Resource Review: The Craft of Revision

The Craft of Revision by Donald Morison Murray
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Murray cautions us:
“Students, first of all, must learn a positive attitude toward revision. The process of revision, for most students, has not been concerned with finding meaning, but it has focused on editing superficial mechanical and grammatical errors to a preconceived and often not clearly understood standard.”

My reaction:
The one word I’m left with is INFORMATION. It seems most of the revision process is rooted in arranging, adding, removing, improving, and making decisions based on the best use of the best information in each moment.  The title could very easily be "The Craft of Writing" because as Murray demonstrates the very act of writing itself is a revision of our thoughts or the seed of an idea.

Format of each chapter:
Murray explains one concept at a time
Organizes chapters in a very specific order / how to write, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite
Most chapters offer exercises and/or examples
Some chapters offer Common Problems and their Solutions
Interviews with different writers at end of each chapter


1. Getting Writing Done—creating a discovery draft
No such thing as writer’s block. Excuse for poor habits.
a. “Writing becomes relatively easy if writing becomes a daily habit.”
i. No truck driver refused to work today because of truck driver’s block
b. Know tomorrow’s tasks today
ii. Know the territory and the task for tomorrow’s writing today


2. Rewrite to Focus

Exercise:
An effective piece of writing says on thing and, before rewriting a draft, you should be able to state it in a single sentence. (Steinbeck did it.)

Exercise:
To discover and state the focus be able to answer the following questions with specific, brief statement: a sentence or less.
a. what is the single dominant meaning
b. what is the central tension within the dominant meaning?
c. What do test readers say is the meaning of the draft?

Exercise:
Frame Your Meaning
a. like framing a picture with a camera
b. draw a box around a part of a picture
c. use the frame like a zoom lens
a. give students same picture with different size frames
b. write a piece on the picture





3. Rewrite to Collect (information)
a. writers write with information
i. words are symbols of information
b. don’t be word-drunk
i. readers hungry for information, images, facts, insights
c. readers read to become an authority
d. concrete, accurate, significant details
i. creates trust
ii. makes writing lively

4. Rewrite for External Order
a. you should have a draft and a bunch of information to work into it
b. now you need to shape everything and take control of it
c. FORM IS MEANING
i. 5 paragraph essay may seem harmless (but it isn’t)
-5 paragraph essays lives only in a school, not real world writing
-suggests that FORM is more important than the content
-suggests that meaning can be changed to fit the form
-there is one right way to tell all stories
-the reader has to be told what the message will be, what the message is, what it means
d. the purpose of the form is to carry meaning to the reader
i. essay? Narrative? Argument? Expository? et al…

5. Rewrite for Internal Order
a. Readers should be able to follow a trail of information
b. Remember a reader is always in control and it is up to you to give them a trail worth following (“a seductive trail”)

Exercise: Answer the reader’s questions
a. all effective writers hear the reader’s questions and answers them immediately
i. How come? How do you know that? Says who? I’d like to know more about that… Why’d she do that? Whoa, back up, I don’t understand…

Exercise: Outline after writing
a. to expose the structure of the draft
b. adapt/redesign the structure

6. Rewrite to Develop
a. an underdeveloped draft is fully developed in a writer’s mind but not on paper
b. stand back and look at it like a reader (hungry for information)
c. look for the signs of an underdeveloped draft:
-it is predictable
-it could have been written by anyone
-there is no individual vision
-the reader learns nothing the reader did not already know
d. develop with information
-reveal with specifics
-write with abundance
e. develop with authority
-convince with authority
-persuade with evidence
f. develop with clarity
-dominant impression-every piece of info supports a single meaning
-the reader should receive information in a natural order
g. develop with context
-address the reader who asks, “So what?”
h. rewriting starts with rereading
-read fragments of your writing
-search for code words or words that have meaning only to you
-read to add snapshots of memories that haunt or move us

Exercise – Emphasize the Significant
a. Arrange and Rearrange paragrahs in a 2-3-1 order
b. moving the most significant information to the edges will clarify the writing

7. Rewrite with Voice
a. lack of voice is most common reason we stop reading
b. signs of a draft without voice:
-no individual human being behind the page
-no intellectual challenge
-no emotional challenge
-no flow
-no magic


8. Rewrite to Edit
a. Twenty ways to “unfinal” a draft
-listen to the draft -cut the end -make new connections
-welcome the unexpected -cut or extend the length -reorder the draft
-expand what works -play with a new focus -change the pace
-tune the music of the draft -reconsider the audience -unbalance the proportions
-start closer to the end -put draft into new context -try a new genre
-add new evidence -look for instructive failure -role play a reader
-use a test reader -observe the draft

b. attitude change…writing is editing…trust your ear more than your eye

Exercise: Interview your draft
a. what is the one thing I wanted to say?
b. What single message does the draft deliver?
c. To whom is the message being sent?
d. Does everything in the draft support or advance the message?
e. Where are the greatest failures in the draft?


