Teacher as Professional

I am becoming a teacher who wants her classroom studio to be able to have true negotiation, authentic student voice and reflection.  A lot of my thinking about negotiation occurred through my inquiry; if you would like to read about that, go to my Teacher as Inquirer post.  What follows is a rather unorganized list of how I am just starting to sort out everything I've learned professionally in these two weeks.

SI - through the technology platforms I've been shown like Storify, Glogster, Museum Box, Tagxedo and Gapminder or nonvirtual genres like mission statements, Murray Cards, Ars Poetica and mentor texts like Scranimals - has taught me how to open the opportunity for students to brainstorm and express themselves in mutli or varied genres.  I am hoping this will help them use their authentic voice.

Part of my work toward wanting more negotiation in my classroom studio (the part that wasn't in my inquiry) is rethinking the concept of expertise. Lil started me thinking about this before SI started as she asked me for my opinions on SI's orientation.  I kept feeling confused because a person who I consider to be an expert was honestly seeking (and was excited about) thoughts from a Master's student peon.  This helped me start thinking about really listening to and seeking out my students' voices.  Lil gave me a voice again as she tweeted one of the things I said.

Then Lacy got me thinking about expertise as I read her blog about negotiation and expertise.  I had been told by a colleague who read an article saying that one becomes an expert as soon as one engages in a community.  I haven't completely teased this out yet but I'm going to keep thinking about.  Some of these ideas may be fleshed out in the way I encourage negotiation in the classroom.  For example, I really like the idea of negotiating what the syllabus should say (shout out to Jessie) or what the goals of the portfolio could be (shout out to Carrie).  These things may show students that I am not the expert in the classroom but that we are all collaborating to learn more.

I am also learning more about modeling.  I claim that modeling is important, but I'm starting to realize that I haven't been modeling like I should.  I started to realize this when Jen told us to write our mission statements.  As I say in this blog, it suddenly dawned on me that, though I want my students to reflect on themselves as writers, I hadn't been doing that.  This idea was emphasized again when Carrie talked about how Jen wrote with us and when Dorry told me that she does the same assignments she has her students doing.  I really think this would position me more as a member of the community - rather than someone floating above and outside of it.  So, now I'm trying to keep an eye on whether I am modeling assignments and behaviors for my students.

I also really started thinking about teacher community and enacting real change.  While in the ranting circle, I kept hearing a voice in my head, "Are we just going to complain or are we going to change it?"  This thought was solidified by Rebecca who vocalized, "So are we going to do anything about this?" which was then affirmed by Rashid.  The sentence echoed until we did the tableaux and discussed how weighty we felt.  I felt something changing inside me and Rashid's demo that day gave me the vocabulary: I had hit my tipping point.  After talking to Melissa and Lacy about really wanting to do something, I went home, thought for a while and wrote on the blog.  This is the first time I have ever wanted to rebel and overthrow the common actions.  I am excited to see what this community of teachers can accomplish together!

Teacher as Inquirer

My inquiry began by reading Peter Johnston's book, Choice Words, the book I picked for my book review.  There is passage, shown below, in which he discusses changing the language we use with readers, the language that creates a good/bad binary (p.20).

I decided as soon as I read that passage that I wanted to explore changing the good/bad binary by changing the way I talk about writers and writing.  The second day I began thinking about language and writing in connection with identity.  I blogged about how I associate writing with identity and wondering what kind of language I can use with students when they are revising to help them feel as if I am trying to help in their writing process rather than criticizing them, which they may do if they associate writing with their identities.  A large portion of Choice Words discuses helping students put the word "writer" into their identities.  So, the combinations of Johnston's words and my thoughts in my blog added another part of my inquiry: How do I help students build "writer" into their identities?  Going forward into SI, I jumped both from one to the other and played in between these two inquiries.  While we talked about writing metaphors and responding to papers, I started thinking about the language I had been using to replace my good/bad binary language.  Lil said, "Revising does not equal improving; it's fluidity" and I really started thinking about the word "improve" and other words I've been using and trying to figure out if they still perpetuate the binary.  The freak-out was part of my reflection of the day.  I continued to play with my language as I thought of more words I could use to describe the writing community I want in my classroom and made a Tagxedo with them.  This Tagxedo was also part of a thought process for how talking about using digital platforms for writing as a way of expanding students' understanding of genres, and, therefore, of writing.

