Candid Beauty

No Child Left Behind

noreply@blogspirit.com (DJ) — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 17:15:00 -0400

“No Child Left Behind.” Wow. In some ways I’ve been an informed Bush critic. In others I’ve just assumed everything he does is dim-witted because he stresses all the wrong syllables in his speeches. As far as NCLB I always just took people word that it was wrong (all the time making occasional snide remark about it in conversation while knowing nothing about it). As mentioned in a previous blog, one the speeches I went to at the Bright Ideas Conference was about standing up to harmful interference, specifically NCLB, but did not go into detail about why it’s harmful. At the conference I gained some specifics, like how it unfairly measure attendance and base funding on it, but I didn’t feel like I got the big picture. I really feel like Nancy Patterson cleared that up.
I know this is an over simplification, but here it goes. Standardized testing is not an accurate test of anything, it’s most often bias, can be racist, and seems to be a better measurement of parent’s wealth than student achievement. NCLB forces schools to give lots of standardized tests. It costs lots of money to schools who don’t have cash to burn, it penalizes schools that need the most help, rewards those that don’t need it and pretty much keeps the status quo.
I also found it helpful to learn the history of standardized testing. I had no idea it started as early as the first World War. I can definitely see how test like these first appeared logical and extremely helpful. I am an extremely open person, in that I’ll hear almost anybody out on any subject. I think to not be this way you’re endanger of becoming complacent in what you already know. Unfortunately what comes along with this characteristic is being easily persuades, especially by those smarter than myself. My point is I have sympathy for all of those who have taken part in standardized testing, but isn’t it close to common sense that it’s not working? I don’t want to get the paranoid conspiracy theorist going in me, but at least some have to know of NCLB’s negative impact, but are going forward with it because serves their interests.
Speaking of conspiracy theories it really got me going when Nancy spoke about that textbook company (I can’t believe I forgot the name), the owners influential position to the government, how much they stand to gain from NCLB (because they produce standardized tests as well as textbooks), and the fact that the Bush’s and his (the owner of the textbook company) family own a island off the coast of Florida together. How can this pass as acceptable in a government that is supposed to be conscious of and discourage conflicts of interest. It’s like every friend of the Executive branch of the government has their hands in the cookie jar (cough..Haliburton). Well I suppose I’ve ranted for long enough.
I really enjoyed Nancy’s presentation, and I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to be educated on the subject by her. If you’re interested in the topic of the last previous paragraph click on the link below.

Conflict of Interests

Grammar

noreply@blogspirit.com (DJ) — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 11:03:35 -0400

Grammar is such a touchy subject; it’s bizarre really. It’s funny, and actually quite revealing, that Weaver touched on some people linking grammar with religion. I would never have made the connection myself, but some people do have an almost blind faith in how grammar should be taught separate within itself. And to be quit frank, some people I’ve encountered seem to have a misguided and even disturbing motive for wanting to teach children grammar the traditional way.
This motive is that it’s a right of passage, and, “If I did it, they should have to do it.” What’s even more disturbing is at times, perhaps because of mob mentality or perhaps just because it’s an easy frame of mind to slip into, I’ve had the same time of sentiments. While the children are completing worksheets on prepositions we might as well make them run a gauntlet where they’re buttocks are assaulted with wooden, and cap it off with forcing them to swallow goldfish they mislabel a pronoun. All jokes aside though, I think this perverse logic passing something on solely because those before went through it, has no place in education.
But, with that rant being ranted, I do agree with Weaver in that some ground work should be done, if not just to introduce the concept of grammar to children. But after that I am in complete agreement that teaching grammar should be in the context of writing. Two things specifically jumped out at me from Weaver’s article. The first was about writing complete sentences in response to test questions. I remember clearly when being taught this in fourth grade. Well, clearly may be an overstatement. I do remember getting a science test back, and although all of my answers were correct I didn’t receive full credit because my answers weren’t given in a full sentence. The teacher was very frustrated with some of us; apparently we’d gone through this in class quite a few times. But she collected herself without inflicting any harm upon us, and calmly went through the lesson again. For some reason it clicked that time. From that point on whenever a test said, “Please answer the questions in full sentences,” I obliged. This is why I read about the process being slow and different for each child, it really hit home.
The second thing that jumped out was about min-lessons relating to writing that students have done, or are doing. I remember doing this in a high school English class. I also remember these lessons finally solidifying that most punctuation goes inside quotation marks. This grammatical victory is relatively small, but I cannot recall one straight-up grammar lesson in which an applicable grammatical lesson has stuck with me to this day.
To briefly comment on Romano’s article, I really enjoyed it. I think teaching kids to bend/break the rules in order to fully express themselves is a valuable lesson. But unfortunately this is not a perfect world, and we’re not all as respected well known as Romano. If constrained to creative writing, and if the point was made very clear that Grammar B was not to leak over into essays or academic writing, it could be very beneficial. It’s disturbing, because I may be more old fashion than I’d care to admit, because it teaching Grammar B does make me a little nervous.
Last year I taught English as a Foreign Language in Spain, and in preparation took a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certification class. Weaver article said many people actually learn grammatical structure while learning a foreign language. I think it may be helpful, and it was certainly helpful for me, to look at some grammatical lessons made for people learning English as a second language. If you’re interested in doing this, check out the sight below. It’s a sight I used to make lesson plans when I was abroad.