9. Rewrite at Work


10. The Craft of Letting Go








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Without Any Comfort

Long pining for comfort, Anne Frank wrote on Christmas Eve of 1943, "Crying can bring relief, as long as you don't cry alone." I can't help but wonder how often each member of The Secret Annex wept alone.

Did they hear each other weeping gently in the dark?

Without the ability to comfort each other, did they just leave each other be to cry alone in a private space?

At one point Anne describes crying large round tear drops. They stained her dress with dark blotches--she sat alone in the water closet for privacy. Was this her private space?

She also wrote of a time, alone in the office, where the tears steamed down her cheeks. Long thin ribbons of anguish--a common experience among the thousands in hiding--shared with no one.

The image I chose for my poster (the small child comforting another) speaks powerfully to me because this simple act seems so inaccessible for Anne.

She turned to her diary, her writing, for comfort.

She turned to Peter.

She turned to her father.

She turned to Miep and the brief moments when Miep and the others brought books, food, or news.

Anne turned, and turned, and turned.

Alone.

Anne's words are important. They tell us that friendship and family nourish us. We really can not survive without the daily dose of close friends or the unconditional and unwavering love of family.

I'm also reminded of the fragile condition of being human, of being a part of a family, of being a friend. We need to play both roles...we need to embrace both roles.

Sometimes we lean on another and we cry.

Sometimes we have to be available so that another may find their comfort.

But always we must be aware and respectful of those relationships so none of us ever has to turn, and turn, and turn.

Without any comfort.

driving lessons

n our congested city street, my mom offered me my first driving lessons in her red Ford Escort.  Usually, she let me drive the car wherever I wanted to go--it was just neighborhood streets: a lot of stop signs and controlled 10-15 mph driving.  You rarely took a car out of third gear in the neighborhood--if you did it would be just a little reckless.  Even with the herky-jerky nature of driving a manual car along city streets, neither the manual shifter nor the need for double parking posed any problems--handling the compact car came naturally to me.

Joey, my tall neighborhood friend, came along during one of my earliest lessons.  He and his bony knees wedged themselves into the back seat.  He had been taking his own driving lessons with his father in what was soon to be Joey's gold Plymouth.

As I pressed the clutch and started the car, mom turned towards me in the passenger seat, smiling.  We hadn't eaten dinner yet; my mom once again sacrificing her time (and a prime parking spot near the house) right after work.

Finding a parking spot near your own house anytime after 5pm was often forged out of sheer luck and patience.  A familiar topic of conversation in our neighborhood was how many times someone drove around and around the neighborhoods, in ever widening concentric rectangles in search of the perfect parking space near your house.

The genesis of some of the best neighborhood angst included being in a car when you passed up a space in the hope of a better, closer, space only to find that someone else nabbed it during your next trip around the block.

I liked pulling myself into the driver's seat as if I were a stock car driver  entering through the driver's-side window--only, in this case, the car door would be completely open.  I watched a lot of shows with cars in them: The Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Rider, Starsky and Hutch, Magnum P.I. and even old men such as Jim Rockford and Quincy, M.D. all jumped into their cars to hurtle to something exciting, dangerous, and sexy. My fantasized stock car entrance occurred by grabbing the roof of the car in a psuedo-chin-up position and swinging my legs in and then under the red steering wheel.

Satisfied with myself I closed the car door and started it--this is when I turned and saw my mom smiling at me, ready to guide me through my next driving lesson.

Before pulling out, and out of force of habit with hopping into a car with friends, I turned and asked Joey, whose eyes  reflected the enormity of the mistake I made as it came out of my mouth, "So, where are we drinking tonight?"

"Get out of the car, Brian."

Sheepishly, I did while Joey slid home quietly.

There ended the lesson.

Resource Book Review: A Writer Teaches Writing

A Writer Teaches Writing: A Complete Revision by Donald Morison Murray

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


hen immersed in reading about writing and the teaching of writing, the real McCoy stands out prominently. This book, clear about its focus from the beginning, is page after page after page of how anyone can transform their classroom into a writing classroom: activities, lessons, adjustments in classroom expectations or procedures, and even how to assess and comment. This is the book where you can access something easily and know that it is steeped in research and practice.

The meaty final few chapters may be of particular interest to you as they address three universal circumstances: problem writers, answers to questions you may ask yourself, and answers to questions others may ask you.

Some of the issues Murray addresses in these chapters are: the student who doesn't care; the student who can't spell, punctuate and aint got not grammar;the student who demands the formula; the student who simply loves to write--and write and write;should I accept papers from other courses; should I share my writing with my students; when do you teach grammar; what is the relationship between reading and writing; and does this work only in a creative writing course? And there are many more.

In addition to answering many of the questions teachers have, Murray also provides a very strong chapter on conference techniques for the teacher. This is worth the price of the book itself.

