Confronting My Own Bias

A week after presenting at a Pennsylvania Writing & Literature Project graduate course, Grammar Matters, I received an envelope chock-full of thank you notes from the participants in the mail. Among the cards, one teacher wrote, "Thank you for helping me confront my own bias about grading."

That statement, confronting my own bias, energizes me.

Not that the note in any way, shape, or form validates any sense of right and wrong or who has the answers and who does not. To the contrary, it reminds me that I am and will forever be in that place as well--confronting my own bias. In other words, growing.

In ten years I will be able to see through the lens of further experience and exposure to mentors--and that kind of growth is invigorating. I am not afraid of knowing that I can, will, and should grow--even though I am twenty years in to the profession--actually, especially since I am twenty years into the profession.

I was reluctant to confront my own bias for far too many years. I did not reflect, read, or write. I simply taught. And I believed I was doing a good job. I wanted to do a good job. My intentions were sincere and from a good place. However, in retrospect, how paralyzing (even just reconsidering) that  former mindset feels now. I was paralyzed within my own bias and I could not recognize it.

Side note: that bias includes more than grading. I have carried biases in writing, grammar, assessment, classroom management, reading, et al. Much of my bias came from not only how I was taught but also how I came to cope and learn.

A team of mentors helped me confront my bias. Donald Graves, one of those important mentors, never met me. But I meet him again and again through his writing. After reading the thank you notes today, I pulled out Writing: Teachers & Children at Work to read from Graves's valuable insights again.

What strikes me today in Writing: Teachers & Children at Work is that Graves tells us children want to write--even on the first day of school:

"Children want to write. They want to write the first day they attend school. This is no accident. Before they went to school they marked up walls, pavements, newspapers with crayons, chalk, pens or pencils...anything that makes a mark. The child's marks say, 'I am.'" (3)

This is the beauty of Graves in my world. He writes so many lines--let alone passages--which serve as a flashpoint--an invitation--for me to confront my own bias.

"We have all heard the groan in the classrooms, 'Do I have to copy it over?' This is the popular understanding of revision. Put a good manicure on a corpse. (4)"

We could go on and discuss Graves--and I hope I spend the rest of my career (and life) doing just that with colleagues (new and familiar). But here, today, I just want to point out that when I read Graves I not only find compelling statements, but also I find an educator who displayed humility and curiosity. take that lesson to heart. 

Humility.

I try to practice humility just as much as I try to practice his concrete teaching points on writing and children. Humility is not always easy, but it is a conscious choice. Graves knew he wasn't perfect, and he embraced the energy of humility (scary! thrilling!) in his life's work. Writing and children invited him to confront his own biases and therein made him feel alive in his work. 

When people or experiences or places make us feel alive, we fall in love.

And so I appreciate the teacher who took the time to write to me in a note, "Thank you for helping me confront my own bias about grading." I imagine that kind of challenge made him feel alive and energized for September.

I am right there with him. Thank you, Jim. Have a wonderful year!

I am wondering what other experiences teachers have had which helped them feel alive, confront their own bias, or even fall in love with the craft of teaching and/or writing...

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: Rethinking Rubrics

Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment by Maja Wilson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


came to know about Maja Wilson's Rethinking Rubrics during an exchange on the English Companion Ning. Wilson replied to some of my discussion topics about assessment and the use of portfolios. Her thoughtful and balanced replies made a lot of sense and I made myself a note to find her book and read it.

I'm heading into my 4th week of a summer workshop with the National Writing Project. My reading over the past few weeks has brought me back to the exchange I encountered with many teachers on the Ning. More specifically it brought me back to rubrics and grading--so much so, that it is now the subject of my inquiry project as I move forward into the upcoming school year.

I read Wilson's book this morning and again found that I appreciated her well-supported candor. Most interesting to me was Wilson's research into the history of assessment in our country. American colleges needed a ranking system for high school students, standard modes such as multiple-choice testing and rubrics were born out of that need.

Wilson questions if something like a rubric, which actually brought writing back into our schools, serves the purpose it promises. She explores what rubrics offer and what rubrics exclude and deny.

Read this book and you won't look at rubrics the same way again.

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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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National Writing Project Day 8: Immersion in Respect

My contribution today is acknowledging the collegial respect demonstrated at our workshop.

We all know that teachers teaching teachers can sometimes be an intimidating prospect.  I've heard colleagues comment even jokingly that teachers can sometimes make some of the worst-behaved students.

Have you ever been in a faculty meeting where rude behavior went unchecked?  Have you ever worked anywhere where cliques developed and colleagues fall prey to judgment and the earnest construction of walls to protect the fifedom of their room or hall?

This is not the case here and I do not think that that can go by unnoticed.

If you read anything about the founding of the NWP or its continued development of leadership,  you find that one of the seminal principles is affording teachers the time to immerse themselves in...reading? (yes) ...writing? (yes) ...conferring? (yes) ...but more to my point, immersion in respect.

So this is what respect feels like...

So this is what being trusted with time feels like...

These tenets of what should be the foundation of all schools, "ain't" always so across the nation.  Just read the news, you may not have to look too far.

I just want to say that I appreciate the foundation of respect found in our PAWLP workshop, and it has been a pleasure getting know different people and all of the unique perspectives and talent we bring to the group.

Hopefully, we can all take this with us and lay the balm of respect on our own families, colleagues, and classrooms.

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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National Writing Project Day 3: Exploring Modes

Our core exercise in the morning began with our reading through our journal/daybook and highlighting similar topics with one color.  I ended up using three colors and found family, nature, and art to be my recurring themes.

Afterwards we were asked to take one of these ideas, not necessarily a large theme but something smaller within that theme, and turn it into a narrative piece, and informational piece, and a persuasive piece.

The experience affected my tone and my voice as I wrote.  Taking an idea (a deer approaching me) which I anticipated being best suited for narrative proved to be equally satisfying to writing and more complex to explore as both informational and persuasive essays.

What I learned is that there is still narrative within the information and persuasive essay, but each of those essay forms lended themselves to my experience being about something else.  Something bigger than simply a deer approaching me in the Berkshires back in July of 1995.

I was more tempted to look back what I had previously highlighted to search for similarities and connections.  One jumped out at me.  Highlighted in the same orange ink were brief entries about a bird's nest which I had unwittingly destroyed; a starving dog yapping at me in Seville, Spain; a peacock chasing me on the grounds of a castle in England; and an interactive map demonstrating the ongoing devastation and disappearance of bees worldwide.  Other observations in my daybook included regional/personal gardens, plants, and vegetables.

My writing explored both personal and common public experiences when human beings intersect with nature--both intentionally and unintentionally.  We are a part of nature yet we've seemed to do a pretty thorough job of almost extracting ourselves from it and with it--responsibility.

With each new neighborhood carved out of our communities we push wildlife into the crowded recesses of what is left.  Along with the loss of natural habitat, some of the insecticides we spray kills the bees.

And as is often attributed to Albert Einstein, if the bees go, so do we.

My homework is to continue to draft one of these pieces tonight--and, as our group reflected after we wrote, many of us are tempted to research and read up on the topics which have emerged from us.

Granted, we are adults, and no longer adolescents or teenagers.  Our interest and fascination with exploring a thread of thought through several modes generated from process writing may not mirror that of a 14-year-old.  However, our generational differences do not counter the fact this is just too powerful a tool dismiss.

I'm immersed within the process and I'm looking forward to bringing it to my classes in the fall.