Writing Everywhere

On July 14, Scott Filkins blogged about his literacy dig, noting the many writing activities he’d accomplished in just one day. But here’s something I’ve been noticing ever since the National Day on Writing bug bit me. Have you ever noticed how many, many people are writing and just how much writing there is in the world? Well, I’ve been unable to help myself from noticing.

Example 1 - Writing for corn and soy beans. A friend of mine owns a farm here in Central Illinois. If you know anything about this part of the Midwest, you’ll guess (accurately) that the farm produces corn some years and soybeans the next. Now although each of these crops when alternated put back in the soil what the other takes out, our rich soil still needs fertilizer. “Where is she going with all this?” you’re probably asking by now, but here’s the point. In times gone by a farmer would just get the some fertilizer and sprinkle it equally all around the farm. But today, this farmer pays to have a satellite fly over his fields—and here’s where the writing comes in—and from that fly-by he gets in text and in pictures information that tells him exactly which fields need how much fertilizer—no more guess work, no over-fertilization run-off.

Example 2 – Writing for cats and dogs. I have pets and I travel lots. I need a pet-sitter who will come to my home and take care of my pets while I’m gone, but more than that, someone who will cuddle and nurse my pets when they need it. In the past several years, I’ve found my pet sitters and information about my pet sitters on their websites where I can read testimonials, notice how they talk about the pets they care for, and check out their prices.

Example 3 – Writing for advertising. In Urbana, Illinois, there’s a billboard on the way into town from the north that displays the most interesting ads, each featuring some short, catchy, and often puzzling tag line. The trick for me each time I pass by the billboard is to see if I can get the entire tag line read at 30 miles an hour and then if I can figure out the message. I’m guessing that’s exactly what the billboard ad creator wants because by the time I put all the texts together, I don’t readily forget the product or service being advertised.

Example 4 – Writing for car repair. My car dealership just got a new makeover, complete with a snazzy waiting room with cookies and coffee, and a car wash complimentary with my oil change. Where the writing comes in—beyond the fix-it ticket they’ve been using for years—is in the car checklist that appears on my bill when I turn up every 3000 miles. The checklist not only tells me which of many services my car should have at what mileage intervals but the service staff usually circle those services that I might be interested in very soon. I actually try to keep the checklist in my glove box so I can remember the next time where I’ve left off on the service program—something I guess they’re counting on.

Example 5 – Texting for kids. Who would have guessed even five years ago that I’d be using my cell phone to make dates with my grown daughter or to firm up the time to pick up my choral singing colleague? In fact, five years ago when I first went to Europe, my daughter was horrified that I wasn’t bringing my cell phone. “Wouldn’t work there anyhow,” I told her, and that was true enough then, but just past weekend I was listening to Rick Steves’ radio travel show and my ears perked up when he talked about buying SIM cards through vending machines in Europe so you could use your cell phone, for example, to text your children to see where they were so you all could plan when and where to meet up. Sure beats the old-fashioned way.

Writing is a significant part of our lives—not just English-teacher lives but the lives of repair people, babysitters, kindergarten artists, pet-sitters, lawyers, bloggers, farmers, hospitality workers, truckers, travelers, advertisers, nurses, trades workers, and more.

Two NCTE Reports-- Writing in the 21st Century and Writing for School vs. Writing for Life speak both to the significance of writing today and to how different it is from writing in times gone by. It’s plain that now we have technological tools that enable us to write differently now in form and frequency, but now with those tools even when using pen and paper, we think about writing differently. We are able to write lots, often targeting our own audiences and trying to make things happen--we have agency for what we write, especially when we’ve been the ones to decide to write. And, many of our students are writing just this way outside of school, ironically thinking that what they’re doing isn’t writing, and many are not doing enough of this new sort of writing in school.

How can we help our students expand their notions of what constitutes writing so we can help them use their own agency and audience selection to make things happen with their writing? What if we began by sending our students on a scavenger hunt for new ways of writing? What would they find?

Five Ways to Learn about Students This Fall

The beginning of a new school term means new students. Sometimes we'll see faces we know from the previous year, but often we see a fresh slate. Fresh, but not blank. They bring with them literacy experiences from other classrooms, from their homes, and from their communities.

