Running Naked Through the Halls

I like blogging it allows me the freedom to write down my ideas and share them with the world without any criticism.  I anxiously watch to see how many people will read what I have written.  And although I fear a negative critique, I crave comments from others.  The greatest part of blogging is the anonymity of the act.  I can write without having to face a firing squad of rejections, red ink or editing marks.  While I can hide behind my creative username, our students can't.  For many students the act of writing is paramount to running naked through the hallways of school while everyone stands there shouting out comments.

Writing is scary! There is no doubt about it; many adults avoid the act for fear of showing their own weaknesses. Putting our ideas out there for the whole world is difficult, and yet we ask students to do it on a daily basis.  We push them to write, to bare their souls on the page, divulge their innermost thoughts, reveal their opinions and passions. They struggle, they fight against the blank page in the endless search for ideas, until the ideas slowly emerge, the words formulate sentences and finally in a heap of mental exhaustion they have completed the task, the writing is done.  Almost immediately after the ideas are on the page, we pick up red pens and start stabbing at each error, pointing out flaws in their reasoning, and questioning their word choice. Students receive their writing back, and look upon their  efforts with disdain and humility.

Why does it have to be this way?  The fact is, it doesn't.  We can change the way writing happens in the classroom.  We can remove the fear simply by changing the approach to writing.  Creating a community of writers means that we remove the fear of rejection, and criticism.

REMOVING THE FEAR OF WRITING:
1. Write Everyday- We can't expect students to do anything well if we don't practice. The more writing students do the easier it will be to face the blank page.  Everything that we want to improve must be practiced.  Giving students time to write each day makes the practice easier. Most teachers hear "write everyday" and imagine themselves buried behind stacks of papers to grade, but notice I said students are writing I didn't say anything about grading.  In fact the less that we grade the writing the more students will be likely to try new ideas and develop their writing skills.

2. Write About Any and Everything- Don't limit students to writing to a prompt.  The sun doesn't rise and set on assessment prompts. In order for students to be real writers they need the freedom to write about all types of experiences.  We want to teach them to think, develop ideas and create imagery. Those skills are rarely encouraged by a prompt.  Instead give students questions to answer or things to explain. Some of the most interesting writing comes from asking kids to explain the unexplained such as, "Why are turtles slow?" or "What does the tooth fairy do with all the teeth she collects?" The more outrageous the questions the more creative the responses.
You can ask students to respond to something they have read or seen.  Show a commercial and ask them if they would buy the item advertised based on the commercial.  Why or why not? Show them images and ask them to create a story from what they see.  I once gave my students a picture of a crowd on a busy street and asked them to assume the identity of one the pedestrians and tell me what they were thinking.

3. MODEL- We must be willing to share our own writing and put our own mistakes on display.  There are federal regulations against spokespeople endorsing a product they don't use themselves and yet many teachers are doing just that.  Asking their students to write but not writing with them. I don't know about you but whenever asked to do something frightening or dangerous I am not willing to try if the "expert" won't do it first.

4. Share- Students love sharing; it is hard to pull them away from Twitter and Facebook.  They post the most mundane statements in hopes of getting a "like" on their page.  Don't fight their natural inclination to share, ask them to share their writing with others.  Just like Facebook and Twitter allow students to determine who they feel safe sharing with.  Don't force them to share their ideas with others, they will be more willing to discuss their ideas when they know the person they are sharing with.
In sharing we aren't looking for things that need to be corrected we are just having a conversation about our writing with others.  I used the rule that students could ask questions about the writing but they couldn't tell them what they didn't like or thought was wrong.  This way students didn't feel as if they were setting themselves up for failure by sharing with someone else.

