Write Right? Oh the Joy of Homonyms

Is there such a thing a writicide?

After reading "The English Teacher's Red Pen: History of an Obsession," I would say Zemelman and Daniels would agree that writicide does exist. For instance, how many middle school and/or high school students write for fun? Probably not too many right? This is because English teachers have lowered students' confident. I can't blame students are not wanting to write - who would like to be told they are not good enough? The famous red pen has placed this crime in our hands now. The trouble is though, we evaluate students extremely different than other subject teachers. For example, when I was in high school I hardly did any writing in my science classes. We did lab reports, but we were not graded on the same criteria which we were in English class. Instead, science teachers searched for our understanding of the lab and the results we were able to obtain. They were measuring what we learned from the activity, not what we had previously known. Do I think there should be more writing in other subjects? Yes, of course! This would limit the expectation that English teachers have placed on their shoulders, so instead of spending their entire weekend fixing grammar mistakes, they can concentrate on content, organization, and focus. It is sad that "our obsession with perfection in mechanics" actually causes us to lose "fundamental aspects of composing [like] content and clarity." I hope in my classroom to focus on focus...meaning I don't want to weigh the papers heavily on conventions. Yes, I'll be frustrated when I see reoccurring mistakes in a paper, but I will only mention the mistake twice. If a student lack focus that is a much bigger problem than misspelling a word.

In my classroom, I want to take the same approach as the piano teacher. Like her, I want to read the paper and not stop every sentence to fix mechanics. We would never have great music if we stopped musicians when they made one mistake! Also, if possible I would like students to meet with me to talk about one problem I may have found in their paper. I would be curious to see what problem they would say they have when writing as well. I will emphasize to my students that writing is a process and grammar will improve as they continue to write. If they need further help with conventions/mechanics, I will help them too. As Smagorinsky reccomended, I would like to instead incorporate grammar alongside reading and writing activities (165). Another reason I would employ conventions alongside other activites is because I don't want to bore my students. My middle school Coop uses this method, so it is nice to actually see it in action too. Student don't want to learn about grammar, instead they want to talk about things they interest them. I find my Coop's daily journal entries way more helpful than an entire period spent on grammar.

So, to reflect- there is not a right way to write. I think is it sad that English teachers are expected to evaluation students as if they are polished adult writers. Also, there is not a right way to evaluate writing either. It really depends what you as a teacher appreciate in student writing. I would definitely say that I appreciate a well-developed clear paper with a few convention mistakes rather than a flawless paper with no content or direction. Writing should not be about being "right," it should be about how you express yourself. This is a message I will pass on to my students. I would, however, be tougher on student writing towards the end of the year because I would have expected students to have improved their writing conventions.

Side Note: My friend, who is a freshman in college this year, sent me a paper to look over. He asked me to give suggestions on how he could improve his paper. I have not read over the paper yet, but I would be interested in bringing it in to class to show everyone. We could compare it to the WFYIS paper we read in class. The reason I find this paper interesting is because he is a friend of mine from China. He is attending Chinese University of Hong Kong and his classes are taught in English. His conventions therefore are not up to par, but I think his focus his there...so how would you evaluate it? After reading these sections on writing evaluation, I think I have a better idea of how I will approach his paper.

Text Satellite

My Prezi!

The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton became my central text because it is a Bildungsroman. I wanted to have a text which focused on the coming-of-age theme so my students could relate to the text on a deeper level.

These are themes I found important in this novel:

• Isolation (being an outsider)
• Violence
• Hope
• Friendship/Love
• Loss
• Right Vs. Wrong
• Hope
• Discovery

One of the first connections I made to The Outsiders is to Jane Elliot's "Blue Eyes Vs. Brown Eyes" experiment. I used the YouTube video of her actual experiment. My purpose of including this media is to show students how we create isolationism in society. This specific example would should how racism serves as a vehicle. Next, Romeo and Juliet is a tragic play which highly reflects violence amongst others. The Montagues and Capulets have a fight scene in the play which I would like to focus on and how their rival prohibits Romeo and Juliet's love affair. I figured also students would enjoy watching the actual scene because it provides a better understanding of Shakespeare's work.  From there, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants serves as the complete opposite. It is mainly about the friendship of 4 best friends as they leave high school and attend college. This is an ideal novel because it relates the to relationships of the main characters in The Outsiders. Furthermore, Tuesdays With Morrie is documentation of an author coping with the slow death of his friend (an old professor). This relates again to the relationship of the main characters in The Outsider because the characters experience the loss of their friend Johnny.  Since I am such a Robert Frost fan, I had to include a piece of his poetry! Nothing Gold Can Stay fits perfectly into the themes because it is actually a poem used in the central novel. It demonstrates that someday there will be an end to all good things (which relates to loss). There are many quotes included in my text satellite as well. The quotes touch on friendship and hope-all of which I think are cute alternate texts. They help mimic the importance of the themes I have chosen to study. "Some Nights" and "Gone with the Wind Theme" were chosen because both songs relates to the central text. "Some Nights" is a song about a person struggling to understand the world. Through life we begin to ask more questions and through experience we discover the answer. Also, "Gone with the Wind Theme" song is an instrumental piece based on the novel Gone with the Wind. This is the book Johnny was reading in The Outsiders. My decision to add this to the text satellite was because it would give a little insight of what kind of story Johnny was reading. The actual novel would be a good secondary source too. The music and the novel Gone with the Wind give us as readers a better understanding of Johnny as a character. The last two texts I thought would be a nice connection were American Born Chinese and The Scarlett Letter. The Scarlett Letter embodies themes of isolation and right vs. wrong. American Born Chinese deals with an American Born Chinese student who feels he is an outsider because he is unsure of his ultimate identity. Also, his fellow classmates can only seem to focus on his Chinese heritage and make fun of him.