The challenge is to figure out what they know and connect to that prior knowledge and experience as soon as possible. Sure we could read through permanent files, ask for writing samples, and give them entrance tests.

The problem is all those strategies still require us to analyze the data and try to find (or more likely, guess) the most important influences and experiences. Why not choose a more straightforward method? Ask them. Here are five strategies you can try:

• Write about Writing with Analogies Ask students to reflect on their writing habits and process. Using the resources in this ReadWriteThink.org lesson, you learn much about how students write and about how their attitudes toward writing. Are they confident? Do they have a lot of anxieties about writing? Do they write a lot or very little? This activity will reveal all! Modify the lesson a bit, and you can ask students to tell you about themselves as readers.
• Compose Technology Autobiographies Today's students have always had computers somewhere in their community. They may think they spent no time writing during the summer months—until you ask them if they posted blog entries and status updates on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Ask students to tell you about their regular or most significant interactions with technology with this ReadWriteThink.org lesson. Their stories will reveal their 21st century literacy skills.
• Keep Writer’s Logs Use the reflective questions in this ReadWriteThink.org lesson to ask students to tell you about their literacy experiences and attitudes. Begin by asking students to respond to a key question or two about their literacy experiences in the past. Try a question like "How is your reading and writing during the summer different from during the school year?" or "What has been your favorite writing (or reading) experience and why?" The lesson provides for ongoing reflection on the writing students do, a process that will keep you informed about the writers you teach.
• Make Reading Plans You can learn much about students' prior knowledge by asking them to tell you about what they want to do in the future. This ReadWriteThink.org lesson asks students to analyze the reading they've done in the past and make a plan for the future. As you read and respond to their work, you not only learn about their likes and dislikes as readers, but you also help them shape individual reading plans for the weeks to come.
• Build a Literacy Gallery NCTE invites all writers to submit one piece of writing that is important to them to the National Gallery of Writing. Kick off your own gallery by asking students to share an artifact of their writing process that is significant—a favorite pen, something they have written, a diary. Anything. The discussion will reveal much about the students and their experience and habits as writers. After your literary show and tell session, work together to set up a class or school gallery, as part of the National Gallery of Writing.

The Value of Questioning in Professional Growth

When I started teaching, I recognized the value of learning from teachers who had more experience and wisdom than I. Through a formal mentoring program at my school, I was assigned two long-term veterans as mentors, and we observed each others’ classroom practices and made time (when we could) to discuss how things were going.

As I look back, I am certainly grateful for the support that came from those mentoring relationships; I know that many new teachers get a much less auspicious start than I did. But as I reflect on the work my mentors and I did together, I see a way in which my perception of the experience was fundamentally flawed: I was seeking models of effective teaching practice when I really should have been looking for models of effective professional learning.

To be sure, I engaged in the professional development behaviors that I knew how to do. I bought books on topics that related to the courses and content I taught. I subscribed to English Journal and vowed (sometimes successfully) to read each issue. I even secured funding to attend an NCTE Convention. But none of those activities really “stuck” because I was engaging in them rather passively and superficially. I looked for resources that seemed topically relevant, saw what they had to offer, and either acted on them or didn’t.

What I lacked was the ability to formulate appropriate questions to address the issues and challenges I was facing in the classroom. Access to the best professional development resources around—publications, meetings, mentors—doesn’t mean much if those resources aren’t situated in a framework of active inquiry and application of new learning.

I’m likely being overly hard on myself. After all, when you don’t know very much, it’s difficult to know what you don’t know. That’s why, as I start work with students and other teachers this fall, I’m going to make a very conscious effort to acknowledge the centrality of good questions to the process of professional growth. Everyone is at a different place on the continuum of development, and the more models of sustained teacher inquiry we see in each other, the more likely we all are to engage in such practice.

Instead of reading a stack of student papers only to give them supportive feedback, I’ll also consider the questions their work implies both about their needs as learners and my needs as a teacher. Could I have built some additional scaffolding into the process to have achieved even better results? What do students need next to continue developing as thinkers and writers?

When student behavior disrupts the learning environment, rather than reaching for the phone to bring parents into the loop and achieve a quick fix, I’ll also inquire more deeply into what went wrong. How can I use the moment to teach respectfully about self-control? Did I contribute, even accidentally, to a cycle of conflict that could have been extinguished?

