Hello, all! It seems like forever since we last met. I hope you had wonderful holidays. I'm opening this space for discussion after Shay's and Courtney's presentations tonight.
Thank you all for taking the time to listen to my presentation and wonderings about the effects of the schedule changes at my school. It was really helpful to discuss these issues with a group of people who are unfamiliar with the situation because in having to explain various reasonings and internal structures of our school policies, I was able to better process the chain of events that have led me to my research question. As I presented, I came to recognize that the situation is much more complex than I had originally constructed it to be. Thank you for all of your suggestions. They will be mulled over for weeks and possibly months to come :)
I was reflecting on a conversation that we started to have towards the end of my presentation last night and was hoping to continue this conversation a little bit via blog. When talking about the number of students who are obtaining an A or B the first time they turn in their writing, I believe Taylor asked about the ease of obtaining an A or B. As I mentioned last night, we are given a specific rubric to use when grading all writing and it is on a slight curve to balance out grades a little. In a nutshell, the rubric is based on the 6+1 traits of writing and has a scale of 1-5 for each of the trait areas. On this scale, 3 is average, 4 is effective, and 5 is excellent and/or above average. If a student is average in all 6 areas of writing, they would receive a score of 18/30. The straight percentage of that would be a 60%, which is a D. The grade letter D represents below average. With the scale that our writing is graded on, the 18/30 score would be a 80% which is a B-.
To add another layer of complexity to this, as I mentioned last night, the scores for our writing assignments are entered into a data base that tracks each student's progress in each of the 6 traits of writing. These scores are analyzed in several different ways that might compare students from different classes, etc. Not using the same rubric might make my students appear to be better/worse than other students in the building due to me using a different rubric.
I wonder if that changes what you guys think about the curved grade. What do you think an average score should be? Other thoughts?
Hi, Shay and Courtney. Thanks for your presentations last week. I think both were very interesting.
Shay, it sounds like you are pretty structured about how you grade the student writing because of school standards and processes. In an ideal world, I wish you would have more freedom to develop your own rubrics that move past the six traits and assess the writings without worrying about comparisons to other classes; but I realize that might never happen. I guess with your project what I'm thinking is, what is the real question here? I think what it seems that you really want to know is how do you get your students to be interested and excited about writing? It's not so much about improving grades, although that's always an important concern. Perhaps as your teacher research continues you can think about the bigger motivation/excitement/attitude questions. What methods increase student motivation to write? To what extent do different emphases on rhetorical principles such as audience and purpose change students' attitudes about writing? I was also wondering how you plan to "write up" your research for the final project. I think you should write it as a traditional teacher research report (first person narrative introduction, short literature review, presentation of data, analysis of data, and "findings"--additional, new questions), although I'm open to creative options. Of course, you have all this info already, and your work is an excellent example of real-life teacher research in a real setting, with all its benefits and restraints. I think you should spend time in the introduction talking about the context in which you work, just like you did with us last week. It is so important to understand things like what you describe above--and, you're right, it's so complex!
Courtney, I think you are also on to something really interesting. I see your research as potentially ground breaking since it seems so new--as a profession we have been really ignoring the role of the supervisor, and not much has really been said about the mentor-student relationship. It's like we worry about the methods class and then once they leave campus we wash our hands of any responsibility and "let the chips fall where they may." Some student teachers are lucky; some aren't.
I like your use of theory on power and authority, and that focus works well when analyzing your data so far. Foucault also says that power circulates and comes from all parties; so while the "institution" might have more power in a traditional sense, everyone has power in a situation in some way. In other words, students have power to subvert a certain lesson or requirement or to even simply ignore it, which is powerful in its own way. Student teachers, while not holding traditional institutional power, do have power to wield, particularly if they are cognizant of it and reflect on their positions. And like you say, power is not always "bad"; it can be emancipatory in fact.
I think with your research it's especially interesting to think about the intersections between the power/authority of the mentor, the supervisor, and the student (I'm seeing a diagram here!) and how individual perceptions of roles affect the mentor/mentee dynamic. Self-perception in many ways IS identity, and how one enacts one's identity affects the perceptions of others. Increased awareness on the part of a mentor teacher of his/her mentoring style might encourage needed modification or development of a mentoring approach, which could, in turn, positively affect the developing professional identity of a student teacher. These are very complex relationships, but I still think there are certain common understandings we could come to about effective mentoring techniques, characteristics of an effective supervisor, and how each should be prepared for their roles. And I think your research might just provide such understandings!
