Case Study Outline

General Information

• Pseudonym: Deanna
• Student at Cedar Shoals High School
• 15 year-old African American female
• In Mr. Ginsberg's 9th Grade Collaborative English class
• Brief overview of personality in the classroom
• Has a loud personality when conversing with peers
• Can come off as rude or aggressive when in a situation she is not happy with
• Pull examples from classroom observations
• Polite and respectful when conversing with "authority-figures" and is thoughtful with responses 
• Pull examples from classroom observations
• pull examples from interviews
• Brief overview of family background
• religious background
• Note to self--obtain more information when possible
• survey
• questions

Literacy Background and Current Literacy Practices

• Observations on Reading Behaviors
• discuss reading selections
• discuss in-school vs. out-of-school reading practices
• pull examples from interviews
• discuss reading comprehension
• can fill out a plot diagram with ease
• does not like reading out loud
• references from "Adolescent Literacy: Myths & Realities"
• pull examples from student work
• Observations on Writing Behaviors
• discuss her opinion of herself as a writer
• discuss her idea of "real" writing
• example essay
• does not follow five paragraph model
• can find focus and expand on her idea
• tends to be repetitive 
• discuss struggle to use what the school considers "Standard English"
• uses slang/incorrect grammar/"text talk" 
• writes how she talks
• references from Nieto's "Culture and Learning"

Revelations and Recommendations

• discuss role of literacy in student's life (in-school and out-of-school)
• discuss what she considers her favorite classes
• what does she like/dislike about class 
• what writing and reading occur in each class
• discuss what she considers her least favorite classes
• what does she like/dislike about class
• what writing and reading occur in each class
• freedom in classroom vs. structure
• options on how to better help Deanna with writing practices
• references from "Writing Conferences"
• references from Fletcher's "Craft Lessons" 
• discuss book options
• YA literature vs. canonical literature

Lingering Questions

• How can I better teach the writing process to someone who has the creativity but has not mastered the structure? 
• Explore reading comprehension and how it affects being able to put words onto paper.
• How do you grade writing such as this? 
• references from Spandel's "Creating a Vision" 

Me vs. The Blank Page

The blank page and I have always had a constant struggle. While everyone in class is writing away, I'm staring at the computer screen, trying to ignore all the fervently typing fingers tapping on the keyboards. My mind doesn't go blank; instead, millions of ideas start crowding my brain until I find myself going through all the multiple scenarios and paths I could possibly take when I finally decide to put pen to paper. I construct a perfect sentence, then a few more, then a paragraph or two until the entire story is written out in an organized little file in my mind.  Sounds great, right? Well, it is until I finally try sorting this file out on actual paper. A few sentences come out unharmed while the rest dissolve away, and then I start the thinking process all over again--the frustration builds.

Why did I go through and still go through this long, tedious, and frustrating strategy? Because, like Anne Lamott in "Shitty First Drafts," I had "fears that people would find my first draft before I could rewrite it" (Lamott 2). I didn't want teachers to correct all the mistakes that I knew I could fix. When I was in high school, I started my papers weeks before everyone else and still stayed up all night writing (not editing) the day before it was due. If a teacher had asked me to turn in a rough draft, I probably would have looked at them as if they were the crazy ones. A first draft? No. My sentences are perfect when I write them down. I had become such a perfectionist that I wouldn't allow myself to change a single word. How could I change what I had been constructing for so long in my mind? Getting my papers back with just a grade, a few vague comments, and a comma in the place it should have been didn't help the situation, either. As I was reading "An Overview of Conferring," I realized that, as teachers, we cannot just "fix or edit the student's writing." You could have put red ink all over my paper and that would have never helped me with my writing process. When we take the time to confer with students about their writing, we need to "teach the student one writing strategy or technique he can use in a current piece of writing and continue to use in future writing" (3). If someone had forced me to write a draft, I would have been annoyed but there's a chance someone could have helped me to make writing a progression rather than a sheet of paper I threw away after it was graded. I had no writing strategy other than "go through it in my head until I'm too frustrated to think anymore, then write it down."

When I got to college, I realized I couldn't write like this anymore.  I had multiple English classes, multiple novels, and multiple writing assignments. I learned pretty quickly I didn't have time to combine and recombine words in my head until the wires of brain began to fry. So, I started writing my first first-drafts. It was a struggle, but I realized that you must "start by getting something--anything--down on paper" (Lamott 2). Through trial and error, I found it was helpful for me to physically write my thoughts on notebook paper. There was something about typing that was too final, but writing with a pencil seemed perfectly harmless.  Whatever works, I told myself. As I began typing up what I had written down, more ideas began to flow; they came effortlessly.  Writing became cathartic rather than frustrating.  I had a teacher who once told me that writing into the night is one way to get an assignment done; but, if you want a piece of work you can be proud of then you need to finish with enough time to step away, forget about it, and come back with fresh eyes; and, if you want to create a work of art then you need to finish with enough time to do this several times. I finally learned a strategy to serve this perfectionist mind of mine.