The needs of my students and my professional identity as a teacher are worth the investment of time that such reflective practice requires.

It took me too long to start to develop a sense of what it means to be an effective teacher-learner. It’s an important challenge for each of us to make explicit for each other our processes of asking good questions; seeking high-quality, relevant resources; and implementing action-based solutions. Whether you’re a mentor or mentee (and we’re all really both, officially or unofficially) this fall, I hope you’ll also work to bring to the foreground the importance of inquiry to the professional identity of teachers in your building.

Building Community in 15 Minutes a Day

Laurie Halse Anderson, author of young adult novels including Speak and Wintergirls, launched a writing challenge on her blog this month: Write Fifteen Minutes a Day, or WFMAD. Anderson invites readers to spend 15 minutes writing every day during the month. She provides writing prompts, advice, and encouragement. All readers have to do is set aside 15 uninterrupted minutes and write.

Where's the community in that project? Look in the comments to the blog entries, and you'll see people, wait, strike that. You'll see WRITERS talking about their work. They describe triumphs and challenges. They talk about where they were when they wrote—in an office, a comfy chair, or a coffee shop. Some reflect on what they have written about. Others talk about how family and friends (and a few pets) supported their work. In just 15 minutes a day, Laurie Halse Anderson has built a great community of writers.

In the classroom, this kind of project can forge great connections among students. Just follow Anderson's example, and provide a prompt, advice, and encouragement. Anderson even says that the prompts can be reproduced for classroom use!

Of course, you can easily adapt the project for any students and class. Scale the time up or down as appropriate for the class. Fifteen minutes is probably plenty for high school and college students, but you might use a shorter period for younger students. Don't have 15 minutes a class session? Choose a shorter period of time, or scale things back so that students write every other day or once a week. The project could also be done for simple homework assignment.

There are a few things that I wouldn't change about the activity though:

• Be sure that the writing prompt you choose require a personal response. You might ask students to talk about something that happened, a dream for the future, or a favorite object. Tap students' personal experience.
• Choose a general topic that gives students plenty of choice. Remember that writers have more authority when they can choose a topic that they are comfortable with.
• Welcome any and all kinds of composition—freewriting, polished paragraphs, story boards, and so forth. Invite students to do whatever kind of writing they want to. The important thing is to write. Exactly how they write is less important.

Once students do their writing, it's time to use their texts to build community. Invite students to talk about their experience with the project. Anderson has some suggestions for conversation in her blog post. For instance, she asks writers to add comments that tell her "what it felt like when the 15 minutes were up." Look through the comments on other WFMAD posts on Anderson's blog for additional topics you might discuss after writing. Of course, you can also ask students to talk about the content of their 15-minute writings.

Using Anderson's project as a model, you can jump start community building in the classroom this fall. The first days of school can be very scary. As teachers, we need to make students feel comfortable with each other as quickly as possible. Writing is the answer. Welcome students as writers, give them advice and encouragement, and watch discussions about writing blossom as students build connections and encourage one another to write. And you can do it all in about 15 minutes a day!

Writing for Now -- Declaring an Audience

This week I heard a newscast on NPR, "Twitter Seen As Tool For Change In China" (NPR Morning Edition July 24, 2009). The gist of the newscast, that some Chinese NGOs held a training course to teach citizen journalists how to use Twitter and other new media in their reporting, made me think of Tiffany Monk, the Florida teenager mentioned in Writing in the 21st Century, the NCTE report by Kathleen Blake Yancey. Tiffany like many young people, already knows how to compose for the audiences she chooses. Tiffany’s mobile home park was flooding with rain from Tropical Storm Fay and Tiffany knew there were many elderly and disabled people who would be unable to get out. 9-1-1 wasn’t an option, so Tiffany took pictures of the mobile home park, posted them on her computer, and sent them out in emails asking for help. Everyone was saved!

Tiffany is like most of our students. She already knows how to compose and, given an occasion, she knows what she wants to say and to whom she wants to say it. We need to encourage this in all our students.

