Reflections on Part Three of John Warner's Why They Can't Write, Pages 127-183 (Post #4) - A Guest Post by Lauren Carfa

At The Oakridge School, the entire English department is reading John Warner's Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities. Six of us have volunteered to post reflections on the book as we read and discuss the text. Lauren Carfa, 3rd grade ELA Instructor, volunteered to post the fourth reflection, which I've provided below.

Must It Be All or Nothing?

I have, embarrassingly, severely held up the progress of this blog! While life has truly been a big factor in this, I’ve come to realize some personal avoidance as well. I have really struggled through this book because I find myself often frustrated either with what Warner is suggesting, or with what I feel is a lack of completion. What I mean by that is I feel he keeps saying what is wrong, what not to do, and why, but that is it. I’m left wondering what he suggests as a better method.

I’ve tried to be very reflective as I read this text. I wrote at the beginning of my notes for this section that I am a product of the system that he is writing against. I was taught how to write for the purpose of taking and passing a standardized test and then moving to the next level and I wholeheartedly agree that, while I have some strong and helpful skills in writing, my education was narrow and lacking. Sadly, I didn’t find college to be any different at any of the institutions I took classes from. This personal experience lends me to feel supportive of many of Warner’s arguments about what students need. I wish my educational experience had been more about encouraging thought and creativity rather than teaching me to meet specific measures that may or may not bear fruit for me in life.

On page 129, Warner says “If you believe school is properly viewed as something like ancient Sparta...much of what I have to say...will sound like the rantings of a soft-hearted dreamer entirely divorced from the real world.” I keep coming back to this statement because I do think so much of what he says isn’t realistic. I don’t see how to merge his desires and aspirations for education with the reality of people. However, I don’t feel like I belong anywhere near the other option he offers. To me, this further illustrates what I keep feeling about so much of his opinion - there is no middle ground, just either or, us or them.

Further illustrating my struggle to sift through the reading, I know that all of the above isn’t fully reflective of my section that I am to represent, but rather my feelings on the book as whole.

In my section, Warner talks about the need for students to be fed and come to school well-rested, and also says, “...but can we agree that enhancing the intellectual, social, and emotional capacities of students is likely to lead to these [preparing children for higher education and careers] outcomes?” Perhaps this will be the conclusion of Warner as well, but the piece I often find to be missing in the field of education is relationship. I really believe relationship is what sets educators into the categories of someone who leads, produces, or brings up students who are successful, confident and capable, verses the educator that holds a place, or worse, stifles the love of learning. Warner keeps referring to the “tyranny of grades” and compliance. I think of tyranny of grades as nit-picking for mistakes, rather than looking at the whole picture of what the goal of the learning was. Regardless, he is right - grades and compliance can lead to defeated, apathetic children. I think that type of educator is one that lacks relationship. I believe that grades and compliance, inside relationship, can be healthy, beneficial, and provides a platform for success and growth. This also applies to writing. Grade, or don’t, but if you don’t have a relationship with your students they won’t grow and develop as a result of your efforts either way. In my opinion, this point is exemplified on page 141 when Warner lists five things that should be our goals. Goals 4 and 5 state:

4. We will end the tyranny of grades and replace them with self-assessment and reflection.

5. We will give teachers sufficient time, freedom, and resources to teach effectively. In return, they will be required to embrace the same ethos of self-assessment and reflection expected of students.

My question is, how do we then determine this standard is met? If there is not a relationship and there is no grade or requirement to demonstrate the expectation is being met, I envision a huge range of “success”. Don’t misunderstand, I do not think that everyone should turn out the same or have identical goals. I want to celebrate the individual. I mean in terms of teachers certain they are impacting students when students feel lost and uncertain, or students certain they are top of their class when they haven’t mastered basic skills. Self reflection is not a strength for everyone.

Finally, on page 153 Warner talks about the circumstances in which writers thrive and advocates giving students experiences and opportunities to make choice and build a practice and love for writing. This, I can get excited about. This, I can get behind. I just don’t understand why it must be completely separated from grades and structure. I see a classroom where both can hold space.

I chose to include the following pictures to demonstrate why I still hold value to giving children structure to work first within, and then out of. This first picture is of a writing piece done with little to no structure. The requirements were very broad and focused on minor things such as how to turn it in, to make sure you have your name, etc. The children had a choice of topic, including one that was free choice. There was no grade attached and no structure given to follow.

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This next picture is of the same student's writing, during even the same week. This picture is a portion of their final copy pages for a project in which they had choice over the topic, but they had to follow a structure and use various tools practiced in class as part of their grade.

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My expertise is not in English, though I am an “English Teacher”. My expertise is in children. I believe children need guidance and structure that comes from a loving person they respect. That is the place they grow from.

Lauren Carfa

Reflections on Part Two of John Warner's Why They Can't Write, Pages 87-123 (Post #3) - A Guest Post by Claire Reddig

At The Oakridge School, the entire English department is reading John Warner's Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities. Six of us have volunteered to post reflections on the book as we read and discuss the text. Claire Reddig, MS English Instructor & Writing Specialist, volunteered to post the third reflection, which I've provided below.

My blog post is organized around quotations that I hope capture key issues discussed and provide room for debate and discussion

“In fact, contact between faculty and between students may be the most meaningful part of education” (90).

At Oakridge, we often hear about the importance of relationships and for good reason. This quotation caught my attention not because it is radical, but because I wonder how our writing instruction and feedback would be different if building relationships was our top priority. For me, I’d definitely make more room for writing conferences (I think I’d call them writing conversations) and I’d see my students’ writing as a chance to learn more about them as people and as writers. I’d probably be less critical if building a relationship was my primary goal and I’d give my students more room for creativity and autonomy. What about you?

“We should not be surprised that a school day could be alienating when it’s dominated by interacting with a screen and a computer running software specifically designed to highlight your deficiencies” (93).

