Kristin+Smith

I think I'm pretty lucky to have worked almost exclusively in small schools. My previous school had about twenty teachers, and my current school has around fifteen. Being a member of such a small group has made it easy for me to take on leadership roles. In my first year teaching, I worked on the school improvement team. In my second year, I continued to work on the school improvement team as a coordinator, provided professional development in a couple of different areas for my coworkers, and acted as the high school grade level chair when the one before me left abruptly midyear. That's really quite a lot of leadership for a second year teacher, and I wouldn't have had the same opportunities in a large school with more experienced staff. My role has definitely been scaled back in my new job as I'm still adjusting, but I believe that the same opportunities will exist here in time.
 * Tuesday, November 20th: Who is a teacher leader?**

The chapters from //Thirteen Steps to Teacher Empowerment// that I read this week really resonated with my own leadership experiences so far. On page 75, Zemelman and Ross say, "When you voice your thoughts, things may not always go your way, but instead of just griping about problems in the teachers' lounge, you will know that you tried your best." I believe this to be true. It is important to get your concerns out to the people who make decisions, to principals and department heads and other administrators, because otherwise, nothing will ever change. Even when my ideas are not the ones that get accepted and acted upon, I feel better about my job when I am able to voice my concerns and be heard. And when people listen to me, and things actually change for the better because of me? That feels awesome.

Zemelman and Ross also emphasized the need to "Stay focused on your goal and don't get drawn into unproductive fights" (79). In my experience, arguments about the little things, the minor details, can often detract from a great idea. People who don't like it because they are reluctant to change or anticipate extra work or for whatever other reason will zoom in on a tangential detail and use that to pull other people off the bandwagon, too. It is important to listen to everyone and hear the voices of even the greatest detractors, but ultimately, I know that I need to focus on what matters, on the big ideas, and help people compromise effectively on the little things so that a whole plan for improving the school does not get ignored.

Another thing that I thought was really important was the idea of establishing norms for meetings. We had to do this eventually at my old school because so many people were late, or grading papers, or playing soduku, or doing crosswords, or texting, or playing Words with Friends during meetings. If you do it after the fact, though, once you've already had five meetings, it can feel to those people who make the norms necessary like you are calling them out or pointing fingers. Setting up norms at the beginning of a committee or school year helps everyone focus on what's important and know what is expected of them before it ever gets to the point where there are problems.

Finally, I liked how for each teacher-leader suggestion, there are also classroom applications. It is important for us to remember that we want our students to emerge from education as leaders in their own right. Just as we learn and apply the tools of good leadership, we should help them to learn them as well. I definitely intend to have my students set their own academic and non-academic goals for next trimester, and I might even incorporate some leadership mini-lessons when I assign small group learning tasks.

Hi there and thank you for your thoughtful post. I agree and shudder to think where I would be if I had not been encouraged to search out, consider and possibly put into practice what I have read in research articles. I also have been on the benefiting end of colleagues and mentors dropping an interesting and appropriate article in my mailbox. I stand on the shoulders of the great researchers that have come before me, as we all do. There is nothing new under the sun, or so they say; and reaping the benefits from someone else's research is a good idea.

Another thing that interested me in this week's readings, and in English 530 in general, is the call-to-arms for each of us to practice focused inquiry in each of our own classrooms. I have a strong interest in multiethnic and multicultural literature. I have a very strong suspicion that students would reap many benefits from being exposed to literature which originates from outside of their normal realm of experience. The exploratory research project that we are currently enjoying has given me a venue in which to look at my beliefs, my students, current research and peer discussion in order to really get after this important topic. I am excited to grow as a teacher; and I see a strong connection between this goal and becoming a teacher-researcher.