On February 23, 2009, NCTE held a press conference to introduce Writing in the 21st Century and the National Day on Writing. Two speakers who joined Kathi Yancey during the conference talked about writing today in schools. Dan Brown and his student Mansur Muhammad from SEED Public Charter School, Washington, D.C , talked about writing—teaching it and doing it-- both in an out of school.

Dan’s the author of the blog Get in the Fracas and his July 7 entry states in underlined bold, “Students need more than just their teacher to be their audience in order to unlock their finest potential.” This blog entry, “The Importance of “Going Public,” echoing the title of an NCTE publication Go Public! Encouraging Student Writers to Publish by Susanne Rubenstein, emphasizes the need for us to design school writing assignments that push students to write to audiences beyond the teacher and the school. Another NCTE book, Designing Writing Assignments by Traci Gardner, and many ReadWriteThink lessons give us tips on how to help students work with various audiences in their writing.

I have to agree with Dan and with another idea that Kathi Yancey points out in Writing in the 21st Century. 21st century writers write in order to take action, to make a connection. As teachers, we need to provide our students with the opportunity to make those connections, using whatever tools are available and certainly starting with the tools the students are already using. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, agreed with this philosophy in his interview with Rachel Dretzin of PBS Frontline: Digital_Nation on July 14, suggesting to the surprise of many that teachers have students use cell phones for class work.

For me, having students “Go Public” to their selected audience, using the tools of technology that many are already using outside of school, and taking action are three vital components of the writing assignments I need to design for my students. I’ll need to often be more spontaneous than in the past to take advantage of current situations for writing, I’ll need to allow for students to pursue many different topics and audiences, and I’ll probably need instruction from some of my students on the workings of the tools while some of my students will need instructions on the same from their classmates or me.

I’m guessing, too, that like me you’d like examples of writings produced in this 21st century fashion. Here’s an idea for how we can get just that. Let’s have our students publish their writings to the National Gallery of Writing. I’d really love to read self-initiated compositions on issues important to students: a text message or Twitter exchange, a video, some prewriting notes, an article, a letter, or poem. I’m inviting you to see if your students have such compositions, particularly from their out-of-school lives. Have them publish to a local gallery that you start or to the NCTE Gallery.

My Reading Record

The highlight of my summers has always been the chance to read – and read a lot. Growing up, I would go to the library every day. While I enjoyed the programs the library had to offer, I really loved the chance to peruse all of the books available. In college, summer meant I would finally have choice in my reading material after reading for courses all year.

As a teacher, my school year reading was usually in preparation for what my students would be reading. Summers were times for me to choose for ME. As I was reviewing summer reading lists this year, I thought back and tried to remember what books really stood out for me in my past summers. Then, after reading many blogs that listed the music people had listened to at five year intervals, I was inspired to choose specific points in my life and reminisce about what I was reading.

Age 5 – The Velveteen Rabbit

I never had a favorite blankie, nor was I a big fan of stuffed animals. However, this story of the stuffed rabbit that comes to life after being loved for so long touched me. As a youngster, I wondered what I could make come to life if I loved it. I loved and loved but none of my inanimate objects came to life. I used to imagine what they would do and say if they did come alive.

Age 10 – anything by Judy Blume

As a fourth grader, I loved that there was a book that I could relate to – Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Peter’s annoyance with almost everything as well as being misunderstood by his family – those things mirrored my life! I made it my goal then to read all of Judy Blume’s books. I enjoyed reading her because she oftentimes touched on subjects many tweens are dealing with but not many people like to talk about – bullying, puberty, fitting in. I was tickled as an adult to learn that she also wrote for grown-ups. And yes, I have read all of Judy Blume’s books.

Age 15 – Flowers in the Attic

I wish I knew how I came to read V.C. Andrews. I am not sure I would have picked out Flowers in the Attic on my own. But I did choose it and chose to read it over and over. I read every book in that series. I read other series by the same author. I was fascinated and mystified. I imagined the characters – what they looked like, how they would sound. I tried to put myself in their situation. How would I react? Could I escape? I was thrilled when I found out the book had been made into a movie. I was rather disappointed by the film. The one I imagined was so much better!