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Resource Book Review: Time for Meaning

Time for Meaning: Crafting Literate Lives in Middle & High School by Randy Bomer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A great strength of Randy Bomer's "Time for Meaning" is a clear focus on how the physical and social structures of a classroom affects the writing process. As an aside before I go too far into my review, he focuses on the secondary classroom but it is certainly transferable to the middle school classroom.

Bomer writes, "I want my classroom to be receptive rather than transmissive or gregarious." Backed by the research of Murrary, Calkins, Atwell et al. Bomer tells us what his goals are and how he attempts to achieve them.

Later in the book he spends a chapter relating some of challenges in establishing a writing class--resistance from both (some) students, (some) peers, and (some) administrators. It illustrates the how heavily invested our culture is in clearly measurable objectives and assignments. Where the research and our cultural preferences clash is in the fact that writing is recursive and unique to experience and development of the individual. Furthermore, what our culture recognizes as the standard measure of competent writing--the five paragraph essay is a piece of the wedge which prohibits young people from developing their writing ability.

I want to add, that the final chapters which highlight the resistance and, at times, venom of individuals is a sad circumstance in education. Usually reserved for young teachers (easier prey), the criticism Bomer received ("your program") from some colleagues was divisive and ignorant. Yet, it is worth reading--not that any of us would experience the same treatment, but it is good to hear where the other side comes from--and I'll leave my comment at that. Read and judge for yourself.

You might think by reading that previous paragraphs that Bomer is proposing something absurd. Quite the contrary, he speaks of demonstrating value in student work, keeping detailed records of what students say and do, conferring with students on a daily basis about their reading and writing, and establishing that literature can help us create an awareness and respect for many things.

His students keep a writer's notebook and use it daily. His teaching style is to ask questions based on what the students write--pushing them to go deeper, to keep asking why, to live a life founded (in part) on inquiry. And writing is a great place to practice that skill.

Bomer offers many great ideas for incorporating a writer's notebook in your class--this book is great mix of current sound research and practical methods of encouraging a depth and extension of the traditional student writing produced in many schools today.

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National Writing Project Day 9: Revision

One of the great parts of giving your full effort and attention to something is that you're ready for any surprises which may come your way, good or bad.  I've been focused in my workshops for the last two weeks--more than I imagined considering they are taking place during beautiful summer days.

My surprise today was actually an A-Ha moment while working with the concept of revision.

Typically revision is a regularly scheduled part of the writer's process.  I've done it.  I've hear colleagues do it.  I went it through it myself as a student: write a draft, bring it to class to have your mistakes circled, and take it home to revise.  Hand in the final copy.

There may be variations to that example, but the core of my learning today is how silly I've been.  I've literally worked with revision as if it were a stand-alone moment.  As if we write-write-write and then take it home and then that is the roller coaster ride of revision takes place--alone in your room, at a desk, door closed.  As if that is where the magic happened for thousands of American teenagers with each writing assignment.

Revision: the wild ride on the Kansas tornado just before safely crashing atop of the Witch of the Deadline.  Upon landing, all color returns to your face and you open the bedroom door to the farmhouse; your younger brother and his good-time friends tumble around the house.  The paper is done--it has been revised...no matter what that mean ol' Miss Gulch has to say, you have a revised product to submit tomorrow.

I experienced at least five different exercises today where revision was either implicitly or explicitly ingrained as a part of the routine of writing single words, sentences, paragraphs, and even brainstorming sessions with partners.

It is interesting to look back on the word--revision.  To have a vision again.  To re-visit.  Yet that is misleading to students and teachers, isn't it?  Revision isn't a separate stage exclusively.  We revise as we write--whether we are overwriters or underwriters.  If we overwrite, we'll certainly have to cut some things out.  If we underwrite, we'll have to go back and insert more text.

As we scan our memories or creative ideas we are picking and choosing what to place on paper--revision is happening naturally.  How often have we paused before writing a line which excites us only to think it through again--revision.

It can be such a simple and painless concept--yet, somehow, in some adolescent circles it is made out to be a giant inconvenience.  It can seem so daunting to a student when left to the back end of a process: take all of this work you just muscled through and rewrite it using stronger verbs, improving your punctuation, minding your focus, double-checking your content and support...and so on.

No wonder some do not revise in that classic mode--it sounds exhausting.

I've revised this blog several times in the act of writing it and until today I never thought of it in that way.  I'm the classic underwriter--I write enough to put my ideas down and then I go back through and build it out from the inside, and go back through again and again to change words, alter meaning, twist a phrase just so.  In my example of a classroom, I may not have believed or understood that to be a form of revision.

And some kids have authentic experiences with this which they have already enjoyed.

Take the example of MadLibs.  Are there many American kids out there who haven't toyed around with at least one pad of these fun oddities?  If they have, then they have experienced revision as they've wrestled over which adjective sounds the most disgusting and subsequently hilarious.

