Writers as Reflective Practitioners

This week our Faculty Learning Community focused on the Morehead Writing Project met and we talked about our top priority for our writing classrooms and because many of us are also engaged in mentoring instructors and tutors we also talked about our primary goal for those writing instructors and tutors. It was a lively and interesting conversation, but what really struck me is that ultimately all our answers could be boiled down to one simple response: reflective practice.

The concept of reflective practice is to engage in continuous learning. Engaging in reflective practice requires an inherent belief that we are never done learning and growing. Reflective practice requires that we learn from experience rather than teaching or knowledge transfer.

The teacher as reflective practitioner is an important part of our work with the National Writing Project. We encourage the teachers we work with to continually reflect on what is happening in their classrooms to think about what is working and what is not as well as why. It is that reflection upon the why that is key to this practice of growth and development.

In recent years I have incorporated reflective practice into my work with writers as well as teachers. Writers learn and grow by writing but also by reflecting on their past experience, both challenges and successes. What were their goals? What did they do to achieve those goals? What worked? What did not? Understanding the answers to these questions can help writers adapt their practice to future situations and better position them to make better choices.

My goal is always to make my students into writers, but more important, to make them into self-regulating writers. Reflective practice is essential to this transformation into self-regulating writer. With reflection, with a recognition and practice of continually reflecting on the lessons offered by each experience, writers can continue to learn and grow long after they leave the writing classroom and hopefully throughout the rest of their lives. That is my goal for my students and I am continually refining my pedagogical strategies to achieve this goal.

This blog is my own struggle to be a reflective practitioner. I hope that others benefit from my posts, but ultimately I know I am the primary beneficiary as I record my achievements, defeats, struggles, and progress. Do you engage in reflective practice? Do your students?

The Walking Dead in my writing classroom

http://themetapicture.com/ways-to-become-a-zombie/

Or,

How to kill those zombie students before campus is overrun

Yes, I am talking about the comic book and TV series, but in some ways this is also an apt description of the level of engagement most of my students bring to Eng 200 or Writing II. We have a two course general education writing sequence at my institution – Writing I and Writing II. Writing I is the typical freshmen writing class that has been around for decades and similar to offerings on other campuses around the United States. Writing II is a different animal entirely. It is rather like the platypus in that no one really knows what it is. Is it a bird or a reptile or a mammal? I plagued my co-workers when I started at MSU to help me identify the species of Writing II but much like the blind men describing the elephant I could not get the big picture based on their individual responses. During my decade at this institution, the course has gone through two revisions and yet we still grapple with it. The other day I had a conversation with a new hire that echoed my own struggle to come to terms with the class more than 10 years ago. And much like colleagues then (and now) all I can do is share my own interpretation of the class and wish him the best of luck.

The most current version, born of frustration, is a compromise and no one is entirely happy with it. The concept itself is OK in that we explore humanity’s “big ideas” through reading and writing, but the actual execution is somewhat lacking. While some instructors are offering some interesting versions and some students are doing some interesting work within the framework, the hallway conversations frequently confess that overall the class is not accomplishing its primary goal (improving student writing). Worse, faculty and student engagement in the class is low. Many instructors dread teaching it and students dread taking it.

However, this week after engaging in an animated discussion about my current obsession with The WalkingDead (shared by many of my friends and family and millions of others), I had a bit of a brainstorm. What if I could have my students explore those “big ideas” not just as they are found in these important cultural readings (mostly by long dead people who are not going to reanimate) but also as they are explored in popular culture – specifically comic books. Now, I am not a comic book scholar but as the mother of an 11-year-old boy I have spent quite a bit of time in recent years becoming conversant in comic book heroes and viewing my share of comic book heroes brought to life (via the magic of movies not a zombie virus). After all, our comic book heroes (and villains) are grappling with the same issues that drive the philosophers we are studying in our reader – good vs. evil, the needs of the individual vs. society, and defining/defending humanity (literally and figuratively), and so on.

I think this class can be a lot of fun and I can’t wait to get started. I am sure there are many of you out there who have are already doing something similar (in fact I can name some friends that I’m almost sure are doing so). Probably that is where my idea came from after percolating in my brain. I hope you’ll share your thoughts and suggestions with me.

Measuring growth and change in our Writing Studio

This semester our National Writing Project site, the Morehead Writing Project, embarked on a new adventure. We created a Writing Studio by drafting five English Education students to serve as Peer Writers, or writing tutors, and provided support in the form of a learning community. In our pilot semester we worked with three developmental writing classes. At our institution students who score between 14 and 17 on the ACT are placed in these classes. Morehead State University offered 14 sections of this class during the Fall semester so we worked with just over 20% of the developmental writing students enrolled in English 099.

While we will not be able to determine the impact of our pilot program on retention and success until the semester is over, I am giddy about the results we have already determined. I know for the powers-that-be the ultimate success will be judged by how many students stay in school to complete a degree, but we expect to see that our three sections will have higher retention for the semester as well as a higher degree of success (earning a C or better) than other sections both for this semester and historically. How much higher we cannot know until December, but the results of a recent survey administered to the developmental students working with the Writing Studio demonstrates to me that we have had an impact in important ways.

Change

Many developmental writing students come into the class with a negative attitude – toward writing in general, their writing in specific, and the very idea of taking this writing class. They do not want to take this class and resist the idea that they can learn to be a better writer based on their previous experience. They also come in lacking confidence in their ability to write. This trifecta of doom – a negative attitude toward writing, low confidence, and lack of ability – creates a cycle of failure that can prevent students from achieving success in college and their profession. Our goal for the Writing Studio is to break that cycle of failure.

