Tag: Writing Process

Why No I

~ Sarah Powley ~ 2 Comments

Since they’ve been in middle school, the kids I’ve taught have complained about having to follow the rules of rhetorical writing— particularly the rule about not using the first person.

Of course, they “know” why. Their English teachers all along have adhered to the formal writing conventions (abbreviated by us as FWC and used as shorthand on their essays to point out such slips as the use of contractions, or the appearance of digits instead of words for numbers under 100, and yes, ironically, for the use of abbreviations). “I” isn’t appropriate, we tell them, because this is formal writing. (And yes, they get plenty of chances to write narratives and stories and other sorts of essays where a more casual tone is perfectly appropriate.)

Like they would understand what we meant. I used to make an analogy with dress: You wouldn’t wear a sundress to a funeral or a leotard to the prom, I’d say. But times have changed, and I’ve seen worse at both venues. So the old analogies no longer hold. In my later years in the classroom, I had to find a new way to make the point that the more distance between the writer and the audience, the weightier the writing occasion, the more formal the style. Your college professor—or the reader of a scientific article—isn’t your best buddy, I’d say. Don’t call him by his first name and don’t inject yourself into the conversation.

In talking over the content and the intent of the Academic English 12 course we have always called (rightly or wrongly) College Composition, my colleague in the English Department at my former high school revealed that her students were making the same complaints mine always had: Why can’t we use “I”?  These students aren’t middle schoolers. They’re, in fact, old enough (some would say, beyond old enough) to think seriously about levels of diction. I described the lesson I had developed towards the end of my time in the classroom to address this topic, and she invited me to try it out with her students.

I was so excited to be back at the front of the room that I showed up 24 hours early.

We had planned the lesson together. She’d locate a copy of the children’s story The Three Little Pigs and read it aloud to the students. The lesson depended upon their all recalling the plot line.

I started the class by reminding the students of the various conventions they observe in life:

  • Going up the staircase: Up on the right, down on the left
  • Setting the table: Glasses are placed on the right, above the knife
  • Driving: Passing on the right on the road (in the USA)
  • Airline boarding: By zone—unless it’s Southwest and then it’s by number
  • Attire: Hats off inside–except on Spirit Days

When I asked why we have conventions, one boy’s hand shot up: “To make things go smoother!” So right. So that everyone knows what to do. So that everyone is on the same wave length. Various kinds of writing follow certain conventions, too, I reminded them, and they remembered: FWC.

My colleague stepped in then and read The Three Little Pigs aloud, just as a teacher would in elementary school. In this particular version, the first two pigs were eaten—a violent rendition, the kids exclaimed—but reading it aloud was critical, and the pigs demise made for humor later on.

Then we divided the class into six groups and handed each group a card. We did do a little staging, as teachers often do to be sure a lesson goes well. One student we knew to have a particularly droll sense of humor we placed in the Facebook group—we knew he would write in that style without inhibition.  Another we put in the Twitter group because he knew its conventions. Finally, we placed a particular girl—one I’d had in 9th grade—in the “scholarly” group because we knew she’d take the assignment seriously. We wanted the kids to enjoy the activity, but we also wanted them to take the lesson where we were headed.

The directions to the six groups all involved summarizing the story of The Three Little Pigs:

  • Retell the story as a plot summary for a formal writing assignment (for say, Academic English 12).
  • Retell the story as an email to Grandma from an elementary student.
  • Retell the story as a student in the hallway would tell it to prep another student who hadn’t read the assignment before class.
  • Retell the story as a series of text messages between the pigs and the wolf. Be sure to write as if these were real text messages.
  • Retell the story as it would unfold on Facebook, starting with a status update by one of the pigs…be sure to write the way people write on Facebook!
  • Retell the story as a “Tweet”: no more than 140 characters.

The students composed their answers on their computers and sent them electronically to their teacher, who compiled them and projected the collection onto the ENO board. One student from each group read the group’s submission aloud. The class had no trouble identifying the style of each rendition. I was especially impressed when one boy said of the conversation in the hallway, “That sounds like a speech, not a written account.”

Here’s what they wrote, just as they wrote it:

1. Plot summary for the English teacher:

2 Slices of Bacon and Wolf Stew

In the Story “The Three Little pigs” there are three young pigs trying to build themselves each their own home. The first little pig buys straw to build his humble abode. However, a hungry wolf comes along and blows his house in. That poor little pig did not survive. The second pig buys twigs to construct his home out of. Sadly, that same wolf finds him as well, and the second pig does not make it either. The third pig uses his intelligence and buys bricks to design a sturdy home for himself. When the wolf comes he is unable to blow in his house. The wolf then attempts to climb down the chimney into the house. However the little pig using his clever wits out smarts the wolf by placing a pot of boiling water in the chimney. The third little pigs goes on to live happily ever after.

N.B.: The class suggested that a revision opportunity should be offered to this group.

2. Letter to Grandma:

Deer GramGram,

How are you doing? Third grade is going good. Mrs. Ruiz red The 3 Little Pigs today. I did not like the story. There were 3 bruther pigs. The first bruther made a hous. His hous was made out of straw. Then there was a wolf. The wolf wanted to get in the hous but the pig said no. The wolf blew his straw hous down and ate the pig. I was sad. : (. Then the second bruther made a hous. He made his hous out of sticks. The wolf wanted to come inside but the pig said no. So the wolf blew the hous over and ate the other bruther. I was really really sad GramGram : (. Then there was 1 mor bruther. He made his hous out of briks. His hous was really realy strong. The wolf wanted in but the pig said no. The wolf tried blowing it over and going thru the roof but the pig catched the wolf and he died. I was really really happy!!!!i cant really blame the wolf tho i like bacon two.