I'm glad I paid attention--I don't think I wrote anything the rest of the day today without recognizing those many moments when revision just kicked in on its own.

Resource Book Review: Clearing the Way

Clearing the Way: Working with Teenage Writers by Tom Romano

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


As I read more about the teaching of writing, a common message has arisen: encourage the writer.

Published over twenty years ago, Romano proposes finding the good in student writing, having students write more than a teacher could possibly assess, write and read all kinds of writing, talk about writing, talk about writing, and, oh yeah, talk about writing.

The same message is still be trumpeted today by members of the National Writing Project and many well-versed teachers of writing. Yet, the stereotypical red-pen wielding, mistake maven still dominates English classrooms. Shackled by any number of things, Romano asserts that teachers fall into the habit of becoming college professors. Our downfall is we critique the mechanics of writing so much that we kill the writer's voice. We do more damage by damning things like the comma-splice...

I got the most out of Chapter 8 where Romano addresses assessing student writing. He admits that there have been occasions where he has failed miserably at his job in this capacity. Yet, I am encouraged by his own revelation:

Distinguishing between the student and the writing is a fool's distinction. Writing is the writer. It embodies her voice, her passion, her thinking, her intellect, her labor, and, on some occasions, her very soul.

You are a fine person, but this piece of writing is a D.

Don't kid yourself--when that happens the writer is stung.

Such a method is directly opposed to our purposes as teachers.

I'm quickly becoming fascinated with how many teachers of writing are disgusted by the damage we do to young writers by grading their work. This is different than assessing. Romano and the rest lay out a variety of powerful and effective assessing models. But this issue of grading is sitting with me like a ghost this summer.

Romano's book resurrected the conversation for me today.

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Resource Book Review: Hidden Gems

Hidden Gems: Naming and Teaching from the Brilliance in Every Student's Writing by Katherine Bomer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I can't say that I ever anticipated reading an emotionally moving book about writing instruction. Over the last 24 hours I have read my first.

The intent of Katherine Bomer's cogent book on teaching writing, Hidden Gems, is to transform the way the rest of us approach student writing. Admittedly, it is awfully difficult to see a piece of student writing and not leap to what is wrong with it. It is how I was taught when I was 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15... And I allowed myself a brief moment of silent shame in a class this week with the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project (NWP) when a colleague projected a piece of student writing for all of us to discuss. Immediately, I saw the errors.

We didn't once discuss the errors--we discussed what was strong in it. We discussed what the writer could build upon. I listened and I have to admit, my perspective of what I do and how I do was altered.

Bomer addresses the fact that many teachers share in my experience:

Constant attention to and judgment on mechanics and organization becomes a systematic means for placing restraints on kids without listening to what they have to say.

Especially helpful is the fact that Bomer includes many student samples in her book. Yet, she not only covers what is strong, but she also models how she would confer with the student and what a plan might be moving forward. These are not perfect texts by our traditional definition. She selected a wide variety of samples.

Bomer also takes into consideration that what may be making teachers begin and end with negative comments on student writing is traced to the writing rubric and grading itself. She quotes from Maja Wilsons Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment:

However, writing may not be a simple system like billiards, subject to the laws of determinism.  Writing may more closely resemble complex, chaotic systems like global weather, economic systems, or political unrest.

Bomer is trying to balance the reality of our profession (or vocation) with the best case scenario for all involved. I liked that she focused on teaching us how to find things to compliment and build upon in student writing--she is trying to change the way you see yourself and how you see your writers.

Bomer writes that teachers need to write for good cause:

Teaching writing without doing it ourselves is like trying to teach a four-year-old how to tie shoes when we have only worn flip-flops our entire life.

I've come to a crossroads myself as a teacher of writing. It is only through discussion with peers, reflections on past practice, and reading books such as this that I can come to an educated decision about how I will move forward next year. I do not have a perfect answer yet, and I do not know that any of us ever can:

Most of us have a long way to go toward creating assessments that teach writing rather than sort, humiliate, and confuse...

Kids try hard to make writing look and sound like the #4...and if they miss the cues and fail to conform, this becomes one more notch in their belt of failure...

The beauty in this book, is not just teaching us to see the beauty and possibilities in all student writing, but it also very clearly holds our "schizophrenic" roles of supportive facilitator to critical judge right up to our faces.

You may not look at your role in the classroom the same way again.

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Resource Book Review: Because Writing Matters

Because Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Our Schools by National Writing Project

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I should establish that the 3 star rating exists only because I am looking for books which can help teachers in their classroom now.  As you'll read this is a book with a long-range goal and noble message which all teachers should read.

Quite honestly, this is really a book for administrators and school boards or people who pull the strings. It is an excellent call to action for our nation's schools.  While the teachers are on the front lines, we can only march or fire or set up camp at the direction of those in command--we can't just teach what we want...no matter how correct it is.  For there to be change, real change, our leaders need to work together to inspire the change...or acknowledge the change which needs to occur.