We think we have succeeded with a number of our students as 63% of the students in our pilot study reported a change in one or more areas of attitude, confidence, or competence and another 16% reported a small change in one or more areas. We are so excited to see the students’ self-awareness increase and even more important to see that they have grown as a result of our work together. We think this is a very big deal because we know as experienced developmental writing teachers that attitude has to change before anything else can change. If students don’t believe in their own ability to change then they won’t change their behaviors or thinking. However, discovering how they have grown is even more exciting for us.

According to our survey results, 55% percent of the students reported that they now like or love writing and another 39% indicated they neither like nor dislike it. Overall, 94% do not dislike writing after working with the Writing Studio for 10 weeks. It is human nature to spend less time on an activity that you dislike and so this change in attitude will play an important role in the students’ future success. We doubt that we can make every student love writing, but believe this move away from the hate and dislike of writing is important.

Low confidence is widespread in developmental writing. Most students were apprehensive during their middle and high school careers and then placement into a developmental writing class only confirmed their existing belief. However, at the end of the Writing Studio, 37% of our students reported that they were confident about their writing ability and 44% reported that they were neither confident nor apprehensive with a total of 81% indicating that they were not apprehensive about writing. Over and over again, students noted on their surveys that they were “more confident” than at the beginning of the class. Studies have shown that students with high writing apprehension are less likely to spend much time writing and persevere through difficult writing assignments, so improving student writing confidence can also be important to their future success.

Previous experience has taught these students that they are not good writers, but they also reported that this changed as a result of their participation in the Writing Studio. When asked to rate their ability to “write a well-organized and sequenced paper with good introduction, body, and conclusion,” 37% believed they could write a good or great paper and another 53% indicated that they could do OK which indicates that 91% of the students could demonstrate competence. Our hope is that we have given these students tools that will help them continue to develop their competence as well as confidence.

Growth

We have seen evidence of many changes in behavior and thinking that indicate our students are becoming writers and developing an understanding of how writers think and act. Perhaps most telling is the simple fact that they named  extra feedback as the number one benefit of the Writing Studio. Students reported enjoying the small group work and peer feedback as well as feedback they received from the instructor and peer writers. Several students indicated that this feedback was key to their growth as writers and that writers need feedback to learn and improve.

Every studio participant who completed a survey said that we should continue the program. Many simply argued that it was helpful, but those who offered more specific explanations described the small groups and opportunity for one-on-one feedback and support as key benefits.

We need to wait until the end of the semester before we determine how many of our students succeeded this semester using the simple measuring stick of grades, but for now I am more than satisfied with the results of our work. The students who worked with our Writing Studio have described changes in their attitude toward writing, their writing confidence, and their writing ability. That is success in my book. Only time will tell if we have truly broken the cycle of defeat that has plagued so many of these students in the past, but I am full of hope.

Why doesn’t the teaching of writing matter?

Or, How I would fix education if I had any power

I spent Saturday celebrating the very essence of the National Writing Project at the Morehead Writing Project’s 2012 Writing Eastern Kentucky Conference. The NWP mission is to foster the teaching of writing and central to that mission is the belief that teachers who write are better writing teachers. Our annual conference revels in both ideas: Teacher as Writer and Teacher as Reflective Practitioner. Also, in true NWP fashion, we bring together educators from K-16 in a variety of content areas and roles. We cross boundaries and make connections in ways that celebrate and facilitate learning – our own learning as well as for our students. Words cannot express how proud I am of the teachers I work with from the Peer Writers who run our Writing Studio to the 2012 Summer Institute Fellows to the Morehead State University faculty who led sessions and participated in every sense of the word. It was an amazing day filled with wonderful words and people.

But now that my feet have recovered (mostly) from running up and down three flights of stairs many times every hour and my Saturday buzz has faded, I have to wonder. Why don’t more educators get involved in the writing project? Why don’t more educators attend writing project events? Why don’t educators want to be better teachers of writers?

Don’t give me the “too busy” excuse. We are all busy. Every one of the educators at our conference on Saturday is too busy. We make time for the things that matter. I suppose that makes the real question – why doesn’t the teaching of writing matter? We all know it does. We know that writing (and the interconnected ideas of reading and thinking) is the most important subject we teach. Without writing (and reading and thinking) our students will not be able to demonstrate what they have learned (filling in bubbles does not demonstrate learning) or effectively communicate in school, on the job, or in the world. Writing can and does change the world every day and if we do not adequately prepare our students to be effective writers then we have damaged, if not destroyed, not only their future but our own.

Sure our leaders pay lip service to the idea that writing is important. Surveys of government, corporate, and education leadership always give writing top billing and yet…  One of my colleagues recently pointed out a fact that I had heard before but hadn’t really understood. If you want to know what is important just follow the money. In K-12 we see the emphasis given to on-demand writing (short essays). Our writing project site receives a continual stream of requests for quick fix professional development sessions on this topic. We never receive requests for help transforming their students into writers. K-12 teachers with writing project training often find it an uphill battle to implement writing workshop and assign writing that does not have a direct correlation to test preparation even though research shows that the students of writing project participants show more writing gains.

And do not even get me started regarding the financial support for my beloved National Writing Project. For 20 years we were a national program with bipartisan support but that all changed in 2011 when we lost our direct federal funding. Here in Kentucky we are fortunate because we continue to receive support from the Kentucky Department of Education but in recent years even that funding has shrunk by 1/3.