Love,

Your favorite grand dauter

3. Cramming in the hallway:

Ok so there was 3 pigs. They left their mom’s house because they needed to make their own lives. Then each pig build their own house out of straw, twigs, and bricks. A hungry wolf blew down the first two houses of straw and twigs then ate the pigs. When he came to the last house, the wolf couldn’t blow down the house of bricks. He went down the chimney in order to eat the last pig. He landed in a pot of boiling water and died. The last pig lived happily ever after.

4. Texts:

Conversation One:

Wolf: Hey what’s up my lil round friend?

Pig: Shut up I hate everything about you, fool.

Wolf: Ok now I’m kind of ticked off. I’m blowing your house to the ground like a little bubble. So get out.

Pig: Haha you must be trippin’ bro. I’m not gonna move.

Wolf: You are obviously oblivious to the situation at hand, my friend.

Pig: Aye bro, idk what u trying to say… u r stupid.

Wolf: (blow) Now you’re the fool.

Pig: OMG you eating me hurts so bad.

Wolf: LOL

Conversation two:

Wolf: Hey man, how’s it goin?

Pig: Wut do u want?

Wolf: Man, I’m just trying to have a conversation

Pig: Nah, I’m not about that life

Wolf: Are you about this life? (blows house down and eats pig)

Pig: Stop, man!

Wolf: LOL

Conversation three:

Wolf: Aye pork chop, let me in dat house

Pig: I ain’t eva goin, not by the hurrrr on my chiny chiny chin

Wolf: nu uh, ill blow dat young house down (tries to blow house down)

Pig: I told you I aint eva goin.  Man I’m too nice.

Wolf: Commin in hot! (goes down chimney)

Pig: You a gonna. (traps wolf in pot

5. Facebook

Pig 1: “OMG, h8 my mom soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much right now. I cant believe she thinks she can tell me what to do. Like if you love jesus ❤ #worst #life #ever #hashtag”

It’s the Word: “Aww bb whats wrong :C”

Pig 2:  “Mom totes just dumped us on the streets, like wtf”

Merchant: “Hey, I can offer some stuff for you guys to build your own houses. Sound good?”

Wolf: “dont bother with these pigs, they are too wimpy to build there own houses. XP”

Pig 1: “thats not what ur mom said last night. #BURN”

Wolf: “Its go time! Lets fight!”

Pig 2: “Well take u on any time”

Pig 3: “I’ll take 300 tons of brick for my house, please.”

Wolf: “LOL JUST ATE UR BROS. UR NEXT #Bacon #porkchopped”

Pig 3: “Dude…….come at me bro.”

Pig 3: “Talk about a sick burn.”

6. Twitter:

Three little pigs are down to one and the big bad wolf is cooking in the pot #yolo #sad #funny #nomnomnom @3lilpigs @BIGbadWOLF

When the laughter subsided, it didn’t take but a minute for the students to draw the conclusions we hoped for.

“So what’s the point?” I asked. “What made the difference?  I can think of at least three things.”

“The audience!” several shouted out immediately.

“The tone!” said another, meaning the tone of the medium itself. I agreed with her: Facebook has a certain tone, and you wouldn’t take that tone with your grandmother or your English teacher.

And finally, with a little pantomiming—my two hands moving farther apart as I ticked through the list from Twitter to the English teacher summary—psychological distance. They got it. Your teacher is an authority—and the grader, they reminded me—and you better not presume to be her buddy.

I rode high on that lesson for a week. And so did my colleague. She reported—a week later—that the kids really had understood the message.

We’re going to do it again next semester, reversing roles this time.

I can’t wait. I’ll probably show up 24 hours early once again.

Winners All

~ Sarah Powley ~ 3 Comments

Norman Borlaug: not exactly a household name. But it should be. The father of the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug has “saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived.” That’s not hyperbole, that quote from the Atlantic Monthly.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970 for his work in developing disease-resistant varieties of wheat, a breakthrough development that he pioneered in Mexico, and replicated in India and Pakistan, expanding the technology to rice and saving millions of lives in the process.

In 1986, he established the World Food Prize to recognize individuals in the field of agriculture whose advancements in science have had a significant impact on the elimination of world hunger.

Later still, in 1994, Norman Borlaug established the World Food Prize Youth Institute, a competition in which high school students study food security issues in countries around the world. After months of research and essay writing, students submit their essays and then present their work orally at regional competitions. The winners there attend the World Food Prize Institute in Des Moines, Iowa, where they interact with some of the most prestigious scientists in the world, learning more about solutions to world hunger and exchanging ideas with these leaders in the field.

We—my high school and my coaching colleague and I—are sending students to Iowa in October: one who ranks among the top five participants in our region and an alternate! Actually, we have a third student who has “advanced,” but she’s a senior this year and therefore can’t compete next fall.

If you read my post “Second Skin,” you know there was one boy who needed help with his citations: He’s our alternate—and he probably will attend. How gratifying is that for the two hours we spent sitting across from each other at a table, whipping those citations into shape???

This past April 4th and 5th, students from the competing schools in Indiana gathered at Purdue (with their coaches) to present their work, exchange ideas, and learn about food science at Purdue. On Thursday evening, the students presented their research findings to panels of experts—Purdue professors from various departments whose own research endeavors concern issues of world hunger. The professors had read all of the students’ research papers—carefully, as we soon discovered—and then queried the students about their research. In small groups and in front of their peers, the students defended their research and their solutions by answering the questions posed by these experts.

