I read another work by Andratesha Fritzgerald, called “Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning” in which she Quotes Delpit saying, “The teacher cannot be the only expert in the classroom. To deny students their own expert knowledge is to disempower them.” After reading Artifact 1, I think it is important, as a writing teacher, to encourage students to explore their own curiosities, come to conclusions about things they wonder, and use their voice to allow them to make decisions about their learning. I want to allow students to have a say in what they learn so that they feel empowered. I want them to feel like what they learned was worthwhile.  

 

As an educator, I know that it is important that students know what the standards are, so they know what their learning goals are for the year. While rubrics, set a clear description of what we, as educators, expect to see in our students work, having the same standards over the course of two to three years can be demotivating for my students. Teaching writing means getting a good sense of what my students are interested in, giving them a voice and a say in what they learn about. So although the standards are the same over a course of two to three years, I would somehow try to make it so that their education isn’t solely based on the standards, and that I make the writing experience worthwhile. 

What does this make you think about as a writer?

When I think of good writers, I tend to think about a person who can write sentences with no errors and have organizational skills in their writings.  Delpit's article tells a story about a doctoral student needing to take a writing class and thinking the teacher was not teaching the class.  The student mentions how the teacher had the students edit each other's papers, and that was the class.  Eventually, the student learns about how the other section is learning writing.  The other class is learning how to express themselves through their writing.  Students from that class are pleased with their professors and feel that they are progressing as writers. 

  I did not get a chance to be creative with my writing in school.  A teacher reprimanded students for not having proper grammar and mechanics.  After reading this article, I am curious if I would be more confident if I experienced a different approach to writing.  

What does this make you think about when teaching writing?

The culture of power is a strong statement made throughout this article.  As urban educators, we tend to forget about the “culture of power.”  The expectation is students will have basic skills when they begin school.  Schools do not consider that these students come from all different backgrounds.  We should be modifying our curriculums for our classrooms.  Urban schools like to preach diversity on professional development days, but once we have these students in our room, we forget about our training due to administration pressure.  As I was reading, it was a powerful reminder of how the curriculum should not dictate how we teach our students.  I have worked at schools that fear to steer away from a curriculum book.  When we do that, we are doing more harm to our students.  As teachers, we want to do best for students, which means we need to take a different direction than what the curriculum book says.  

I do not want students to have the same experience when learning how to write.  I did not have an opportunity to express myself without being graded harshly.  I must allow my students the opportunity to write without the pressure of grammar and mechanics. 

What did this make me think about being a writer?

The standards from grade sixth to twelfth are the same.  The three types of writings students must accomplish are narrative, informational and argumentive writing.  Every year a student is writing the same three writing styles.  

As a writer, there are more than three styles of writing.  I am becoming more aware that being a writer is more than writing an essay.  I was conditioned to think this way and need to have a more open mindset on how I feel about writing.  Once I finished looking at the standards, I felt a sadness in me.  I became upset that these standards are what I knew as writing throughout my schooling.  

What does this make me think about teaching writing?

As I read through the standards, I noticed how the learning standards are the same for grades sixth through twelfth.  There are slight differences between the learning standards, but they are generally the same.  A teacher's job is to teach to the standards.  We are teaching the same standard at six different grade levels.  What should teachers be doing differently from grades sixth to twelfth to strengthen students writing if we are always teaching to the same standard?

What did this make me think about being a writer?

The article mentions how mechanics and freewriting are essential when teaching writing.  A few times in my kindergarten through twelfth-grade writing experience, I was allowed to free write.  There were a few times that teachers did not stress mechanics.  This experience with writing destroyed the way I felt about writing.  My lack of confidence in writing resulted in me now enjoying writing.  If I was not going to enjoy my writing, then the amount of effort I was going to put into my writing was lacking.  I am curious about if I were allowed to free-write.  Would I want to write more?  Would I have different feelings towards writing?

What does this make me think about teaching writing?

The title of this article, "Why Kids Can't Write,"  was relatable to the number one thing I hear other teachers complain about, which is kids not knowing how to write.  Every year the closer we get to New York State Testing, the principal stands up and announces how we need to practice writing for the test since it is not our students' strong suit.  Looks are shared around the room because we all know it, but there is never a change year after year.  This article is my answer to why nothing changes because teachers are not taught to teach writing.  