In higher education, there is lip service again to the importance of writing. Most campuses require some introductory writing classes and many also emphasize writing across the curriculum or writing-intensive classes as well. Yet, the actual administrative support for the teaching of writing is minimal. The majority of introductory writing classes, or first-year writing, are taught by ill-paid adjunct faculty and graduate students with no job security and often no benefits. Similarly, these programs and their support systems, such as writing centers, are often administered by faculty living on the edge (in terms of respect, remuneration, recognition, tenure, etc.).

In the end, despite the wonderful afterglow of our amazing conference, I continue to despair regarding the future of education and especially the teaching of writing – in Eastern Kentucky and in the United States. We need to put our money and our time on the line if we really want to make our students and teachers into writers.

Wonder what our conference looked like? Check out the 2012 Writing Eastern Kentucky Conference on Storify. Wonder what topics we covered? Check out our conference schedule. Not only did our sessions cover a wide variety of topics specifically designed to support the teaching of writing, but we also featured sessions to help writers and brought in four guest writers to further promote writing including R.D. Hall, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, Annie Jones, and George Eklund.

Make Time To Refresh and Refill

I wasn’t going to blog this week. It is a perfect storm of professional and personal responsibilities. I have an article revision due, a conference to host on Saturday, a slew of student assignments to grade, and it is Halloween. But, if I am honest, every week is filled with similar if different challenges. If I wait until I have the time to blog then I never would and this is true for other choices I make as well.

The Morehead Writing Project is hosting a conference on Saturday (Nov. 3). Writing Eastern Kentucky is a small regional conference but we bring together the best of the writing project for one pretty terrific day. We will celebrate writing and writers by bringing in published authors of poetry, novels, and graphic narratives and we celebrate teaching and teachers by showcasing some of our rock star teacher-leaders and their outstanding classroom practice.

It is going to be a great day full of writing and learning and connecting with ideas and people and it is the perfect antidote to the mid-semester blues. I am hopeful it will give me the energy and excitement I need to power through the rest of the semester and the marathon of grading and feedback that is finals week. I love teaching and working with teachers, but sometimes I get caught up in the daily grind and feel more than a little overwhelmed by the size of my “To Do” list. No matter how much you love your job it is easy to lose the joy when the grading piles up and your email box overflows. It is too easy then to cross nonessential items off your list. That grading has to get done but attending a conference is a luxury we simply can’t afford, we think. How can we spend half our weekend just writing and hanging out with other teachers when we have lessons and lectures to plan?

Now that’s where we are wrong. Spending a day celebrating the work that we love with others who get “it” is not a luxury – especially when the job gets demanding. That is the best time to step off the treadmill to refresh and refill your teaching spirit. As a rule, teachers are givers and rarely feel comfortable taking time for themselves, but if you do not take time to refill your spirit and your energy and your creativity then you might find the well has gone dry. Taking time to refresh and refill yourself as a teacher, as a writer, as a person, is never a waste of time and your students and colleagues will be the better for your renewal as well.

Remember, just like anything else, if you do not make the time to refresh and renew then you will never find it. If you are within driving distance of Eastern Kentucky on Saturday then we hope you choose to join us at Writing Eastern Kentucky. Don’t even worry about finding your writing journal, we’ll provide one for you! Come write with us and come learn with us. You will be the better for it. I promise.

Writing Workshop and the rule of Garbage In, Garbage Out

A letter to my students: 

How can you benefit from our writing workshop?

I know most of you would rather visit the dentist than participate in writing workshop. I understand that you have had painful and often time-wasting experiences with peer review in the past and I cannot promise this won’t be equally awful or worse in different ways. In fact, if you let those past experiences drive the way you participate in this workshop then I can actually promise you this workshop will be awful and useless. That is because the benefits of writing workshop participation are based entirely on one simple rule -- garbage in, garbage out. I am not talking about your actual writing here, but rather the effort and time and energy you put into asking for help and offering it others.

Writers are people too

This is one of the reasons I spent so much time and effort on building community at the beginning of our class. The better you know the others in your writing group then the easier it is to ask for and offer help. It is never an easy thing to share a part of yourself with strangers so try to get to know your classmates and understand the talents and knowledge and skills as well as unique challenges they bring to the group. Also remember, that as humans we are inclined to be lazy. By default we will want to expend the least amount of time and energy possible. Call each other out on this when you spot it. Don’t just let unexplained comments and criticisms hang in the ether. Push for explanations and more details. Question!

Give us some direction

As you know, one of my biggest pet peeves is the plaintive cry for help without asking for anything specific. Simply posting your writing to the workshop and asking for help to make it better does not put us in a position to help you. Help us help you by telling us: What are you still struggling with the most? What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of this piece of writing?  What do you want to know from a reader? This is your chance to get individually-tailored advice to improve your writing – grab it with both hands.

Provide an audience not a proofreader

Perhaps the biggest mistake that many people make during workshop is approaching peer review as a writer. This is especially fatal if you lack confidence in your own writing ability. Your job here is to provide an audience for your fellow writers and give your honest feedback. Whenever you get lost or confused; whenever you are jarred by the text by the writing, ideas, or presentation; and especially whenever you are interested and pleased by the message and/or writing make a note on the text. After your initial reading, provide a gut reaction to the piece on an emotional and intellectual level then provide more detailed explanations regarding the notes you marked throughout the piece. Finally, go back through and offer as much advice and support as possible to offer solutions to the problems and challenges you identify.

I believe strongly in the power of writing workshop. You can learn from real readers and you can learn by being a real reader, but you have to come fully suited up and ready to play. You have to get in the game before you can score. You have to get a little sweaty and play through the pain and discomfort. Do you want to be a better writer? Then do writing workshop like you mean it.