This was nothing like the comfortable audience of peers students face in their English or speech classes. The professors were certainly respectful—even friendly—but there was a formality to the setting that high school students rarely experience. The professors posed tough questions and pulled no punches in their questioning. In one case, a professor told a student her statistics were faulty. No gentle suggestion that she “might want to check her facts” as high school teachers sometimes gingerly write in the margins of an ill-researched paper. Nope. “Your statistics are wrong.” Flat out.

You could almost hear the students gasp.

But this is the big leagues. Facts must be right, and when they aren’t, a student needs to know.

After the oral presentations, which we discovered later weighed heavily in the selection of finalists, the students reflected on the process of writing, researching, and presenting their work and conversed with the experts who had questioned them. They gained insight into the way that scientists think, advice on how they could help people in the developing world—even what courses to take in college to combine their specific academic interests and the urge to help globally. One of our students—who wants to go into an engineering field—was told to “look for opportunities to collaborate” with other departments. The opportunities abound, a professor told her, to make a global impact through engineering—for example, in developing relatively simple agricultural tools. He explained that shovels, for example, are designed with adult males in mind–but in some countries, it is women and children who are the chief agriculturalists.

Because of my responsibilities in other schools, I could not attend the day on campus that followed on Friday, but my colleague was there with our five students. She told me that they were welcomed at breakfast by Dr. Jay Akridge, Dean of the College of Agriculture.  He applauded the research efforts of all of the participants and, more importantly, validated their selflessness in, at such a young age, wanting to make a difference in the world.  During the rest of the morning, the students were introduced to classes and majors at Purdue that would allow them to pursue their area of interest further.

At lunch in the Purdue Memorial Union, the students listened to two Purdue World Food Prize winners, Phil Nelson (2007) and Gabeisa Eijeta (2009).  Both men spoke of their research and explained that by first identifying a need, they had been able to discover or invent a solution that had made a difference for people in many poverty-stricken nations.

In the afternoon, the high school students attended sessions in agronomy, biochemistry, agriculture and biological engineering and food science.  Each of these sessions involved a hands-on experience.  For example, in a visit to the Biochemistry Department, the students loaded and ran an electrophoretic gel to identify a fictitious bacteria found in “homemade” yogurt.  In the Agronomy Department, a researcher led the students through a demonstration of some basics of soil chemistry and explained how different soil types affect product growth.

On Friday afternoon, students received written feedback on their research papers and had an opportunity to reflect again on the World Food Prize experience from start to finish. I was there for the wrap-up and was able to listen to the students articulate their take-aways from the World Food Prize experience. In general, students remarked that they had not only benefitted personally from the experience, but that they had been inspired because they had participated in a project “bigger than themselves.” Many said their eyes had been opened, their lives changed.

A week later, the results were announced. That is when we learned that several of our five students would advance. But the fact is, we have five winners. For all of these students, the prize is not the public recognition of their accomplishment, not the resume item or the activity they can list on their college applications, but the insight they have gained, the perseverance they have practiced, the skills they have mastered. Their hearts have been touched by the depth of their exposure to issues of poverty and hunger and their minds have been expanded beyond what they could have imagined when they first began their research.

Norman Borlaug intended to enter the field of forestry. In fact, he had a job lined up with the US Forest Service after graduation from college. However, tight money during the Depression delayed his start by six months. While he waited, Borlaug decided to stay on at the University of Minnesota and take some more classes. One day, quite by chance, he attended a lecture on plant pathology that changed the direction of his life. He decided not to take that job with the Forest Service and, instead, entered the Ph.D. program in plant pathology. The rest, as they say, is history.

Our students took a chance on a competition that was time-consuming and intellectually demanding, on a writing project that wasn’t easy, on an endeavor for which every reward has been intrinsic—not an easy sell for sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds.  But look what has happened. Is it possible, just possible, that in signing on for the World Food Prize competition, by studying the topic and factor that they did, they have found direction for their life work?

Every night, one in seven people in the world goes to bed hungry. It is possible that one of these amazing students will someday make a discovery that changes those odds?  Imagine. It could happen.

Second Skin

~ Sarah Powley ~ 6 Comments

I slipped into the task like putting on a second skin.

Since the beginning of this semester, I’ve been working with a high school science teacher on a project tailor-made for co-teaching. She had gotten wind of an essay contest—the World Food Prize Essay Contest for high school students, sponsored by Purdue University, home to two World Food Prize winners. The contest is an opportunity for high school students to learn about and address issues of food insecurity around the world. What this teacher proposed was a melding of our areas of expertise—science and English—with the added fillip for both of us of the international focus.

In December, I perused the contest particulars.

The format was fundamentally a problem-solution paper. Background on the country came first. In the sample paper provided by Purdue, the winner from last year had painted a picture of Afghanistan in condensed, tightly written prose that led directly to the paper’s thesis: The central issues surrounding food insecurity in Afghanistan and some solutions that would alleviate them. Then, a lengthy and thoroughly researched discussion of those problems and solutions, and finally, a summation and restatement of the thesis. All of this, of course, documented with in-text citations and a works cited page in MLA format.

It was certainly a longer paper and a more complicated research project than any of our students would ever have undertaken—but not impossible at all. Especially when we broke the paper down for the kids and laid it out in steps for them. You notice, I am already saying “our kids.” It didn’t take me long to feel like a teacher of kids again.

