What's W̶r̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶M̶e̶ Going on in My Brain?

I loved reading "Imposter Poets" by Jessica Lopez Lyman, a section from "How Dare We! Write". Despite a few spelling and grammatical errors, this piece is a joy. It’s beautifully written and brings up a lot of good points about writing and trying to make it in the world of academia as a Woman of Color. I felt myself really connecting with every other sentence, and I truly wanted to teach about everything this writer talked about. Unfortunately, we had to cut down on some of the topics for time's sake. I want to use this space to talk about an important issue we should all think about. That topic is mental health.

I have a lot of personal experience with mental illness that I’m not willing to delve into on a highly-public space. This made the following passage jump out at me: "You are told this is a panic attack. You don't believe the experts. Anxiety is for rich people." As Lyman explained her struggles with anxiety, especially as a woman outside of the classification of "rich", it really spoke to me. I thought back to all of my struggles with mental illness, and how those struggles were exasperated by the lack of belief in them (a result of upbringing and social class). Then, I started to think about my future students. It occurred to me that we still haven’t really touched on this issue in any of our classes, at least not in any depth, and probably wouldn’t be by the end of this program. That is extremely concerning to me.

Mental health has always been a taboo topic in our society, especially in poorer communities and communities of color. There is now a greater push for educating the population and encouraging dialogue on these issues (see “MakeItOkay.org” for example), but the taboo still continues in certain circles. This denial of issues can make it extremely difficult for people, especially secondary students, to understand what is going on in their minds and how to properly deal with it.

As teachers, we will have countless students in our classes who will struggle with mental illness. We are not required (or qualified) to double as therapists, but we should educate ourselves on this issue so we know how to best support our students. I can speak from experience when saying untreated mental illness can lead to major life disruptions, and school is oftentimes the first priority to go out the window. If our students can’t find help with battling these issues, they will be less likely to succeed in your classroom. I continuously try to find resources to help me learn more about mental illness. I also plan on looking into school resources for dealing with mental health when, or even before, I decide on where I will teach next year.

I know this is a complicated issue that can be difficult to parse through. I also know I didn’t provide a lot of resources in this post. I want to put out there that I would be willing to share resources or talk about my experiences and thoughts on this issue with anyone who will reach out to me.

Let's Not Kill the Writer in Our Students

As an English major, I have looked over and given feedback on countless papers. As a student, I have received feedback on countless more. Through all of these experiences, I’ve always thought that grading papers was kind of messed up. I can understand trying to help students improve their writing skills, but why do we have to assign different levels of worth to students’ creative pieces?

Kelly Gallagher’s “Teaching Adolescent Writers” has given me some ideas on how to handle a distaste for assigning grades to papers. Early on in the chapter she writes, “Always telling students what is wrong with their papers is a recipe for killing off young writers” (Gallagher 144). This highlights one of my greatest fears as a teacher. I know that the way an educator teaches can make the difference between students hating or loving a subject. I don’t want to be responsible for “killing off” the writer in my students. For this reason, I found this chapter to be quite helpful in thinking about my own practices in writing assessment.

Throughout the chapter, Gallagher pushes the idea that student improvement comes from frequent, in-person conferences before the student finishes with their piece, rather than delivering a final, irreparable blow at the end of the process (Gallagher 148). I can remember numerous times when I’ve felt anxious about getting a paper back with a poor grade, not knowing what my teacher was looking for. If all of my teachers took Gallagher’s advice about meeting with students in the middle of the writing process, I would have been able to work collaboratively with my teachers to improve my papers and, more importantly, my writing skills. Instead of feeling anxious, I would have put more focus into what I wanted the final paper to look like. In my future career, I will definitely implement mid-process conferences with my students to help them improve their writing skills, rather than be discouraged by my comments and grade at the end of it.

Another big point Gallagher pushed that I’ll take with me into my career can be summed up by the following paragraph heading: “Read the paper through a craft lens” (Gallagher 145). It is so easy to get distracted by grammatical errors and by what is “wrong” with a paper, especially when we’ve grown up hearing narratives that push such things. (See my post from last week for more on this topic.) However, bogging students down with negative comments about their writing will only turn them away from wanting to write. While it is important to help students learn how to write with Standard English conventions, it’s almost more important that they are given room to make their writing into what they want it to be. Instead of telling students what’s wrong with their papers, we should ask them questions that will spark ideas and help them to move in the direction they want to go. I intend on making this my main focus as I work with my future students on their writing.