What alarms me is that Because Writing Matters reminded me that the famous Newsweek article "Why Johnny Can't Read" hit the scene in 1975.

1975.

I was 7.

Actually, this belief that young people can't write is nothing new. We can go all the way back to Harvard University's creation of a writing course for all incoming freshmen in 1875.

Yet, writing scores across the nation continue to decline or remain well below expectations.

Why?

We talk about at work.  We make professional suggestions.  We encourage growth and offer professional feedback.  We read, and share, and discuss the scores from state testing.

Yet, all across the nation, Johnny still can't write.

What I gather from this book as well as others is that we value other things more. We may say students need to write better, but in order for that to occur they need to write more.

Many studies suggest they write less in all of their classrooms.

Or if they do write, teachers have been trained or permitted to teach to the writing piece. Teachers have learned to assign writing and not teach the writer--and there is an enormous difference.  We lean on rubrics (some catered specifically to narrative, informative, or persuasive) and we point to hamburger charts and teach the correct composition of the five-paragraph essay.

Many studies suggest that students not only write less in language arts classrooms but they may not write at all some of their other classes. Writing, in our nation, has been swept into a tidy pile to be covered almost solely by English teachers...who teach content-based curriculum.

They have content to get to and through.  They also have traditional points of view to deal with when it comes to writing--the notion that if you are noting every error or slip in grammar then and only then are you helping them be a proficient writer.

We know enough to understand that literacy influences the rate of success and growth potential in our career.  People who do not write well, unfortunately, find fewer doors open to them in this world.

Yet, ask ten English teachers across the nation in 2011 if their classes are content-based or writing-based.  Don't be surprised by the response.

What good is it if a student knows about the different types of clouds or rocks, or the causes of the Civil War, or the Pythagorean Theorem if they can't write about it...especially with the technological revolution swirling around us.  As Kelly Gallagher suggests in Teaching Adolescent Writers, the merging of technology and literacy is a stampede heading dead at these kids.  They either need to start running with it, or they'll be passed by, or worse yet...crushed.

What good is it to ask our science, math, and social studies teachers to use writing in their classes if they have not been trained?  I can make a pretty solid prediction that many teachers outside of the language arts classroom would assume that they are not qualified to handle a steady diet of student writing because they do not feel capable of helping students with the conventions of grammar.

I'll also assume that many of those same teachers might be willing to do it if they were trained...and there will be still others who will want to be assured that they only need to assess the content of the piece..and leave the grammar to the English types.

A teacher reading this book might find it simultaneously enlightening and frustrating. We know where we need to go, we even know how we might get there...we are willing to do it as I imagine many were when I was 7 and Newsweek printed "Why Johnny Can't Write" but some of the roads are still closed.

So, when I say that this book is best suited for administrators or people who make the big decisions it is because this kind of evolution has to begin at the top. Otherwise, we're just a bunch of teachers in a bunch of different districts in a bunch of different states trying to do the right thing within a system which has not adjusted the rules of the game in spite of the evidence.  Among teachers, writing is called the Silent 'R for good reason.

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National Writing Project Day 7: Domain on the Brain

I have a few thoughts elbowing their way around my brain after today's workshop with Dr. Andy Fishman:

Thought(s) 1:

Have you found that you/your colleagues have mashed together the concept assessing/conferring about domains and grading essays with rubrics?  The more I learn the more I think we've come to that--the word "rubric" has found a way to replace the correct terms of more than just "domain."

Conferring about a specific domain is quite different than using a domain chart to stamp a grade on an essay, isn't it?

Is it easy for a teacher to confuse the two...use each incorrectly...and confuse the student writer?

I find that the use of the Pennsylvania Writing Assessment Domain Scoring Guide makes sense when  dealing with formative assessment and conferences.

I'm struggling with the distinction between that guide and a rubric.  Can that guide be a rubric?  Should it be?

I don't like the thought of a number on a guide...or on something which is best promoted (in my opinion) as a formative assessment guide.

It gets gummy when I start thinking about numbers and letters generated from that guide.

Thought(s) 2:

I can't recall if I read it in Study Driven or Teaching Adolescent Writers...or someplace else...but the concept that writing in the real world doesn't supply a rubric before writing kept creeping back into me today (even though today's discussion was domains).

If we are teaching domains (Focus, Content, Organization, Style, and Conventions) and these are best reinforced through rehearsal and conferring and writing and conferring and revision and conferring over and over, then why are we really using rubrics?  To teach to the essay?  To have a piece of paper with a stamp of approval upon it?  To cover our own rear-ends so that we can say "See, I used a rubric, my expectations were clear!"

Can we ever really separate and distinguish the difference?

National Writing Project Day 5: Show, Don't Tell

As part of a teacher demo today by Sarah (PAWLP) we had an opportunity to work from some writing samples already in our daybook.

