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.