Scared and Scarred No More

Last week I made the argument in “Breaking the Cycle of Defeat” that we need to spend more time in our classrooms attending to the self-beliefs of our students as well as the specific writing lessons we want/need to impart. I contended that if we want to break the cycle of despair and defeat then we must help our students become confident writers so they take more from our classes than scar tissue and a lifelong aversion to writing. This week I want to address the ways that we can help those scared and scarred students become writers. 

We must begin by making our classrooms a safe place to try and to fail. If students are given the chance to participate in low-stakes writing that is offered an audience but not assessment then they are more likely to write – both more often and at greater length. In addition, they will be more willing to experiment and take risks with their writing once they learn that the writing will be not be assessed. Examples of the types of low-stakes writing assignments I use in my own classes include brainstorming activities, reflection journals, and discussion board posts. These writings are shared with the class and receive comments which are focused on the content and not the form of the message.

Writers also need to read. They need to read to inspire and spark new ideas as well as to find models and mentors. Student writers should definitely read professional, polished writing, but they should also read the work of peers – especially pieces not yet polished and still in process. Even better, developing writers should see the early drafts and unpolished pieces of their mentors and teachers. Too often, struggling writers believe they are the only writers who struggle – and worse, they believe that good writing arrives fully formed and polished to other writers. They do not understand the time and work that goes into writing – and telling them is not enough. They need to see it happen and they need to experience it. They need to be led through the process before they will attempt it on their own. In my classes I use writing workshop to guide students through this process. We brainstorm and plan writing together, students share writing in various stages so everyone can see their process and progress, and then we revise and edit their writing together.

However, the most crucial aspect of writing workshop is feedback. Students should receive various types and levels of feedback from a variety of sources. Most important, that feedback should be focused on providing useful, supportive information – not simply negative assessment. During workshop, the idea is to provide feedback to help develop and shape a piece of writing. In addition, student writers should provide feedback to others. Engaging in discussions of writing as writers and with other writers can not only help student writers improve the specific piece they bring to the workshop, but also teach them how writers work and collaborate. My hope is that providing this type of guided feedback will help them learn and grow as writers as well as develop their own writing process which will support that continued growth and development long after they leave my class.

While I hope these steps will help my students become less scared and more hopeful about their progress as writers, I also like to have conversations about the struggles and fears that all writers face no matter how much writing success they may have achieved. In this way, our writing workshop offers support for the improvement of the writer as well as the writing. I understand well, as a result of my own research focused on writing apprehension and writing self-efficacy, how the past can so dominate a writer emotionally that there are actual physical manifestations of that fear. How can we expect a struggling writer to work through something that causes physical and emotional stress without addressing it? That is why we need to have real conversations and share real stories – our own as well as those of our students plus a judicious sprinkling of the stories of more famous writers. I cannot promise that working through these four steps will erase the scars that our student writers bear, but I know thanks to my own research as well as that of Albert Bandura and others that we can reduce writing apprehension and increase writing confidence by attending more closely to our students self-beliefs.

Breaking the cycle of defeat: Transforming students into writers

I teach writing for a living and I direct a National Writing Project site which means I work with both pre-service teachers and practicing teachers to improve their writing pedagogy. As a result I reflect and study a great deal of research and theory concerning the teaching of writing.

But what does it mean to teach writing or, as I like to think of it, to teach writers? Pat Schneider defines a writer as someone who writes and I won’t argue with that definition. I typically begin my semester with a discussion about what it means to be a writer and this is ultimately where we end up. However, even though they accept this definition, many of my students do not really believe they are writers even though they write. How do we make our students believe they are writers or can be? I know most of my students come to me believing that they are not writers and they cannot become writers. Can we change those beliefs? Is it important to change those beliefs?

Schneider describes “not being able to write” as a “learned disability” which is the result of “scar tissue” or a lack of confidence developed in reaction to unhelpful responses to your writing in school and at home. This rings true with the stories that my students tell about their previous experiences with writing. These students have been told through verbal and written comments as well as grades that they are not writers. It seems quite natural to me that they would take that feedback one step further to believe that they cannot become writers. Why does this matter?

Research shows that students with high writing apprehension or the scar tissue that Schneider describes are much less likely to engage in writing activities, are much more likely to give up when faced with writing challenges, and simply do not work at writing and learning to write to the same degree as their more confident peers. Blythe et al argue that for many at-risk students writing failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as students do not work as hard because they already believe they are doomed to failure. It is also possible that this sense of doom and failure has much broader impact as well. Patrick Sullivan writes “Is it possible that the most lasting and significant learning outcome many students take away from English classes is a lifelong aversion to writing?” He argues that at least part of our national education challenges, namely our “college readiness crisis” and “remediation problem,” stem directly from this aversion.

Sullivan’s argument struck a chord that reverberated to the core of my teacher soul and resonates strongly with my own belief that we focus too much on forms and failures in our writing classrooms. I am not arguing that grammar, spelling, punctuation, and proper format are not important – they are – but too many teachers and hence too many students see these as the only measures of good writing. It is possible to master these skills but only through practice – which those scarred and scared students will not even attempt unless we can find a way to break the cycle of defeat.

Among the arguments that Blythe et al make about teaching writing is that more writing instruction is not always the answer for these students – at least not until we have addressed their low self-efficacy. If we do not attend to their self-beliefs and break that cycle of defeat then writing instruction will likely be for naught. White and Bruning posit that without considering beliefs, teachers may view dimensions of writing quality too simply. The authors argue that explicitly addressing beliefs improves opportunities for students who may not have been taught adequate writing skills and lack positive beliefs to support their positive engagement in the writing process. We must spend more time in our classrooms attending to the self-beliefs of our students as well as attending to specific writing lessons if we want to break the cycle of despair and defeat. We must help our students become confident writers or it may well be that the only things they take away from our writing classes are scar tissue and a lifelong aversion to writing.