5. Conference- The one mistake that many teachers make is not looking at the essay until it is finished.  You need to talk with students about their writing.  Students don't care what you write on the essay after it is graded. My students would look at the grade and then file the essay away.  It's like getting the bill at dinner, there isn't anything you can do after eating except pay.  Students feel the same way when you give their writing back with the grade on it.  The conversations, and suggestions need to happen AS they are writing, not AFTER.  I would meet with my students and have a 2 minute conference.  I had already read the essay and made comments in the margins and then we would talk about ways to improve the writing.  This gave me an opportunity to ask questions and for the students to get a better understanding of what my comments meant.  Students were then able to make revisions that were worthwhile.
We also conference at the conclusion of the writing, BEFORE I give the student their grade.  We  fill out the Goals/Greatness page in their writers notebook.  I identify three things they did well, in this piece of writing and two things I want them to focus on for the next writing assignment. These two minute conversations were more valuable than all the time spent hunched over the essays with a red pen in hand grading.  The students had some real input that helped them to improve.

Writing will always be difficult for some students, but it doesn't have to be a frightening experience.  By changing the way writing is done and evaluated, we can remove the stigma.  Students should feel empowered and confidant enough to bare their soul on the page, not humiliated and stripped of all their dignity by a firing squad of red pens.

Until Next time...

State Assessments? What's the point?

All across the state of Texas, the wildflowers are in bloom, the trees are budding and the long awaited spring has arrived.  However if you are in education, you are unaware of any of this. You are surrounded by walls covered in butcher paper, rows of desks, piles of dictionaries, and pencils sharpened to a point that could impale.

 It is testing season here in Texas, and for many this marks the end of a marathon of drills and reviews, and the endless writing of essays meant to explain, persuade or entertain. As a classroom teacher the week following the state assessment, the students would invariably ask why we were still in school; the testing was over, what more did we have to do? Many parents feel the same way. The battle has been fought, in 4-6 weeks we will find out if we have slain the beast or if it has beaten us. But in reality, is this all the year has meant?  Is this test, this snapshot of student achievement really what we worked  all year for?

Many years  ago, while in college learning the pedagogy of educational practices I was told that assessment was only as good as the decisions that we could derive from it.  If we set the assessment up as the watermark for pass/fail, then we know nothing more than which students "met standard" and which did not. The State assessment serves as a useless tool for instructional decisions.

By the time the results are returned to campuses the school year is days away from completion.  The information gathered by looking over the individual student reports will tell us which categories of questions we need to re-mediate before the next test, but it doesn't give us critical information about what the student understands. This test can no more determine a student's readiness for College or the next grade level than a lucky 8 ball can predict the future.

The state of Texas can't even decide what subjects will be tested.  Last year as the campus testing coordinator I had to organize two testing schedules. The first was for the final year of TAKS testing for students graduating in 2014.The other was the STAAR test for all students graduating in 2015 and beyond. Last year STAAR tests were given for English I Reading, English I Writing, English II Reading, English II Writing, Algebra I, Biology, US History (field tested), English III (field tested) and Geometry (field tested). This fall the state decided that testing in all of the content areas for grades 9-11  was too much  and reduced it. They introduced a new version of the English EOC by combining the reading and writing tests into one large test and decreasing the students' time to 5 hours instead of 8.  There are still some out there who believe that more changes are yet to come.  How can we depend on a system of assessments to discern a students understanding, when the state can't even decide what is important enough to assess and what isn't.
 
Recently parents have been in the headlines for stating that they won't send their kids to school on the days the state assessments will be given.  They would rather keep their children home than expose them to the lunacy of state assessments.  What is the point?

If we as educators can't draw information from the assessments to guide instructional practices, the state can't decide what to test, or when. or how, and parents are refusing to allow students to be subjected to the testing why are we bothering?  Who does all of this nonsense benefit?  To what great debt do we owe Pearson and the powers that be for creating this chaos, confusion and consternation?

I am sorry to say I don't have the answers to those questions, but I do know what I will be doing in the next few weeks.  I will be throwing open the windows to let in the cool breeze of spring.  I will  rejuvenate classroom instruction after the long hibernation of test prep.  I will welcome spring and not wait idly by the mailbox to find out what my students know,  instead I will create authentic assessments that drive instructional practices and decisions.

Until next time...