This quotation caught my attention because we use a computer program called iXL in Middle School to teach grammar skills. The upside to iXL is it is personalized and it (in theory) teaches the students how to avoid mistakes. We began using iXL a few years ago when the grammar pendulum began swinging away from direct grammar instruction and we were searching for a middle ground. We also found that our students were at very different places when it came to grammar knowledge, so iXL allowed us personalize grammar instruction and free up more class time for reading comprehension and writing practice. As you can imagine, students are not fans of iXL and see it as a chore. I still see iXL as having a role in our MS classrooms but I would love to hear about other options...

“They have rarely been required to distill or synthesize an argument to its essence, a higher order task than mere comprehension. They are comfortable repeating what they’ve heard/​ read but less experienced in articulating what a text ‘means’” (99).

I think this quotation gets at the heart of so many issues in our classroom. I think we are giving our students less opportunities to push themselves as creative and critical thinkers in a safe and stress free environment, whether it is in writing or in conversations. If we want to see our students use complex analysis, they have to practice these skills in an arena that values trial and error. And we need to value and highlight this critical thinking when we see it in our students’ writing (even if the arguments contain grammar and spelling errors!)

“But the far more important part of the work is my trying to figure out why the error has been made so I can offer something to the student that allows them to return to their writing process in order to do better next time. Often, this is only achieved in consultation with the students themselves” (101).

I think this quotation goes back to my thinking about how my feedback about student writing would be different if relationships were my key goal. I think I would see myself as a teammate who is offering feedback in a non-threatening way and is instead offering suggestions and things to ponder rather than requirements.

“Those who hold on to the notion that students must learn the ‘basics’ of grammar before allowing writers to move on to the more difficult work of expressing ideas are denying those students access to experiences that make use want to learn to write. It is the equivalent of music students being confined to the study of sheet music, without ever being allowed to play an actual instrument” (108).

I have to admit, this quotation got me a little hot before I read the following quotation several pages later…

“This is not a declaration that anything goes or that students do not need to be instructed on writing good sentences, but from their earliest attempts at writing we must allow students to see that ‘proper’ expression is dependent on audience and occasion, and this means they must make informed decisions” (110).

For me, the key to successful writing and grammar instruction is to find a happy medium. We don’t “confine” our young writers to worksheets and practice in isolation, but we also don’t deprive them of direct instruction and feedback about grammar concepts in a stress free (read grade free) environment. I also really appreciate the reminder that purpose, audience, and format always matter when it come to writing.

“Unfortunately, we make many sacrifices on the altar of correctness, a practice that is surely exacerbated by testing and accountability systems that promulgate the illusion that there are right and wrong answers in the realm of reading and writing” (109).

This quotation brings me back to conversations Lauren and I have had on numerous occasions about what type of writing is “worthy” of public consumption. Do we need to make sure our students’ writing is free of all grammar and spelling errors before posting it in the hall or posting it to a blog or sharing it with an authentic audience?

“There are reasons why we don’t keep score and everyone gets in the game when children first start playing a sport” (109).

I’ll choose this quotation as my final one because one of the enduring points for me from this book so far is the need to grade less and give more freedom and grace to our student writers.

P.S. - I didn’t feel the need to reinforce the message on pages 113-123. It seems like I would be “preaching to the choir.” Feel free to share your favorite quotations from that section!

Claire Reddig

Reflections on Part Two of John Warner's Why They Can't Write, Pages 35-123 (Post #2) - A Guest Post by Stephen Hebert

At The Oakridge School, the entire English department is reading John Warner's Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities. Six of us have volunteered to post reflections on the book as we read and discuss the text. Stephen Hebert, AP Lang & American Lit. Instructor, volunteered to post the second reflection, which I've provided below.

A Recent Lesson in Atmospheric Conditions

This past week, I witnessed a disappointing phenomenon in my classes.

After spending the first three quarters of the school year figuring out my new school, I decided to dedicate this final quarter to a series of pedagogical experiments. My first experiment was to find a new approach to the most difficult text we read all year: The Scarlet Letter. I turned the book into a role-playing game in which students had to complete a series of “quests” in order to escape 17th century Boston and make their way back to the present. For the first two weeks, students seemed quite excited. We had weekly goals for how much they needed to read, but otherwise, their progress in the game was left up to them. They could choose which quests to complete and which to ignore.

Something changed, however, this past week. In the Upper School, we have progress reports, and I had to somehow convert students’ performance in the game to a letter grade for these reports. I put students into groups and asked them to devise systems for turning game performance into a letter grade. After listening to a dozen different proposals spread out over five class periods, I took the most popular ideas, combined them, and then put them on the board. Very quickly, the energy that we’d built up in class over the previous two weeks died out.

Why?

When I asked students about it, the theme was quite clear: “Grades are the worst.” For me, this is just a variation of what John Warner suggests in the opening chapter of this section: “School sucks.”

In “The Problem of Atmosphere,” Warner begins with a social experiment that leads him to a startling claim: “Students are not coddled or entitled. They are defeated” (38).

I tend to agree.

The System and the Culture

As a teacher and a chaplain at three different independent schools, I have spent many hours over the last ten years counseling students who have been defeated by grades and test scores, who feel so beaten down that the opportunity for growth is no longer possible for them until they can get some distance from the system that made them feel that way.

What are the characteristics of that system?

As an Upper School teacher, I’d argue that the specter of college admissions plays a large role. More specifically, the misguided belief that all students need to go to college to be “successful” and that only certain colleges count. The highly competitive nature of college admissions, coupled with the belief that a blown test or quiz will end their chances at getting into University X, creates a culture of compliance rather than creativity, a culture that values grades over learning, a culture that sees school as a transactional, quid pro quo arrangement, rather than a journey of (self-)discovery.

Our students fear failure.

They look at a 100-point scale and they see 70 ways to fail (0–69) and less than half as many ways to succeed (70–100). Even worse, many of them believe that anything less than an A- is a failure. As we prepare them for college and life, where the economy is more and more based on gigs which require creativity and soft-skills, this narrative of "success" has put our students in a bind that doesn’t allow them to experiment, to make a mistake, to skin their knees. Thus, we make our contribution to the anxiety epidemic. If I believed that my future hinged on a particular quiz or test, then I’d probably be anxious too. 