Thank you everyone for listening, for asking great questions, and for engaging in such lively conversation regarding my student teachers. Janet, thank you also for the insights, thoughts, and suggestions that you have offered here and in person over the past week.
I'm excited to finish writing about my project thus far, but the task seems a little overwhelming because it is so rich. I'll have to restrain myself a little bit. Additionally, it's hard not to get too wrapped up in what I want to do next semester, and hard not to kick myself for what I see as failures in my supervisory duties this past semester. In a way, I feel like this project will never be truly done because I hope it will be a true action research project; I hope to keep modifying my own practice and then observing the effects of my practice on the relationship amongst the three of us - student teacher, mentor teacher, and supervisor.
Courtney and Shay – great presentations last week! I really enjoyed hearing about what both of you are doing.
Shay, I really don’t know what to say about the grading / revision situation. It seems to me that once students get grades they see them as “final” and it is hard to get them to continue to do work on a project. Revision is something most students hate doing – especially on a global scale (this is part of my project as well). I guess it comes down to, as Janet mentioned in her post, how to get students motivated to revise. I wonder if some end of the year project that is based on previous writings might help motivate students. This way they would have to look back at what they’ve done and revise/rework it. Or, what about the publishing idea we discussed in class? If they eventually share their work with others (beyond you and their classmates), then this might motivate them to do what they can to revise and polish their work.
I don’t think any of these are necessarily “solutions,” but just things to consider and maybe ask your students their thoughts on these kinds of projects. Of course, every group of students is different, so a more uniform solution could be difficult.
Sorry if my post comes off as discouraging. It is sad to hear that students aren’t spending the time they should on writing, and I think it’s really great that you are taking on the important issue!
Courtney, I really enjoyed your presentation and reading the student teacher reflections. Every time I read a page or heard your stories, I was brought back to my own student teaching experience and the experiences of my friends. We all went through the process and talked to each other about what went on, but I had never read any research in this area about what the dynamic is usually like, or how student teachers interact with their advisors/cooperating teachers. This is why I think your project is so important. I think it is important to open up this conversation and find out what is working, what problems all concerned are facing, etc.
You may have mentioned this, but beyond the reflections and student teacher interviews, what other artifacts are you using for your project? Did you get a chance to talk to the cooperating teachers about their relationships with the student teachers? I realize that might be a difficult thing to do, but I was just wondering. Maybe you could do something like that for future study.
interesting point, Heather, about additional data for Courtney's project in the future. She might also consider using observation/field notes and copies of student teaching evaluations if permission is given (although this is too big for this semester!) Discourse analysis might also be an interesting approach here since language often reflects/exacerbates power differentials. Janet
Heather, I do plan to collect a lot more data next semester. I will be relying on my own observations and my notes from conferences with the student teachers regarding those observations for this project. Next semester, however, I hope to develop an instrument to use with the mentor teachers that will help me better understand their view of their role. I thought it might also be interesting to give a similar instrument (or even the same one) to the student teachers, then use the results as a discussion starting point when we have our first meeting during the first week of student teaching. I also plan on trying to meet with the MTs before the start of the student teaching experience in order to explain my research, get permission to use their documents, and to possibly arrange to do separate interviews with them. There is so much I wish I could have done this semester, but it just didn't work out.
All, after really thinking about my presentation over the last couple of days, I decided that I needed more information from my students. I decided to survey them about the re-write option since I am in the middle of grading their most recent major writing assignment, which means that they will soon have another opportunity to re-write their papers. Although my original sense was that most kids did not want to stay after school to work on the re-write with me, most students stated that they were satisfied with their grade after writing it the first time. Although I expected this, I didn't expect the number of studnets who said that they would definitely take advantage of the opportunity if they were not satisfied with their grade and/or that they really liked that the re-write was an option. So, I guess this leads me to think about the grading aspect of this a little more closely. A nice follow up would be to examine what students perceive to be a satisfactory score. In other words, where is the line between good and bad for overall performance?
