyable experience. I liked how presenters not only talked about the importance of integrating popular culture and media into your classroom, but they also gave you specific examples on how to do this. I wasn’t planning to get concrete future teaching ideas, but I’d say I gained some valuable resources that I will be able to use in my future classroom.