Thank you, Kristin, for helping me to think through this as I respond to your well-worded post. Sincerely, Erin Umpstead


 * Sunday, November 11th: What is research in the context of teaching? **

How do we know what works in the classroom? How are best practices developed? How do teacher preparation programs know what pre-service teachers should learn? Teacher research is the answer to these questions, and many others. Teacher research is how we justify what we do in the classroom to those who might challenge us, and it’s how we validate or transform our own ideas about teaching. Dr. Tucker shared [|this article] with the EMWP Summer Institute this year, and like it says, teacher research is the light saber that vanquishes the Darth Vaders of our schools.

DiPardo et al address the different ways in which teachers use research to inform their practice. The first application of research they give is the one that I am the most familiar with thus far in my career: “Teachers and teacher educators study and respond to research” (303). I’ve read countless books and articles on teaching that have been published as a result of teacher research, and I’ve analyzed them to find what I can apply to my classroom and critically reflected on what will and will not work for me. In this class and in others, I’ve discussed and responded to teacher research with other teachers.

As a new teacher still, existing teacher research has allowed me to draw on a wealth of experience and classroom-tested strategies that I wouldn’t have access to otherwise. I greatly appreciate all of the research that’s been published. I don’t even want to imagine what kind of teacher I would be without it. I think there would be lots of grammar drills and basic, formulaic writing, and I think there would be a lot less really interesting learning going on.

The second type of teacher research that DiPardo et al discuss is one that I am looking forward to becoming more involved with in the future: “Teachers and teacher educators conduct research” (304). I have several questions prepared that I would like to look into in the future. For example, I would like to study the topic for my exploratory essay this semester, which is //how can peer response be used most effectively in writing instruction?// I would also like to study how allowing students to self-select novels for study affects engagement, and how using peer and expert writing models affects student writing. Right now, I feel kind of full of questions, and I know that I’m only just getting started.

I really appreciated how Dipardo et al emphasized the importance of teacher discretion throughout the article. They started by expressing the “belief that teachers are professional decision-makers who draw upon multiple resources in determining appropriate courses of action” (297), and concluded by reiterating that “research cannot yield generalizable practices that will work for all students everyway,” thus “teachers must function as informed professionals” (307). Teachers, not policy-makers, are at the heart of teacher research. It’s about studying and learning from one another, but in critical ways that allow us to discover what works for us and leave out what doesn’t. Just about any teacher will tell you that what works in one class falls flat in another, even with in the same school. For that reason, Teacher research is descriptive, not prescriptive, and it is important that both teachers and policymakers realize that.


 * Sunday, November 4th 2012: What is Valid Assessment? **

As with many good essential questions, the question for this week has led me to more related questions. How can teachers use assessments effectively? For that matter, how can districts and state and national boards of education? What should we assess? How can the process of writing be assessed?

The assigned readings this week touched on all of these questions. Swain, Graves, Morse, and Patterson discussed a teacher research project in which they examined student writing to identify prominent features, both positive and negative. They then developed an assessment of writing based on those features. Their assessment strategy seemed like it would be very time-consuming to implement at first. Analyzing student writing either alone or with other teachers would take a serious time commitment. Despite this drawback, I could see how effective their assessment strategy could be. As they described, it reveals what students are already doing well, as well as what they could readily learn and use right at that moment. If a teacher (or a team of teachers) has the time to meet and establish such an assessment, I think it could be very powerful, although I cannot see myself doing it any time soon.

The literature review by Polesel, Dulfer, and Tumbull looked at the value and criticisms of standardized testing. It addressed specifically how standardized testing can be harmful, and how people from different areas, including parents and national educational officials, misuse the data from standardized tests. I found what they said to be extremely accurate. Parents use testing data to make judgments about the quality of schools without considering the actual experience that students have there. States use testing data to grade schools, and to identify low performing schools for turnaround programs. Individual schools are starting more and more to use standardized testing data to evaluate teachers.

I believe that these uses of standardized tests are all trying to turn the data in to something it is not. What it is, is a brief snapshot at a very limited kind of knowledge that each student has on a given day at a given time. In many cases, it probably does indicate certain things about schools and teachers. In many other instances, on the other hand, it only indicates that a student did not care about the test, so they didn’t try. Maybe they didn’t get any sleep the night before, or they don’t like their teacher and they know the test could get her fired. This literature review reminded me of how important it is to carefully consider the ways in which we use standardized testing.

