One of the core principles of the National Writing Project (NWP) states that teachers are the best teachers for other teachers, so in writing project sites across the nation, current and former teachers like me are employed to share their expertise. I spent 25 years as a teacher in grades 5-8, and I happily share my experience in narrative and informational writing. My students wrote well in these areas, with many awards and publications to prove it.
But when it comes to argument writing, I am dancing as fast as I can to stay one step ahead of the teachers I mentor. I am part of a grant program that aims to improve the quality of college and career writing; I work with teachers in two schools in southern Missouri.
My own students did some obligatory persuasive writing, but their writing was shaped by my experience with it: Start with a claim and find evidence to back it in order to change someone's mind. Our service work did yield some writing that I now recognize as argument writing. We started with a question and gathered evidence before making a claim. Student writing was fueled by passion but lacked organization and citation of sources.
Now the narrative and informational texts on my shelves are giving way to texts on argument writing, and my learning curve is steep. I spend my days studying how to teach students to thoughtfully consider both sides of an issue. However, I do not have my own classroom to hone my lessons, to practice them in the relative privacy of a closed door classroom. I practice them in other people's classrooms with other people's students, and they watch me stumble.
For two days now, I have been ruminating on how I have failed one of the teachers I work with. She is a first year teacher and missed all the professional development we offered in the first year of the grant. This was my first collaboration with her. She is kind and generous and says she is pleased with the thinking evident in their papers, but I am disappointed with my work.
I developed a mini-unit based on her desire to examine a question central to the book her class is reading, The Giver. "Are group rights or individual rights more important in shaping government policies?" I tried to be faithful to the format and strategies of a mini-unit provided us by the national leadership team, but I was in a hurry to prepare a lesson on argument in order that it could be observed by a researcher tracking the progress of the grant. I was also in a window of time before we were given the clear directive that the mini-units should be delivered exactly as given to us.
We began with Spock's words in his death scene on the Starship Enterprise: "The needs of many outweigh the needs of a few." The students, when called to respond in writing to Spock's words with a reaction of their own, quite naturally began "According to Spock,". (I am horrified to add that I did it, too, even though I know that a work of fiction can't appear as an authoritative source for an argument and even though I cautioned the classroom teacher about it.) This misstep could have been fixed with partner talk to illuminate their responses to his words instead of a response in writing.
The order of the texts can also be easily switched with an article written by two ethicists on the common good following the video clip and next replacing a generalized article about individual rights being trampled with a specific current event text about individual rights (e.g., response to Ebola, assisted suicide, gun rights). Easy fixes and we have a strong mini-unit for use next year. Easy fixes, but I'm still feeling bad.
So now I get it - put a damper on the creativity in order to maintain the integrity of the grant work, but I had to make mistakes along the way to fully understand it. The stakes are high. We have but two years to develop writing instruction that will make a difference in college and career ready writing. (And I thought I had escaped high stakes pressure - the talk of tying teacher evaluation to test scores - by retiring!) Creativity and innovation serve me and my students well in my own classroom, but in my new role as teacher mentor, I must listen and collaborate and support - step back sometimes instead of charging forward.
My first thought is to bristle at the confinement, but once again writing has served its purpose and given me a focus (and a claim!). I have reached the end of this piece with a way of moving forward and a way of retracting my tongue-in-cheek offer to resign. We are engaged in stressful, ground-breaking, important work, and we must address our needs as facilitators. Our writing project had the foresight to hire an expert in adult learning and professional development, and we can lean on her when we waver. Door prizes and laughter, stress busters and tall drinks for us! Our next planning meeting needs a director of fun and a continuing commitment to care for ourselves, too.
What are you doing to take care of yourself?