On that note, I have looked through comments and have begun to think about the grade aspect of my project a little further because it seem to hold the most power for both sides that I am looking at (school system and students). I started thinking about the forced rubric for our staple writing assignments and how it might be setting students up for false success (maybe - not sure about this), but thought that it was interesting when I looked at my advanced class data and compared the amount of A and B papers from one of the writing assignments that we all had to do and grade the same way versus the essay test that I created and graded differently. There was a noticeable difference. Surprisingly, only two of those students decided to re-write their papers.
I am going to try giving students a forum to publish and comment on their writing. I have added two new links to my teacher website for students to use. The first link is for writing in progress and encourages students to question and comment on one another's writing as they are going through the writing process. The second option is for publishing writing and encourages students to publish their work for parents and peers to look at. Here's the website link if you are curious:
Great work, Shay. I think the survey was a great idea. You might be interested in some further research about grading and student writing. Here are a few books:
Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment by Maja Wilson (Re)Articulating Writing Assessment by Brian Huot Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teacher's Guide (4th edition) by Edward M White
I know there are many research articles, particularly from the 90's.
In my presentation, my background information focused on who my students are, how they have scored on state tests, etc., but I am thinking about having my background information focus more on the changes that have been made within my school to set up the situation that I am currently in (not having time to teach writing). What do you think? I not really sure how helpful it was to explain the population of students since I think that this siutaion could be in any school with any population of students. Thoughts?
Okay, so I still need to read through everyone's comments and add more response, but Courtney, I've been thinking a lot about your research in light of my current experience with student teachers and was wondering if it wouldn't be useful/beneficial for both you and those of us who are observing Eng Ed students to have something of a supervisor support group next semester?? I think you, Taylor, and I might be covering all or most of them and in talking last week was thinking about how often I would like to have others in the same situation to discuss, ask questions of, etc. And, I was thinking that it might benefit you to use these meetings/discussions/ideas for your research?? I feel like you could benefit us with your knowledge about the relationship and we could benefit you with our input from experience...just a thought! It could be something simple, like meeting every two weeks or once a month, or even just responding to one another on a blog like this...
First, I want to echo the compliments of you all. Great presentations! Very interesting. First, Shay, I keep going back to the grading issue and think to some extent that it's sad that you're expected to use a required rubric because I'm wondering if there might be a more useful method...What I mean is that if when students turned in their papers they were instead giving some kind of cue from you, like a check or plus, for example that indicated the degree of revising you think they still need. This could eventually turn into a grade, so, for example, a student who earned 5 checks at the end might earn a B compared with a student who revised enough to earn a plus on each paper who might earn an A. Does that make sense? I don't know, maybe that still reduces writing to a grade??
I think the question of purpose and audience is essential. I liked all of the ideas about how to make students' writing relevant, interesting, etc. Maybe you could even have a class publication and/or days in class where students have time/space to share their writing and maybe give each other feedback. I know your schedule is really tight, but it could even be something every other Friday where students could revise until their final "presentation" even if it was in small groups?? What about a variety of genres too? So, in addition to writing the required essay-type writing, they could supplement their topic (or a new topic, not sure what kinds of things they write about) with a poem, reflection, song lyrics, whatever??
Courtney, as I mentioned I've been thinking about your topic a lot in my specific situation working with s.t. and coop teachers and especially the role of power. It's a...unique relationship in the fact that coop teachers, in my experience, seem to want to say one thing to the s.t. and another thing to me (so, a coop teacher might say in our group meeting that overall everything is going well but then talk to me behind closed doors about several areas of concern). I've realized that my role is often managing this relationship. I've realize more and more how candid I have to be to avoid conflict later...does that make sense? I do wonder quite a bit about what my role should be. I try to be a person of support who students feel comfortable sharing issues and concerns with even if, like with your student teacher, they are with one's coop teacher. I also, however, want to encourage them to be reflective and critical of their own experience. That said, every semester it seems like I find myself wishing I would have done more...Needless to say, I'm so interested to hear what you find out. I think this is a great topic and necessary, like Janet said, to best help our student teachers succeed.
Shay and Courtney, I enjoyed both of your presentations. I found myself trying to position social studies within both of your contexts and realized how "to the point" the discipline is.
Courtney, not once did I receive a reflection from a student teacher like what you received. You would think that out of 10 students and 10 journals each, they would be able to talk about more than the content. I am not supervising next semester but would love to be a part of your support group. Managing the relationship and power dynamics between the student teachers and the cooperating teachers was my biggest challenge, and it often involved the student teacher being unaware of the students. For some reason, the male and female social studies STs were not talking about this power struggle in their writings, but we were definitely talking about it during our face-to-face and email meetings. I'd enjoy the opportunity to follow your research.
