Next week I will again be in the classroom every day of the week, for five weeks. I will also begin working as a tutor of students attending Queen Elizabeth Public School. With the opportunity to be doing so much teaching on the near horizon, it is important that today I take a step back to reflect on lessons I have learned from mentoring at Hawthorne Public School.
In many ways, the mentoring experience at Hawthorne was unlike most experiences I expect to have in classrooms in the future. Working with a student only once a week for less than an hour, and only for four weeks in total, is likely to be one of the most short-term teaching commitments I will have engaged in. Further still, its focus on a single student, with interactions entirely based around a single, bi-directional relationship, while ideal in many ways, is far from the reality of teaching in public schools today.
This being said, while it may be unlike how I will be able to spend most of my time in schools, it was very much akin to the work I am about to do as a tutor. Working one-on-one with students is liberating in many ways. It allows for an easy, organic development of the relationship between student and teacher. With one relationship, it is also much easier to informally assess for a student's growth as a learner.
I was really glad I took the time in my first meeting with my student writer to share and learn about one another on more personal terms. Having done this, I felt the learning process was facilitated for weeks into the future. As I move into working as a tutor, I am excited to form new relationships with students, to share and learn with/from them in our first meetings and going forward, and to help them grow as learner through this positive, student-centred relationship.
Monday 16 March 2015
Monday 9 March 2015
Wrapping up
This was the last week of mentoring for me and my student. Working with him through to improve his writing process these last few weeks has been an instructive process and has given me a great deal of insight into the challenges and benefits of working with middle school students. With my student having been sick last week, I was expecting him to have made some solid progress on some of his written pieces. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and instead I was given a crash course in some of the challenges posed by technology in today's classroom.
My student's paper was almost unmodified from the last time we worked on it, which posed an obvious problem for where we were to go from there. What was more challenging, however, was his motivation in class, which today I could not find a way to productively engage in the process of thinking about his writing. He wanted to use a laptop he had procured in order to go through another of his papers electronically, even though the piece of writing which he had printed for me was right at hand. We had a lot of room for improvement, and countless lessons on style and argumentation with that one and a half page in hand, and yet he could not focus his attention on the task at hand but instead dedicated 80% of his attention to getting his laptop power and figuring out a keyboard issue on it (that wouldn't be resolved all period long).
With this being our last class together, I found myself frustrated to not be able to shift his attention away from the problem we could not fix (the computer) and toward the problem that we had easily addressable and at hand. Having worked with another student last week, I also knew the distance between my regular student and last week's in terms of their ability and proficiency as writers. I knew that my regular student had so much work to do to refine his thinking and practice as a writer, and had this one last class (of 4) with him to produce change.
Of course, with so little time, and so few classes, is hardly possible to produce tangible change in a student's writing. Trying my best to engage with his writing with him in a productive, constructive process that was both critical and supportive was likely the best I could hope for. That he trusted me enough to show me three of four of his pieces over the weeks, and that we got to debate the best star trek captains as well, is enough for me to leave this experience glad to have been a part of it. From speaking with ATs and others, and increasingly from my own experience, I am beginning to understand just how much teaching is about the journey and not necessarily the end results.
My student's paper was almost unmodified from the last time we worked on it, which posed an obvious problem for where we were to go from there. What was more challenging, however, was his motivation in class, which today I could not find a way to productively engage in the process of thinking about his writing. He wanted to use a laptop he had procured in order to go through another of his papers electronically, even though the piece of writing which he had printed for me was right at hand. We had a lot of room for improvement, and countless lessons on style and argumentation with that one and a half page in hand, and yet he could not focus his attention on the task at hand but instead dedicated 80% of his attention to getting his laptop power and figuring out a keyboard issue on it (that wouldn't be resolved all period long).
With this being our last class together, I found myself frustrated to not be able to shift his attention away from the problem we could not fix (the computer) and toward the problem that we had easily addressable and at hand. Having worked with another student last week, I also knew the distance between my regular student and last week's in terms of their ability and proficiency as writers. I knew that my regular student had so much work to do to refine his thinking and practice as a writer, and had this one last class (of 4) with him to produce change.
Of course, with so little time, and so few classes, is hardly possible to produce tangible change in a student's writing. Trying my best to engage with his writing with him in a productive, constructive process that was both critical and supportive was likely the best I could hope for. That he trusted me enough to show me three of four of his pieces over the weeks, and that we got to debate the best star trek captains as well, is enough for me to leave this experience glad to have been a part of it. From speaking with ATs and others, and increasingly from my own experience, I am beginning to understand just how much teaching is about the journey and not necessarily the end results.
Friday 6 March 2015
Relationships and Mentoring
This week was a bit tricky in terms of my mentoring process, but nonetheless remained instructive. We often talk about the importance of positive, trusting supportive relationships being formed between students and teachers forming the backbone of the learning process; so too do we often emphasize the necessity of careful planning. In this vein, I have worked hard to cultivate my relationship with the student I am mentoring, and look forward all the more eagerly to working with him through his writing process every Monday because of it. However, this week I arrived to find my regular student missing (sick) and the resources I had prepared for him therefore lost much of their utility. I was instead tasked with meeting, learning, and engaging with a new student, whose writing project was totally different, just as was his style of learning.