The first challenge was to write directions for a photographer who was going to recreate or film the experience.

I treated it like I was writing for a film and ended up using the idea of a wide angle shot of a camera, scrolling in to the opening of my narrative:

Wide angle shot of a suburban neighborhood from above.  We move in slowly as might towards one house in particular.  A white van sits in its driveway and a very tall man is walking to it from the porch.  Details of man and van are vague at best.


The morning shy over the house remains violet from the waning night.  The horizon--a thickening line of pale lavenders.


The ground is wet from a recent summer shower.


We zoom in slowly on the van from the side and to the rear, we see more of the house beyond it--two rocking chairs on a porch, colorful annuals in outs, and one light one downstairs towards the back of the house.

We swing along the side of the van and enter the passenger side window, rolled down, and enter.  We see Norman.  Tall and over-sized for the front seat, Norman stares at his cellphone in his open palm.

Phase two of our demo was to breathe some life into a character.  I chose to stay with Norman as I may be developing it for my rough draft for the week.  We had to write comparisons, showing what they do not embody.

Sarah used Sonnet 130 (Shakespeare) as a model for us: "My mistresses eyes are nothing like the sun..."

This proved difficult for me.  It forced me to look at my character in an entirely new light.  I had to see a new detail which I may have ignored or maybe just didn't see:

Norman is ten pounds of cotton in a two pound bag--his wrist and shin and chest hair burst around and over and through the fabric like plumes of insects silently stalking prey.

What worked here for me as teacher and writer was not worrying about defining showing versus telling.  We were invited to work with our own authentic pieces of writing to begin to breathe life into it.

We did other exercises and discussed the ideas behind showing versus telling, but I have to throw it out there that I appreciate learning from colleagues when we are permitted to play around with the work, experiment, heck even fail at it--but it sure beats being lectured at and simply just told x, y, and z should be done because Dr. Fancydegree wrote about it in a book.

Teachers need to put their hands on the task and need to do it themselves to be able to understand it and then be able to teach it.

I'm appreciating the spirit behind our instruction in the PAWLP workshop--write alongside of your students.  See yourself as a writer...be a writer...and bring that into your classroom.

Start teaching the writer and not the writing.

Resource Book Review: Teaching Adolescent Writers

Teaching Adolescent Writers by Kelly Gallagher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What strikes me about Kelly Gallagher's book is how thorough it is--by that I do not mean to suggest cumbersome and extraneous. I mean here is somebody who not only clearly articulates and well-support belief, but explains how he covers it in his classes and offers ideas as to how you might cover it in your class.

Everything I read in this book is absolutely adaptable to any class at any grade level.

He begins with a spot-on metaphor of what is happening in our world. The explosion of technology is putting a premium on an individual's capability to communicate: read and write. Technology hasn't made the fundamental value or skill easier, if anything it has shined a very bright light on it.

I'm writing now. You are reading now. Via technology.

This exchange between us did not occur LAST YEAR...others were blogging and reviewing books, yes, but it just trickled down to me. Now, go back ten years ago.

Go back to when I started teaching seventeen years ago. This did not occur.

As Gallagher extrapolates, "All teachers share the responsibility of not only teaching their content, but also promoting the literacy level of students."

We have to move beyond assigning writing and move more towards a whole-school value of teaching writing.

Gallagher roots his beliefs in the core value that we are all stakeholders in this process. And he demystifies the notion that science, or math, or art, or any teacher other than an English teacher can/should/is capable of teaching a writer in their subject area.

He offers dozens upon dozens of exercises capable of being used, right out of the book, for any course, any curriculum.

This is worth a first and second look; it is worth placing in your classroom as it will certainly get a lot of use once you crack it open. Who knows, maybe you'll even inspire a colleague to grow from it as well.

The bottom line is, kids have to write more than what we are generating nationwide. The national and state scores bear it out. The future, the rate and manner in which technology is hurtling forward...that too bears it out.

It is going to take some dialogue, but it has to start somewhere.  Gallagher's book is as solid a start as any I've read.

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Resource Book Review: Study Driven

Study Driven: A Framework for Planning Units of Study in the Writing Workshop by Katie Wood Ray

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What a gem.



I borrowed this book from the PAWLP library, was impelled to take notes as I read--thirteen full pages--and still have resolved to buy the book for myself for my classroom and a place near my desk.

As a reference and resource for pieces of writing or places to find pieces of writing for support in your classroom it is the best I've come across.

As a reference and resource for lesson planning ideas it is the best I've come across. Katie Wood Ray offers THIRTY thorough lesson plans or what she calls study possibilities. This is after 186 pages chock full of great ideas, support, and inspiration. Some of the study possibilities she offers span the range of memoir, historical fiction, and practical how-to fiction, to photo essay, how writers use punctuation as a crafting tool, and Editorials, Commentary and all Things Op-ed.

