I heart Williams, just this once!

Okay, I know you will all mock me mercilessly, but maybe this week's reading will give me a chance to defend myself. (I hope.) This chapter was as close as I would say came to a real "page turner" for me, not because I LOVE reading about this stuff, but because I think all these things we've been reading and talking about really get to the core of how I feel: How CAN I teach my students to communicate more effectively? My intention is never to be judgmental. In fact, I find it (as Williams mentions) interesting to study the types of patterns/mistakes the even well-educated individuals make--and I don't think there is anything wrong with the way people speak. And of course, they're going to write the way that they speak.

What I am most interested in is helping my students improve their grammar (yes, some of their errors are grammatical, especially at the MS level) and usage, without coming across as judgmental. The question still remains, I suppose, on how I will do that.

And who'd've guessed I have multiple links! Here they are:

Don't hate me, but I love this site:
www.engrish.com

http://www.foundmagazine.com/

http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/ESLquiz.html (punctuation game)

I plan on using to second one as a prompt for creative writing. There are tons of things you can imagine about the people who wrote these notes! You can also get paper copies of these and there is a NSFW version.

This pic came up when I searched for "Rubric"

I don't know why.

Possibly a public service announcement?

Moving on, I'll tell you a secret. Not only do we not have "Yank" magazine, but, in Oklahoma (Cue state song from horrible Rogers and Hammerstein musical.) I never even KNEW what a rubric was until I enter the College of Education. So, in my first graduate course 2 things happened:

1. My paper was thrown back at me because it was in MLA format. (Prof mutters under breath,"english majors" and gives me 4 hours to return it in APA format.)

2. We were passed out a rubric.

Of course, I had heard the word before. I didn't have to looked it up in the dictionary. But, it was sort of a non-issue for me. In English department rubric = do WELL, get GOOD grade, do assignment POORLY, get BAD grade, DON'T DO assignment, FAIL. This makes sense to me because the professor decides what is good, bad, in between, etc. Especially in our field of study. It's very difficult to quantify a good essay, poem, etc. For the past month we've had trouble even defining the 6 traits of writing. How can we objectively quantify them?

In addition, I believe rubrics cause students to ask, "Is this what you want? Is this what you mean?" (i.e. curriculum unit) just a little to much. They can get caught up in the idea that they are not going to meet your criteria that they lack the creativity that is the essence of composition. They may also feel very frustrated when they though they met your expectations, but you feel differently. (I made two supporting points just like it says right here!)

Most of all, as a student my concern has been that I will not get enough feedback because my professor will feel that I should know what is required of me and that I should be meeting those criteria listed in the rubric. I, on the other hand, will be cruising along, assuming I'm doing a good job no my assignment, when really I could make an improvement. (This is more of a concern with semester long assignments, such as journal entries, blogs, etc.)

For me the jury is still out on whether I'll use rubrics. Probably not because I don't think you NEED them. Simply put, they hinder more than they help. Everything I just said has probably already been said somewhere by someone, so it's good to know there are people out there that agree with me.

And that is the end of the most boring blog entry ever. My apologies. DO check out this link, poets.org. It's got audio clips, lots of contemporary poets, events/readings. It has nothing to do with the readings, but who cares? I don't. I only slept 30 min. last night.

Revision is OF THE DEVIL

There. Now I feel better.

After reading about--for what must have been around a thousand times--the orgasm, i.e. miracle, that is revision I feeling completely turned off toward the concept. In the past I've often found it difficult to polish some of my poems into any thing except v. shiny garbage, so forgive me (or not) if I don't feel completely blown away by the concept.

That being said, I can see the potential in this concept and it is an improvement. Any time you put back a "final draft" and give it a second look, it's not difficult to find at least some ways to improve on it. I remember this happening many a time during my undergrad when I'd pull an all-nighter, finish up, and think of all the improvements I could make if I had time to "sleep on it" and revise.

In particular, I liked The Writer's Toolbox because it offered practical ways to help my students, which IS something worth getting excited about.

Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing (Kids like podcasts, and she's funny.) Being the huge nerd that I am I have a live bookmark to it. She's got topics that are complex enough for us and ones simple enough to help students improve their writing.

hide sharp objects, am reading Williams again.

k. This is not my entire post, and really is not at the heart of the substance of my post, but I just have to say something!