Writing as Antidote?

What does this have to do with writing?

As Warner says to his students, “writing is an ‘extended exercise in failure’” (41). As teachers of writing, we have an opportunity to provide students with an alternative to the do-or-die culture that they find themselves mired in. Why? Because we can teach them how to fail. We have to.

In her response to Jared’s post, I deeply appreciated Lauren’s extended bicycle analogy in which she approached teaching writing in the third grade as a way of building skills by laying down fundamentals. You have to know the basic rules of bike riding in order to ride a bike: how do the pedals work? where are the brakes? what's up (or down) with gravity? 

Lauren Carfa's comment from the Oakridge English department's private blog

It reminds me of one of my son's first bike riding lessons. His grandmother bought him a balance bike for his fourth birthday. He loved that thing! He would zoom all over the driveway and sidewalks on it. One day, he decided, against my advice, to brave the very steep hill just beyond our driveway. I watched out of our kitchen window as his little blue helmet disappeared from view down the hill. I ran outside to see him speed downhill and steer intentionally into a hedge on the side of the road a few hundred feet away. I ran down after him, disentangled his little body from the bushes, cleaned him up, and wiped the tears from his cheeks. When I asked him why he steered into the bushes, he told me, “I didn’t know how to stop.” (Incidentally, this is how he stops on ice skates too...)

As it turns out, steering into the bushes is an effective way to stop your bike, but it may not be the best way. It’s reckless.

Likewise, in coaching golf and baseball, I’ve watched kids get hung up on the details. Recently, I was working with a nine-year-old pitcher. I was trying to get him to move his hips in a certain way so that he could really push off the rubber and toward home plate; hopefully, he’d generate a little more speed and accuracy. I took him through a drill to give him the right feel for what his body should be doing, but when he got up on the mound to try it out, he was so focused on what his lower body was doing that he literally forgot to release the ball. Instead of throwing it toward the catcher, he spiked it into the mound several times before I told him to just forget everything and throw a strike.

Sometimes, when we are faced with a glut of rules and regulations, we find ourselves stymied, unable to even complete the simplest tasks.

In writing, there must be some middle ground, some sweet spot where we can avoid being totally reckless while also avoiding stultification. We must be able to create an atmosphere in our classrooms that foster the kind of creativity that we long for in our students.

But how?

The key might be in taking seriously what Warner tells his students: “[E]very piece [of writing] is a custom job, created by a unique intelligence (the writer), in the service of the needs (purpose) of a specific audience” (72).

Questions to Consider

This leads us to a series of questions to reflect on and explore in our own practice and in our own institution:

• What are we doing to create an atmosphere that encourages students to take risks and learn from their failures?
• What systems in our classrooms, in our department, in our divisions, and in our school should we re-examine?
• How does our grading and assessment of writing reflect our values as educators?
• How are we creating writing assignments that help students to see each piece of writing as “a custom job”?

Or, perhaps you disagree with John Warner (and me). Maybe you’ve got an alternative way of understanding the atmosphere, the systems, and the fads that Warner calls out in this section. Maybe you’ve got a passionate argument for why the system isn’t broken. Spell it out below!

Stephen Hebert

Reflections on Part One of John Warner's Why They Can't Write, Pages 1-31 (Post #1)

At The Oakridge School, the entire English department is reading John Warner's Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities. Six of us have volunteered to post reflections on the book as we read and discuss the text. I volunteered to post the first reflection, which I've provided below. 

Last week, we read Shirley Jackson’s terrifying short story, “The Lottery,” and discussed its significance as a class. There was consensus among the group that the story was asking us to reflect critically on the idea of “tradition.” We analyzed its most important symbol – the black box from which the characters draw slips of paper for the gruesome ritual of the lottery. We learn from the story that the black box is older than anyone there and therefore possesses a kind of sacred quality for the residents. However, the narrator notes that “the black box grew shabbier each year” and “much of the ritual [that related to the box’s purpose] had been forgotten or discarded” (5). Later we discover that the box they’re using isn’t even the original one, and towards the ending of the tale, the narrator chillingly states, “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (9). My classes agreed that the black box symbolizes certain “traditions” – not tradition in a generic sense – but specific cultural practices whose origins are largely forgotten but the impact of the practice remains strong. The scary question posed by Shirley Jackson is one which asks us to think about traditions we still practice that not only lack purpose but may be harmful to certain individuals in our community. Every society has its black boxes, and John Warner wants us to interrogate the culture of writing instruction to expose the shabbier practices we still hold on to.

Black Box Traditions Are a Way to Control the Variables

For instance, take the five paragraph essay. Does anyone know where it came from? Why does it settle for five units instead of four? Why emphasize the limits of form as opposed to the infinite possibilities involved in a process? The 5 paragraph construct, according to Warner, can be traced back to Harvard’s entrance exams in the late 19^th century!! Last I checked, the skills demanded by 21^st century universities and employers are drastically different than what was needed in the 1800s. Warner writes, “The five-paragraph essay is an artificial construct, a way to contain and control variables and keep students from wandering too far off track. All they need are the ideas to fill in the blanks. It is very rare to see a five-paragraph essay in the wild; one finds them only in the captivity of the classroom” (29). The five-paragraph essay gives us a manageable set of variables as instructors and (perhaps more importantly) as graders. Warner makes clear, though, that often “we overestimate our own past proficiency at writing” – meaning it’s important we examine the costs of this traditional construct before casting the first stone when grading students’ ability to correctly adhere to the form.