Shay, if I have not shared this before, I grew up in Hamilton County during the 1980s and 1990s and watched Westfield explode and adjust from being a small country/town to an affluential suburban center. I always felt sorry for the school system because it seemed caught between decisions made so it could compete with Carmel and decisions made so it could best provide for its students. Perhaps this is just an outsiders perspective, but the community seemed squeezed and stretched at the same time. After hearing about the schedule decisions within the school, I could only imagine the teachers feeling squeezed and stretched.
Social studies writing is different than English writing, same goes for the grading. So I'm not sure how much help I can be here. My only suggestion is to work with your team members to incorporate more writing assignments and activities. I would have enjoyed working with an English teacher to enhance social studies writing. They do not have to be big assignments. Something like an entrance slip and an exit slip where the students rewrite their thoughts about the day's lesson. In science terms, open class with a hypothesis, end class with a conclusion. This is a rewrite. If teachers use a bell ringer, than maybe they would be willing to take 3-5 minutes at the end of class to allow students to rethink the bell ringer. Granted this means that the initial question has to be something that would allow students to expand upon over the class session (or maybe two or three class sessions). It could work. Even though you have to reduce writing opportunities, maybe your teammates can increase writing opportunities.
As a speech person and audible learner, I enjoy performing and hearing my writing out loud. I know we do not write the same way that we speak, but it is moving to hear an expository piece. When I read my writing out loud to myself or someone else, I catch wording errors that can lead to misunderstandings. I catch connotations that I couldn't hear in the words on paper. So ... my suggestion is to not only provide a print outlet for writing, but to also provide a performance outlet. Poetry slam, original drama, music night ...
Beth, Taylor, Marianne, Shay - anyone who wants to, regardless of whether or not you will be supervising - I would LOVE to have a "support group"! I need it so much right now. I have to admit that I'm having trouble writing up my final because I'm spending so much mental energy over the "should haves." Now that I'm learning more about how other programs structure the student teaching practicum, and how other supervisors do their job, I'm feeling like I've done a really inadequate job, even though rationally I know that I've done the best I can given my limitations.
Right now, I'm struggling with feeling like I sort of abandoned one of my student teachers in Indy. He's working at a large (2300 students) county school with a really structured curriculum. By that I mean they actually have a common final that all students across a grade level take, and they are in the process of developing a standard test for each unit at each grade level. So he's teaching Huck Finn (in 3 weeks!) and already has in hand the test they have to pass, which was created by the department as a group. His classes are LOADED (avg. of 30 students), and there's just no time for anything. He's been writing in his journals about the ideas he's had for activities, but he just hasn't been able to do them because he's pressed for time. But I feel I can't go in there and say to a whole department, "Look, you gotta give him some room to explore." I've talked to him extensively about how different things will be if he goes to a school with less structure - that he'll have more freedom, but by the same token he'll have a lot more work and a lot more responsibility - just so he's prepared to face that. But here is yet another situation where I find myself holding out empty hands and saying, sorry, I got nothin'.
Sorry, thanks for letting me get that off my chest.
Shay, I thought I would repeat here what I mentioned in class just so others can weigh in if they'd like. If your goal is to help the students begin to consider themselves writers, and to engage in writing outside of class, then what they might need is just more opportunities to write on a smaller scale with less pressure. This is why I suggested incorporating more writing in small, 5 minute chunks, not necessarily all graded, and connecting it in some way to the literature you are reading (so it does "double duty"). One of my student teachers created a class scrapbook for their study of The House on Mango Street. The students wrote in reader response journals, and then every day at the end of class she would allow 4 students to work on the scrap book (different students every day, of course, and she used it as somewhat of a reward). They acted as editors - students submitted things they had done that they wanted to include, and the "editors" chose pieces, arranged them, asked students to add artwork where they thought it was needed, etc. Maybe you could create a long-term project like that?
Hi, Shay--an answer to your question way above: I think both types of background info should be included, but I agree more time should be spent on the "changes" part you propose.