Engaging with this student reminded me of what one of my AT's calls the "constancy of interruptions" in the teaching process. Indeed, a teacher who is not ready for wrenches to be thrown into their well-laid plans, who is not in fact anticipating these wrenches and ready to use them to their advantage, is hardly ready to teach. Mentoring this new student through his very different writing process was a huge shift, as his learning style was strikingly different. Whereas my former student produced all his work in singular bursts of typed writing, this student was far more iterative in his approach, not even needing to be guided to the beneficial strategies of writing in pencil with an eraser at the ready, writing multiple drafts, and writing with a mind to growth rather than to finality. Whereas the former student was very much interested in the over-all flow of his writing, this one found motivation in refining the details and seeking improvements in his writing.
Had I stubbornly presented the materials I had brought with me for the former student to the new one, I no doubt would have been met with confusion or even alienation. Instead, I spent a productive work period with this student as he waded through four drafts each (?!) of two different paragraphs summarizing the first two scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream. As important as preparation is in teaching, I have come to learn that mental preparedness for the unexpected represents an even more important component of successful practice. In this particular scenario, my mental preparedness to adapt my well-laid plans was further augmented by my readiness to create a new, positive, and trusting relationship between student and mentor/teacher.
Engaging with this student reminded me of what one of my AT's calls the "constancy of interruptions" in the teaching process. Indeed, a teacher who is not ready for wrenches to be thrown into their well-laid plans, who is not in fact anticipating these wrenches and ready to use them to their advantage, is hardly ready to teach. Mentoring this new student through his very different writing process was a huge shift, as his learning style was strikingly different. Whereas my former student produced all his work in singular bursts of typed writing, this student was far more iterative in his approach, not even needing to be guided to the beneficial strategies of writing in pencil with an eraser at the ready, writing multiple drafts, and writing with a mind to growth rather than to finality. Whereas the former student was very much interested in the over-all flow of his writing, this one found motivation in refining the details and seeking improvements in his writing.
Had I stubbornly presented the materials I had brought with me for the former student to the new one, I no doubt would have been met with confusion or even alienation. Instead, I spent a productive work period with this student as he waded through four drafts each (?!) of two different paragraphs summarizing the first two scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream. As important as preparation is in teaching, I have come to learn that mental preparedness for the unexpected represents an even more important component of successful practice. In this particular scenario, my mental preparedness to adapt my well-laid plans was further augmented by my readiness to create a new, positive, and trusting relationship between student and mentor/teacher.
Saturday 28 February 2015
Teaching students about writing argumentative papers
Some more resources that I have found after last week's session and look forward to sharing with my mentoring student this coming Monday, this time focusing specifically on argumentative essays (which one of his papers seemed to be roughly emulating):
With developing writers, I am increasingly getting the sense that one of the key lessons that needs to be taught is that they must consciously decide which type of writing they are performing. Part of this decision should be explicitly aided by the teacher's instruction, for instance through explicit instructions and mentor texts prior to the going out and writing a given assignment. Another part of this is to give them the tools to know how different forms of writing are differently capable of presenting the thesis or information they are trying to communicate.
While some of the writing samples my student has created are better geared toward a simple report format, with presentation of a series of interesting facts being the goal of his writing product, other samples are clearly reaching toward the presentation of a contentious argument. Young writers do not necessarily differentiate between different forms of non-fiction writing, but helping them to realize that different objectives require disparate writing forms is a key to helping them to learn to write with more precision, control, and intent.
Sunday 22 February 2015
Quick links/resources on mentoring student writers
The following is a short list of resources I found that have helped me to consider how best to mentor student writers:
The Essay and writing Convincingly
I think that teaching students the essay is still highly relevant. Contrary to what seems to be an increasingly popular belief, I know that the essay is a powerful, convincing, and entertaining literary medium. I think that students should learn it because I think learning it empowers them to communicate and think more effectively, not only as scholars or professionals but as citizens and neighbours.
The way I consider it, the essay is defined more by structure than by anything else; it is its structure more than anything else that makes it a distinct form of writing. The structure of essays is predicated on an organization around the natural flow of a clear, convincing argument, with an introduction, the arguments, and a conclusion. Showing students that introducing, arguing, and concluding an argument may seem repetitive, but in fact works, might be the best way to get them "on board" with learning what at times can feel like Latin. It is important to show them how this structure mirrors many other literary forms they may be more familiar with, like a movie, and also show how when deployed well (i.e. a good clip of a lawyer closing a case from a movie) this form can be helpful to them in far more than just their summative writing exercise.