Students Already Demonstrate the Skills to Write

In the section “Johnny Could Never Write,” Warner observes that “…[S]tudents freely and effectively communicate in other mediums, often using the skills we claim to desire and develop in academic writing. When students turn to school-related tasks, though, those skills seem to disappear” (16). Students already have the skills, meaning the real challenge for us as instructors is shifting attitudes and beliefs that students hold about their writing. However, certain “black boxes” of writing instruction are getting in the way of this. In the opening section, Warner employs the analogy of training wheels to diagnose what’s wrong with traditional approaches to writing instruction. Just as training wheels actually keep the learner from practicing the most important skill for riding a bike, in this case balance, the five-paragraph essay prevents students from developing the writer’s most important skill, which he identifies as choice (such as choice of audience, topic, tone, form, etc.). In other words, the 5 paragraph essay limits students’ opportunities to make the choices that matter as a writer. But I want to take Warner’s analogy further; it’s not just the training wheels when it comes to how we teach writing. If we taught bike riding the way we teach composition, students would read about the rules of bike riding; they would answer worksheets that test their comprehension of those rules. We might even watch videos of the greatest bike riders in history, and occasionally, we would ride bikes ourselves (but with training wheels, of course). And we wonder why students don’t like to write. One thing’s for sure: this approach is not helping us overcome the challenge of transforming students’ attitudes about the practice. We act like the risks of letting them crash or get off course are as physically dangerous as those related to actual bike riding when in reality our classrooms have the potential to be the safest places for students to crash, fail, and try again. As Warner states, “Prohibitions may prevent disaster, but they also may close off the possibility of great discovery”(31).

Human-focused Design Over Function-focused Design

The Council of Writing Program Administrators compiled a list of qualities they think to be most important for every developing writer: curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and meta-cognition (25). Warner’s claim is that black boxes like the five-paragraph essay or the tendency to isolate grammar instruction have the result of taking writing out of an authentic context thereby making it less motivating for students to engage creatively and persistently in the process itself. In fact emphasis on traditional modes of assessment “has left our practices largely divorced from the kinds of experiences that help students develop their writing practices” (28). My claim is that we need to focus a little less on outcomes (which tend to take writing out of its contexts) and start worrying more about the outset: Do students already believe in themselves as writers from day one? Is there an authentic context, purpose, and/or audience that beckons them to write? This means moving away from a function-focused approach (function prioritizes efficiency, manageability, conformity, etc.) to design our writing instruction using a more human-focused framework (which prioritizes choice, purpose, ownership, and creativity). Otherwise we risk casting stones at something we should be nurturing – namely, every student’s “deep need to represent their experience through writing” (Lucy Calkin The Art of Teaching Writing). To do that, we have to take the risk of riding without training wheels. 

Questions for reflection:

What are the black boxes of writing instruction (or instruction in general)?

What instructional practices do you want to change in your classroom and what prevents you from doing so?

What instructional practices have you changed in recent years? How are you doing it differently?

What classroom traditions do you want to change? Which ones do you think still hold value and why?

Some resources for extra reading:

Colley, Jared. “Why I’m Done with Paper Prompts: An Imagined Conversation with Jacques Ranciere and Lucy McCormick Calkins.” What Should We Do with Our Classrooms? 2 June 2018.

Council of Writing Program Administrators. “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing.” National Council for Teachers of English & National Writing Project, January 2011.

Hidden Brain Podcast. “The Carpenter Versus the Gardener: Two Models of Modern Parenting.” NPR, 28 May 2018.

Nazerian, Tina. “Is the Five-Paragraph Essay Dead?” EdSurge, 18 October 2017.

#Ranciere18 - Why I'm Done with Paper Prompts (kind of joking, but not really...): An Imagined Conversation with Jacques Ranciere and Lucy McCormick Calkins

A group of us are investigating and discussing Jacques Rancière's The Ignorant Schoolmaster (go here so see the Google Doc and go here to join the hypothes.is group), and this is the end of our first week. Starting Monday, we'll be reading Chapter One "An Intellectual Adventure." You can also find more activity at the hashtag, #Ranciere18. However, I'm also reading other materials for various projects, which brings me to Lucy McCormick Calkins's seminal study, The Art of Teaching Writing, a work I decided to return to this summer for two reasons: I'm beginning to revisit our writing curriculum at The Oakridge School, and I'm starting to prep ideas for a deep dive session on the topic that I'll be facilitating with Joel Backon at OESIS Boston this October. This is just one more reason my stack of summer reading has already become a sizable collection of titles, and here's what's on deck (Please! Any recommendations on the topic of teaching writing would be much appreciated, just leave a comment below!):

Last night, I reread the opening chapter of Calkins's The Art of Teaching Writing and immediately I had to close the book. The connections to Rancière were overwhelming. Perhaps I'm a hammer who can only see nails right now, but the parallels were undeniable. Each thinker was making a radical claim about how we should see students as equally capable from the outset, no matter their level of performance, and each writer was raising concerns about how schools can sometimes get in the way of seeing students for who they actually are. Consequently, we confront the problem of passive students who resist learning.

A quick overview of core principles for Rancière's project:

So why bring this up in a post whose title calls for the abolition of paper prompts? And how does it relate to Calkins's opening chapter in The Art of Teaching Writing?

Consider the following two quotes:

The ignorant schoolmaster exercises no relation of intelligence to intelligence. He or she is only an authority, only a will that sets the ignorant person down a path, that is to say to instigate a capacity already possessed, a capacity that every person has demonstrated by succeeding, without a teacher, at the most difficult of apprenticeships: The apprenticeship of that foreign language that is, for every child arriving in the world, called his or her mother tongue (J. Rancière's "On Ignorant Schoolmasters" from Jacques Rancière: Education, Truth, Emancipation).

Human beings have a deep need to represent their experience through writing... But in our schools, our students tell us they don't want to write (Lucy Calkins's The Art of Teaching Writing).

Step back for a second and observe these two fundamental truths about all humans: (1) we learned to do one of the most difficult, complex tasks without the aid of explicit, direct instruction: we learned to speak "the mother tongue" and (2) we have a deeply ingrained need to tell our stories, but schools have a way of making students forget that.

Why is there a disconnect?

Calkins makes the case that, while we're good at stimulating/motivating students to write on certain occasions, we have a much harder time "helping young people become deeply and personally involved in their writing," such that we cultivate the skills necessary for empowering lifelong writers who no longer resist the invitation to write for themselves as well as for others.