Dave’s ESL Cafe

How do you Grade a Paper Fairly?

noreply@blogspirit.com (DJ) — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 11:14:49 -0400

I’ve never actually graded a paper before. I’ve proof read many papers, but this was completely different. Some questions arose while doing it, but not all straightforward. I have another teacher who told our class that all grading is subjective. He claims even math is. Who said 90-100 should be an A? Why should it be a four point scale? I think the idea of grading being subjective couldn’t ring any truer than in grading writing.
OK, first with the straight forward questions. I know there is a standard format, as far as markings, for proof reading papers, but I’m not sure what it is. Is this standard just for uniformity’s sake? Was it proclaimed the standard just because everybody started doing it, or was it decided to be the most efficient or best way to do by some official group of scholars?
Second, should everything wrong with the paper be marked, or as a proof reader and grader should I pick and choose my battles. On one hand I can see marking every mistake or suggestion as being intimidating or demoralizing to the student. But I could also imagine a student making the same mistakes repeatedly if they are not marked, and also complaining if the same mistake is marked on one paper, but not a previous one.
The next is about giving the final grade. Should grades be relative to each other? In other words, should there be an unspoken curve. The professor who shared his views on grading being subjective also told us writing was graded relative to other writing being graded at the same time. He said it may not be done intentionally or even consciously, but it is done none the less. If this is already happening should you accept it, maybe let it be known? Or is this unfair? Should a conscious effort be put forth to not do it, or will that compensation become over compensation, and muddy the whole process? To keep from doing it should a strict rubric from grading be followed for every paper? Or will this stunt creativity?
Lastly I question how to grammar and structure with content, effort and passion. All seem important, but can they compensate for each other. Should a bland and generally inspirited paper with excellent structure and grammar receive a high mark. And oppositely should a highly passionate paper, ridled with grammatical errors, that’s poorly organized (sort of like this blog entry), receive a low mark?
I know most of these questions I’ll have to answer myself; and many are essentially rhetorical. But if anyone reading this has any answers or suggestions, please put them in a response. I know someone has a great website they’d like to share with me. As far a websites, here’s a decent one I found.

Establishing Standards and Criteria

Multigenre Writing Secion Tres

noreply@blogspirit.com (DJ) — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 15:10:00 -0500

It may just be my mood, but I didn’t find the last third of this book as engaging as the first two thirds. That being said though, I think chapter 18 is not just important for multigenre writing, but writing in general. “Indelible Moments, Central Acts, Crucial Things, and Meaningful Places” really describes what writing is all about. I’ve had many teachers who meant well, but gave out the uninspiring assignment “write about something that changed your life.” I’m sure they even went past this and tried to give some examples, yet they were probably generic like, “When you see a kitten bathing in sunlight” or “When your grandfather sat you on his lap and gave you a Werther’s Original candy.” I have two points I want to make about this. As I’ve already mentioned I think these moments in life are what everything’s about. They’re not just memories, although many of them are, and memories are indescribably important. These moments are times when all the elements, especially those that are inexplicable, come together and a person becomes saturated with pure emotion. They can be when the love of your life expresses their reciprocal feelings, or when you’re driving to work listening to music. They’re proof that there is a layer to this life that will never be understood, only felt. Accurately portraying theses through any form of art, to me, is the highest and purest form of expression. Every person has these, whether their emotion is happiness, despair, indifference, or disillusionment. If students can identify and be helped to truthfully write about these moments, or the feelings they produce, a great accomplishment will be reached by all. But there is where the problem lies. Although I believe everyone has these moments, not everyone is conscious enough to identify them. The most important thing for a teacher to do is explain them thoroughly through sincere, not watered down examples, examples of these moments accurately expressed through art (perhaps in a popular song, movie, etc. the students might recognize) and in extensive verbal explanation.
One of the last things in the book talks about giving students a kind of survey about their experience with the multigenre assignment. I strongly agree getting student’s feedback is crucial grading the students, and in improving the assignment. But I’m not sure writing answers to questions will get truthful answers. I’ve been trying to come up with something that might solicit a more honest answer, but as of now nothing’s come to mind. If anyone has any suggestions when reading this, please include them in your comments.
I’m at a bit of loss as of what kind of link to leave on this page. So I’m just going to put one for a page that has different opinions on No Child Left Behind. Enjoy.