Writing a research paper is one of the most difficult tasks high school students undertake. It’s a long process, and that’s hard in itself for kids with attention spans that last no longer than a Facebook post. Then, reading is involved—and with that, the pesky but fundamental comprehension skills of paraphrasing and summarizing. Then, the organizing of all that information: in the day, with index cards, each labeled with the author, title, page number, topic and subtopic, and perhaps—if I had been your teacher—marked as a paraphrase, a summary, a quote, or a basic fact.

We don’t do that anymore. Today, kids keep binders that contain printouts of the articles they’ve found, all tabbed alphabetically and highlighted for easy access to information the student intends to use in the paper. Increasingly, as they and we become more eco-conscious, the students don’t even keep binders. They create folders on their desktops. For the organized among them, this works just fine. For the others, it’s the beginning of a nightmare.

Some teachers still require outlines, a skill to be taught all by itself. I used to demand sentence outlines because the students would be forced to think their  papers through. Some of the first problems arise at this point: Just knowing the difference between a topic and its support befuddles some kids. They’ll use a quote for a main idea and a fact as a topic. But if their outlines are complete, I can read them and tell the students where the holes are. A few students will realize that with a sentence outline and well-organized index cards or binders, the paper will write itself.

For some students, actually writing the paper is the stumbling block. It means sitting in a chair for a long period of time and composing one sentence after another until the end.

But it’s not the end: Now come the in-text citations and the bibliography or works cited page. For some students, this is the trickiest part because it requires having kept track of all their resources (those index cards or the tabbed binders again) and having developed a system for keying all the quotes, statistics, examples, stories, facts, and details that they used for support to the ideas in the outline. For kids who can’t keep their lockers or their bedrooms tidy, this is a sorting and classifying task like no other!

And it’s still not the end: editing and proofreading and cross-checking the citations remain. And nowadays, even one more step: submission of the document to a plagiarism detection program like Turn It In, the advent of which was a boon to exhausted teachers, who used to have to google suspect lines or search through the students’ binders and cards to prove the student had copied. (You dare not even hint at plagiarism without the proof in hand!) Used as it’s intended, though, and done soon enough before the paper is due, the program serves as a plagiarism prevention program. I know many kids who have been saved from academic disaster by Turn It In, and I’d far rather coach a kid through the process of paraphrasing than nab him or her for plagiarism.

Are you tired just reading all this?

And you don’t have to read the papers! Or send them back for revisions and read them a second time!

Are you impressed with the sheer complexity of the task?  Me, too. I am always proud of my students when they reach the end of this task—even if their papers aren’t stellar, they’ve accomplished a complex task.  Perfection will come with maturity, experience, and the incentive of researching a topic they really care about (which they’ll do increasingly as they narrow down their academic pursuits to their life’s work).

So I knew very well what the World Peace Prize essay contestants would face as they researched a topic they knew nothing about—a country and its problems with food insecurity—and wrote the longest and most thoroughly documented paper they’d ever attempted. But I also knew that any student who elected to enter this contest would be self-motivated (no grades involved, no extra credit), willing to read, and immensely capable.

So yes, we had to help some of them select a country from a list of over 100 and choose a factor (the contest organizers presented them with a list of 19 factors that impact food security), help others select resources and evaluate those resources for credibility and authority, and talk all of them through their research—help them make sense of what they had read. But this was kind of fun for us as teachers. My colleague and I got wrapped up in the topic ourselves.

We both read the students’ early drafts and made suggestions for revisions (We were excited that we noticed and commented on the very same things) and then, at the end, I helped them with the documentation and works cited page by cross-checking their citations.

One boy did need major help with this part—and so I spent two hours yesterday teaching him how to do it, sitting beside him as he hunted out the source of each statistic and quote, each example and fact. I sat across from him while he reconstructed his works cited page and watched as he formatted the paper to meet the contest requirements. It’s not that he hadn’t been taught this process before, but I suspect such things had never mattered to him before.

But he was receptive yesterday—because suddenly, such things did matter. These papers were going out into the real world, would be read by a real audience, and since the boy cared immensely about his topic and had written a very strong paper, he really cared that he got the citations and the works cited page right.

My colleague submitted the papers yesterday after school. We think there are some among them that could be winners…but in truth, all of the students are winners. They completed this difficult task and have taken away a lifetime understanding of a serious global issue and a skill set for research that will make any paper they write from here on out, a breeze.

And I had the delicious experience of co-teaching with a colleague I admire, watching her coach the students in high-level analysis of substantial and substantive scientific information and using again myself the teaching skills I have learned over a lifetime spent in the classroom.

It was a win all around.

Unsung Heroes, Reprise

~ Sarah Powley ~ 4 Comments

Last week I received an unexpected email from the director of the West Lafayette Public Library, Nick Schenkel.  In a book talk on our local NPR station, he had reviewed the collection of essays my 9th grade Honors English class had written and published last spring; he was writing to invite me to listen. Unsung Heroes in Our Community, Volume III was the culmination of a year of carefully planned instruction on my part and intense research, personal interviews, and many, many revisions on the part of the students.  In late May, we celebrated the publication of the book with a festive reception for the heroes in our high school media center.

When you write anything, you wonder if it will find an audience and what that audience will think. Accordingly, I went right to the WBAA website to find and listen to the review. As my browser searched out the recording, I speculated about the content of the 10-minute spot. What would be the focus? Would it be on the work of the heroes or the work of the students?  Which of the stories would Nick retell? Who among my students would be featured? What would the overall appraisal be?

