Creative Writing Creates Community

In my Theory of Composition class we have been assigned an article review. This article review has been a great chance for me to dive into some readings about the community that is created from creative writing. I have been interested in this subject since I have wanted to be a teacher and one specific interest has been how to get non-creative students to become creative. While I didn’t use this article for my review, I felt that it was a valuable resource and offered a multitude of great ideas about this topic.

 

 Deborah Dean and Adrienne Warren have worked together to write a great article, entitled “Informal and Shared: Writing to Create Community”, about the benefits of informal writing and how these activities have affected the community within their classrooms. One exercise that I found fascinating is what Warren and Dean call ‘Scribblers’. This activity involves scribbling on a sheet of paper, passing it to a neighbor who then turns it into a drawing. The paper is then returned to the original student who has to write a story about the scribble. I thought this was a great way for students to be creative both visually and in their writing.

 

 Dean and Warren also talk about how students can create a sense of community when they are able to share their feelings about writing and how they write, even bad experiences can create a strong sense of community in a classroom. I thought that this might be a great way to address students who, when asked if they liked to write creatively, say they do not enjoy writing. By sharing their opinion and hesitations on this subject it can bring to light suggestions from other students about how to solve this problem. Sometimes this kind of feedback can be WAY more powerful than any advice a teacher would be able to offer, or maybe it’s just the fact that it’s coming from a peer rather than from an out of touch teacher.

 

This problem has already arisen in my short time as a teacher. I was working with an AP student who wanted to submit her writing to a writing competition. The student wanted my feedback about what she could do to improve her writing. When my suggestion included adding a bit of creative to writing to her more formal writing project, I seemed to have hit a nerve. She immediately informed that she despised creative writing and when I asked her why I learned that she felt she wasn’t any good at it. Because she was able to confess her hatred of creative writing, I was able to offer advice to help remedy this situation. I offered an alternative improvement that wouldn’t focus as strongly on creative writing.

 

I think that informal creative writing, writing that will never be seen by anyone else, is the key to get students back into creative writing. Has there been a time where you were asked to write creatively even though you HATE doing it? How have you been able to overcome this same kind of situation in your classroom?

 The link to the article is below!!

http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/download/nwp_file/16994/Informal_and_Shared.pdf?x-r=pcfile_d

District Inservice Day

A day at school with no students? How weird!

I woke up a little more casually, welcoming the chance to dress a little sloppier.  I made it to school around the same time I usually do and took my time wondering the deserted hallways, getting an insider's look at a quiet, clean hallway. A few teachers straggled past, mugs of coffee in hand. When I finally made it to class I sat my stuff down at my desk at the back of the classroom and asked about today's agenda.

I learned that we would sit through two group sessions and get together with the English department to grade the state assessments. Sparing you the nitty gritty of the day I can confidently say that it was an interesting experience and one that I can't say will be all that bad when I become a full time teacher.

Among other things, I learned that teachers are definitely still kids at heart and even though they may complain about how hair brained their students are, they can still be the same. I was glad for the opportunity to get to see all of the teachers that taught me while I attended school there and it was an even greater experience to see how those teachers really act when students are missing from the hallways.

Getting ready...

So after the short week next week I will get to start my KPTP lesson. At the last minute I decided that I would like to align my KPTP content with the history classes and do a unit over the Vietnam War/Literature. I have about half of the unit planned out and I am really excited about getting to start the unit. First we will be starting with centers that will introduce the students to different medias, such as YouTube news casts, newspaper clippings, some poems, etc. Then we will move onto one of my favorite writers, Tim O'Brien!! We are doing a whole day of O'Brien vignettes where the students will do a one pager over whatever vignette they choose to read.

Finally, I get to visit with a Vietnam vet and he is going to contribute to a stellar unit. Can't wait to see how this all turns out!!

KPTP

I started work on my KPTP this past week.

When I first started I was a little overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that I had to complete. The demographics, 2 lesson plans, 2 assessments, etc. But when I finally got started on it I realized that just being at school helps me with a great deal of the planning and preparation.