In my first year teaching fifth grade, I had a wonderful mentor who asked me where I wanted my focus.  My answer was writing because I did not know where to begin.  I took math, reading, and science classes but never had a course that trained me to teach writing.  It was an odd epiphany I had that school year, and it has always baffled me that we, as educators, are not trained to teach writing.  We need to provide professional development opportunities for writing.  The more training we receive, the better our students will get with their writing skills. 

What did this make me think about being a writer?

 

I found it interesting that the article mentions how teachers do not write themselves.  I never thought that teachers who are not writing in their free time as an issue.  However, it makes sense that we should be writers if we are the ones who teach writing.  I fear writing because I never know how to get started or fear errors.  I need to start asking myself questions before I write.  The article suggests asking yourself before you write a few simple questions.  Am I getting to my point?  Is my writing clear?  Is my writing organized?  Am I using good language?  Asking myself these questions continuously as I write may help me feel more confident. 

What does this make me think about teaching writing?

In the article, the author asked which writer was better, Hemingway or Steinbeck?  The question can spark a debate, both writers were terrific, and it depends on the readers' perspective of which writer is better.  Greene then continued saying why our students should not be different from these famous writers.  I agreed with the statement he made.  A student never exceeds a standard of writing.  Writing is a skill that anyone can continuously improve.  

Green made me think about how I would typically grade writing in a middle school classroom.  When I taught writing briefly, I was that teacher who had the checklist.  I highlighted the rubric section that that student met, then circled a grade.  After reading the article, I quickly realize the lack of training we receive as educators in writing.  Instead of being the checklist teacher, I need to be asking about the students writing.  I feel this would be a more beneficial system for grading.  It provides the students with proper feedback.  Questions such as, did the writer do what it set out to do, offers more reasoning to a student, rather than a 1,2,3,4 scale.  

What did this artifact make you think about teaching writing?

This artifact made me think about how teaching writing can be done for all students. It may look different, but can be done. Students with physical disabilities will be able to use the technology provided to communicate with students or individuals who can physically put pen to paper. This has made me as an educator realize that the way writing is taught can be done in many different ways. Technology also provides a variety of ways to teach writing. I can take a lesson that teaches students how to formulate a topic sentence through modeling, providing examples, having them brainstorm in a writers notebook, but I can also use resources through the internet that may my students my understand  better through technology based on their learning style. 

As an educator I will stress the process of writing, along with the codes and rules for grammar punctuation and how to properly structure a sentence. After reading the article I understand that for students to have a  beautifully written sentence, students need the right tools to make their writing work. As a teacher of writing, I know it is beneficial to have worksheets made for students to practice concrete sentence structuring around subjects, predicates, conjunctions, verbs, nouns, and adjectives. However,  I will be sure to make more opportunities for students to practice using these same tools to write their own sentences on content that motivates them to use those tools. As a teacher of writing another thing I want to work on goes along with the part of the article when Sokolowski talked about looking past “There’s no capital, there’s no period” to say, “By God, you wrote a gorgeous sentence.” It made me reflect and want to shift the way I give feedback. Saying you have an amazing sentence, let take a closer look at it, sounds alot more effective than listing all the things the sentence is missing.  

 

When thinking about teaching writing, this article allowed me to accept responsibilities for any lack of skills my students past and present may have in writing. I currently teach first grade and in writing we are practicing writing individual upper- and lower-case letters, spacing of letters in words, and rules of capitalization. Seeing that there is currently a literacy gap, for these first graders who spent the whole of their kindergarten experience on zoom, I spend most of my writing lessons teaching penmanship, neatness, and little chants to remember how to write letters. I don’t spend half or even enough time on constructing full on sentences. This artifact makes me think about how, as a teacher of writing, I must make time to teach other tools for writing. As much as I despise using "fill in the blank" and "circle the word that..." worksheets to practice these tools, I must look outside of myself and my preferences, to introduce my students to things that will benefit them as growing writers.  