I listened intently.

First, I was gratified that each hero was mentioned—certainly, a few were highlighted—but every person was represented. The students had worked in groups of three to research their topic and interview the hero they were honoring; thus, all of them were recognized for their work. Then I was excited: I wanted to listen to the review again, this time with my students—now 10th graders—and watch their reaction to Nick’s comments and his praise (Yes!)  for their work. Their current teacher graciously let me steal some of her time with them to do so. Sitting in a classroom again with these remarkable kids and listening to what the librarian said took us all right back to last spring when we had worked together so intensely for so long.

Nick opens his review by explaining that Unsung Heroes “spotlights local residents with big hearts and big imaginations.”  The students nodded, stole looks at one another, smiled at me. The librarian goes on to say that each essay exemplifies “Hoosier can-do”—and I thought about how the students’ work itself illustrates the same thing. When we first began the project, the very idea of writing a book had seemed preposterous to them—but the students had persevered, completed the task, and now were hearing genuine, unsolicited praise for a book that Nick calls an “uplift for our spirits.” Like a detective, Nick had read the text, discerned the evolution of the final product, and in his review, he illuminates not only the content of Unsung Heroes, but the process by which it was accomplished.

In the published book, each essay is followed by the students’ personal reflections on the process.  In her reflection, Alesia repeats the definition of a hero that the class had generated: Motivated by his or her values, beliefs, or compassion for others, a hero is a person who, with no expectation of recognition or reward, when confronted by a disaster, an injustice, or a need, inspires and helps others—at the risk of losing something valuable.  Nick zeroes in on that definition in his review, pronouncing it “as good as any I have read.”  We basked in the glow of those seven words, knowing that developing that definition had been our very first step. It had taken the students two instructional days to list all the attributes of a hero they could think of and then capture the essence of those qualities in short, precise phrases. We worked at the ENO board to put all of their ideas into one (long) grammatical sentence—not an easy feat.  Can you imagine having debates about prepositional phrases and commas  and dashes with 9th graders? Well, we had them. Two days—100 minutes—to write a definition might seem extravagant, but 28 kids had to agree on every word. Just as importantly, having a clear definition was critical to the success of the project. It guided the students in selecting the heroes in the first place and later on in composing the text.

Nick mentioned the research the students did—a long and arduous process in which they investigated their hero’s cause and then wrote a traditional term paper complete with an annotated bibliography and a works cited page. Then came the interviews—when the students met their heroes face-to-face—and the follow-up: emails, phone calls, and second and third meetings in some cases. And then the drafts of the essays—and the seemingly endless revisions.

Oh yes. The revisions. I read and responded to the students’ first efforts, reading for structure and coherence. Then I read again—still for structure and coherence. The students read each other’s work—for clarity and  detail. Revisions followed and the students read again—their own and each other’s essays. Sentence structure, word choice, transitions: they checked on these.  Finally, finally, there was the line editing—the grammar that had to be checked, the questions about punctuation that had to answered, the intricacies of prepositional phrases and adjective clause placements that had to be determined. Revision went on—it seemed to them—forever.

One transition was particularly pesky. The students who were writing an essay about the chairperson of our local community health clinic needed to profile the  clinic’s founder, a different person, first, and then transition into the discussion of the chairperson’s work. The first time I listened to Nick’s review, I nearly jumped out of my seat at his mention of that particular segue. He says it was effected “effortlessly.”  When the kids heard that, they grinned broadly.  The fact is, I must have sent that piece back half a dozen times because the transition was choppy; ultimately, the students got it right. That it seemed so smooth to Nick made all the red ink, the returns, the frustration, and the perseverance so worth it. The power of revision: illustrated for us right there on the radio. Could a teacher ask for more?

At one point Nick explains to the radio audience that these essays were written by teams of students “in the best tradition of committee writing.”  The team approach had posed a design problem for me as a teacher. Voice is so important in writing, and I had been afraid that voice would be lost if the students worked collaboratively. Indeed, as McKaylee wrote later, in her reflection on the process, “One of the most challenging aspects of the Unsung Heroes project was to allow the paper to smoothly flow, camouflaging the fact that it was written by three authors instead of one.”  When I hit upon the idea of including each student’s personal reflection in the book, the problem of voice was resolved—and the book is the better for the reflections. Though their heroes have inspired them and made permanent imprints on their lives, in the end, Nick is right:  The reflections are often the most “compelling and thought-filled” pieces in the book.  When he read a portion of  Kory’s reflection, captured a line that Sherrie wrote, repeated Eric’s lovely tribute to the special education teacher in our own building, these three blushed, slid down in their seats, felt the hot pride of authorship that comes when a story has hit home.

“What do you think?” I asked at the end of the broadcast. “How does it feel to listen to the review?”

“It gives me goose bumps,” said Megan, who was sitting next to me. This wasn’t hyperbole. There were little bumps all over her arms.

It gave me goose bumps, too.

Thank you, Nick. Thank you for affirming me as a teacher, my students as writers, and the heroes’ stories as inspiration for us all.

A Travel Journal Worth Keeping

~ Sarah Powley ~ 4 Comments

School’s out, the grade book is closed, and the room has been cleared for summer maintenance. For many students, attention has turned to summer travel. Some will be going on exchanges, others traveling with their families. Here’s the handout I share with students who are going abroad for the first time.