As an educator the idea that a student has the "right" to write poorly or go off topic just seems wrong. It haven't read these chapters yet, but it sort of strikes me as similar to when people say they have a "right to their own opinion" when what they are arguing is not a matter of opinion, but actually one of fact and can be proven untrue. Their claim to such a "right" is based on fallacious logic.

While good/bad writing and on/off topic IS a matter of opinion, it becomes less so once students step into the classroom. How else can a teacher evaluate his students? I just get this bizarre image of someone being handcuffed and brought into the classroom and read their rights. Then, when they fail the course they argue, "I have the right to write badly!" I'm hoping as I sit down to read this book I come to a better understanding of Spandel's ultimate goal.

Having looked over the preface and taken a sneak peek of the other chapters, it seems she is hovering between rights and needs. I agree students should feel free to make mistakes. I just really do not like the trend/idea, especially with creative writing, that there is no real standard of quality. (What does it mean to you?, etc.) The question is, how DO we evaluate?

Also, with with Spandel I'm running up against that problem, once again, that these ideas don't seem quite practical. I think it might be sort of cool to imagine the inside of a pencil. I've also been in lots of classes where students were able to choose their topics and it didn't seem to make much of a difference either way. I'd drop dead if I gave an assignment that made my students run through the grass singing "Tra-la-la" and begging for pen and paper. Maybe I'll figure it out and one day they'll make a movie about me and Michelle Pfeiffer will play me. Oh, wait. They already did that.

I do like the idea of letting students try to choose something that holds personal value for them. I'm not saying I'm against that. But I also think that we can give them topics/tools they may not think of. This might help them discover something. Maybe it's just that I'm getting more and more frustrated as we get to the end of the program and we keep talking about all these solutions that seem to contradict each other.

On the other side of the spectrum we have Williams. I think it's just his writing style. The tone or something. He seems really judgmental and negative. Damn. I absolutely loved hearing about the multi-genre concept after he trashed the idea of combining literature and expository writing, which I thought was completely bogus when I read it last week. And that's the thing about Williams, it wasn't presented as his theory, it was put forth as the only option. That's something I was told never to do when making an argument because it is a major turn off to your audience.

I will definitely put something together that is multi-genre because I feel like it's a low-pressure situation for students to try out different forms of creative writing. Their entire grade isn't riding on whether they can write an awesome poem, etc. and I think that will help them. It will also give them an automatic topic. However, I think I will make it mandatory that my students include some formal expository writing along with the project.

Wk 2: What should be obvious. And grammar!

Initially I was turned off by what Williams was saying. I tend to get defensive b/c after all, here we are! We did some how manage to learn something from the miserable classroom and teaching methods we're all criticizing. But, after I get over that, I can move on to see that what I'm reading makes sense. A lot of times when I read these sort of "How to Teach" things, I sort of think, well, OF COURSE. I forget that, what comes naturally to some of us (the process or writing, reading) isn't that way for everyone else. So, it's great to see that they are putting the "process approach" or whatever they want to call it, down on paper, into concrete stages.

I really liked the part about "divorcing" editing from the rest of the writing process, and not just because people worry about errors and may stifle their creativity. It's important to realize that such errors are inevitable. (That's why we have erasers.) And this way students can sit down in their last stages and THINK about why their grammar/usage is incorrect. Why doesn't this sentence make sense? subj/verb agreement, etc. Then they understand what that is. If they hurry over that while writing their papers it won't mean anything to them and they will probably be more likely to make that mistake again. This is an excellent example of grammar in context, which seems much more affective than writing vocab words and sentences--which I had to do even in high school. (I had a BISCUIT for breakfast. X 6)

At first I thought, workshops for essay writing, what? Pairs definitely makes more sense to me. That's pretty much what I did during my undergrad anyway, I'd show my paper to a trusted friend, who I knew would give me an honest opinion. Again, we're modeling these ideas off what good writers already do, so it's hard to go wrong. It seems that Carney has adapted the process well for the classroom. These workshops give you the benefit of input from your classmates, but the responsibility lies with the individual writer. I think that's v. important.

Okay, so I'm not a genius or anything because I had no idea what to list as a link, but I was surfing around for associated sites and found this site, TeenLit, and the more I looked at it, the more the writing tools seemed really cool. It would be a great places for your students to go in class when they needed some help and it looks like they have a publication as well. Also, it had a list of cites where kids can buy papers--so you can catch them cheating!