Unfortunately, much of what we do with students when it comes to writing in an academic context amounts to inauthentic writing occasions where "we set up roadblocks to stifle the natural and enduring reasons for writing, and then we complain that our students don't want to write" (Calkins 4). It becomes all the more dismal when teachers accept the students' resistance to such occasions as a natural reaction. Rancière would counter such a scenario proclaiming, "we [cannot] accept this passivity as the inevitable context of our teaching" (Calkins 4). All students, says Rancière, are equally intelligent; all students have something to say. Therefore, all students can (and want to) write.

So how do we prompt students to reawaken what we already know to be unmistakably in them, namely the desire to write?

One of the roadblocks that stifles student writing is our tendency to want "to make them into writers" - to assume they're not there yet, but a worse hindrance to our cause is a certain assumption we must unpack that often comes with the good, teacherly intention of providing students with "writing prompts." Consider what Lucy Calkins writes when reflecting on the idea of "motivating writing":

I was being patronizing. In Rancière's terms she had assumed the role of "explicator" which "stultified" any natural inclination on the part of the student to take responsibility for his/her equal capacity to say something and thereby be heard by an audience of equal intellects.

We as teachers know a lot, and can craft a plethora of paper prompts to verify it. However, "our children are no different. They, too, have rich lives. In our classrooms we can tap the human urge to write if we help students realize that their lives are worth writing about" (Calkins 6), which gets me to the title of my blog post. I need to write less paper prompts and start listening more closely to my students' uniquely rich experiences. I need to empower them to learn how to construct their own prompts, albeit ones that satisfy two demands of our vocation. First of all, students need to relate their learning to their personal experiences in ways that make it relevant for them, and secondly, they need to learn to write for informal and professional audiences that demand them to bring their experiences outside themselves and in contact with a world that's beyond their wildest imaginations. This is one way we can make a step in the right direction when it comes to getting students more deeply and personally involved in their writing, but we have to treat them as writers from the outset. It's not a goal: it's a human reality, a natural capacity akin to early language acquisition.

Someone once asked Lucy Calkins What is essential in teaching writing?, to which she responded, "For me, it is essential that children are deeply involved in writing, that they share their texts with others, and that they perceive themselves as authors" (9). I. couldn't. agree. more. We have to write a lot about things that matter to us, and we have to have authentic audiences (beyond the teacher and classroom peers), but for Rancière the third point may be the most essential: Students have to perceive themselves as authors.

When reading this, I was reminded of a passage from The Ignorant Schoolmaster where Rancière discusses the notion that all humans have the capacity to be painters (an obvious analogy to his claim about the equality of all intelligences). Provocatively, he asserts, "It's not a matter of making great painters; it's a matter of making the emancipated: people capable of saying, 'me too, I'm a painter,' a statement that contains nothing in the way of pride, only the reasonable feeling of power that belongs to any reasonable being. There is no pride in saying out loud: 'Me too, I'm a painter!' Pride consists in saying softly to others: 'You neither, you aren't a painter'" (66-67).

There is no pride in saying out loud: 'Me too, I'm a painter!' Pride consists in saying softly to others: 'You neither, you aren't a painter'

Me too, I'm a writer! That's what I want to hear from every student who enters my classroom. And never will I pridefully say to a student: "You know. Maybe writing is not your thing." What I will be saying more to students is write about something that matters to you. What story do you want to tell and why? But this means I need to write less paper prompts and think of ways to inspire students to frame their own questions.

Planning The Oakridge School's 2017 Inter-Institutional Colloquium on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - Entry 2, August 18, 2016

On January 30, 2017, The Oakridge School will be hosting a colloquium on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, giving high school students the chance to present papers, works of art,  films, and more on one of British literature's most thrilling and horrifying novels. 

After much discussion with teachers in the DFW community, the consensus was clear: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein should be the focus for the 2017 Metroplex Colloquium, to be hosted by The Oakridge School on January 30, 2017. I can't think of a better choice considering the fact that we're approaching the novel's bicentennial! Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein in 1816, and it was published for the first time in 1818. We look forward to welcoming students and faculty from various schools to join us in a celebratory conversation about one of literature's most influential novels.

We'll be reading the significantly revised version of the novel that was published many years later in 1831. At Oakridge, we're using the Penguin Classics Deluxe Ed., which looks like this:

• ISBN-10: 0143105035 | ISBN-13: 978-0143105039

After deciding upon a specific text, I invited faculty members from different schools in the surrounding area to join me on a google doc to plan and write collaboratively a call for papers for the 2017 Frankenstein Colloquium. I want to thank the following people for contributing to that endeavor: Jennifer Bonner at The Oakridge School, Joel Garza at Greenhill School, Christopher Schmidt at Parish Episcopal School, Chris Renshaw at The Oakridge School, and Jenny Fast at Founders Classical Academy.

As a result of everyone's creative input and suggestions, this year's colloquium will offer some excellent options for paper prompts as well as opportunities for 2D Art, Film, and MakerSpace submissions. The theme for January's colloquium is "Frankenstein 200 Years Later" and the prompts invite students to write about topics that range from literary and historical concerns to ones of a more scientific and philosophical nature. All the prompts are relevant to our experiences 200 years later in the 21st century, so go here to read more about the 2017 Frankenstein Colloquium's Call for Student Papers.

This year, we're excited to expand the invitation for student work by offering 2 new additions for the upcoming colloquium: (1) a Call for Student 2D Art & Film and (2) a Call for Student MakerSpace Designs & Products. To find out more about opportunities to showcase art or film inspired by Shelley's novel go here. And go here to learn more about the call for student MakerSpace creations (that are inspired by one of literature's greatest and most terrifying creations, namely Frankenstein's "monster").

The submission form for all student work can be found here, and all submissions must be turned in by Nov. 22, 2016.

So What Happens Next As We Wait For The Arrival of January 30, 2017?