Of course they’ll take pictures and send them back home—theirs is, after all, the world of the iPhone and Facebook—but some things can’t be captured in photographs. I encourage my students to record the sights and sounds of other countries and the experiences they have as they travel in words as well as photographic images. And then, of course, they’ll have lots to write about when they return to the classroom and need story starters for their essays.

First of all, I tell them, there is no single way to keep a travel journal (except that you have to write in it or you won’t have one.) Your journal can be an old-fashioned diary—one that summarizes each day from dawn to dusk. This type of journal is sometimes called a chronicle because it details, in the order of what happened, everything about the day: what you did, who you saw, what you experienced, where you went, what you ate, or just some of this. Or, your journal can be topical (you write on just certain subjects and don’t necessarily record every last thing you did). It can be thematic (you write about ideas and how you see them play out in events and people you encounter). It can be a sketchbook. That’s right: You draw your way through the day—or in this case, the trip. It can be a scrapbook of odds and ends you collect as you go and paste right into the pages alongside your thoughts, observations, summaries, and sketches. In other words, the journal is yours—your business, your record, your expression of yourself, your portrait in words (mostly) of what you see hear, smell, taste, touch, sense, experience, and understand on your journey.

A journal can be a diary with a lock and key, a spiral notebook, a fancy blank book (lined or unlined pages) from someplace like Barnes and Noble, a sketchbook (unlined pages), or even a 3-ring binder! It can be any size that’s convenient for you. But here are my preferences for journal-keeping (based on years of keeping them):

• A spiral binding so the book will open flat—makes it easier to write on the left hand pages.
• An elastic band that slips around the front and back to hold anything loose you’ve slipped inside (of course, this can be accomplished with a big, fat rubber band, too).
• Lined pages—but, if you’re likely to want to sketch, you might prefer unlined pages. In that case, take a sheet of blank paper and draw heavy lines on it–thick ones, dark enough to show through the blank page. Slip the lined piece of paper under a blank page and presto: lined pages!
• Not so big you can’t slip it in your purse or backpack. Not so small you can’t write very much.
• A glue stick (slip it in your purse or pocket)
• Pockets (make these with index cards and scotch tape) on the inside of the front and back covers. You will use the pockets to keep stuff too big to paste into your journal.

Getting Started:

It may help to get started to imagine an audience. It might be your parents, with whom you will share your book when you get back. It might be a friend. It might be an imaginary friend. It might even be just you yourself that you’re writing to. But most people have an audience in mind—maybe subconsciously—when they sit down to write. If a “known” audience will help you, consciously pick someone to think about when you write. That way, you’ll “speak” directly to that person, in a natural voice, and you’ll think of the details that person would need to know to understand. This is very much like writing a letter. (Some very powerful diaries have been composed as letters. Remember Anne Frank’s diary to “Dear Kitty”?) Other people, however, prefer to just “free-write.” Do what suits you.

Naturally, you are going to apply everything you have ever learned about descriptive writing from every English teacher you’ve ever had. You know: appeal to the senses, think in metaphors, relish similes and other figures of speech, write about one thing by comparing it to another, choose vivid words, use action verbs, include details, details, details—etc., etc., etc. Besides all that, which is VERY IMPORTANT and ABSOLUTELY BASIC, here are some practical suggestions for things to notice and write about :

What to Write About:

Jokes you are told—what someone thinks is funny tells you a lot about their world.

Conversations—just a few lines that are provocative or thoughtful will begin a journal entry in an interesting way and capture the flavor of what you learned. Just by itself, with no elaboration, conversation is interesting to read. For example, I had this conversation with two girls who were translating for me when I was in Russia in 1998. (Both girls were named Anya.) Their summary of the teacher’s omniscience stays with me because I recorded the conversation.

In Russian schools, students sit two to a desk—a “seatmate” it is called.
I said to Anya 1 and Anya 2 that I was impressed they didn’t poke each other, they said, “Oh, we poke.” And then I did see one boy whack his diligent seatmate with a ruler.
“Seatmates are an advantage,” Anya 1 said. “If I don’t understand something, my seatmate can help me.”
“What’s to prevent cheating during an exam?” I asked.
“The discipline, “ they answered. “The teacher knows.”

Lists. Make a list of items in a room, books on a shelf, ingredients in a cupboard, CDs or videos in a rack, things on the table, foods in the market, music on the radio, vendors on the street, merchandise in a shop, breads in the bakery, people on the train, foods at a party. The list will capture the flavor without much further description.

Draw a floor plan of your host’s apartment if you are staying with a family. Label the rooms and explain who sleeps where. Later, if you are able to take pictures of the apartment, it will help your family and friends at home to visualize it.

Recipes for foods you liked. Ask your host mother to show you how to make a favorite bread or dessert. She will be pleased, and you will have an authentic recipe to share.

Journal Entry Starters:

Three things I should have brought…
Three things I didn’t need to bring…
Three things I didn’t expect…
Three things I’ll never forget…

Things I love about Russia (or any country)…
Things I miss about the USA…
Things that made me sad…
Things that made me glad…

Keep a record of the weather
Keep a record of the number of times you hear a certain word or slang expression
Keep a record of the dogs you see, or cats, or kinds of cars, or popular songs
Keep a record of the American products you see for sale

A surprise
A disappointment
A moment of gratification
A moment of annoyance
A wish
A hope
A dream

Take a walk down the street. Who else is on the street? How many and what kinds of cars pass you? How many animals do you see? What buildings do you pass? How are they different from buildings in America? What is beneath your feet? Straight ahead? What do you smell? What do you see on the horizon? What’s the prettiest thing you see? The ugliest? What feeling do you get, walking down the street?