The essay may be defined by structure, but I think that other key elements of the essay are important for students to learn. Teaching them about choosing and preserving an appropriate voice is really important. Voice in essays should cultivate and convey a clear sense of the author, one that derives directly from their chosen relationship to the audience. Voice is itself defined largely by dichotomies: formal/informal, academic/personal, past/present, historical/literary, emotional/detached, etc. When teaching voice, a clip like this one from Taylor Mali (http://youtu.be/OEBZkWkkdZA) can help introduce the importance of this idea. Teaching students to be aware of their voice when writing and speaking has ramifications well beyond the essay.
Teaching the essay is by no means easy. It brings together much of what is taught in English classes from k-12 into a single written exercise that begins with a blank page and demands that students produce a product that reflects structured, well thought-out (in advance) work. Introducing them to it slowly via scaffolding, and more importantly showing them why it is important to learn to write an essay are key components of successful essay-teaching.
The way I consider it, the essay is defined more by structure than by anything else; it is its structure more than anything else that makes it a distinct form of writing. The structure of essays is predicated on an organization around the natural flow of a clear, convincing argument, with an introduction, the arguments, and a conclusion. Showing students that introducing, arguing, and concluding an argument may seem repetitive, but in fact works, might be the best way to get them "on board" with learning what at times can feel like Latin. It is important to show them how this structure mirrors many other literary forms they may be more familiar with, like a movie, and also show how when deployed well (i.e. a good clip of a lawyer closing a case from a movie) this form can be helpful to them in far more than just their summative writing exercise.
The essay may be defined by structure, but I think that other key elements of the essay are important for students to learn. Teaching them about choosing and preserving an appropriate voice is really important. Voice in essays should cultivate and convey a clear sense of the author, one that derives directly from their chosen relationship to the audience. Voice is itself defined largely by dichotomies: formal/informal, academic/personal, past/present, historical/literary, emotional/detached, etc. When teaching voice, a clip like this one from Taylor Mali (http://youtu.be/OEBZkWkkdZA) can help introduce the importance of this idea. Teaching students to be aware of their voice when writing and speaking has ramifications well beyond the essay.
Teaching the essay is by no means easy. It brings together much of what is taught in English classes from k-12 into a single written exercise that begins with a blank page and demands that students produce a product that reflects structured, well thought-out (in advance) work. Introducing them to it slowly via scaffolding, and more importantly showing them why it is important to learn to write an essay are key components of successful essay-teaching.
Monday 26 January 2015
Sherman Alexie's "Indian Education" and Narrating Educational Oppression
Shelley Peterson's work demands teachers devote greater attention to the power of narrative as a means of having students engage with writing to learn. Taking her cue, I returned to a short story of Alexie's called "Indian Education," in which he provides halting narrative accounts of the memories that remain of his public education, from grade one through to grade twelve. I think such an account is provocative because of its working from the baseline story of a student working through each grade level, but then incorporates into this near-universally experienced timeline the deeply incongruous and often distressing variations in the "common" story that have been experienced (/endured) by Native American peoples in the United States.
Educators have become increasingly aware in recent years of the urgent need to incorporate greater attention to the lived experiences, past and present, of Native Peoples in Canada, especially the trauma's suffered in residential schools across this country. Yet, in spite of this growing sensitivity, it seems that many have struggled to integrate these stories into their jobs as curriculum-providers. Narratives like those provided by Alexie can bridge this gap between what we know we need to teach and the curriculum, all while benefiting from the multiple boons associated with teaching writing and history through narrative.
In fact, using Alexie's text as a model could prove even more useful. Once students have seen the way the basic structure of exploring each grade, 1-12, can be channeled to tell such a personal and provocative tale, they could be set to the task of similarly building a narrative one grade at a time, from either personal memory or fictional accounts, toward the construction of a unified story with some semblance of thematic unity. Working with students who are still somewhere along the 1-12 timeline provides the added opportunity of allowing them to carry their story forward, in a sense using their personal educational narrative as a basis for thinking about how their own story can grow or change in the coming years.
Educators have become increasingly aware in recent years of the urgent need to incorporate greater attention to the lived experiences, past and present, of Native Peoples in Canada, especially the trauma's suffered in residential schools across this country. Yet, in spite of this growing sensitivity, it seems that many have struggled to integrate these stories into their jobs as curriculum-providers. Narratives like those provided by Alexie can bridge this gap between what we know we need to teach and the curriculum, all while benefiting from the multiple boons associated with teaching writing and history through narrative.
In fact, using Alexie's text as a model could prove even more useful. Once students have seen the way the basic structure of exploring each grade, 1-12, can be channeled to tell such a personal and provocative tale, they could be set to the task of similarly building a narrative one grade at a time, from either personal memory or fictional accounts, toward the construction of a unified story with some semblance of thematic unity. Working with students who are still somewhere along the 1-12 timeline provides the added opportunity of allowing them to carry their story forward, in a sense using their personal educational narrative as a basis for thinking about how their own story can grow or change in the coming years.
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