 As a teacher of writing, I thought a lot about the idea that we should be preparing students for what tools they could be using and creating in five to ten years from now. As a teacher of writing, I think about the standards for writing, in the curriculums presented by the schools I have worked for. My first thought is always “what do they need to know at this point in the year?” My initial focus is getting them where they need to be, for them to be successful in the next grade level. Aadahl brings up the question “How do we help students form context, purpose, and potential in the tools they need to be successful writers and get them ready to learn about that?” I know as a teacher I frequently have “teachable moments” during lessons in other subjects. For example, in reading class, one of my first graders stated, “we don’t need to know how to read to be successful.” To which I quickly responded, “reading is the foundation for just about every other subject, job/career, and just about every other life aspect.” His thought was that if he grows up and starts his own business he won’t need to know how to read. It will be ten years before this kid can begin building a business. Bringing me back to this artifact’s theory of working toward what tools students will use in five to ten years from now. In response to his statement, I spoke to my student about advertising his business, using platforms to spread awareness, attract customers, label his merchandise, doing research on other neighboring or similar businesses and how they became successful, and how all those things require him to know how to read. After listening to Aadahl’s theories on technology as a new tool for writing, I am understanding that I can apply these same “teachable moments” to the importance of writing as well. Raising awareness and encouraging my students to use their resources for building a platform for something they are passionate about, works just as well for writing, as it does for any other subject.  

 Teaching Writing-  When reading this article, I kept asking where are the resources and the time to do this? It comes down to a daunting task for teachers to not only teach students a curriculum but in turn make it culturally responsive to all students in the classroom. I think when the author refers to “expressing ourselves creatively” applies to all students. It is about providing students with choice with how they show what they know. It could be a podcast, or a google presentation. Providing students with choice empowers them to take interest in their learning. 

 Teaching Writing-Looking at these standards made me think of the Professional development: Creating Powerful Assessments that I am in. Our instructor wrote a book on this topic, which is awesome. We watched a video on how this team of teachers as created this awesome system. Within it, kids know exactly what standard they are working on and how they are being assessed on them. Through this process students can depict their areas of strength and areas of growth. They can track their work and see what skills they need to master to meet a goal. Right now, in the PD we are looking at standards and to really break them up down to individual skills students build upon. To also make standards “kid friendly” in order to promote students to know exactly where there are and where they are going in their learning. Some standards really need to be broken down, there are multiple skills being assesses in more than one standard. Yes, these standards are a great starting point as an educator, but there is a lot of work that needs to go on behind the scenes in order to make this applicable in the classroom. 

 

 

Teaching Writing- I could not have agreed more with the paragraph “who is the better writer”. I think that is what makes writing so difficult to teach. There is so many different avenues to take and there is not a cookie cutter format to follow. That is kind of the point to writing though. Putting your own personal touch, thoughts and feelings out on paper to communicate to others, how do you teach someone about their own thoughts? “There is no clear point of mastery in writing”. That can be just as challenging for the teacher as it is for the students. Even as an adult, a teacher, someone who has two bachelor degrees, I still could not even tell you if I am a master in writing. This article put teaching writing perfectly. There simply is no single correct way to write, really anything. 

 

Early in this article, I realized that a lot of my patterns of writing are similar to when I was in 5th grade learning to write a book report for the first time. I enjoy writing, however I know that sometimes staying on one topic is a difficult task. This has been a common theme in my writing, and is always something that I had to edit when writing papers in college as well. Although there are many things that can be done throughout school to improve our writing, there are some things that are specific to us, and make us into our own individual writers. 

What this artifact made me think of about teaching writing:

The next thing that Goldstein wrote that made me connect with teaching writing is the topic of “massive teacher education”. I completely agree that growing up my writing time in the classroom was finding nouns and verbs and tracing out of a booklet, usually for about 30 minutes out of our day. When it came time to learn how to teach kids how to write, things such as Common Core were being implemented, and we had to learn that ourselves. This article has made me realize that there should be a good balance between helping kids navigate their creativity through writing, as well as teaching them proper grammar and sentence structure. 