All of my questions about testing and assessment have not been answered yet, and probably never will be. I think what is most important in assessment for me are the assessments I develop for my own classroom. Do my assessments reflect what I want students to have learned? Which assessments am I using formatively to inform further teaching? Which are summative? Have I taught what I meant to teach in advance of my own final assessments? These are my primary concerns because I have the most control over them. At some point in my teaching career, I have no doubt that I will take up a teacher research project to evaluate my own use of assessments and how my assessments are affecting student learning, but for now, that’s a question for the future.

 I was gripped by the Yagelski article from the start. He makes a convincing case for why we must have a revolution in our understanding of teaching writing, taking it from a theory or process model to one of practice. As Yagelski states, “In mainstream writing instruction, the text is what matters, not the act of writing,” (191). In my personal experience, writing for students and for teachers is often about the grade one gets at the end of an assignment. Students will ignore the writing teachers do in response to their words and flip to the end to see the grade before dumping the paper in the recycling bin (or worse, the trash can). Teachers, as I see it, are also more interested in the text than in the act of writing, and for a variety of very good reasons, most things that students write do end up with a grade on them. If we are to view writing as “a vehicle for sustained inquiry into our experiences, a means of understanding who we are,” (193), which is an intriguing perspective, it seems obvious that something about the way we value text over the experience of writing needs to change.
 * Monday, October 29th 2012: What Texts Should We Compose? **

 But as Yagelski points out, the view on writing that he espouses is not supported by the Common Core with its emphasis on argumentative and informative texts at the high school level. While I can philosophically see the value of an experience-based view of writing, the stark contrast between his view and that implied by the Common Core makes me wonder how a writing curriculum based on experiences could help students as they prepare for college. Yes, students do like to write about their own lives. They love when they can freely rant, swear words and all, about something that happened to them yesterday. How does that apply to the writing demands of college, though? Outside of my teacher education classes, **almost all** of the writing I did for my undergraduate degree was informative or persuasive in nature. If I had to guess, I would say that writing to convey an experience accounted for no more than 5% of my college writing, and then it was usually in the form of a response to a literary text.  Yagelski provided some great examples about how the understanding of writing as a way to experience and explore our world can lead to units that meet the need of teaching students about the technical skills of writing. I don’t doubt that it does that. Organization, audience awareness, stylistic concerns, and any number of things can definitely be taught through units that use writing as a way to understand living.

However, when a student takes World History Before 1000 A.D. as a required class in their first year of college, and they have to write three essays on three exams in response to specific questions about history, will they be prepared for that? They will need to know how to use factual evidence to support a thesis statement in a structured, organized essay. Their history professor will not care about their joy in learning about Ancient Rome—only that they can critically analyze the reasons for its rise and fall. Likewise, in the world of work, if they are writing up a proposal and specs for a tool for an assembly line, their boss and client won’t care about how they go through the struggle of coming up with an efficient design. They will want a direct, concise, and convincing plan for how the tool will be built and how it will work. Our students need to be prepared for these realities.

Writing as a way of understanding our lives is important and meaningful on a personal level, but the Common Core did not set out to help students develop into thoughtful, reflective, introspective individuals; its specific goal is to develop college and career ready individuals. Writing as praxis, writing to convey and understand personal experiences, is something that all students should get to experience for all of the many reasons that Yagelski gives. Ultimately, though, as students approach the end of their high school years, I strongly believe that they need to be writing more persuasive and informative texts. These can be connected to personal interests and related to experience, but students need to know how and when to distance themselves from the text as well. Yagelski states that writing should be about the experience, and I can certainly see the value in his view, but I also believe in the value of college and career readiness, and as a 12th grade English teacher, I feel compelled to focus most on preparing my students for what comes next.