Thank you all for taking the time to listen to my presentation and wonderings about the effects of the schedule changes at my school. It was really helpful to discuss these issues with a group of people who are unfamiliar with the situation because in having to explain various reasonings and internal structures of our school policies, I was able to better process the chain of events that have led me to my research question. As I presented, I came to recognize that the situation is much more complex than I had originally constructed it to be. Thank you for all of your suggestions. They will be mulled over for weeks and possibly months to come :)
ReplyDeleteI was reflecting on a conversation that we started to have towards the end of my presentation last night and was hoping to continue this conversation a little bit via blog. When talking about the number of students who are obtaining an A or B the first time they turn in their writing, I believe Taylor asked about the ease of obtaining an A or B. As I mentioned last night, we are given a specific rubric to use when grading all writing and it is on a slight curve to balance out grades a little. In a nutshell, the rubric is based on the 6+1 traits of writing and has a scale of 1-5 for each of the trait areas. On this scale, 3 is average, 4 is effective, and 5 is excellent and/or above average. If a student is average in all 6 areas of writing, they would receive a score of 18/30. The straight percentage of that would be a 60%, which is a D. The grade letter D represents below average. With the scale that our writing is graded on, the 18/30 score would be a 80% which is a B-.
ReplyDeleteTo add another layer of complexity to this, as I mentioned last night, the scores for our writing assignments are entered into a data base that tracks each student's progress in each of the 6 traits of writing. These scores are analyzed in several different ways that might compare students from different classes, etc. Not using the same rubric might make my students appear to be better/worse than other students in the building due to me using a different rubric.
I wonder if that changes what you guys think about the curved grade. What do you think an average score should be? Other thoughts?
Thanks
Hi, Shay and Courtney. Thanks for your presentations last week. I think both were very interesting.
ReplyDeleteShay, it sounds like you are pretty structured about how you grade the student writing because of school standards and processes. In an ideal world, I wish you would have more freedom to develop your own rubrics that move past the six traits and assess the writings without worrying about comparisons to other classes; but I realize that might never happen. I guess with your project what I'm thinking is, what is the real question here? I think what it seems that you really want to know is how do you get your students to be interested and excited about writing? It's not so much about improving grades, although that's always an important concern. Perhaps as your teacher research continues you can think about the bigger motivation/excitement/attitude questions. What methods increase student motivation to write? To what extent do different emphases on rhetorical principles such as audience and purpose change students' attitudes about writing? I was also wondering how you plan to "write up" your research for the final project. I think you should write it as a traditional teacher research report (first person narrative introduction, short literature review, presentation of data, analysis of data, and "findings"--additional, new questions), although I'm open to creative options. Of course, you have all this info already, and your work is an excellent example of real-life teacher research in a real setting, with all its benefits and restraints. I think you should spend time in the introduction talking about the context in which you work, just like you did with us last week. It is so important to understand things like what you describe above--and, you're right, it's so complex!
Courtney, I think you are also on to something really interesting. I see your research as potentially ground breaking since it seems so new--as a profession we have been really ignoring the role of the supervisor, and not much has really been said about the mentor-student relationship. It's like we worry about the methods class and then once they leave campus we wash our hands of any responsibility and "let the chips fall where they may." Some student teachers are lucky; some aren't.
I like your use of theory on power and authority, and that focus works well when analyzing your data so far. Foucault also says that power circulates and comes from all parties; so while the "institution" might have more power in a traditional sense, everyone has power in a situation in some way. In other words, students have power to subvert a certain lesson or requirement or to even simply ignore it, which is powerful in its own way. Student teachers, while not holding traditional institutional power, do have power to wield, particularly if they are cognizant of it and reflect on their positions. And like you say, power is not always "bad"; it can be emancipatory in fact.
I think with your research it's especially interesting to think about the intersections between the power/authority of the mentor, the supervisor, and the student (I'm seeing a diagram here!) and how individual perceptions of roles affect the mentor/mentee dynamic. Self-perception in many ways IS identity, and how one enacts one's identity affects the perceptions of others. Increased awareness on the part of a mentor teacher of his/her mentoring style might encourage needed modification or development of a mentoring approach, which could, in turn, positively affect the developing professional identity of a student teacher. These are very complex relationships, but I still think there are certain common understandings we could come to about effective mentoring techniques, characteristics of an effective supervisor, and how each should be prepared for their roles. And I think your research might just provide such understandings!