Are you spending enough time thinking about writing?

My students don’t spend enough time thinking about writing – and probably yours don’t either. I understand why. After all, they have lots of other things on their mind. And to be honest, I sometimes don’t think about writing as much as I should and this is my field of interest, my passion, and the driving force behind my paycheck.

As a writer who spends a lot of time with other writers, I also know that too much thinking about writing can be a bad thing – a dangerous thing. It often leads to the two primary dangers facing writers (well the two leading dangers after avoiding the siren call of Words With Friends) -- spending so much time thinking about what to write or how to write it you actually forget to write. Either rabbit hole can lead to madness and put an immediate end to productivity.

 The truth is that for most of our students too much thinking is not a problem. I want to blame our current education system for this lack of thinking. After all, our obsession with assessment and interminable pushing to teach to the test has created a monstrous education system which offers very little time for simple thinking and reflection. Even worse, there are only penalties and no rewards for encouraging thought and inquiry in the typical K-12 setting. But that is another blog post. I must confess that even though I grew up in a kinder, gentler era of education where there was time and energy devoted to reading, writing, and creativity, and my teachers were not worried about how test scores would impact their job, I did not spend a lot of time thinking about the art and craft of writing. And I KNEW that I wanted to be a writer, so I can only imagine that my classmates spent even less time on it.

I believe that this is a problem, this lack of thinking about writing, we should worry about as writing teachers. Many of my peers want to spend a great deal of time obsessing about the two dangers I mentioned above – the what and the how of writing. In fact, that is what my students obsess about the most as well (hmmm, perhaps there is a relationship there). We spend meetings debating whether to assign a persuasive essay or an analytical essay and, of course, students’ punctuation choices often provoke hilarity, but is that where we should be spending our time and our students’ time?

I don’t want to dismiss the importance of grammatical knowledge or genre awareness, but I believe we will not solve the challenges of either without helping our student writers develop a deeper awareness of writing. Writing is not WHAT we write and it is much more than following formatting, grammar, and spelling rules. We need to help our students think like writers before they can become writers. This concern is one of the primary motivations behind the “writing about writing” movement in composition studies. In WAW-based classes, students read theory and research about writing studies, think and discuss their reading, and then write about these ideas as well as study writing on their own.

While I have moved my own teaching away from a WAW-focus, I still focus a great deal of class time and energy on reflection and discussion about writing because I believe that writers do obsess about what and how as well as why. Writers write but they also think about writing -- and, in particular, they think about their writing. I want my students to become writers and I believe an essential part of that transformation must involve learning to think like a writer which means we must think about writing and how writers think and behave. I do this by leading weekly class discussions on these issues and requiring students spend reflective time each week on these issues as well. Not only do I hope to use these tools to transform my students into writers, but this process also helps me spend more time thinking about writing. Win-Win. Do you spend enough time thinking about writing? Do you spend enough time encouraging your students to think about writing?

Beginning with the writer

Within the past week we have witnessed something exciting in our Writing Studio program. We are seeing our basic writers begin to talk and act like writers. While their first writing assignments were not a dramatic improvement from their initial offerings, what has changed is the way that they prepare to write, the way that they talk about writing, and the way that they support each other as they work on their writing. Even though none of these students is yet prepared to give themselves the title of “writer,” those of us working in the Writing Studio know that by making these moves they have indeed become writers.

Mina Shaughnessy writes in “Errors and Expectations” that the determination of academic inferiority often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy which only increases the gap between that that student and success until it “begins to seem vast and permanent.” This gaping void is typically what basic writers see before them by the time they enter college. They have experienced repeated failure and received so much negative feedback regarding their writing ability it is no wonder that they fear and dread writing and writing classes. It is precisely this fear and dread that concerns me the most – far more than the writing errors they make.

My study of writing self-efficacy, or a writer’s belief in his or her ability to perform the writing task at hand, has shown that those writers with low writing self-efficacy have no expectation that any attempt will meet with success and so they are more likely to give up at the first sign of difficulty and less likely to work through those challenges. Just as Shaughnessy describes, these writers expect to fail and so they fail – again and again. Because they do not continue working they do not learn and grow as writers and the cycle of failure continues. The challenge for basic writing teachers is to break that cycle of repeated failure which only reinforces the writer’s lack of confidence.

Our pilot Writing Studio program is designed to break that cycle by leading our basic writers through the writing process, modeling the conversations that writers have about writing as they develop and revise, and providing practical support and positive reinforcement along the way. These ideas and practices are not new to basic writing classrooms. For decades, most basic writing teachers have known that they must be a combination of coach, cheerleader, and referee to provide a delicate balance of education, encouragement, and rule enforcement. However, the numbers are never in a basic writing teacher’s favor. Even if the basic writing class is small, typically the teacher is teaching multiple sections and simply does not have the time or energy to provide enough individual support. But more than that, due to their low writing self-efficacy and negative past experiences, these students often do not work well in writing groups (the efficient writing teacher’s answer to the numbers problem).

Our solution was to assign peer writers (upper level undergraduates) to each writing group. The peer writers serve as both leader and mentor for the basic writers. The peer writers lead discussions and ask questions to help develop and shape the writing as well as guide the revision process. Our hope was that providing an extra scaffold of support for our basic writers in the form of peer writers who are closer in age and expertise than the instructor would help the basic writers grow and develop as writers. After all, for many basic writers the writing teacher is seen as representing some unattainable goal of expertise. However, a fellow student is not so different from the basic writer and can be seen as offering a more accessible version of writing success.