This is a seriously thorough and well-balanced book.

At the core of her belief is immersion. We can only hope to improve students we teach by immersing them in the texts and in their writing--teaching them to read like writes. Immersion affords us the possibility to read the type of writing we are going to do, talk about it, practice it, and share it.

One of the seminal questions we can help all students by asking is "what have you read that is like what you are trying to write?"

Her preference for the outline of a typical class period would entail: whole class gathering for teacher-led conversation, demonstration, or inquiry; independent writing and writing-related work (conferencing); talking and sharing about the process of writing.

Katie Wood Ray concludes this thoughtful book by covering the issue of time. We are all pressed for time in our schools and districts. I won't go into here, but she makes a very eloquent case for considering trying to make at least some part of these ideas work in your classroom.

We don't teach under the same rules, issues, or needs. But can reach the same texts and have the same conversations (which our colleagues) to, perhaps, begin to shift the pendulum back. As far as time goes, until something changes, we have what we have.

Read this book--even if nothing changes in your school or district or curriculum I am confident this will help you make at least some positive change in your teaching.

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Resource Book Review: Because Digital Writing Matters

Because Digital Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Online and Multimedia Environments by National Writing Project

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Built more on theory and pedagogy, this NWP book provides sound, rational reasoning for building the digital literacies of ourselves and our students--in that order.

A generalization referenced in the book resonated with me: our students are "digital natives" and their teachers are "digital immigrants". I appreciate the idea that we (the teachers) are constantly working to fit in technology. The book goes on to point out that since 2003 when everything began to become networked and our cloud environment was in its infancy, our students are now no longer the people our educational system was built to support.

It is different than The Digital Writing Workshop by Troy Hicks in that there are scant few authentic examples of projects, student work, or specific digital technology. While BDWM will certainly provide some moments for you to chew on, it is not the book to reference for quick adjustments to bring back to your classroom.

This is the slow-simmer book. It contains the ideas to bring back to your colleagues and your administrators. It is the book to bring back to your school community.

Are things really just the same as they were 30 years ago just with nicer computers, or has the world dramatically shifted, and with it writing, composing, conferring, reading...learning?

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Resource Book Review: The Digitial Writing Workshop

The Digital Writing Workshop by Troy Hicks

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Rooted in sound process writing principles, Troy Hicks leads you through many possibilities of transforming at least a portion of what you do in your class. I liked that he stresses the concept that we shouldn't be writing digitally just for the sake of using a computer or a slick new program. The core of what we are working are still the principles of effective writing and that should always be the primary concern.

Understanding that that is platform Troy Hicks builds upon, The Digital Writing Workshop covers RSS, Social Bookmarking, Blogging, Podcasts, Wikis, and Collaborative Word Processors just to name a few. He offers many well documented sources and authentic examples of teacher and student work. We can see both in the book as well as by typing in any number of the sites Hicks suggests what modes we can influence in our own classrooms.

One of the strengths of the book is its clarity of purpose, audience, and execution. Each segment is covered thoroughly in a language which can comprehended by any teacher with any level of experience of technology. He offers links to wonderful sites which can take the beginner step by step through the basics, as well as links for the intermediate or advanced.

I borrowed the book from a library and took extensive notes in my daybook, but I am already committed to buying my own copy to have on-hand as a resource.

His style and vision is so helpful that I went and borrowed his second book, a collaboration, Because Digital Writing matters...which I plan on beginning once I end this sentence with a period.

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National Writing Project Day 2: Timelines and Freewriting

One of today's writing lessons began by asking us to create a list of every job we ever held.  Then we generated a list of every car we ever owned.  Finally, the last list asked us to remember every place we ever lived.  We were then given fifteen minutes to free write from any point of any of the timelines.  Take one thing and tease something else--what do we want to share, what do we want to explore, what is jumping out at us from our lists?  The following true story is one I love telling to people but I feel like I have not told it in a while, so I wrote it today.  After I came home from the workshop I polished it and published it here.  Enjoy.

Throughout the late 1980s I worked five different jobs during the early months of each summer break from college.  We all did.  The beach was relatively empty until the July 4th weekend, so we all worked as much as we could anywhere we could in order to save up a chestful of money and then we'd quit most of the jobs after the July 4th weekend.  We'd all keep the most lucrative jobs throughout the rest of the summer, as we wanted a bulk of July and August for us.

I fried chicken at Superfresh in the early morning hours, waited tables at an outdoor bar and restaurant called The Wharf, bussed tables at Ed Zaberer's, collected money at carnival games on Morey's Pier at all hours day and night, and worked as a bouncer and then a bartender at The Playpen.  For most of those jobs, I learned to hustle.