Thank you everyone for listening, for asking great questions, and for engaging in such lively conversation regarding my student teachers. Janet, thank you also for the insights, thoughts, and suggestions that you have offered here and in person over the past week.
ReplyDeleteI'm excited to finish writing about my project thus far, but the task seems a little overwhelming because it is so rich. I'll have to restrain myself a little bit. Additionally, it's hard not to get too wrapped up in what I want to do next semester, and hard not to kick myself for what I see as failures in my supervisory duties this past semester. In a way, I feel like this project will never be truly done because I hope it will be a true action research project; I hope to keep modifying my own practice and then observing the effects of my practice on the relationship amongst the three of us - student teacher, mentor teacher, and supervisor.
Courtney and Shay – great presentations last week! I really enjoyed hearing about what both of you are doing.
ReplyDeleteShay, I really don’t know what to say about the grading / revision situation. It seems to me that once students get grades they see them as “final” and it is hard to get them to continue to do work on a project. Revision is something most students hate doing – especially on a global scale (this is part of my project as well). I guess it comes down to, as Janet mentioned in her post, how to get students motivated to revise. I wonder if some end of the year project that is based on previous writings might help motivate students. This way they would have to look back at what they’ve done and revise/rework it. Or, what about the publishing idea we discussed in class? If they eventually share their work with others (beyond you and their classmates), then this might motivate them to do what they can to revise and polish their work.
I don’t think any of these are necessarily “solutions,” but just things to consider and maybe ask your students their thoughts on these kinds of projects. Of course, every group of students is different, so a more uniform solution could be difficult.
Sorry if my post comes off as discouraging. It is sad to hear that students aren’t spending the time they should on writing, and I think it’s really great that you are taking on the important issue!
Courtney, I really enjoyed your presentation and reading the student teacher reflections. Every time I read a page or heard your stories, I was brought back to my own student teaching experience and the experiences of my friends. We all went through the process and talked to each other about what went on, but I had never read any research in this area about what the dynamic is usually like, or how student teachers interact with their advisors/cooperating teachers. This is why I think your project is so important. I think it is important to open up this conversation and find out what is working, what problems all concerned are facing, etc.
You may have mentioned this, but beyond the reflections and student teacher interviews, what other artifacts are you using for your project? Did you get a chance to talk to the cooperating teachers about their relationships with the student teachers? I realize that might be a difficult thing to do, but I was just wondering. Maybe you could do something like that for future study.
Again, great job,ladies!
interesting point, Heather, about additional data for Courtney's project in the future. She might also consider using observation/field notes and copies of student teaching evaluations if permission is given (although this is too big for this semester!) Discourse analysis might also be an interesting approach here since language often reflects/exacerbates power differentials.
ReplyDeleteJanet
Heather, I do plan to collect a lot more data next semester. I will be relying on my own observations and my notes from conferences with the student teachers regarding those observations for this project. Next semester, however, I hope to develop an instrument to use with the mentor teachers that will help me better understand their view of their role. I thought it might also be interesting to give a similar instrument (or even the same one) to the student teachers, then use the results as a discussion starting point when we have our first meeting during the first week of student teaching. I also plan on trying to meet with the MTs before the start of the student teaching experience in order to explain my research, get permission to use their documents, and to possibly arrange to do separate interviews with them. There is so much I wish I could have done this semester, but it just didn't work out.
ReplyDeleteAll, after really thinking about my presentation over the last couple of days, I decided that I needed more information from my students. I decided to survey them about the re-write option since I am in the middle of grading their most recent major writing assignment, which means that they will soon have another opportunity to re-write their papers. Although my original sense was that most kids did not want to stay after school to work on the re-write with me, most students stated that they were satisfied with their grade after writing it the first time. Although I expected this, I didn't expect the number of studnets who said that they would definitely take advantage of the opportunity if they were not satisfied with their grade and/or that they really liked that the re-write was an option. So, I guess this leads me to think about the grading aspect of this a little more closely. A nice follow up would be to examine what students perceive to be a satisfactory score. In other words, where is the line between good and bad for overall performance?
ReplyDeleteOn that note, I have looked through comments and have begun to think about the grade aspect of my project a little further because it seem to hold the most power for both sides that I am looking at (school system and students). I started thinking about the forced rubric for our staple writing assignments and how it might be setting students up for false success (maybe - not sure about this), but thought that it was interesting when I looked at my advanced class data and compared the amount of A and B papers from one of the writing assignments that we all had to do and grade the same way versus the essay test that I created and graded differently. There was a noticeable difference. Surprisingly, only two of those students decided to re-write their papers.