Age 20 – Nonfiction

After my reading material was called “junk” by a friend, we spent several summers choosing books for each other to read. We were allowed to read one book of our choice, and then we had to follow up by reading a book selected by the other. My friend picked nonfiction titles for me to read most of that summer. By fall, I read four or five books on Kennedy’s assassination. I was vaguely interested in the topic when the summer started and pretty much an expert when summer was over!

Age 25 – Parenting books

I became a mom around this time. I read a lot to my daughter, and she adored that time. In fact, her first birthday cake was shaped like a book and its title was “The Story of Kelsey’s First Birthday.” I also started reading all kinds of parenting books as I wanted to learn every tip so I could give my daughter the best possible foundation. After watching a segment on Oprah, I went out and bought the book See Jane Win. The author followed hundreds of successful women and she identified the traits and experiences they all had in common. It was very thought-provoking and an interesting read. Now that my daughter is almost a tween, it is a text I should revisit.

Age 30 – Magazines

By now, I had two kids, a new career and another part-time job. I became increasingly frustrated that it took me months to finish a book. I couldn’t stay interested because I would forget too many details between readings. However, with magazines, I could finish reading an article in less than 5 minutes! While I loved to devour magazines like People and Us Weekly, I would also try to balance those with Time and Newsweek. We subscribe to a large number of magazines at our house – and I still get a little giddy when they come in the mail!

What will I be reading at 35? I can name a few things on my list, but we will have to wait and see. What have you read throughout your life? What made an impact on you? Enjoy your summer reading!

Every Piece Counts

Part of the stated mission of the National Day on Writing is to draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing in which Americans engage as part of their daily lives.

To put this concept in concrete terms, I decided to try an activity I learned about through the NCTE Reading Initiative several years ago—a literacy dig. I looked back at a recent weekday (last Friday to be precise) and compiled a list of all the writing I did:

• 15 work-related emails to 10 different audiences
• 8 personal emails (including Facebook messages) to 5 different audiences
• final edits, including basic HTML coding, to a lesson plan on responding to literature through microblogging and social networking
• a draft of the INBOX Ideas and ad copy for an upcoming issue of Classroom Notes Plus
• a personal blog entry on the New York City subway system, including five related images and captions
• 2 comments on a colleague's blog
• 3 posts on Twitter
• 5 updates or links on Facebook and a response to a comment
• a dozen or so words corresponding to images our son drew on a whiteboard in our living room
• dozens of text messages
• marginal notes in a textbook on learning in adulthood
• online form to add a payee from my checking account
• multiple IM chats

This list accounts for all the actual composition that occurred, and because I had a record of most of these activities, they were easy to recall. Missing from this list are activities such as the prewriting that occupied my thoughts on the drive back from a visit to a local writing project site. Participants shared videos of their writing processes, and I soon began thinking about how I might use images, sound, and text to capture my own writing process.

Even if the list is incomplete, as I look back on the variety of my writing from last Friday, I can see the value in the National Day on Writing. Some pieces, such as the marginal notes, are meant only for me, and they provide a permanent record of my thoughts at the moment as I read. The words on the whiteboard, in contrast, served to teach our son about the relationship between text and images, and they lasted only as long as it took him to bring the next supervillain to life in full color. Still different is the edited lesson plan, intended for a wide online audience and representing the fruitful collaboration among the author, reviewers, and NCTE staff.

Because each of these pieces reveals something about my identity as a writer, any of them would be an appropriate choice for inclusion in the National Gallery of Writing. Though we're each asked to contribute just one piece to represent ourselves as writers and citizens, the collective gallery has the potential to reveal diversity far greater than what any one of us does in a day, a month, or a year.

The challenge, then, is for each of us to do our part in getting the word out to community and civic organizations, as well as school and workplaces of every variety. The more people from all walks of life who contribute to the gallery, the greater will be its richness and its integrity as a representation of writing in America. If you're so inclined, consider making the extra commitment of establishing a local gallery yourself and serving as the curator.

We won't be able to see all these pieces of writing until the Day on Writing arrives on October 20, 2009. But as we talk to the people with whom we interact on a daily basis—our neighbors, the postal carrier, service staff at a local restaurant or bank—and as they establish galleries within the National Gallery themselves, we'll begin to gain a sense of the diverse and integral roles writing has for American life in the 21st century.