I slept little during May and June and barely touched a beer (that was coming in July).  May and June were about squeezing every cent out of every hour that I could.  We made so much money we opened savings accounts at a nearby bank.  In two months of hustling for three consecutive summers I'd saved almost $7,000--now, a nice chunk of that disappeared into beer and shots and taking waitresses on dates throughout the months of July and August, but I always returned to school with several thousand dollars in my pockets.

It wasn't the same for all of my friends except for those that hustled.  You can hustle a pretty penny during summers at the beach--but you have to grind it out, you can't stop.  Burn the candle at both ends as long as you can and people will hand you money--cash.  Wads of it.  Believe me, you'll stop before they do, and if you don't seize the opportunities and grab it, someone else will.

We'd obviously learned very quickly that hustling translated into cash...and the place I hustled the most was the gaudy tourist trap restaurant Ed Zaberer's.

Zaberer's was huge--it was compartmentalized into many smaller dining rooms connected by ramps.  The rooms were flooded with hungry people and ponytailed waitresses.  It was so busy I learned to carry four buspans at once--I'd stack two on each shoulder and power walk to the kitchen, bust through the swinging doors and shove the clattering buspans onto the cleaning line.  The dishwashers ate food from these buspans and swore at me, goodnaturedly I think, in Spanish if I had squashed some buried treasures inside the underneath buspan.

And just as quickly as I'd delivered full pans, more overflowed in other dining rooms--if I hustled I could be the one to grapple them, and I could be the one the waitresses tipped out more money to at the end of the night.    We were all in college and we all knew the game--if we hustled and cleaned their tables and their pans they could hustle more families and in and out and make more money.  If the waitresses made more money then the busboys made more money.  But you needed face time with the waitresses--they needed to see you and know you were the one making their jobs easier and better.

As the dishwashers chomped on the remains crab cakes and sausages, I accelerated through the doors to corral more buspans but stopped hard on my heels as a crowd blocked my passage between two tables.  My impatience grew as I had nowhere to move and couldn't understand why these people (tourists and waitresses) kept me from doing my job.  I didn't look closely--my focus was clearly just on my job and right now I could not do my job.  I couldn't focus on anything else.

If you did not move fast enough in Ed Zaberer's you would be admonished by Ms. Bliss.  She stood 4 foot tall, wagged ten arthritic crooked fingers both for relief and to emphasize a point; she glowered at us through Joe Paterno's spare eye glasses.  Incredibly, her knees pointed East and West and her toes and chin daggered straight at the person in front of her--her toes and chin led Ms. Bliss throughout the many rooms of the dimly lit restaurant.

The fact of the matter is I knocked Ms. Bliss out cold.

Throughout my many shifts, grunting four buspans to the kitchen each time lathered me up with a heavy sweat and a sharp focus on my job.  I didn't see things as much as I felt things in my path like a bat--I'd obviously known all of the paths between tables and across ramps--I knew where to turn and when to pause--I didn't really need to focus on seeing so much as I did on using my strength and balancing four filled pans.  I'd developed strength in my shoulders and legs heaving, sprinting, bending, stretching, and hustling, hustling, and hustling these heavy pans for hour upon hour.  There were no breaks in the dinner crowd.

A ponytailed flicked in the air and the charming smiling waitress simply said, "Dude, you knocked out Ms. Bliss."

Upper management and very important people came out of the woodwork to evaluate Ms. Bliss.  I looked closely between the crouching and the concerned--I confirmed what Miss Adorable shared with me. I knocked out Ms. Bliss.  Her knees still pointed East and West but her toes and chin jutted towards heaven.  On her left temple a knot the size of a golf ball hardened.  As it turns out, I ran over Ms. Bliss, knocking her square in the temple with two stacked buspans and never looked back.  I have to admit, I never felt her--it wasn't like a car running over a squirrel and the driver feeling the subtle thump-thump raising the car.  This must have been more like tractor trailer meets earthworm.

Once all of the king's horses and all the king's men put Ms. Bliss back together again she settled in for the last hours of the night at a corner table alone with a pack of ice and vodka gimlets.  The waitresses didn't ask.  They continued to bring fresh ones of each until the last light was turned off in the place.

I worked the rest of the night just as hard but I did look where I went now and that made me a bit slower at my job.  Ms. Bliss summoned me after I'd cleaned the last station and the doors were locked.

This felt like going to see the Godfather.  An empty room with a film noir appeal, and a still mound of steel magnolias in glasses on a hard wooden chair swallowing vodka gimlets.  She swallowed vodka with the same ease as her own saliva.

She did nothing at first.  I stood in silence on the opposite side of the round table for eight.  Her right hand trembled and slid a white envelope towards me.  She patted it twice and taught me a lesson.

"I should have been more careful.  Don't ever stop working hard--you did nothing wrong."

I asked her if she was ok and she waved me off impatiently with those same crooked fingers.

"You keep at it.  You work hard.  I like that."

And with that she picked up the envelope, a little thicker than usual, and slapped it into my hand with a little vinegar, wished me good night, and emptied her glass again.