Opinions on NCLB

Multigenre Writing Part Deux

noreply@blogspirit.com (DJ) — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 13:26:56 -0500

This set of chapters was full of very diverse ideas and topics. I actually started with nine, although I think we were supposed to end with nine last week. Chapter nine did two things for me. Jeff’s multigenre piece was fun, and the back story on it and Stephanie’s student teaching experience was inspiring. But an unexpected side effect of reading about the Allosauras reinforced my desire to teach highschoolers, specifically upperclassmen. Perhaps it’s the quality of writing, the ability to look inward a bit more or in this case the maturity of the voice. I’ve always known I wanted to teach high school English, but never really knew why. It sounds really odd, but his chapter set off a sequence of thoughts that gave me a pretty good explanation. My junior and senior years in high school are when I really started to see literature and writing the way I do now. I’m sure that’s not the case for everyone, which makes me question whether it’s a good reason. Well good reason or not, I still have the strong feeling that’s where I belong. How’s that for nonsensical gibberish?
Chapter 10 addresses an extremely important topic. Secondary English teachers are not going to be teaching a classroom full of themselves. Not everyone’s going to major in English, or even cares for the subject. I would guess this a major problem within the profession: Many high school English teachers should be teaching creative writing in college. Although there will be those extraordinary “tie-dyed future artist” students whom we want to cradle and nurture, our responsibility lie in developing the skills and abilities of every student. I agree with Romano in that multigenre assignments may be difficult for students who like a lot of structure, but on the other hand I think “uptight future engineer” students may also have an easier time with multigenre writing. For example a math equation or blue prints could be possible pieces within multigenre writing, could they not? Once the open endedness of the assignment could be shown to be an asset to their personality type, I think any student could run with it.
Chapter 16 was another that jumped out at me. In fact it gave me the idea in the previous paragraph for more left brain students to “branch off” into subjects that better fit their interests and way of thinking. The possibilities really are endless. An idea that came to me while reading about the pianist who assembled her writing as a program, was that audio and video could be brought in. Many student’s thrive on different types of technology. A recorded conversation, song, or just sounds may be a powerful addition to multigenre project.
Below I’ve included a link to page that some students at MSU made. It walks students through the multigenre process. It has links to examples of different types of genres and a bunch of other stuff. Pretty cool, you should check it out.

The link I was talking about in the last paragraph

"Bright Ideas" Spring Conference on the English Language Arts

noreply@blogspirit.com (DJ) — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 01:21:31 -0500