Lil's Workshop on Inquiry helped push me to start examining the conversations and vocabulary surrounding my inquiries.  I was able to start looking at buzz words and, after looking at a few bibliographies, created a list of articles to start exploring.

Reading into the field began pushing on my thinking immediately.  I reread an article by Bruce Horner called "The Sociality of Error", which encourages readers to rethink what they immediately label as "error," partly because it's a social construct, and begin a conversation with students about their writing.  He also emphasizes the writing and writing conferences in the classroom are negotiations and that students choosing to push back against the teacher's suggestions may be part of that negotiation.  I walked into SI saying that "negotiation" was my new favorite word.  Then, because of the work I did during Lil's workshop, I found an article called "Rethinking Negotiation in Composition Studies" by Thomas West and Gary A Olson, who discuss how negotiation can be used to aid a collaborative environment or to maintain control.  I did someone thinking out loud on paper in my blog that night.  This is always where I started thinking about finding a space for negotiation in the classroom and what it would actually look like to negotiate in a classroom when a student rebels or tries to renegotiate something in the class.  Soon, (later that night, in fact,) I would learn that the space would be a third space.

The first day of SI, I was talking with Sally about my thesis, which was (and mostly still is) only a vaguely formed idea. I know I want to look at how taking a Barton, Brandt, Heath, Gee view of literacy will change the way one does X.  The X will be something in the ELA classroom or in the writing center.  Anyway, as Sally and I talked, I started thinking about third spaces and wanted to learn more about them.  I posted on the blog with this inquiry and Lacy gave me a few suggestions for articles to read.  I read articles by Gutierrez et al (Rethinking Diversity) and Moje (Working Toward Third Space in Content Area Literacies) and learned about hybridity and third spaces.  These are the spaces in which I can both join in and out of school literacies together and negotiate with students when either students or I break out of the standard societal expectations of the classroom. 

On day six, as people were responding verbally and through writing to my demo, my two inquiry questions and my thesis work finally collided together.  I worked through these thoughts in my reflection.  Then, as Carrie asked us about what constructing an identity means (day seven), I began thinking about Discourses and how teaching the writing identity as a Discourse can open the conversation to more than an abstract concept of "writing".  Again, I blogged this as a reflection of the day.

I have found a few words I really want to integrate into the enviroment: reclaiming the word "assessment", using "studio" instead of classroom, playing around with "composing" or "creating" instead of just "writing", using "yes and" and using "could" instead of "should".  In addition, I've been zooming out a little since day 1, recognizing that I also need to focus on the broader conversation I set up in my classroom around/about writing and writers.  I would like the conversation to allow me to answer "yes" to the first half of the questions below.

Teacher as Writer - Growing as a Creative Writer

My self selected piece and my piece that I posted on Open Mic at e-anthology were both creative fiction pieces.  These are the first two fictional pieces I have written since I was a child, and, as such, I am in the process of learning how to develop characters and write believable emotions into them.  The piece on e-anthology, "John's Story," received a variety of comments which gave suggestions for how I could add depth to one of the characters, Emily, and advice for how I could get into the main story line faster.  

Because I did not receive comments from anyone in UNCC's SI, I won't go into any more detail on this story.


My self selected piece is called Henry the Traveler.  This is my first attempt at a novel, or - if there doesn't end up being enough material - at least a novella.  It was inspired by a creature who lives in my car.

 I had written less than one page of this story over a year ago and had been saying I needed to work on it since then, though, of course, each day passed by with it untouched.  SI gave me the push to work on it again.  I was able to work on three aspects of my writing.  The first was figuring out how to stop my procrastination and get writing.  I was procrastination mostly because there seemed to be so much work to do.  I mean, when writing a novel, where do you even start?  Sally told that during her thesis, she wrote at least 600 words a day, and I decided to try this technique.