Case Study Interview #2

For my second interview, I decided to post the conversation as closely as it occurred. I had a few comments here and there that I don't mention, but I've kept all of her words because I think it's important to see when she expands on certain things and after which questions. 

Me: What’ve you read in school over the past two weeks? 

Student: I’m reading The Precious. It’s my individual reading book for Mr. Ginsberg’s class. I’ve been reading it in class when he gives us time to read.

Me: Have you read in any of your other classes? 

Student: We don’t really read in any of my other classes—Not for-real reading.  We do like worksheets and stuff.

Me: So, what is for-real reading? 

Student: Like books and short stories. You know, when the teacher gives you time to read something in class.

Me: Have you done any reading at home?

Student:  At home I get bored and read my book (The Precious) some more. I read from page 59 to 73 last night...I started The Color Purple before, but I didn’t like it.

Me: Why didn’t you like it? 

Student: It just wasn’t for me. The words were small, and it just wasn’t me.

Me: Have you read anything other than books, like stuff online?

Student: I’ve still been reading magazines like last time. I like reading about the Kardashians and celebrities and stuff. I get on Facebook sometimes, but not really.

Me: Is there any other social media sites like Twitter or...?

Student:  Instagram, instagram is my favorite.

Me: How about writing? Have you written anything over the past two weeks?

Student: We write in every class. Every class has you writing.

Me: What kind of stuff do you write?

Student:  Like worksheets and questions like in Mr. Ginsberg’s class when you have to read and then write what you think about it.

Me: Are there any writing assignments you are working on right now?

Student: I don’t think so. We just do little writing stuff in my classes.

Me: Have you done any writing at home in the past two weeks? 

Student: Not really.  I made a grocery list, but that’s all I can think of.

Me: What about any of your social media sites like Facebook or Twitter? That’s considered writing.

Student: No. Not really. I post on Instagram, but I don’t always put words with my pictures. 

We ended here, so she could finish her group work. Before she left, she told me she would tell me how she was doing with The Precious.

Assessing Our Assessments

By the time I reached my senior year in high school, I thought I had mastered the art of writing or at least the art of "faking it" to make a good grade. Every other week, my AP English class wrote in-class essays in order to prepare for the dreaded AP English test. I had become accustomed to making the highest grade in the class, usually a 4 or 5, until one essay pushed me into a slump. I made a 2 on what I thought had been a creative essay about Tess of the D'ubervilles--no feedback, just a few numbers on a rubric and a number 2 on the back sheet of my paper. When I looked at the grade, my face drained. I felt my creativity was ineffective and my thoughts were invalid. I felt defeated. Instead of looking to improve my writing, I shut down.  The next essay came, but all the prompts seemed to demand too much of me. Too much delving into my own ideas; too much thinking about how to change a 2 into a 5. So, I pushed all of my personal aspects away and basically wrote a summary of the Heart of Darkness. I restated the prompt, I wrote a whole bunch of fluff, and as Vicki Spandel states in Creating Writers Through 6-Trait Writing: Assessment and Instruction, I "resort[ed] to survival-skill writing" (Spandel 34). All of a sudden, I felt like middle-school-me who wrote as big as possible to turn two sentences into a half page journal.

I eventually rebounded after an individual writing workshop with my teacher, but when reading about assessments, I couldn't help thinking about all the students who have felt the same way after receiving a bad grade with no explanation--or worse, all the students who simply don't care any more because of all the bad grades their past writings have received.

Writing is a delicate process. We're asking our students to make their ideas concrete. We're asking them to share, to open-up, to be vulnerable. After reading the Hicks PDF on assessing digital-writing, I realized we are also expecting our students' writing to be "an act of identity formation, a twenty-first-century skill that students need to have as they represent themselves across a variety of online communities" (Hicks 107). We're asking a lot from our students as we try to create twenty-first-century writers, yet we're surprised when they choose to shut down and "resort to survival-skill writing." (Spandel 34). 

Reading about six-trait writing opened my mind to how assessment can be used to actually save our writers from the shut-down. Assessing our students doesn't have to be for the sake of recording a grade.   It should be used to encourage and enhance the ideas of our students. If we're asking them to write for us, then we can't condemn every mistake they make. We have to focus on the successful parts of their writing and on helping them achieve more success. If we're looking at THEIR writing then let's "make students partners in the assessment process" (Spandel 6). I think most of us want our students to be apart of the learning process, but I had never given much thought on including students in the assessment process, so this idea came as an "ah-ha" moment when reading the Spandel PDF. The assessment should benefit the student and teachers have to keep that in mind when tallying grades for other necessary reasons.  Not only should teachers create assessments that can truly improve the writing of the students but they should also teach students how to assess their own writing because we (teachers and students) often forget that students are "skilled self-assessors [that] are assessing and reflecting on their own work all the time" (Spandel 25). 