Go shopping. Describe the procedure. What if you didn’t have a friend to help you? What would be the dangers for you? What would perplex you? Frustrate you? Confuse you? What are the advantages of buying items the way it is done in this country? Disadvantages? Compare and contrast with shopping protocols in America.

Watch TV. IT doesn’t matter whether you understand the words. Record the types of shows, the length of each one, the commercials (if there are any), the pictures that are shown. Who is the audience for each of the shows? How is TV in this country different from American TV? How many channels are there? How many American shows did you see? What were they? How many shows imported from other countries? How much news do you hear about the USA? How much about other countries? Compare international news abroad with international news in the USA.

Describe a dinner/breakfast. What did you eat? How was the table set? What were you served? Were you expected to eat everything on your plate? Did you like it? If you didn’t, how did you balance politeness with preference? What was dessert? How long did dinner last? Did the whole family talk? Did everyone clear the table? Who did the dishes? Did you offer to help? Were you expected to help? What was the response to your offer to help?

Describe traveling by public transportation. How long did it take to go from one place to another? How much did it cost? What was the procedure? How did it differ from taking a city bus at home? If you traveled to school, how did the trip compare with your experiences on the big yellow school bus here at home?

And of course, write about what you did every day.

Happy travels! Don’t forget to come home and tell us all about it!

Teach Me How

~ Sarah Powley ~ Leave a comment

Once, in Rwanda, I was working with the English teachers in a secondary school in Kigali on the rules for punctuating compound sentences. I had handouts, visual aids, and even a graphic that illustrated a fairly clever way to remember the rules. But, I had run out of practice sentences. We were in the school library at the time—a room with very few books but many long tables and benches to accommodate the 50-60 students in a class. As I pondered how to produce more practice sentences quickly—without the aid of a blackboard—I glanced at the shelves and saw, to my surprise, a familiar text—Writer’s Choice—a book I had used in my own high school in Indiana some years before. In fact, a whole class set—two class sets—were neatly arranged on the shelves. I got up from my seat at the table and retrieved a copy for myself and one for each teacher.

The texts had been sent from a school in Florida to this school in Kigali as a charitable donation. A gracious one, indeed—but the books had never been used. They’d been on the shelves since they had arrived. The English Department Chair shrugged when I asked her why.

I didn’t belabor the point. I just turned to the index and searched for the page numbers that corresponded with compound sentences. We all turned to the appropriate page, and I resumed my lesson.

When I was finished, the teachers began asking questions. Did this book teach capital letters? Did it teach spelling? What about other comma rules? Could I show them how I found the sentences I had been looking for? It dawned on me, suddenly, why these books had not been used. These teachers weren’t accustomed to using textbooks in the first place, but more importantly, the books themselves were baffling. They didn’t understand how our thick and elaborate American textbooks are laid out: sequenced chapters with the rules and their exceptions, each rule followed by several dizzying sets of practice sentences and quiz sets; elaborate but confusing color-coding; distracting sidebars; and suggested links to related lessons located half an inch farther into the text. They didn’t know what an index was.

Once I showed them how to use the book, the teachers were absorbed, turning the pages avidly, asking each other questions, discovering with delight the explanations for rules they themselves weren’t sure of. It wasn’t long before the English Department Chair turned to me and said, “I see now that these books are very useful.”

An impromptu lesson in how to use a textbook was more critical—and probably more lasting—than the fancy lesson I’d prepared on compound sentences.

That experience with the Rwandan teachers sticks with me because it reinforced something I’ve known for a long time but sometimes lose sight of: Process is as important as product. Mastery of process yields confidence, an attitude that is, for a young learner, far more important than content knowledge. It is confidence that enables a student to shoot for the stars. Students reach high when they are comfortable with what they’re doing, comfortable with the process. Actually, don’t we all?

It’s intellectually interesting to identify content we want our students to learn; it’s fun to develop the blueprint for a culminating project. But it’s easy for us to overlook the importance of teaching processes. How to use a database. How to run the grammar checker. How to summarize. How to use Turn It In (an online plagiarism prevention site). How to give a speech. How to make a poster aesthetically pleasing. How to write a business letter. How to set up a Works Cited page.

Sometimes the process we need to teach is a basic one. For example, part of the Unsung Heroes project (which I wrote about a few weeks ago) is learning how to write a handwritten letter. My students write thank you notes to their heroes for the time spent interviewing them and invitations to the celebration we hold when the book is published. I insist they do this on stationery, in ink, by hand. Every year I have to teach my students how to address an envelope. I used to have to show them how to find an address in the phone book. Now it’s how to find an address online. But now they know—and they won’t shy away from handwritten notes in the future. In fact, they think they’re pretty cool.

Other times, though, the process is complex. For example, English teachers are charged with teaching research skills so students can produce what used to be called “the term paper.” What we are teaching our students is a very lengthy process: choosing a topic, finding resources, reading and understanding those resources, evaluating them, writing an annotated bibliography, formulating a thesis, combing the readings for evidence to support the thesis, and then writing the paper itself–clearly, coherently, correctly—even elegantly. And finally, that miserable Works Cited page—how to do that systematically so the bibliographical entries match the internal documentation. It’s an enormous process, and at my school, we lead the students through it at least once each year. Their papers often reveal that they don’t quite understand their topic. They may treat it superficially or focus on something trivial. But really, these fledgling scholars are to be congratulated at the end: they’ve gained experience with a difficult and lengthy process that will be second nature to them when they get to college—where the content will really matter.