If we can help these basic writers develop an understanding of the writing process and how successful writers think and work then we believe we have given them the tools to break the cycle of writing failure. Shaughnessy points out that “[w]riting is something writers are always learning to do” and that no writers are ever done learning. There is a limit to how much we can teach any set of writers in just 17 weeks, but if we can change the writer then there is no limit to how much they can learn and grow after they leave our classrooms. We can help them become writers, but that is where we need to begin – with the writer and not the writing.

What does our writing studio program look like?

Last week I wrote about why the Morehead Writing Project is creating a writing studio and this week I want to explain how our studio looks during its pilot. Of course, we do not know what will come of this pilot so the final version could look very different. The Morehead Writing Project Studio is affiliated with the English Department at Morehead State University, but it is a separate program offered by the Morehead Writing Project which makes it different from most other writing studios. Our pilot program focuses on MSU students, but we hope the final version will grow to include K-12 students as well. While most studio programs grow out of a need to serve a student population, ours came from our mission to provide support to teachers of writing. We wanted to create a vehicle that demonstrated the best methods for teaching writing – methods in keeping with the beliefs of the National Writing Project. Ultimately, we end up in the same place as other studio programs – helping student writers; however, I believe this difference in orientation sets us apart.

The pilot studio groups are embedded within three developmental writing classes taught by two MWP teacher-consultants. The class instructors divided their classes (which cap at 17) into three small groups which meet once each week for an hour. These teachers have coordinated their syllabi and assignments as well as class preparation so the classes (which total 45+ students) are very similar in content and approach. Of course, we are able to do this for our pilot project, but may not be able to do so as the program grows. The studio work is considered part of the required work and attendance for the class so there is no separate or extra credit awarded as a result. Many other models offer Studio as an elective or required 1-credit class as an adjunct to freshman composition.

Our pilot studio groups are led by Peer Writers who are junior/senior English Education majors at MSU. The five Peer Writers involved with the pilot project have all worked with MWP before as well as had a number of education classes and/or tutoring experiences. Typically, studio groups are led by faculty members and graduate students although there are some programs which also use advanced undergraduates. We know there is a larger pool of English Ed majors we could use at MSU as well as a number of Middle Ed majors. We are cautiously considering how many Ed students we can work with at a time to maintain the same level of quality. At our pilot stage, all of our Peer Writers were carefully selected and we can easily stay in contact to provide the support and guidance they need to lead studio sessions. Of course, experienced Peer Writers won’t need that level of support but how many novice Peer Writers can we work with at a time?

The first assignment for the classes we are working with is a literacy narrative. The instructors have provided writing prompts to guide the initial development of this narrative and the Peer Writers are familiar with both the assignment and the prompt so they can support their studio groups as they continue the work they began in class by writing, sharing, and talking through their challenges. We are finding this assignment to be an useful vehicle for the conversations we want to take place in both the studio groups as well as our learning community.

We have created a learning community which includes the five Peer Writers and the two writing instructors as well as two representatives of the Morehead Writing Project. During weekly meetings, our learning community shares stories about working with students, brainstorms solutions to challenges, and coordinates plans for the next round of studio meetings. We are finding this learning community to be a tremendous resource for supporting our pilot project, but as the program grows it will be increasingly challenging to gather all the instructors and Peer Writers together every week. Our task as we grow will be to find ways to provide the necessary support for our Peer Writers.

Although our pilot is still in its early stages, we are already seeing a number of benefits. Of course, the developing writers benefit from working in a writing group led by a skilled mentor who can model both good writing habits and good writing group participation. In addition, the discussions focused on the students’ previous literacy experiences help students unpack some of the issues blocking their progress and better position them to learn and grow as writers. It is also not surprising that the Peer Writers are finding the studio a great learning experience as both teachers and writers. However, both the faculty members and pre-service teachers have found working within a supportive community both more helpful and invigorating than expected. We are all energized and engaged by this collaborative teaching experience. Our excitement for this project continues to grow as we wrap up our third week and we cannot wait to see what happens next.

Creating a Writing Studio Program

This year the Morehead Writing Project has started a new program. The Morehead Writing Project Writing Studio Program provides peer writers to lead groups of student writers in developmental writing classes (now) and early college writing classes (coming). Why? The mission of the National Writing Project is to improve the teaching of writing and we believe this project can do so on three fronts.

First, we believe our program can help the students of our host institution. We know there is a need to support our developmental writing students. More than 50% of incoming college students must take one or more remedial courses (in writing, math, and reading). First-year attrition among all college students is high (25% nationally) and the three main reasons that students struggle (and often leave) is that they are underprepared academically, lack the necessary student and life skills, and possess low confidence in their academic skills. We believe a studio approach is more compatible with the approaches to teaching writing endorsed by the National Writing Project than a writing center or lab. We believe working within a supportive community of writers will help our developmental writing students learn and grow as writers as well as students. We hope providing peer writers to serve as mentors and advisers will help our developmental writing students attain the knowledge and skills they need to not only stay in school but succeed.