It was a success.  Writing 600 words isn't much, considering it doesn't even fill up two pages.  Being able to see the word count go up by 100 every time I wrote a short paragraph made me feel that I could easily keep writing to 600.  At the same time, 600 words compounded daily adds up to a significant amount.  I added six pages and two and a half scenes in three days.  I have officially found a way to keep myself writing and stop the procrastination!  My goal is to write 600 words at least four days a week for the rest of the summer.


The next thing I learned was how to develop the main characters - Henry and Jenni.  (I've also realized that I really like names that end in the "e" sound because almost all my fictional characters have one.)  Dorry was a great help in thinking about what kind of character Jenni is going to be.  I had already decided she was her own worst enemy, convincing herself that no one likes her and allowing that notion to affect her relationships, but I hadn't gotten farther than that.  Dorry helped me develop her character by getting me to think through how Jenni was going to react to Henry.  Fueled by her question, "Is she the Harry Potter type character?" my writing group mates started describing different people they knew and how they may react to being talked to by a moving purple fuzzy ball. As I worked through how she would react (choosing the personality Dorry originally suggested), I started developing a personality for her.  

 I also worked on a scene that would occur later in the novel from the Murray characters. I had written about a place that was important to me - a place called Interlochen, where some of my family lives - and Carrie pushed me to think about why this place was so important, namely figuring out what emotions I attached to this place.  

 

By analyzing my own motivations and feelings, I was able to add motivations and feelings to Jenni by adapting my memory to her situation.

The third thing I worked on was voice.  My writing group helped me with Henry's character development by helping me think about his voice.  Dorry pointed out - and Carrie agreed - that Henry's voice switches from less formal to informal (the informal is actually true to the narrator I have written him to be).  The picture below is a piece of my second draft after my group had commented on it.  The black is my question and the colors change for each responder, Dorry, Carrie and Tara, respectively. 

  

While Carrie and Dorry aided my thinking in keeping his voice consistent, Tara also helped by reminding us that Henry would likely be more formal with a person he had just met.  I am working on combining both ideas to figure out how Henry would sound formally... finding a happy medium, in a way.

I will be able to take the questions and advice about character development and voice that I have been given by my writing group and Sally's 600 words/day idea into finishing Henry's story and future fiction.

Finally, I grew as poet.  I have written poetry since I was 13, but I had never written a multi-voiced poem.  I started playing around with ideas of how to write and read multi-voiced poems while working with Melissa as we read the polar bear/SUV poem.  We really struggled with who should read when until we hear Dorry and Carrie read their poem.  From there, my writing group started talking about how to make Tara's poem a two voice poem and I was able to see how to take an idea - or a poem that is currently uni-voiced - and turn it into many voices.  The multi-voiced poem I wrote was sparked during Ashley's demo.  It was interesting, not only to write representing many people in a single poem, but also figuring out how to structure the poem.

Teacher as Writer - Developing My Identity as Writer

As I worked through my writing history (and my inquiry questions), I started to question how one finds an identity as a writer and what that actually means.  Because of this questioning, I chose to make a Storify (as a product of Stephanie's demo), which was a collection of how people talk about the things that writers do.  I started thinking about what I believe writers are based on my reaction to what others said.  For example, many people wrote that they could not be writers because they can't spell or if they wanted to be writers, they need to learn better grammar.  I don't believe that writers need perfect spelling (that's what spell check helps with) or perfect grammar, as we discussed in Lil's activities about teaching grammar in context.  However, it wasn't until Jessie pushed us to write out our writer's mission statement that I started thinking about WHO I really am as a writer.  My thinking began in this blog and I did more thinking over the weekend.  But I really struggled with defining who I am as a writer.  This led me to my demo topic: Defining what a writer is.  If I can define writer, then maybe I can more clearly define who I am as a writer.  I walked away with a recognition (partly influenced by a number of people who, in the "question" section of the responses to the demo, asked me if I'd defined writer yet myself): I am much more comfortable defining what I believe about writing and engaging in the act of writing (as I wrote in my Twitter post) than I am defining who I am as a writer.