Sometimes we forget how important it is to teach the “how-to” part. We have a way, in our eagerness to share our own excitement about a topic or an idea, to presume in our students skills they don’t have, just as the people who sent the textbooks to Rwanda presumed the teachers there would know how to use them. We sometimes assume familiarity, make assignments our kids don’t know how to approach, or confuse them with complexity. In our enthusiasm, we don’t break a process down—or we skip teaching it altogether—and leave our students puzzled rather than confident. I’ve done it myself too many times—but I’m learning. Teaching well is a process, too.

Great Expectations: The Unsung Hero Project

~ Sarah Powley ~ 1 Comment

I wish I’d had a tape recorder last Friday. My students were huddled in their writing groups looking at feedback from their peers—penciled remarks and notations from the other students in the class—on fourth and fifth drafts of essays each group had written. They’d traded their essays with each other, passing them around the room round robin style. In just two weeks, their work goes to press.

The manuscripts the students were looking at so intently this past Friday are the culmination of three intense months of research, interviews, and writing that they have done about individuals in our community who have met their definition of a hero. The students’ essays will be published in a book that we hope will be acquisitioned (as the previous two volumes have been) by the public libraries in our town and by the historical societies here and in our state capitol, Indianapolis.

The writing these students have been doing is for a real audience, a real purpose—and the impact of authenticity on their work has been nothing short of phenomenal. Their growth as writers has been off the charts.

Here are the sorts of things they were saying as they bent over their manuscripts, excitedly deciphering their friends’ comments and evaluating the merits of the various proofreading notations:

• They say we need to move this phrase so what it modifies is clear. They’re right.
• They think this should be a comma, but I don’t. I think it should be a semi-colon.
• Look! This is the subordinate clause rule Mrs. Powley just taught us!
• I don’t understand this comment. Emily! This is your handwriting. What do you mean here?
• Three people said “proper” water doesn’t sound right. What word should we use? We mean you can’t drink the water. Is there a word for that?
• What do we do to make this fragment into a sentence? Oh look! It connects to the noun at the end of the sentence before it. Oh! It’s an adjective clause!
• Look at this. We’ve started three paragraphs in a row the same way. We need to switch it up.

Ninth graders. Urgently resolving their own grammatical errors, punctuation mistakes, stylistic quandaries, and word choice confusions. How did this come about?

The story starts several years ago, in 2009, when I was a Fellow at the Lowell Milken Center in Ft. Scott, Kansas. I spent time there that summer planning the project that my 9th grade students have worked on now for three successive years: Unsung Heroes in Our Community. The mission of the Lowell Milken Center is to promote, through education, respect and understanding for all people. The spirit of the Center is embodied in the Hebrew expression tikkun olam, which means “to repair the world.” To accomplish its mission, the Center supports project-based learning endeavors that feature unsung heroes—people who have acted to repair the world.

The idea that drove the design of Unsung Heroes in Our Community is a reality that has bothered me for a long time: Too many young people today are without positive role models. They are without real heroes. Their knowledge of individuals in the world who have made a difference extends to celebrities and sports stars, occasionally to someone in politics. Worthy as some of these people may be, students are generally unaware of the range of actions that can be considered heroic and even more importantly, of the people in their own community who have gone out of their way to help others.

This year’s collection of student essays is the third one that profiles people in our town who have stepped forward to “repair the world.” My hope when I began this project three years ago was that these people would inspire my students, and my hopes have been fulfilled. Indeed, the “heroes” have become role models and mentors for them.

Here are a few of the comments the student made in their reflections on this project:

• We learned so much about suffering going on in the world—and not very far from us, either. [These students were writing about a couple who volunteer on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.] But we also learned that there are those that care and are willing to step up to the plate and do something about it— and they live right in our own community.

• This project has inspired me to become involved in community affairs and volunteer for organizations such as Riggs [a community health care center].

• Another thing I have learned through this project is the true definition of a hero. A hero is not just someone wearing spandex and flying high in the air with his cape trailing behind him, but someone who has a passion to help others and makes a difference without expecting any reward.

• In getting to know my hero, I have learned that, no matter what struggles life may give me, I should keep moving forward and never look at the challenges as some type of disability or setback but as a chance to prove myself and my own strength.

• With each new revision, I was inspired to make something truly great. In a sense, to make something that would do justice to what Mrs. Yates [the writer’s hero] does. I wanted to make her proud.

So, on Friday, listening to my students’ conversations, answering their questions, cheering when they figured out how to solve a writing problem by themselves, I was as happy as I’ve ever been as a teacher. My students have internalized the formal English lessons they’ve learned, they’ve successfully accomplished an enormous and meaningful task, and each of them feels the pride of achievement. They’ve learned immeasurable amounts about their community and the amazing people who live here—people who, not surprisingly, went out of their way to help 9th graders with a school project.

Most importantly, from my point of view, my students now know real heroes. In the future, when these 9th graders confront an injustice, meet with a challenge, or perceive a community need (as they undoubtedly will), I don’t just hope they will recall the courage, selflessness, and determination of their “heroes” and model their responses after them, I believe they will.

And finally, because the work they did—the research, the writing, the revision—was all for an authentic purpose, intended for a public audience, they took their writing task seriously. They really cared about the outcome: about telling their heroes’ stories accurately and well, about crafting sentences and paragraphs that are clear, coherent, correct, and even eloquent.

What could make an English teacher happier?