The answer to the essential question for this week seems obvious at first. We’re all familiar with The Writing Process, complete with capital letters: Prewrite, Draft, Revise, Edit/Proofread, Publish. I think I learned this mantra sometime around second grade. Prewrite, Draft, Revise, Edit/Proofread, Publish.
 * Monday, October 22nd: How do we compose texts? **

The first complication to this simple answer comes from the fact that The Writing Process does not look the same for everyone or for every writing situation. Not every draft goes through the whole process. Sometimes, I write something once in a notebook or on my computer and never look at it again. Other times, I come up with a brilliant line in a sudden storm of the brain while running four miles. Then, two days later, I remember to write it down. A month later, it becomes the start of a poem. After all of that work, it may still never be published. Thus, if The Writing Process isn’t something I use to compose every piece of writing, should I teach students to use it all of the time? That seems illogical.

Rather, I should teach them the strategies that apply in individual situations. You have to write a research paper for your college history class? Start by brainstorming some research questions, reading to find information, organizing your ideas, and then follow through with the rest of the writing process. Your college English professor wants you to write a response to the assigned reading for the week? That one can probably be a single draft simply proofread for spelling and grammar. I want my students to know when to use which parts of the process for efficient and effective communication.

Another complication was addressed in Kathleen Blake Yancey’s 2008 NCTE Presidential Address. The world of writing has changed drastically in the past 30 years. People are writing more often and more publicly for new and still constantly changing purposes. The Writing Process can branch out in so many new and different ways.

What if we use Google Docs to compose drafts together as a group in response to thought-provoking essential questions? What if we use it to assemble them together and publish them in one place, like thousands of students did in [|Writing Our Future: Letters to the President]? The writing processes involved in that may still resemble prewriting, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing, but in very different ways than people once imagined.

Research, an essential part of prewriting for some purposes, once looked like reading out of a book and filling out color-coded notecards in order to organize information. I learned to do it that way only about thirteen years ago. Now, though, you can instantly crowd-source questions to get first hand information from experts on sites like Twitter or Reddit, although we must teach students to verify such sources to make sure information is reliable. Students can get a basic answer to most questions just from a quick Google search, like Yancey pointed out in her speech.

With so many changes, the old Writing Process seems a little stale to me. Not stale in such a way that it should be abandoned, but stale in a way that perhaps we need to do some revision. Since our students are already such prolific writers outside of the classroom, how can we make the process used in class relevant to their digital lives? What can we do to build on their composing abilities in ways that will be meaningful now and in the future? How can we make them more critical and sensible participants in the new online community? Those are the questions I think we need to address as we move forward with a new look at The Writing Process.


 * Monday October 15th: Who is a literate reader of what texts? **

This year, I went from teaching in a mostly African American, urban school to an almost exclusively white school in a rural area. Considering this recent transition, the article “Perspective-Taking as Transformative Practice in Teaching Multicultural Literature to White Students” immediately caught my attention. At my old school, my students were quick to identify with Melba in //Warriors Don’t Cry// or Tom Robinson in //To Kill a Mockingbird//. We had great discussions about overcoming challenges due to race, social class, and gender even when I was teaching 8th grade. Not all students in that setting were sensitive to such issues, but most of them could relate or at least recognized the challenges of living in a multicultural society.

None of the anchor texts for my senior English class this year are particularly multicultural in nature, but I’ve still been considering ways to get my students thinking outside of their familiar comfort zones. This article gave me some really intriguing ideas that I’m looking forward to trying out, especially the writing prompt framed as a letter from a character. I can see how considering the motives behind a character’s actions, and behind others’ reactions to that character, could help students experience different perspectives. I also liked the authors’ honesty. I got the feeling that they had seen //Freedom Writers//, and they wanted all of us English teachers to know that we are not failures just because that story doesn’t come true for us every year. Small, incremental change is still meaningful, and it’s a more realistic goal to have.