Once the Call for Student Work was completed, I put together a blogspot as well as an official twitter account for the colloquium:

Blog: frankenstein200.blogspot.com | Twitter: @MaryShelley200

#Frankenstein200

The idea behind the blog is to provide a space where students and faculty from various campuses can come together to collaborate, share ideas, and respond to each other's work online while reading and studying Shelley's text this fall well before we meet in January 2017. In previous years, Joel Garza of Greenhill School and Deborah Moreland formerly of Hockaday School have joined me and my classes on other blogs (go here and here) to study collaboratively the texts we've chosen for previous colloquia. I think Joel and Deborah would agree that the collaborations on the blogs added so much to the overall experiences, so I encourage readers (both remote and local) to think about joining us this year online. It's worth the risk and adventure; just go here to see what I mean.

At Oakridge, we'll be reading the novel during the month of September, so most of our activity on the blog will happen then. However, other schools will be reading the text later, so activity will continue on the blog as we move into the fall and winter seasons. We'd love for you to get on the site this semester to join our conversations or to just leave a comment.

A Call for Faculty Readers and Evaluators to Help Select Submissions for the 2017 Frankenstein Colloquium

Again, submissions are due Nov. 22, 2016, meaning I need to start putting together the committee of readers and evaluators who will determine which submissions should be accepted to be showcased at the colloquium on Monday, January 30, 2017. I plan to enlist readers and evaluators from various campuses, which we've done in the previous years as well. The other task at hand is to determine what other kind of special programming do we want to include for the colloquium in January: Keynote speaker? Special panel sessions? Creative writing workshops? Theatre workshop with 1 of the many play renditions? There's so many ideas to consider, which makes the task of putting the schedule together an exciting and rewarding challenge. Please stay in tune to learn more about plans for the schedule and program! 

If you have ideas for programs or special workshops, OR if you want to be a reader or an evaluator of submissions, OR if you want to join our collaboration on the blog in a deeper way, please contact Jared Colley, English Chair, The Oakridge School, at jcolley@theoakridgeschool.org or @jcolley8.

2017 Frankenstein Colloquium's calls for student work:
1. A Call for Papers
2. A Call for 2D Art & Film
3. A Call for MakerSpace Designs & Products
4. Submisstion Form for all student work (Due Nov. 22, 2016)

Contact Info.:
Jared Colley
Chair, English Department
The Oakridge School
jcolley@theoakridgeschool.org
@jcolley8
frankenstein200.blogspot.com

Resources from Lausanne Learning Institute - July 10-12, 2016 - Memphis, TN

Lausanne Learning Institute, July 10-12, 2016, #LLI16

Last week I had the opportunity to attend one of my favorite summer conferences: the Lausanne Learning Institute in Memphis.  If you've never had the chance to go, I highly recommend LLI for the educator interested in current conversations about educational technology and student-centered learning. There's no better place to have such discussions than in a city like Memphis with its fascinating history, rich musical culture, and savory southern cuisine. For 3 years now, I've had a blast attending Lausanne, and it's exciting to hear that they'll be growing their brand as well as their reach as a professional development institute as soon as next year.

Beale Street, Saturday evening

The Oakridge School is the 2016 Spotlight School

Attending this year included the added privilege of representing the 2016 Spotlight School of the Year. The Oakridge School was recognized as "the most innovative independent school, from technology integration to student-centered curriculum" by the Lausanne Learning Institute based on its extensive review of schools across the nation. I was proud to be a part of such an impressive team of collaborative, student-centered educators: all in all, we hosted around 20 sessions at the conference on topics ranging from maker spaces to authentic learning to writing across the curricula. Below you can watch the acceptance video that was shown at the opening banquet when Jon Kellam, Headmaster of The Oakridge School, accepted the award on behalf of the school. (The video was made by Oakridge upper school students...)

Resources for the 4 Sessions I Hosted:

Over two busy days, I hosted four sessions, two with Claire Reddig, Writing Specialist at The Oakridge School, and two on my own. Day one, I facilitated a conversation titled, "Rhizomatic Learning & Disrupting School Silos." Most of what was explored in this session stems from my interactions with the #Rhizo16 community as well as my work with Joel Garza and Seth Burgess (including our "Ignite" Keynote from OESIS LA 2016). Go here to read more about my thoughts on how "Rhizomatic" thinking could provoke a radical shift in mindsets in terms of how we rethink school organization. Below, I've provided an embedded version of the Google slides (contact me if there's any questions):

Unfortunately, my first session on "Rhizomatic Learning" was not very well attended, but those of us in the room, perhaps due to the smaller size, had a great conversation. One of my administrators joked that I've got to quit putting obscure words in my session titles if I want more people to attend. That's fair advice, but esoteric word choices didn't stop people from attending my second workshop: "Pwning the Humanities: Gamification in the Classroom" (for a definition of "pwning" go here...).  One of the best parts of the session was the fact that students attended, and they weren't afraid to join the conversation and give feedback.

The students in the room are digging gamification with @jcolley8 and ready to ask for it at their high school. #LLI16 #oakridgeowls

— Sarah Kramer (@builtamom) July 11, 2016

Although I don't have a "slide show" for the session on gamification, go here to find resources, related content, and links based on what was discussed, and again, contact me if there's questions.

"Pwning the Humanities..." | Mon., July 11th, 2016

Day two, Claire Reddig and I hosted two sessions related to writing. Our first workshop was titled "Connecting Writing with Authentic Audiences," where we facilitated a conversation on what it means to connect student writing to an authentic audience as well as what strategies we could employ to make it happen in our classrooms tomorrow. I've embedded the slide show for this session as well; feel free to take a look:

After lunch, we hosted another workshop on a similar topic, called "Writing Across the Curricula at The Oakridge School," and we were blown away by the turnout for the final session. It was standing room only, which made clear to me that this is a timelessly valuable topic: how do we integrate one of the most important, transdisciplinary skills across the departments in way that is intentional, clear, and collaborative? Much of what we shared was based on the hard work done by the Oakridge English department (and beyond) in recent years to improve the execution of writing instruction across the campus, K through 12. Below, I've supplied the slides to this one as well, and I urge anyone to take a look and give feedback:

For more resources related to the sessions I hosted at #LLI16, go to my google site, which can be found here. There's many more links and useful content to be found there.