I am doing a lit circle for my KPTP. My lessons will be the intro activity and another smaller lesson within a lesson that I haven't picked yet. I started getting planned for first part of it. I am collaborating with a group of teachers and as a group we have decided that choice is what we wanted to focus on with these teen books, they all also seem to stay within that vein. So now for the during class activities, which is the part that I will have the most control over, we are giving the students a choice of activities with a 'menu' that lists them. Every time that they read they must complete each of the activities. This gives the students who like to draw a choice to concentrate on that or if they like to write then there are a few choices where they don't have to draw.

I think that this will be a good activity that will make the reading of these books a little more interactive for the students. I'll post my plan and the final draft of my menu on here when they are complete.

The Counting Continues

He slides the graded paper across the oak desk. Scratches and gouges imitate rolling, rocky waves as it slides the across the aged surface. His hand mechanically sets the paper in the 'done' tray, swings back across the desk and fumbles to separate the last two papers from each other. The sheets of paper give up their embrace and fall apart, one staying in his hand, the other falling like a orange leaf from a bare tree. The paper barely rustles as it is laid into place. He reaches up and removes the glasses from his face, the index finger and thumb on his opposite hand rub in the corner of his eyes to relieve some of exhaustion he fells creeping into his head. A new resolve pulses through his brain, he returns his glasses to his face, grabs the red, felt tipped marker and starts to read the essay that hulks on the table in front of him.*

* Thinking of doing something like this for my second genre reflection. An semi-extended metaphor for grading papers and finishing the end of the semester. Could use some suggestions. 

Thanks, 

Gage Gruning 

KATE Conference Response

 What breakout sessions were most helpful to you as a future teacher?  What ideas are you going to incorporate into your teaching and/or planning?

The last session that I attended was about learning studios. It is a kind of classroom arrangement that focuses on movement and student involvement. The classroom layout makes use of chairs and tables on casters (for the sake of mobility), dual projectors and dual whiteboards. I liked this breakout session the most because the classroom arrangement sounds like it would be very useful and would go well with the teaching style that I hope to emulate. Even though it would be close to impossible to incorporate every idea the presenters talked about I think that some would be useful and easy to incorporate. 

The easiest would be attaching casters to the furniture so that they are easier to move, this would be good for group activities. I also think that I would like to include dual projectors in my classroom design. The presenters talked a little about the use of these, including showing side by side texts and pictures so that the students can see the differences between the two texts/images. They talked about paint that is used especially for projecting screens and I figured that this would be easy to get permission for, it could be easy to do and easily to undo if I changed classrooms.

Overall, I enjoyed the conference and learned a lot of new things during the breakout sessions. I would definitely attend next year's conference. 

Genre Reflection #1 - Regaining Control

The rest of the class sat silently, looking back and forth between the rogue student and the teacher.

            

“How do you know if we can’t do the assignment in two sentences?”

The teacher leaned back against the table at the front of the class, the podium with the assignment in question on it, stood at her right. The rest of the class sat at light grey desks grouped together in quartets around the room. Hands and papers masked their amusement at the interruption to their usually uneventful day.

           

“I’m not saying you can’t do the assignment in two sentences but I am just going to let you know that you are going to get a bad grade if you only write two sentences”, the teacher’s flat voice conveyed her exhaustion expertly.

The student stood among the desks, chest out and shoulders pushed back in a mock sense of confidence. He fed off of the hidden smiles and quiet snickers. The louder they became the taller he stood and the more the false sense of confidence moved towards justified confidence. Seeing this the teacher stood at her full height, moving towards the student causing the interruption. Speaking in her teacher voice the teacher announced, “This is not a discussion. The assignment is that you write a narrative story about a time when you learned a lesson. It has to be at least two pages in length, double spaced and typed. That’s it.”

           

“But why does it--”

            

“No. That’s it”, countered the teacher.

Smiles and snickers were immediately stifled by the tone of the teacher’s new found voice. With the silence the rogue student’s shoulders sagged, his chest caved, his legs buckled and he sank into the navy blue chair. The teacher finished passing out the rest of the assignment sheets and walked the perimeter of the classroom, squashing the lingerings of an uprising still brewing in the student’s minds. The teacher returned to the front of the classroom with her shoulders pushed back, her chest pushed triumphantly forward and her head held high.