I found the Sheridan Blau article to be extremely relevant to my teaching as well. Each of the seven habits that Blau addresses seems obvious. For example, the idea that “A capacity for sustained attention” (19) is necessary for critical reading is not revolutionary. What made this article interesting and useful for me was that it explored the implications for students in ways that I hadn’t necessarily considered before. For the habit cited above, Blau points out that some reading interventions may actually help students remain inattentive readers while confirming “the students’ own mistaken notion that they lack some specialized body of knowledge or reading skills that distinguish them from the teacher” (19). This habit of sustained attention, along with the other 6 habits, are all areas with which my students struggle, and I think that’s part of why they think they’re “bad” at reading.

What I appreciated most about the Blau article were the three bullet-pointed suggestions to address some of these habits in the classroom. I’ve used reading logs and sticky notes in the way suggested before, but I have never, ever done a cold reading of an article or short story alongside my students. It has always been hammered into my teaching brain that I must plan every detail of the lesson, including doing the reading in advance to make sure I prepare discussion questions and anticipate student difficulties. A cold reading would definitely be outside of my comfort zone, but if I’m asking my students to leave theirs, I should be willing to take that risk myself. I don’t have any lessons planned in the immediate future where this strategy would work, but I know that I will definitely use it in the future as soon as an opportunity presents itself.

==== One theme that kept coming up for me in the readings for this week was that reading is not **always** easy for anyone. At some point in our academic or leisure reading, we have all encountered a challenging passage, or something that just didn’t make sense. Maybe the struggle was just staying engaged and attentive to the text because we didn’t want to do it, or maybe the struggle came when it was time to make meaning. Whatever the case, having difficulty while reading is practically a universal experience. ====

==== In the article by Rex and McEachen, they described how the class environment is defined by the idea that boring, challenging, or confusing parts are important. Likewise, the chapter by Schoenbach and Greenleaf discusses reading as a sort of text-based problem solving. Blau addresses this issue even more directly in “Literacy as a Form of Courage.” While everyone faces difficulty at some time in their reading life, Blau states that we teach students “to respond to difficult text by questioning the sufficiency of their specialized training as readers rather than by giving the additional effort and attention that difficult texts demand of every reader (103). ====

==== These articles all reminded me of Kelly Gallagher’s reading reasons, one of which is “Reading is hard, but hard equals rewarding.” This is also one of his writing reasons, by the way. The fact of the matter is that many students give up in the face of a challenge. To fail would show that they are incapable, while giving up can instead show that they are choosing not to do it. They will still fail, but it’s not because they couldn’t do it. Shoenbach and Greenleaf discuss this when they talk about how most students do not see reader, writer, and learner as being part of their identities. Not doing the work, not putting in the effort, becomes part of who they are. ====

==== What they say is true in all classrooms, but I feel that it is especially pertinent to the school where I teach now. Most of my students are there because they’ve had bad experiences in traditional schools. They see themselves as bad students, and even as stupid. The first thing that comes out of their mouths when they face difficulty is “I’m too dumb for this,” which simply isn’t true in most cases. These articles reminded me how important it is to address their perceptions of themselves not only as readers, but as writers and as learners, too. I need to invest some more time and effort into developing a classroom community where giving up is not the norm, and where we all support each other and understand that struggling or facing challenges is an expected part of the learning process. I have not emphasized that enough this year, and I definitely need to. ====


 * Monday, October 1st: Who is a proficient language user? **

 The question this week is one that I think is very important for all educators to consider. It isn’t just us ELA teachers who deal with language; I would hope that every teacher speaks to their students in every class, and the way we speak can have a lot to do with how and what our students learn. The first time I realized this in my own classroom was on my very first day as a teacher. I gave a survey to my 8th and 9th graders, and one of the questions asked “What are your parents’ or guardians’ occupations?” No one in my class knew what the word “occupation” meant. Everyone in their daily lives just said “job.” They learned a new word that day, and I learned that I should provide more context clues when using possibly problematic words in assignments.