On February 23-24, 2017, The Oakridge School is hosting the first LLI Southwest Conference!

Jon Kellam accepting Spotlight Award

Another exciting development related to last week's conference was the announcement that The Oakridge School, LLI's 2016 Spotlight School, will be hosting the first southwest regional gathering for LLI in February 2017. One of the main themes we keep returning to as we begin to plan February's conference is the idea of "Making Good Teaching Visible." With this in mind, we plan to schedule two kinds of session formats: (1) the traditional 1hr. block workshop for presentation & conversation and (2) what we're calling "fishbowl" sessions, such that the first 45mins will include a lesson with students in the room, followed by a 45min presenter-led debrief without the students in the room. We're excited about the 2nd format because it allows teachers to see each other's craft in action: it makes good teaching visible for everyone to see! We hope to have educators submit proposals for both kinds of formats, and we hope attendees and presenters come from all over the nation. Make sure you go here to submit a proposal for next February, and hopefully we'll see you in Arlington!

Jared Colley

@jcolley8

Submit proposals here for the 2017 LLI Southwest Conference at The Oakridge School!

Planning The Oakridge School's 2017 Inter-Institutional Colloquium on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - Entry 1, April 9, 2016

The Oakridge School is excited to announce that we will be hosting the 2017 Colloquium on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, first published in 1818 nearly 200 years ago!

This is going to be the first entry in a series of posts about the steps we'll be taking as a community to plan the 5th inter-institutional paper colloquium for high school students in the surrounding metroplex area of North Texas. Since one of my goals this year is to expand the reach of this collaboration both geographically and digitally, I almost hesitate to specify our regional location, but the schools of Dallas, Arlington, Fort Worth, and the surrounding area are the reason this practice is now in its 5th iteration. It's a privilege to be a part of a community where there's so much trust and collegiality.

What do we mean by a student-centered, inter-institutional colloquium?

Before the 2012-2013 school year, I began having conversations with Joel Garza of Greenhill School and Deborah Moreland formerly of The Hockaday School about the idea of hosting a colloquium at the The Oakridge School's campus where students from multiple schools would read the same text, submit papers by a certain deadline, and attend a paper conference with workshops for students to present their ideas and have conversations together (much like we do at the collegiate and professional level). We all recognized the many benefits of pursuing such a project: (1) students could practice public speaking; (2) there would be an authentic audience for students' writing, making the learning experience more meaningful and relevant to them; (3) we would be modeling what higher level scholarship looks like; (4) this would break schools out of their silos (such as campuses, departments, and classrooms) and facilitate purposeful collaboration.

After sharing and stretching ideas with Joel Garza and Deborah Moreland (as well as other teachers from various schools), a call for papers came together which focused on the collection of short stories, Dubliners, by James Joyce. Here's a trailer of the culminating event:

Of course, so much went on (in terms of work and collaboration) prior to the filming of this video that made the event you just witnessed as successful as it was. We set up a blog, for instance, to instigate collaboration and interaction between campuses months before the gathering ever took place. Go here to get a much more detailed version of the story (especially if you want to learn more about how we used tech tools to collaborate across campuses a-synchronistically in anticipation of the future colloquium...)

For the 2013-2014 school year, The Oakridge School hosted another event, this time to investigate William Shakespeare's play, Richard III.  Once the call for papers was distributed, several schools, including Hockaday and Greenhill, returned to participate again, and we added new elements to the program by inviting Drama/Theatre departments to participate as well as historical and archeological inquiry in honor of the recent successful dig to rediscover the Yorkist ruler's remains.

Since then, the tradition has continued to grow. Last year, Gary Nied of Cistercian Preparatory School organized a colloquium on Flannery O'Connor's short stories hosted by his campus in the fall of 2014, and most recently Joel Garza of Greenhill School hosted a "Midwinter" colloquium on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, an event that just took place last February bringing together theatre, dance, literary discourse, and many other interdisciplinary activities. The tradition continues to evolve as more campuses are getting involved and more disciplines are being brought into the fold. Again, my hope is to welcome even more students and faculty from other areas who can join the fun this year (or in the future), even if that means being a remote participant using digital platforms and tools.

What have we done so far for next year's gathering?

Last February, I decided it was time to start reaching out to faculty, campuses, and various departments about planning the next student-centered paper colloquium for the spring semester of 2017. The first question, of course, was what text, theme, or topic did we want to focus on? Considering how the conferences had grown, what other elements would we want to include (in the past there's been acting workshops, archeological presentations, slam poetry sessions, creative writing workshops, and so on...)? What other departments did we want to invite (considering that most of us involved are English teachers or department heads)? Also, how could we get more schools and students to participate? Instead of answering such queries in isolation, I set up a google doc, data-mined emails, and blasted a message to the surrounding community with a link to the document which was created to facilitate a collaborative approach to planning. (Please go here to see the doc; it shows how amazing a conversation can be when everyone adopts a collegial spirit of wanting to work together to do something bigger than what can be done by one person, school, or classroom...)

Once the google doc had lived for about a month, I consolidated everyone's comments into 4 options for the topic of next year's colloquium:

1. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (200 year anniversary is 2018; nice intersection of issues such as tech, otherness, gender)
2. a selection of science fiction texts (a handful of short stories and/or novellas)
3. a selection of texts about totalitarianism & politics (perhaps 1984, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, Handmaid's Tale)
4. Chicago Then, Chicago Now (an examination of Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun & Wright's Native Son)

I set up a google form (which can be found here), and around 25 respondents from 12 different campuses voted on what they thought would be the best selection. Here's the breakdown of the results:

I'm excited to announce that next year's colloquium will be revisiting Mary Shelley's Frankenstein nearly 200 years after its first date of publication, and the outcome of the survey was based on the insights and opinions of faculty and administrators from the following schools: All Saints' Episcopal School of Fort Worth, Cistercian Preparatory School, Dallas International School, The Episcopal School of Dallas, Fort Worth Country Day School, Greenhill School, The Oakridge School, Parish Episcopal School, St. Mark's School, Southwest Christian School, Trinity Valley School, and Ursuline Academy of Dallas. How many out there already read this canonical classic in your curricula? Why not join our collaborative conversation??