I am going to try giving students a forum to publish and comment on their writing. I have added two new links to my teacher website for students to use. The first link is for writing in progress and encourages students to question and comment on one another's writing as they are going through the writing process. The second option is for publishing writing and encourages students to publish their work for parents and peers to look at. Here's the website link if you are curious:
ReplyDeletehttp://teacherweb.com/IN/WestfieldMiddleSchool/MissBarrie
Great work, Shay. I think the survey was a great idea. You might be interested in some further research about grading and student writing. Here are a few books:
ReplyDeleteRethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment by Maja Wilson
(Re)Articulating Writing Assessment by Brian Huot
Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teacher's Guide (4th edition) by Edward M White
I know there are many research articles, particularly from the 90's.
In my presentation, my background information focused on who my students are, how they have scored on state tests, etc., but I am thinking about having my background information focus more on the changes that have been made within my school to set up the situation that I am currently in (not having time to teach writing). What do you think? I not really sure how helpful it was to explain the population of students since I think that this siutaion could be in any school with any population of students. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteOkay, so I still need to read through everyone's comments and add more response, but Courtney, I've been thinking a lot about your research in light of my current experience with student teachers and was wondering if it wouldn't be useful/beneficial for both you and those of us who are observing Eng Ed students to have something of a supervisor support group next semester?? I think you, Taylor, and I might be covering all or most of them and in talking last week was thinking about how often I would like to have others in the same situation to discuss, ask questions of, etc. And, I was thinking that it might benefit you to use these meetings/discussions/ideas for your research?? I feel like you could benefit us with your knowledge about the relationship and we could benefit you with our input from experience...just a thought! It could be something simple, like meeting every two weeks or once a month, or even just responding to one another on a blog like this...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, more to come...
First, I want to echo the compliments of you all. Great presentations! Very interesting. First, Shay, I keep going back to the grading issue and think to some extent that it's sad that you're expected to use a required rubric because I'm wondering if there might be a more useful method...What I mean is that if when students turned in their papers they were instead giving some kind of cue from you, like a check or plus, for example that indicated the degree of revising you think they still need. This could eventually turn into a grade, so, for example, a student who earned 5 checks at the end might earn a B compared with a student who revised enough to earn a plus on each paper who might earn an A. Does that make sense? I don't know, maybe that still reduces writing to a grade??
ReplyDeleteI think the question of purpose and audience is essential. I liked all of the ideas about how to make students' writing relevant, interesting, etc. Maybe you could even have a class publication and/or days in class where students have time/space to share their writing and maybe give each other feedback. I know your schedule is really tight, but it could even be something every other Friday where students could revise until their final "presentation" even if it was in small groups?? What about a variety of genres too? So, in addition to writing the required essay-type writing, they could supplement their topic (or a new topic, not sure what kinds of things they write about) with a poem, reflection, song lyrics, whatever??
Courtney, as I mentioned I've been thinking about your topic a lot in my specific situation working with s.t. and coop teachers and especially the role of power. It's a...unique relationship in the fact that coop teachers, in my experience, seem to want to say one thing to the s.t. and another thing to me (so, a coop teacher might say in our group meeting that overall everything is going well but then talk to me behind closed doors about several areas of concern). I've realized that my role is often managing this relationship. I've realize more and more how candid I have to be to avoid conflict later...does that make sense? I do wonder quite a bit about what my role should be. I try to be a person of support who students feel comfortable sharing issues and concerns with even if, like with your student teacher, they are with one's coop teacher. I also, however, want to encourage them to be reflective and critical of their own experience. That said, every semester it seems like I find myself wishing I would have done more...Needless to say, I'm so interested to hear what you find out. I think this is a great topic and necessary, like Janet said, to best help our student teachers succeed.
Shay and Courtney, I enjoyed both of your presentations. I found myself trying to position social studies within both of your contexts and realized how "to the point" the discipline is.