Source:

Gallagher, Kelly. “Using Assessment to Drive Better Student Writing.” Teaching Adolescent Writers, Hawker Brownlow Education, 2015, pp. 141–167.

Even Teaching Grammar Is Political

The piece that stood out the most to me this week was Jill Ewing Flynn’s “The Language of Power”. I have been thinking a lot about the implications of teaching grammar as if there is one proper way to write. These thoughts have stemmed from my upbringing and the information I’ve learned to get to where I am now.

Grammar had always been presented to me as an absolute. I remember briefly discussing dialects in a couple of classes, but they were always framed as being inferior to Standard English. Almost every piece of academic writing I’ve done has been corrected or commended because of my usage of Standard English. I had never been prompted to think about who had written the Standard English rules or why we were made to follow them.

I grew up believing there was a right and wrong way to write. This view came from the way teachers corrected us in class, my family corrected me at home, my role models talked poorly about people who didn’t speak using the same rules, and people in power used this same form of English. I was constantly drilled and expected to know how to speak in this way. Near the end of my k-12 schooling, I strongly believed there was one correct way to write.

Now, after learning more about the world, about writing, and about teaching, I’ve completely changed my mind. I now realize that the reason I believed there was a correct way to wright was because oppressive forces and people in power have spent years indoctrinating me to believe this. I’d been trained to believe that those who don’t speak like rich, white men will never be successful like they are. The worst part is that many schools, parents, and role models continue to teach this damaging narrative. It is so engrained into our minds – at least speaking for white folks – that most of us never even question it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve told people that I majored in English only to hear them say something like, “Oh, I guess I’ll have to watch my grammar!” They always say it as a joke, but the truth is that they probably worry that I’ll catch them speaking “incorrectly” and will judge them as inferior because of it.

As a teacher, I worry about further pushing on this harmful. I am happy I was able to read about Mr. Ramsey and how he taught “the language of power” alongside his students’ own dialects, being careful not to put Standard English on a pedestal (Flynn 27). I hope to do something similar in my own classroom. I want to give my students the tools to help them succeed in our oppressive society while simultaneously giving them space to write in their own dialects. I believe a key to teaching this is to be honest with my students and tell them that context and audience matter.

Source:

·      Flynn, Jill Ewing. The Language of Power: Beyond the Grammar Workbook. National Council of Teachers of English, 2011.

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Advice on Giving Advice

I very much enjoyed Atwell’s piece on conferences because it was short, easily accessible, and applicable. I appreciated that it gave specific advice that I can directly apply to future writing conferences. In this post, I will pick out a few of the 13 “Content Conference Guidelines” and apply it to my previous experiences and to my future career.

Atwell’s first guideline covers something I think I’m going to struggle with as a teacher who’s passionate about writing. It states, “keep an eye on the clock and remember you’re responsible to all the writers in the room” (Atwell 224). I have had countless experiences reviewing other people’s writing – from class requirements to helping friends and family – and I always tend to take a long time. I love taking my time to carefully read through and mark up every little thing I find that could use some improvement, but that won’t be possible when I have to read over 100 papers. I think I will be able to keep writing conferences short and to the point – which is what this first guideline is really about – but I will have a hard time briefly reading through each paper and only marking up big points. I will have to learn how to do so, not only for my benefit, but also for the benefit of my students. If I give them 1,000 things to work on, they probably won’t be able to focus their efforts enough to actually learn anything.

The second guideline I appreciated was number five, “whisper and ask students to whisper when they confer with you and each other” (Atwell 224). This is a point I know well, but one I wanted to highlight because of its importance. I have always been easily distracted, and this has led to a lot of issues when trying to complete my work in class. One of my pet peeves is trying to finish work in a class where the teacher is constantly talking. I especially hate trying to work through a task that requires a lot of focus and internal thought, like reading or writing, within a noisy environment. For this reason, I will always focus on keeping my classroom quiet during individual work times.

Finally, number eight states, “build on what writers know and have done, rather than bemoaning what’s not on the page or what’s wrong with what is” (Atwell 225). This is essential to student success in writing. If all we do is tear down what students have written, we will be hurting their confidence, discouraging them to take risks, and diminishing their opportunity to learn and expand their writing abilities. A much better approach is to ask questions and help students to build upon what they’ve already written. As an English major, I’ve been lucky enough to experience plenty of practice on giving good feedback, but I am always looking for more ways to expand my knowledge and learn how to better facilitate my students’ growth as writers.