While reading this artifact, I was having many thoughts that took me back to my childhood of how I learned to write. Growing up, writing was always a structured time in the classroom. We were frequently given graphic organizers that shaped us to be determined to get information written down on the paper as fast as possible. Turning  in the work and being done with it while putting in the minimal amount of effort was a consistent  routine for me.  While reading this article I found  myself relating towards the man of  color feeling as if their teacher isn't teaching. I did my graphic organizer, turned it in and then never saw it again. As a  young writer I felt as though I was just going through the motions of doing mindless  work for a grade. In regards to this artifact as a writer I felt that my feelings I have had towards writing in  my early ages were valid. Falling in love with writing is so difficult at a young age when one feels like they are just writing to please teachers and to get a grade. 

What did this artifact make you think about teaching writing?

While reflecting on this artifact, it made me eager to teach writing in the future. Since I did not find a love for writing until more recently in  life, I want to inspire my students to fall in love with the process of writing at a young age. Teaching them the culture of power in writing and showing them how it is possible to fall in love with the process is something I hope to help my students with.  

As a writer, being in the shoes of a student, I don't think I would have ever achieved all of the standards stated for each grade level individually. As a student who never loved writing, if  I ever knew that there  were so many expectations expected of me to achieve within  the writing standards, my willingness to  work  harder would have decreased even more. I am thankful that my teachers never pushed these standards into my head, I would have constantly felt like not enough as a writer. 

What did this artifact make you think about teaching writing?

This article brought many different emotions into play for me. The feeling of excitement and anxiousness pull me in different directions after studying this artifact. Excitement comes from overall, feeling confident in my abilities to achieve these writing standards in the classroom. Anxiety comes from there being an overload of standards, it can become overwhelming to prove that all students are achieving the same standards consistently when there are so many of them. 

I personally related closet with the statement in the artifact, “students with high confidence in their writing ability perform better”. When looking at my own writing abilities, my writings were always longer, had more personality  and overall more put together when I was writing about something that  I was interested in. After reading this article I realize that is because I had the confidence in myself  to  write about these certain topics, since I enjoyed what I was writing about. As a  writer, I feel as though if I was given the chance to write without graphic organizers, and about topics that interested me more, my love for writing would have grown more at a younger age. 

What did this artifact make you think about teaching writing?

This article made me realize how important free and creative writing is in the classroom. Not only does this give students the opportunity to express themselves, it gives them a moment to be creative and really dive deep into something that they enjoy. This artifact also made me think about how important it is for me to be a good writer to teach my students every key tool that they need to be successful in and outside of the learning environment of school.

This article made me realize that I am not the only teacher who has not always enjoyed the writing process. I never have loved the process of writing but more recently, I have begun to understand and learn more about how fun writing can be. For the longest time I have not enjoyed writing mostly due to not feeling as though I have perfected the craft of writing itself. Throughout this article, being able to verify that I am not alone in these feelings makes me more eager to advance my personal craft and  grow a relationship with writing. 

What did this artifact make you think about teaching writing?

This artifact made me think about my beliefs when it comes to teaching writing myself. When teaching writing it is important to think about how all students can feel differently about the writing process. Giving students the ability to express  themselves through their writing and the structures they prefer to use, or prefer not to use can  affect the amount of  work they put  in.. It made me acknowledge that teaching writing doesn't have to go a certain way every time. It is okay to have students express how they enjoy writing  in their own ways. 

I really enjoyed this video. Something that stuck with me was when Elyse Eidman-Aadahl spoke on  the capacity to do more sophisticated writing at even younger levels than before based on the tools and technology that we are given. She explains that to be a good  writer there are many factors that one has to think about. She focused on  purpose around the three minute and thirty second time of the video. This artifact made me feel as though if I had this technology at a younger age to assist in the writing process I would have felt less frustrated when completing my work. I feel as though this article looks at how technology can help students find their purpose with writing at a younger age which can therefore enhance their motivation,creativity and determination to be good writers.  

What did this artifact make you think about teaching writing?

This artifact has shown me how much I can use technology when it comes to writing in my future classroom. Now more than ever we are using technology. Elyse said that it is important to think of yourself  as a writer when you're posting to social media, youtube and other platforms as well. Using this to engage students into the writing process  will enhance their abilities to really explore themselves as writers. Today, explaining to  students that they are writers in many different forms of their life rather than just during writing lessons is crucial to help them fall in love with the process as a whole.