Despite coming off a 14 hour work day, a first round NCAA MSU loss and 4 hours of sleep, I really enjoyed the Bright Ideas Conference. I’m an MSU alum, so I also took great pleasure in walking the campus again. Never having been to something like this, I thought it might be a bunch of accomplished people tooting their own horns. I was very happy to find out it wasn’t. From what I gathered, which was only from two sessions plus the keynote speaker, the conference was made up of people who passionately cared about teaching English, and who wanted to share what they thought could positively impact others’ teaching. As I mentioned, I saw the keynote speaker, Ernest Morrell. I also went to a session about teaching social justice that was spearheaded by Dan Baker and Shannon Dannison. And lastly I was a host for Les Burns who talked about asserting professional authority.
Entering the keynote address I was less than enthusiastic. The coffee must have mistakenly been decaf because it wasn’t working. But Ernest Morrell almost immediately captured my attention. His personal story was inspiring, and his ideas for bringing popular culture into the classroom weren’t too bad either. Morrell followed along the same lines of Christensen in that many of the skills he was trying to develop in his students were critical in nature. Although his entire presentation was memorable, two things stick out in my mind. The first is his assignment to compare a classical piece of literature and the lyrics of a hip hop song. The idea has occurred to use contemporary or popular music in the classroom, but never to draw parallels between classic literature and modern musical lyrics. The fact that this can enable students to appreciate classics they would usually never give a chance, and show them poetry isn’t only written by dead white guys is exciting. The other thing that sticks out in my mind was Morrell’s comment about questioning censorship. I’m one to fight gratuitous or meaningless explicit material, but I think it’s extremely important to point out that things parents try to diligently shield their children from in popular mass media and music, (drugs, sex, violence), they’re only too happy expose them to in Shakespeare or Romantic poetry. Morrell definitely shared some things that will resonate in me.
The first session I went to, Beyond the Literacy Canon, was basically about incorporating Critical Pedagogy into teaching. There were a couple good practical ideas shared, but honestly I didn’t think this was presented (at least in comparison). An idea that has continued to echo is to show texts that show two different perspectives on the same topic. For example reading Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing,” which show America in quit a idealistic light, and then reading Langston Hughes “I, Too” which is a kind of parody, or response to Whitman’s poem. I like exercises like this that demonstrate two different perspectives vs. telling children, “There are more ways to look at things than one.” The idea for this session was definitely their, but unfortunately the presentation lacked.
The last session attended I had the pleasure of being the host. I was able to meet and talk a bit with the presenter, Les Burns. His speech was about teachers taking control of their own jobs. Much of the talk was devoted to the inadequacies of No Child Left Behind, but this was only to demonstrate that teachers need to do something about things that are harmful to the effectiveness of their teacher, and their profession. Burns’ speech and the discussion that followed were really engaging. More than anything it made me realize how uninformed I am, and that before I can take an active part in this strive for change I need to know what I’m talking about. So I’ve decided when I have a spare moment (after this semester) that I’m going to research NCLB (No Child Left Behind) and become a student member of NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English). If you are interested the links below will take you to the Michigan Department of Education website, where you can read about NCLB, and NCTE’s site where you can sign up to become a student member.

Michigan Department of Education

NCTE

Multigenre Writing Part 1

noreply@blogspirit.com (DJ) — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 15:55:00 -0500

Before this book I had never heard of multigenre writing. But even now as I write this my word processor doesn’t recognize multigenre as a word, so I don’t feel that bad. Three Things jumped out at me as I read the first nine chapters of Blending Genres, Altering Style. The first was I had a nostalgic feeling from reading the first example. As I said I’ve never been exposed to multigenre writing, at least to my knowledge, but it had some quality that made me feel as if I had. Second was one of the shaded in boxes with teacher’s comments. It talked about how much she enjoyed reading multigenre papers, vs. student’s other work. And third, how sincerity and experience with the topic is absolutely necessary for most multigenre writing to work.
While reading “Cosmetic Clips” I was thinking to myself, “This is supposed to be some new, crazy way of writing, but I seem to be absorbing it so naturally.” When I think of new genres of art I picture something trying to be too artistic, like a black and white film narrated and shot by the perspective of a transvestite candy wrapper. Done right, these read like an effortless and authentic piece of writing. Not only does the whole measure up to more than the sum of the pieces, but each individual piece compliments, and adds depth to every other piece.
Multigenre writing is a fulfilling and constructive exercise for students, but advantages exist for teachers too. As Sue Amendt said in Chapter one multigenre papers are much more enjoyable to read than traditional research papers. I could relate for two reasons. One, I immediately enjoyed reading these. Two, much of what I’ve written in my academic career, although well done and crucial to my development as a writer, has been bull*#!@. Voice carries through in these pieces, but one crucial element is needed.
A multigenre paper must be have the honesty and sincerity and that can only come from experience and knowledge of the writer. It’s stated in the text, and demonstrated in class. Trying to take on a topic that’s not a part of the writer will be distant, and maybe confusing. The piece we looked at in class, which eventually was found to be about loneliness, was clearly a valiant effort, but did not have a coherent message. But I may be a bias observer considering I’m a pro-choice, borderline agnostic.
I quite enjoyed this reading; even more so after the examples and discussion in class. If and when I become an English teacher a multigenre paper will definitely be part of my curriculum. I’ve included a link below that will take you to a site where Tom Romano takes you through writing workshop. Although there’s not much about multigenre writing, it still gives some very good teacher advice. It also has audio clips of Romano, which for me, were nice for putting a voice to the writing in our book.

Romano_Link