Tech AI: Tuesday, June 16

We just read a report from the National Council of Teachers of English, and we are supposed to be thinking about “21st Century Literacy,” what we read and where we are going.

It reminded me of a talk I had with Justin’s teachers on the bus ride home after a field trip. They were talking about the amount of writing the fourth graders do, and they said the amount is much higher than it was just five years ago. Most of all, the teachers wanted to know what I was seeing in students coming to college. Were they ready to write?

In my mind, students are more aware of writing than ever before. They write more, but they don’t always recognize what they do is writing (blogging, texting, e-mailing). The way they write may enforce some bad habits (like spelling and shorthand), but it also gives them a lot of experience (even experience they may not realize) about writing for an audience. They’ve accidentally sent e-mail to the wrong person or written something and pressed “send” when still angry.

But I think students know more about writing than they realize. They need some help putting what they know into a framework, and I think this is what is already happening for those younger kids — the one’s Justin’s teachers were talking about.

When I grew up, English was a mystery. I was told to write something, and I did. It was graded, and it was over. I didn’t do a lot of thinking about it. I was often given very specific steps to accomplish, but I never thought about asking why. I remember this most when I was in a class where I had to write a research paper. The teacher was R.J., and I never really liked R.J. He wanted us to use index cards. We had to write a single fact on each index card, and we had to turn in something like 25 index cards.

R.J. never told us what to DO with the cards. He didn’t tell us how to search through the cards or organize the cards, or use the cards to create an outline and eventually our paper. He just wanted 25 cards. I did it, and I was too dumb back then to know to ask “why?” I remember the paper we wrote in that class was long. Some kids claimed they put sentences in the middle of their paper like, “RJ, if you read this, tell me, and I’ll give you $20.” RJ never said anything, the kid claimed. I never actually saw the phrase in the middle of the paper, but they said it was there. This was back when you really typed your paper and had to use white-out to fix your mistakes (the mid to late 1980s).

Last year, my middle daughter had to write a paper. Her teacher required she use index cards. Why? I still didn’t ask the teacher, although I did mutter to my daughter about it. In fact, my daughter actually lost 25 or 50 points because she didn’t bring her index cards in on time. (They were a day late.) I did ask the teacher about that, and I just gave up. I don’t know if this teacher did the things RJ didn’t — helped the kids organize and utilize the cards to create the paper. I just know that for my daughter, it was just like it was for me 20 some years ago — it didn’t matter what I wrote on the cards or why I was writing on the cards. My focus and my daughter’s focus was just finding 25 things to put on the damn cards and be done with it.

But that was the past, and I am trying to figure out what teaching English composition (and teaching research writing) looks like in the 21st Century. As I was reading the article from NCTE, I started thinking about conversations I wanted to start with my students in the beginning of the class. I even opened a document and wrote some of them down. Here they are:

National Day on Writing – October 20 – add into syllabus.
Define writer.
How much writing do you do each day?
When you write, do you have any special requirements?
Where do you write?
Do you write more or less than your parents did when they were your age?
Which class did you write the most in?
What type of writing did you do in that class?
Do you enjoy writing?
What is one of your strengths as a writer?
What is one of your weaknesses as a writer?
What writing counts?

I have more to say about this, but I am out of time.