ReplyDeleteCourtney, not once did I receive a reflection from a student teacher like what you received. You would think that out of 10 students and 10 journals each, they would be able to talk about more than the content. I am not supervising next semester but would love to be a part of your support group. Managing the relationship and power dynamics between the student teachers and the cooperating teachers was my biggest challenge, and it often involved the student teacher being unaware of the students. For some reason, the male and female social studies STs were not talking about this power struggle in their writings, but we were definitely talking about it during our face-to-face and email meetings. I'd enjoy the opportunity to follow your research.
Shay, if I have not shared this before, I grew up in Hamilton County during the 1980s and 1990s and watched Westfield explode and adjust from being a small country/town to an affluential suburban center. I always felt sorry for the school system because it seemed caught between decisions made so it could compete with Carmel and decisions made so it could best provide for its students. Perhaps this is just an outsiders perspective, but the community seemed squeezed and stretched at the same time. After hearing about the schedule decisions within the school, I could only imagine the teachers feeling squeezed and stretched.
Social studies writing is different than English writing, same goes for the grading. So I'm not sure how much help I can be here. My only suggestion is to work with your team members to incorporate more writing assignments and activities. I would have enjoyed working with an English teacher to enhance social studies writing. They do not have to be big assignments. Something like an entrance slip and an exit slip where the students rewrite their thoughts about the day's lesson. In science terms, open class with a hypothesis, end class with a conclusion. This is a rewrite. If teachers use a bell ringer, than maybe they would be willing to take 3-5 minutes at the end of class to allow students to rethink the bell ringer. Granted this means that the initial question has to be something that would allow students to expand upon over the class session (or maybe two or three class sessions). It could work. Even though you have to reduce writing opportunities, maybe your teammates can increase writing opportunities.
As a speech person and audible learner, I enjoy performing and hearing my writing out loud. I know we do not write the same way that we speak, but it is moving to hear an expository piece. When I read my writing out loud to myself or someone else, I catch wording errors that can lead to misunderstandings. I catch connotations that I couldn't hear in the words on paper. So ... my suggestion is to not only provide a print outlet for writing, but to also provide a performance outlet. Poetry slam, original drama, music night ...
Beth, Taylor, Marianne, Shay - anyone who wants to, regardless of whether or not you will be supervising - I would LOVE to have a "support group"! I need it so much right now. I have to admit that I'm having trouble writing up my final because I'm spending so much mental energy over the "should haves." Now that I'm learning more about how other programs structure the student teaching practicum, and how other supervisors do their job, I'm feeling like I've done a really inadequate job, even though rationally I know that I've done the best I can given my limitations.
ReplyDeleteRight now, I'm struggling with feeling like I sort of abandoned one of my student teachers in Indy. He's working at a large (2300 students) county school with a really structured curriculum. By that I mean they actually have a common final that all students across a grade level take, and they are in the process of developing a standard test for each unit at each grade level. So he's teaching Huck Finn (in 3 weeks!) and already has in hand the test they have to pass, which was created by the department as a group. His classes are LOADED (avg. of 30 students), and there's just no time for anything. He's been writing in his journals about the ideas he's had for activities, but he just hasn't been able to do them because he's pressed for time. But I feel I can't go in there and say to a whole department, "Look, you gotta give him some room to explore." I've talked to him extensively about how different things will be if he goes to a school with less structure - that he'll have more freedom, but by the same token he'll have a lot more work and a lot more responsibility - just so he's prepared to face that. But here is yet another situation where I find myself holding out empty hands and saying, sorry, I got nothin'.
Sorry, thanks for letting me get that off my chest.
Shay, I thought I would repeat here what I mentioned in class just so others can weigh in if they'd like. If your goal is to help the students begin to consider themselves writers, and to engage in writing outside of class, then what they might need is just more opportunities to write on a smaller scale with less pressure. This is why I suggested incorporating more writing in small, 5 minute chunks, not necessarily all graded, and connecting it in some way to the literature you are reading (so it does "double duty"). One of my student teachers created a class scrapbook for their study of The House on Mango Street. The students wrote in reader response journals, and then every day at the end of class she would allow 4 students to work on the scrap book (different students every day, of course, and she used it as somewhat of a reward). They acted as editors - students submitted things they had done that they wanted to include, and the "editors" chose pieces, arranged them, asked students to add artwork where they thought it was needed, etc. Maybe you could create a long-term project like that?
Hi, Shay--an answer to your question way above: I think both types of background info should be included, but I agree more time should be spent on the "changes" part you propose.
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