 Other teachers no doubt encounter the same language issues, especially when working with students from cultures different from their own. How are all teachers helping students learn academic language while still legitimizing their home languages or dialects? I felt like the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” touched on this idea, although it was more limited to the English Language Arts, and I would be interested to read more on this topic.

 Of the readings for this week, I was most interested in the article by Lindblom and Dunn. I am a strong believer in the power of learning grammar in context. That context can be in the students’ own writing, but as this article pointed out, it can also be in the context of their lives. Overheard lunch conversations, rap lyrics, and grammar rants from the news are all much more authentic than contrived sentences in a workbook. I also thought about how empowering the kinds of activities described by Lindblom and Dunn can be—analyzing language for themselves shows students that they are allowed to have opinions about grammar, and that grammar and language are not fixed, absolutely rule-bound concepts.

 I think one of the other keys to learning grammar in context was highlighted in //Vernacular Eloquence//. While unplanned spoken language usually needs some editing and revision, Elbow pointed out that it is full of “valuable linguistic resources” (78). Why not have students write the way they speak or think, and then have them analyze their own writing in the same way that they did a rap or an overheard lunch conversation? They are already using a lot of crafty language tools in their spoken language. Getting them to recognize the power of their own voice and style is a challenge, especially with reluctant writers, but I believe it could make all the difference.

//Works Cited//

Lindblom, Kenneth, and Patricia A. Dunn. “Analyzing Grammar Rants: An Alternative to TraditionalGrammar Instruction.” // English Journal // 95.5 (May 2006): 71-77.

Smitherman, Geneva. “‘Students' Right to Their Own Language’: A Retrospective” // The English //// Journal //, Vol. 84, No. 1. (Jan., 1995), pp. 21-27.

Elbow, Peter. “Speech as a Product” and “Intonation,’Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring // to Writing. // New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.


 * Monday, September 24th: Who are adolescent readers and writers? **

 I believe that I have a wide range of responsibilities as an English teacher. I need to help my students learn the skills necessary to communicate effectively, and to give them a great deal of practice in applying those skills. I should try to instill in them a love for, or at least a tolerant appreciation of, literature. I also try to teach them to use evidence to support their ideas, to strengthen an argument, or to clarify a complicated point. I hadn't really considered to any great extent what else I might be teaching them with the curriculum I'm using, though. I had never thought about how I think about the population that I teach, and how that could affect the way that I teach them.

Petrone and Lewis discuss this issue in their study "Deficits, Therapists, and a Desire to Distance," and it really made me reflect on my own preconceptions and teaching reasons. They found that the pre-service teachers they studied mostly saw themselves as therapists or sculptors. The pre-service teachers believed that it was a main part of their job to help students navigate through the turmoil and issues of adolescence, and to influence them to make good decisions. Looking back, I don't think that I ever quite saw myself that way. Although I believe that all teachers should engage in character education at appropriate times, I don't think that the role of English education is to "sculpt" students into my idea of good people. Sure, we talk about right and wrong, and good and evil, and other big thematic ideas, but I try to encourage students to question everything, and to come to their own conclusions as long as they can use evidence to back their ideas up. I don't see myself as having all of the answers about being a grown-up. I was surprised to read that so many future teachers in the program that was studied did seem to feel like they were experts at how to be an adult, and how to navigate adolescence.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt;">The implications for teaching with the idea that we are sculptors or therapists was also intriguing. Petrone and Lewis claim that the pre-service teachers they surveyed used ideas about adolescence as a way of othering. They stated that "In this way, the discursive practice of othering people between the ages of 12 and 18 may function as a system of reasoning related to how othering has been used as a mechanism to justify imperialism and other forms of domination" (Petrone and Lewis 274). It is true that we often try to control our students to a great extent in school. We are the keepers of the bathroom passes and the tissue boxes. We ask that kids stay in their seats, and be quiet when they're working, because that's what we believe works best for everyone. Is this really natural? To what extent is it necessary? On a related note, Petrone and Lewis also state that "adolescents are understood more for what they will become rather than whom or what they are now" (Petrone and Lewis 278). The reason we give ourselves for exerting such control, or even domination, is that our students are not responsible enough to decide for themselves. They're still developing those capabilities, we say.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt;">In my classroom, I specifically try not to distance what we're doing from its real world implications. I ask students, "When have you seen something like this outside of school? How might you use this outside of school?" I also try to encourage them to be responsible for their own decisions. Still, I wonder about what I imply through the texts I select and the discussion questions I pose. I wish that I could shadow a student in my own class while I teach to discover what they are really learning, and what I am really teaching through my actions. I think, like Zemelman and Ross suggest in chapter 2, I need to start planning more discussions about the purpose of my activities at the end of lessons (30). That way, I can better evaluate my own hidden agenda and make sure I'm not missing my mark, or assuming to much about my students.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 16px;">//Works Cited//