I think my aversion to thinking about my writerly identity is my insecurity about myself as a writer.  During orientation, I admitted in my day book that I am always shocked that I can move from an idea to a completed work that is actually smart/witty/well written/whatever; this starts to get at my insecurities as a writer, namely that I am not "good" enough as a writer to really do it and do it well.

 So, in an effort to think more about myself as a writer, I'll be reflecting on what I've learned about who the writer in me is.


My discoveries began with thinking about what to put in my writing timeline.

I had never considered my writing history before, nor had I attempted to figure out where my desire for writing came from.  As I thought about my history - and, due to Lacy's questions, my writing influences in particular - I realized the extent to which I connect reading and writing together.  This thought started because I started thinking about who I want to show my writing to first, my father.  I know I connect writing with my dad, but I don't remember discussing writing with him when I was younger.  What I do remember talking with him about was reading. Click on the video below to hear about my dad's influence and how his influence connects to my writing.

During group discussion, we began talking about this reading/writing connection and Rebecca brought up the importance of mentor texts.  The more I thought about this idea, the more I realized that I use and have used mentor texts all the time to mimic and test out ways of writing.  In fact, this concept is how I have been learning to write for as long as I can remember.  I both copy styles, techniques and structures and adapt what I read for my own purposes.  I describe this in this post, which was the product from Rebecca's demo.  I walked away with the following thought that afternoon:





I also started thinking through how personal writing can be.  My thoughts began when we read the poem, "Purification" and the horror I felt at throwing away bits of writing.  My reflection for the day theorized that I felt this horror because writing is connected with identity.  In this reflection, I make the assumption that this is true for all writers, though after a discussion about how poetry is often considered creative, while academic writing is not, I started wondering if the same was true about what is often considered personal.  As Carrie struggled through her own identity as a writer, I was able to see a different perspective on the connection between writing and identity and played through this idea in her comments.  Maybe, I suggested, for her, poetry was personal, while academic was not.  This lead me back to thinking about myself.  I analyzed and reflected on my own writing and my reactions to criticism (though I know it's helpful, I always feel momentarily offended that they didn't deem my writing as perfect) or to bad grades (anything less than an A... even A- get under my skin a bit) and how I feel when I'm performing the act of writing and when I'm showing others my writing.  I split my thinking into two categories: academic and creative.  See the video below to see how I talk about and what I enjoy about each.

As I thought more, I realized that writing - all writing - in deeply personal to me because I push beyond just having "writer" as part of my identity; it is how I define myself.  When a person asks me about myself, I usually say "I am a teacher and I am a writer."  Writing feels right to me, just like teaching feels right.  To use a phrase Carrie S. told me once, I don't really believe I am A writer; I believe I am Writer.  Given this, the fact that I am insecure about my writing makes sense because I am insecure about myself.  I often believe that I am not "enough".  However, I am working on accepting the writer I am and being proud of that.  So, here is what I claim about myself as Writer:

I am a   re-visioner

social writer; I need to talk it out

procrastinator

descriptive (image grammar) writer

My writing  is always personal 

                  echoes my personality and experiences

                  gets easier after I’ve gotten started

                  contains serious subject matters

                  is therapeutic

Reflection

I cannot believe how much I have learned, discovered, written and thought about in only 8 days!  I had so much to process about the last two weeks that I needed to split up the "categories" in order to really think through what I did and learned during SI.  At the same time, if Prezi would have allowed me to, I would have made this document there; I do not believe there are boundary lines created by these pages between the "categories" and that what I learned in one affects the others.  I used the "categories" for thinking purposes only and because that is what the blog platform allows for.  That being said, there are some repetitions in the different posts and the reader is encouraged to think of this as overflow between "categories".

Also, because there is so much information, for those of you who don't have time to read a reflection the length of War and Peace, I'd recommend just picking a page and reading that.

Happy Reading!