What do we plan to do next?

1. The next thing we plan to do is establish a date for the colloquium (most likely late January or early to mid February 2017) as well as a due date for student submissions to present papers.
2. We also need to craft a call for papers, and judging from the 2nd pie graph above, there are many participants who are eager to contribute ideas for prompts. Most importantly, I want to make the call for papers as inclusive as possible in terms of disciplines and student interests.
3. We need to reach out to more schools to expand the community of collaborators. (Let us know if you're interested! Geography is not an obstacle considering our access to technological tools.)
4. Speaking of technology, I want this collaborative, communal investigation to begin sooner than later, so we plan to set up a blog or wiki site such that students and faculty from various campuses and classrooms can begin to collaborate, share ideas, and post demonstrations of learning in various mediums well before we meet for the colloquium.

I will continue to post entries as we journey through this adventure together. If there's interest to join our investigation (even if it means only collaborating digitally on the forthcoming webpage or having a student skype in his or her presentation at the event), please contact me so we can connect. I'm already looking forward the 2017 spring semester!

Jared Colley
jcolley@theoakridgeschool.org
@jcolley8  

More on Authentic Audiences for 21st Century Students: Why We Read, Write, and Think for Each Other

Joel points out in his post the fact that independent school teachers often have a lot of pedagogical & curricular autonomy, which is mostly a good thing… mostly. 21^st century technologies, however, have brought changes to almost all areas of our cultural landscape – changes which make clear that teachers with autonomy need to revisit questions about the benefits of collaboration and connectedness (if not for their sake then for the sake of today’s students). One reason: we’re not the only experts to whom students have access whether at school or outside of the traditional classroom. Technology has made this evident and undeniable. More importantly, in my opinion, connectedness and collaboration make it possible now for teachers to provide authentic audiences for their students’ voices in ways unthinkable in the recent past, and one thing that can bestow purpose and meaning on a student’s learning experience is the presence of a real audience.

More than ever, it’s possible to have students read, write, and think for each other (as opposed to doing such things for their singular teacher) – making the activity more real, more connected, and perhaps more fun. In recent years, I’ve been employing various digital, web 2.0 technologies to get my students to connect and collaborate with students in classrooms from other campuses. (Go here to see how my students at The OakridgeSchool connected with classes at two other campuses, Greenhill School & TheHockaday School, to read together James Joyce’s collection Dubliners. Of course, we did it again last year, this time studying William Shakespeare’s history play, Richard III.)

One of my favorite methods we experimented with was getting students from one class to frame questions for their peers in other classes from different campuses. We did this through various means:
-my students at Oakridge collaboratively posted blog articles (here) that always concluded in a series of questions for Greenhill and Hockaday students.  Greenhill and Hockaday would respond employing various modalities of expression such as text, video, or mp3. (More examples: Greenhill which leads to Oakridge's response;  Hockaday which leads to Oakridge's response; Greenhill which leads to Oakridge's response and then to Hockaday's final word)
-we also had the advantage of augmenting our digital collaboration with visits in person to each other’s campuses – something that’s only possible with the benefit of geographical proximity. Using the responses of the Greenhill students (which were born out of the blog), Mr. Garza (teacher from Greenhill) visited The Hockaday School, bringing his students' questions to their Hockaday peers.
-Hockaday blogged about their perspective of the visit, providing insight and more questions for both Greenhill and Oakridge classes as we struggled with what were very difficult literary works.
-Greenhill students made use of Audacity to record an mp3/podcast both for Oakridge and Hockaday students. Their recording was guided, of course, by the evolution of questions being posed by classes from the other campuses.
-Using GarageBand, Oakridge then responded in kind by putting together their podcast response; here's some highlights:



Oakridge student citing Hockaday student's blog post

At this point, students were citing each other by name, complimenting each other’s readings with expressions of appreciation. They were reading and thinking for each other, serving as meaningful audiences in a community of collaborators. I can’t emphasize it enough: namely, the joy they felt once this exchange became real – once the students received a validating response from an unknown peer who heard them and who cared. As a teacher who is a community of one, I can’t recreate that kind of meaningful learning experience on my own, but by collaborating and connecting with other campuses, such an experience can be designed and realized with ease and joy.



Greenhill student addresses Hockaday teacher's point

What happened next, however, was even more amazing: simply put, we started writing for each other. For me, this first occurred when my students sat for their 9 week midterm. Instead of a comprehensive exam, Oakridge students wrote essays for their Hockaday and Greenhill audience and posted highlights on the blog. (See Hockaday’s response here) Never had I seen developing writers operating so keenly in terms of connecting word, audience, and purpose in their writing. These students weren’t grudgingly writing for me, the teacher; they were eagerly sounding out their voices to peer groups across the digital channels of the internet. Eventually this evolved into composing more formal papers to conclude the project, but in many ways, their compositions were not traditional at all. Students wrote to each other (to each other’s teachers). Many of my writers chose to cite blog, mp3, and video pieces posted by students from other campuses. It was a real learning community full of curious writers and readers, open-minded speakers and listeners, and there was so much joy! By formally engaging nontraditional, digital resources, students were learning the connections between digital literacy, research, and composition as well (while validating each other’s voice in the process!).

So why should we integrate technology to craft authentic audiences for our students? When a student writes for their teacher and that instructor is the only one who will see that composition, why should she make it great? But if she’s writing for a communal audience of peers and teachers alike, not only will she feel the push to make it better, she will act on the desire to make it great because there’s an authentic audience! Bottom line, it makes their learning meaningful, relevant, and worthwhile, and one might just catch them enjoying the process as well.

-Jared Colley