Monthly Archives: September 2009

Action Research

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I am just beginning an action research project under the guidance of Dr. Barrie Bennett who is working with our board for one more year.

Last year, in my role as a learning coordinator, I helped facilitate a similar project for a larger group of elementary teachers, and I remember wishing that I had a classroom so I could do my own project. Well now I’m lucky enough to be asked to participate in this project as a classroom teacher. If feel particularly lucky because it’s as though I’m doing a mini Masters with Dr. Bennett for free!

I had hundreds (okay 5) of ideas floating around in my head for this project but decided to settle on this question: How does having an authentic audience for student writing impact student motivation and writing quality?

Due to tight timelines I wanted to pick a topic that I could already integrate into what I was working on, namely the student “This I Believe” oral essays. So I created a writing attitude survey and tried to gauge where students were in terms of their attitudes about writing and whether or not they thought it was important to have a real audience for their writing. Most students agreed that having a real audience would probably improve the quality of their writing, but a number of them said that they would not be willing to post their “This I Believe” oral essays to our blog.

So I’m wondering about a couple things. First of all, is it the content that makes them uncomfortable about sharing? Based on the rough drafts I’ve read so far, there are some students who don’t yet seem to understand the connections between audience, purpose, and content, even though they’ve analysed a number of model essays. Some students think that the only type of writing worth doing is that stream of consciousness ranting about how unfair the world is. Also, even though I have stressed that this is meant to be personal but not private, some students are still confused about that line.

I also wonder if some students are confused about what we are talking about posting. I am using this project to assess their oral communication skills, so they are recording their essays and posting the MP3. I think some students are concerned that their spelling and grammar is going to be criticized by others (even though I’ve told them that we will work on those skills a little later).

For now, I think I will go ahead with this project and invite those who said they were willing to post to do so and then interview them to see what their responses are to the process. I would like to invite teachers and students from other schools and perhaps other countries to comment on their essays (moderated comments of course). If the response is positive, then hopefully that will encourage other students to post their work next time. I wonder if a more informal type of writing would garner more student participation. After all, the ones who are most anxious about their writing abilities tend to also be the ones who need the most help.

Digital Natives?

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“Digital natives” “the Net Generation”… these are terms I hear a lot. I’m on Twitter and Facebook. I blog. I text. I create content and upload it on a regular basis. I’m not online constantly, but I do feel a need to stay connected, and I get excited about the possibilities for sharing and collaborating that exist because of web 2.0. I keep reading that this is what my students do too. It’s what they want from teachers. So when I was planning for this year, I thought about how I could make my teaching more representative of the world they experience outside the classroom. I thought about authentic writing tasks. I thought about anywhere anytime learning and created blogs and edmodo classes. I even started to think about how to use cell phones in the classroom. My new principal was so excited by this that she scheduled 2 of my senior academic English classes in a computer lab! I was so psyched! I even made a funky intro movie for my classes.

And then, at the end of my first class on the first day, it happened. A polite and friendly student said to me, “Um, it’s kinda weird being in a computer lab for English.”

My heart started to race a bit as it does when I get anxious.

“Weird good? Or weird bad?” I asked hopefully.

She smiled, not wishing to offend. “Kind of weird bad. Like, it’s English class. I don’t really think there’s a need for technology.”

My heart sunk. Literally. I found it in my left shoe at lunch.

Now I know, I know. It was just one student. I know some of them were as psyched as I was. But I got the impression from a number of them that this idea of a 21st century English class was just as threatening for them as it must be for some teachers. I really didn’t expect that.

It made me wonder. Where is this coming from? My current theory is that most students probably are digital natives. I’m not sure they’re as savvy as we’d like them to be, but most of them are comfortable using technology (that’s what they told me on the survey anyway). But I think that some of them have gotten the message from parents and teachers that technology is bad. It’s a distraction. It’s a toy. It’s something you ban. It doesn’t have a place in a serious academic classroom (maybe?). And these students are the “good” students–academic, disciplined, polite, respectful. They really listen to the messages they get from adults. And they’ve gotten the message that this is bad.

I’ve had to change my mindset about technology in the English classroom. Instead of it being the expectation, it is an option. It is another way for me to differentiate my instruction. They don’t have to post comments on the blog (but I wish they would). They don’t have to submit assignments on edmodo (but it’s usually more convenient that way). I’ve told them I never want to get an angry phone call from a parent saying, “You told my son he HAD to submit his assignments online.” It’s an option.

It’s so strange for me because, yes I’m interested in technology, but I’m doing this because I thought it would be good for the students. I thought they would prefer to learn this way. I thought I was making life easier for them–not harder.

Sigh. It’s still early. And I think some of them are coming around. The girl who spoke to me on the first day made a wordle and shared it with her classmates via edmodo. That’s kind of weird good.

B2S Hopes

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For those of you not in the know, B2S is my code word for Back to School. When I was a little girl my dad (an elementary principal) would outlaw the phrase “back to school” during the summer–not because he disliked his job, just because he appreciated his holidays. Now that I’m a teacher and so is my husband, I completely understand the sentiment. I believe it was my friend Andrew (also a teacher) who cursed me for mentioning my back to school anxiety dreams in July, but he used the term “b2s” and now that’s what I call it.

So on the eve of b2s with far too much work to do to write a lengthy post, I thought I should take some time to think about my hopes and plans for this year–keeping in mind my priorities that I made back in June.

1. I hope that I continue to implement and model what I view to be effective assessment and evaluation strategies.

2. I hope to be patient and open-minded. I have a tendency to get so passionate about my beliefs that I don’t really listen.

3. I hope to listen more and talk less.

4. I really really hope that the gamble admin took by timetabling me in a computer lab pays off in that I get my students to do some really exciting stuff.

5. I hope that if my kids do exciting stuff, that other teachers recognize it and don’t think it’s weird that an English teacher is in a computer lab.

6. I hope they will let me keep some books in the computer lab.

7. I hope that my kids like me (I don’t care what people say. It matters. They don’t have to like me for me to do a good job teaching them, but it sure makes the job nicer).

8. I hope that I do right by my students.

9. I hope that I don’t lose sight of what’s important and feel dragged down by the Debbie Downers of the teaching world.

10. I hope that I make a difference.

11. I hope I’m not too cheesy.

Good luck to all you teachers, administrators, and students who have either just started or are about to start a new school year. Remember, as Sir Ken Robinson says: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”