Petrone, Robert and Mark A. Lewis. Deficits, Therapists and a Desire to Distance: Secondary English Preservice Teachers’ Reasoning about Their Future Students.” // English Education. // (April, 2012): 254-287 <span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 16px;">Zemelman, Steven, and Harry Ross. //<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 16px;">Thirteen Steps to Teacher Empowerment: Taking a More Active Role in Your School //

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt;">**Monday, September 17th: What is English Education?** <span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> On Friday of the first week of school this year, I asked my students to give me a few “teacher rules,” guidelines that they would like me to follow on a daily basis. At first, they were stumped. Then, they gave me a couple of silly ones: don’t play country music, don’t give any homework ever, and others along those lines. I wrote those ones on the board (editing the homework one slightly), and I asked them to think deeper. How did they actually want their teachers to behave? How did they want me to treat them? That was when it got good. “Be enthusiastic. Like, act like you like what you’re teaching us.” “Change it up. Don’t make us do the same thing every day.” “Make it interesting. Or as interesting as you can.”

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Their advice was echoed for me in my reading of “English in Secondary Schools: A Review.” In this article, Abbott addresses the need to get students excited about what they are reading and writing in order for the learning to be meaningful and effective. He points out the flaws of drilling grammar, stating that he once had a student with an impressive knowledge of grammar and language, but “Unhappily, he could not himself compose a page of writing free from gross error” (Abbot 394). Instead, in order to help students improve as writers, he suggests assigning essays on topics that are interesting to students on a regular basis. He recommends using student interest to drive the literature curriculum, too, and using the historical context and the nearly magical qualities of good writing to get students to enjoy reading.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> What astounds me is that Abbott published this article over one hundred years ago, and still our English departments are facing the same problems. In most cases, we read texts specified at the district level at prescribed times. Many teachers still drill grammar at the high school level, and I have even spent a full quarter of a school year teaching grammar and having students correct sentences. Reflecting on that time in my teaching now, I don’t believe that it had any effect at all on my students’ writing abilities, and I know for sure that they were bored and disengaged. They were definitely acting out. I was not even interested in what I was saying, so why would they be? Not only do we still teach in many of the same ineffective ways, but we also have many of the same problematic outcomes. Students entering college and the workplace still struggle too often with writing clearly and accurately. Too many of them do not have the communication skills they need to be successful.

<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> After reading this article, I find myself asking (possibly for further research later), why are we still teaching this way? And what can I do to help my school, and maybe even my district, find a better way? //13 Steps to Teacher Empowerment//, here I come.

//<span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Works Cited // <span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Abbott, Allan. "English in Secondary Schools: A Review." //The School Review// 9.6 (1901): 388-402. //JSTOR//. Web. 17 Sept. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1075043>. <span style="font-family: Garamond,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Zemelman, Steven, and Harry Ross. //Thirteen Steps to Teacher Empowerment: Taking a More Active Role in Your School Community//. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2009. Print.