In addition, a writing studio program supports the growth and development of the writing instructors and the peer writers (English Education majors who will be writing teachers in a few years). We have created a learning community to support our studio program. The learning community includes me (as MWP Site Director and the peer writer mentor), the two developmental writing instructors (also MWP site leaders) whose classes are piloting the studio program, and five peer writers (upper level English Ed majors who have worked with MWP in the past). We are meeting weekly to discuss practical issues ranging from current assignments and discussion topics to cover the theoretical and pedagogical challenges the peer writers encounter in their studio group sessions. In addition, we all regularly reflect about our experiences with the studio project to help us document the process. I look forward to these meetings and love the give-and-take of our discussions. We are all learning and growing as teachers as a result and I know my enthusiasm about the project and teaching has only grown since we began meeting.

Finally, as a result of both the hands-on experience teaching writing and working with writers as well as participation in our learning community, we believe our peer writers will be better prepared to teach writing when they graduate and enter their own high school classrooms as teachers. Our five peer writers are learning strategies they can employ in their own classrooms in the future and developing their own teaching style, but perhaps most important of all they are learning how to shape and direct their own professional development through a network of peers. I am so proud and excited to watch these pre-service teachers work through the challenges they face and can’t wait to see what happens next.

Stay tuned as I share the progress of our new program in the months to come! Soon I hope to share a description of what our writing studio program looks like and how it works.

What do I want to be when I grow up?

I have always known what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with words. I wanted to write and work with writers and I wanted to use my words to teach others. I am one of the fortunate people who knew from an early age what I wanted and I am even more fortunate that most of my adult life has meant doing just that. I have been lucky enough to have a long and varied love affair with the written word which has also allowed me to earn a living. I have been a newspaper reporter and editor, magazine writer and editor, and I been a published novelist. I have been a freelance writer for both print and web publications and worked as a technical writer. I ran a successful web publication company with a number of ezines, blogs, and web sites. Then I moved into academia and have had the dual joy and burden of teaching writing to both undergraduate, and graduate writing classes. I have taught everything from developmental to professional writing and after more than a decade I still believe I have one of the most important jobs on campus – even if my status and paycheck do not reflect that belief.

While I consider myself very lucky to have a job that includes important work that I love, I also know how difficult it is to work somewhere that work is not valued. I owe it to myself as well as all those who have contributed to the professional I am today to find that dream job. Of course, the real challenge is sorting through my dreams to uncover the true specifications for that dream job. This is hard. Very hard. Academia wants to sort people into neat little boxes. And I am not a neat little box kind of person. I have a lot of skills and a lot of interests and I do not want to abandon one skill set in favor of another – and I don’t think I should have to do so when I believe there are academic programs out there that are looking for people just like me. Am I fooling myself?

The Modern Language Association Job Information List is coming out soon and I need to be ready. I need to think about what I really want and where my needs and wants fit in with the needs and wants of academic programs. My current institution hired me to teach general education writing. At the beginning my course schedule was filled with developmental writing and the two-course composition sequence, Writing I and Writing II. Then I developed and piloted online versions of the composition classes which have become a mainstay of our general education program. As time passed I was also offered the opportunity to teach introductory creative writing and technical composition (an alternative to Writing II). Then shortly after entering my Ph.D. program I became the Site Director for our National Writing Project site which led to teaching graduate classes that covered a spectrum of topics from teaching writing to research and theory to creative writing. After earning my Ph.D. in Technical Communication and Rhetoric I have added professional writing to my list of course offerings. I like teaching all these things. I like working with developing writers to help them find their voice and confidence. I like working with more experienced writers to help them grow and develop as professionals. I like sharing my experience as a working professional writer with others who want to pursue a career with words. I like working with educators to improve the teaching of writing. I want to do all those things. Am I fooling myself?

In addition, my position as a National Writing Project site leader has given me administrative experience. I manage a budget with a variety of funding streams as well as writing the grants and reports that support those streams, a staff of students and professionals serving in a variety of roles, and oversee a number of community and professional development programs. This is important work and tremendously rewarding work. I love this work and the people I work with as a result. I know that I may not end up working in a program with a National Writing Project site, but I hope to work in program that fosters this kind of work – this synergy between writing and teaching writing – and I want to work in a program that is large enough to share this work and vision with others.

 

And so, the question remains. Am I fooling myself? Does such a dream position exist? Will I be able to find just the right program (not too big and not too small) that needs a multitool like me? And how do I position myself for that job? I anticipate that this is the type of job that will value teaching and service over research, but I still want to research, write, publishing and present -- but where and which focus? However, now I need to stop dreaming and focus on the job I have.

Read my guest blog post on Inside Higher Ed

Putting the joy back into teaching and writing and teaching writing

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/college-ready-writing/guest-post-putting-joy-back-teaching-and-writing-and-teaching-writing#ixzz1zaUDW2MN
Inside Higher Ed 

What To Do…What To Do

I’m in a bit of a quandary. For the first time in possibly forever I have time.

• Time to think
• Time to write
• Time to research
• Time to plan
• Time to find myself

And like a kid in a candy store with just one quarter to spend (hey, I grew up in an era of 5-and-10 stores) I find myself running from one shiny display to the next and unable to choose.

Part of my problem is that I know that while I have time NOW it is not an unlimited resource. I have already spent half of my summer break working in my capacity as Morehead Writing Project Site Director and I know by the middle of August my full-time instructor job will be back in full swing. But still, I have six glorious weeks (including two weeks with my child away at camp). How should I spend it?

I have three categories of possibilities: things I have to do, things I should do, and things I want to do.

Much of the things I have to do are tied up with my job as Morehead Writing Project site director. I need to wrap up all the June programs (Summer Institutes and Academies plus camps). I’d love to get that done this week so it is off my plate. But I also need to plan for some fall projects – especially starting up our new writing studio program. I’m still struggling to find university funding for the students who will work on this project with me so that has to stay near the top of the list. And of course, at some point I need to plan and prepare for my fall classes.