When I hear the word "assessment," I think daunting, constricting, detrimental--but, I'm changing my mindset. I didn't fall into a slump because of one bad grade. I fell into a slump because I had no idea why I made that bad grade. I had no idea how to change it.  That paper had been assessed but my writing process had not. If we begin to assess our own assessments and see how we can investigate the writer instead of intimidate, then we we will be one step closer to success and further away from the shut-down. 

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References

https://21stcenturywritingworkshop.wikispaces.com/file/view/Spandel_Six%20Trait%20writing_pgs.%201-39.pdf/448622508/Spandel_Six%20Trait%20writing_pgs.%201-39.pdf

https://21stcenturywritingworkshop.wikispaces.com/file/view/Hicks_Assesssing%20writing.pdf/448374838/Hicks_Assesssing%20writing.pdf

Is That a Community?

My mentor teacher started one of his classes by asking his students what the word "community" meant to them. As the students started shouting out things like "friends," "school," and "family," he scribbled the words on the board.  Then one of the students, trying to be funny, shouted out "JAIL!" The teacher wrote that down as well.

"How is jail a community?" He asked.

"I don't know," she replied.

"Why are they in jail?"

"Because they did something wrong."

"So, they all have at least one similarity and they are all sharing an experience. It may not be the funnest experience but it is an experience that they share together."

This activity came to mind when reading about inquiry-based stances to teaching in Exploring Inquiry as a Teaching Stance in the Writing Workshop by Katie Wood Ray. In this text, Emily Steffans approaches a writing project for her fifth graders with an inquiry stance.  Not only does she teacher her students how to write a particular genre, but "they've learned how to learn about writing" (Wood Ray 247). She accomplishes this by presenting materials to her students and building instruction based off of the students' questions and observations about the text. She doesn't just plan to teach what she thinks the students should be learning.

So, how does this relate to my scenario about community? Well, I began to think of jail as a community that is similar to some classrooms. We do not consider the wardens who work in a prison as part of the jail community because they watch and patrol--they do not share the same experiences as those who are in jail. In a classroom, the students are sharing an experience--good or bad--but, the teachers are not always apart of this learning community; they watch and patrol. Emily Steffans, though, involved herself within her students' learning, and when reading Ralph Fletcher's Craft Lessons: Teaching Writing K-8, I saw how important it is for a teacher to be apart of his or her classroom's community.  As I looked through the lessons, I began to imagine how to incorporate myself within my own learning community, but the best advice came at the end: "Write with your students. Read with your students. And make plenty of time to talk together about the reading and writing you're doing" (Fletcher 110).  The students do not have to be the only ones who are learning in the classroom. If you take the time to learn with your students, then you build a reciprocal community where students can learn to guide their own learning.

We want to create a community where the students feel freedom to learn and explore, not trapped and under the eye of scrutiny. The classroom is a community in itself, but it can also be a gateway into a larger sense of community where students can share their ideas with not just their community of classmates but also with a community of learners that span across the world. In Crafting Digital Writing, Troy Hicks states "helping students see real audiences and purposes for their work often means moving beyond school boundaries, and I encourage you to make that move with your students to the broader networks these web-based tools allow us to connect with" (Hicks 41). With the help of technology students can link to multiple communities that relate directly to them and their lives, and with a simple click they can breach the confinement they may feel from the four walls of the classroom. But we, as teachers, have to teach students the responsibility that comes with this freedom. We must first build a community in the classroom so they can they can learn and understand what it means to be apart of a community, which is why it's important for teachers to engage in their students' learning.

The teacher should model what he or she expects, so how will the students create a learning community when the teacher keeps an arm's length between his or her desk and the students? How will the students learn to be involved with their own and each other's learning? The teachers and students should be in constant communication, and as stated in The Dynamics of Writing Instruction, "composing is a highly social act, rather than the work of an isolated individual" (Smagorinsky 22).  Why do we isolate students, and why do teachers isolate themselves from their students? We should not keep these able minds trapped in a desk all day while we teach AT them.  We should be learning with them, allowing them to build a learning community with their peers and their teachers. In her classroom, Emily was modeling "the process she wanted her students to go through rather than the product she wanted produced" (Wood Ray 245). If we apply this strategy to all aspects of the classroom, then we will teach our students how to create their own communities and how to continue learning from those around them.

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References

Fletcher, Ralph et al. Craft Lessons: Teaching Writing K-8. Stenhouse Publisher, 1998. Web.

Hicks, Troy. Crafting Digital Writing. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2013. Print.

Smagorinsky, Peter et al. The Dynamics of Writing Instruction. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2010. Print.

Wood Ray, Katie. "Exploring Inquiry as a Teaching Stance in the Writing Workshop." Language Arts 83.3 (2006): 238-247. Web.