There are also things I should do. I should blog. I should finish up the article I started this spring. I should write that book review I promised. I should revise and polish job search materials. I should search out conferences to attend and pitch a presentation. I should network. I should plan out what I am going to do with all the research and data I have assembled in recent years. I should plan future research projects. I should decide what I want to be and where I want to work. I am not in a permanent position and I want/deserve more so I must position myself to act when great opportunities present themselves. But I must also think about who I want to be and what I want to do so I can choose wisely.

Of course, I would rather sleep late, read for entertainment, watch movies, and play silly games on my Kindle. I have spent some time doing that over the past few days. I think it is always good to recharge your batteries (physically and intellectually) and I also know that I can only do so much of that before I want to get back to work, but that leads me back to the place where I started. What should I do now? Which hat should I put on? Should I be a teacher, a researcher, a writer, or an administrator?

Writing Networks or Creating a Community of Writers

I have spent a lot of this month thinking about community. Of course, as those who read my blog know, I have written a lot about community over the past year, but I’m teaching summer classes and preparing my discussion notes prompted me to think about what I have learned about community this summer.

Writing within a community of writers has always been important to me as a writer and so I have always worked to provide that same sense of community for my writing students, but recently I have become very interested in what makes a community and how a community is formed. I know that communities don’t form by accident and simply assembling a group of people does not a community make. Last summer I wrote “What is a community?” and “Creating a Classroom Community;” however it is when I began learning more about social capital theory that I was able better understand how community works. Social capital is essentially the investment of your time, energy, and knowledge in a specific community and the benefits you derive from that investment. A sense of community is important to your willingness to invest and your level of involvement and commitment plays an important role in what and how much you will give to the community.

So what makes someone more likely to invest in a community? Community members have to want to join. Possessing both power and agency are also important for the members of a community to develop the trust essential to social capital. This trust must encompass social controls as well as reciprocity. Building a community requires willing members, trust, social norms, and reciprocity. This summer as a National Writing Project Site Director I’ve had the privilege to observe the formation of four communities of writers (read more in “Transformations, Magic, and the Power of Writing and Writing Teachers”). While I agree that those qualities are essential to creating social capital in a community, I also believe there is an essential ingredient missing from that list. I believe the group members must share a common goal in order for a true community to form from a group of individuals and for social capital to develop within that community.

It seems as if I’m stating the obvious. Clearly the group formed for a particular reason. What I mean is an actionable goal that they are ready, willing, and able to do something about. It is more than believing or caring about the same thing – it is working on something together. I think this is the reason why some classroom communities thrive and others wither on the vine. I’ve long known that we can make community work in an National Writing Project Summer Institute – especially if we take care with recruitment and selection – but this summer the Morehead Writing Project tried an online Summer Institute for the first time and we were more than a bit worried about our ability to create community without the opportunity to bond over parking woes, shared meals, and all the side jokes that come with sharing space for an extended period of time.

What we have found is that we can create an online writing and learning community. Our online group is working together, supporting each other, and bonding. I feel it and see it but more important so do they – and most important of all (to me anyway) is that they see the importance of this sense of community to the growth and development of their own students. In their own words, they have noted that what has made the difference for them in their sense of community is the level of trust and sense of equality in the group as well as the open and available communication streams. We use Twitter (#ENG608) as well as sharing documents that we create together and comment upon those individually written. Trust has been established because we have shared extensively and increasingly openly our fears and failures. We also know that we can trust that help, encouragement, and interest are there from the other members of the group. My less-successful classroom communities did not have this level of trust and reciprocity so this is something I will need to work on. However, a key part, according to the online group, is the sense of equality. The students are taking on leadership roles and with the use of contract grading I am really able to steer clear of center stage and dominating the conversation. Of course, this is easier to achieve at the graduate level so I remain uncertain about how to make it work in an undergraduate class. All this is supported by social capital theory, but I remain intrigued by my idea of a common cause in terms of its impact on community.

Teachers come to a National Writing Project Summer Institute because they want to become better teachers of writing. NWP believes that teachers who write are better teachers of writing and so a great deal of time and energy at an SI is focused on transforming teachers into writers. Once they have experienced the magical transformation and begin to grow in confidence, teachers then embrace this foundational idea. I believe it is at this point that the true community forms. They now have a common purpose and understand how the other teachers in the room can help them learn and grow as writers as well as teachers, but perhaps most important they understand how community can help other groups learn and grow as well.

Similarly, I visited two different writing camps offered by the Morehead Writing Project this summer. Both developed writing communities and the kids had a lot of fun writing, but the second camp focused very closely on “writing for change” and even though the kids involved in that second camp had fewer previous relationships I think they bonded more tightly as a group because they had the mission in common. The first group grew as writers, but I think the second group grew as writers and as people and as a community.

Ronfeldt writes “In Search of How Societies Work” that there are four major forms of organization: Tribes, Institutions, Markets, and Networks. He posits that all other forms are hybrids of these. His theory is that these forms have existed since ancient times, but each “embodies a distinctive set of structures, believes, and dynamics (with bright and dark sides) about how a society should be organized” and each “involves different standards about how people should treat each other.” I really want to think a lot more about his idea of networks and their development as I think those ideas work in interesting ways with my own ideas of community and social capital. I’ve taken a step forward in my understanding of community and network formation as both a teacher and a leader as a result of my teaching experience this summer and it has given me a lot to ponder (and I expect write about) in the future. I'm already starting to ponder these lessons and ideas in terms of my professional writing students and my work as a technical communicator.