During Ben's demo today, I was reminded of the connection between art and creativity. Earlier in the institute, we were asked about our sources of inspiration. I have always found that intense reading and looking at vibrant pictures inspires me to write. However, I know that everyone is not inspired in the same way. I found it interesting that Ben, who is also a creative writer, used a series of images to inspire writing. It worked for me! I was able to connect what I had been thinking about at lunch with the writing from this activity.
I'm often faced with the problem of how to bring forth more from my students in their writing. Do I ask them the right questions? Do I need to create a safe space for sharing of ideas? Or are we simply reluctant to share our bad writing?
Writing creates a more personal judgment zone. We place a lot of thought and time into what we present as a formal piece. Yet, how to we muster the courage to share this piece with others? We share our work, almost holding our breath until we receive some form of praise from the audience. Then we feel as though we have accomplished something. I know if we still feel intimidated to share writing that is supposed to be bad as adults, how much more afraid are our students to share their best attempt with their teacher?
In middle school education, the concept of a teacher's opinion is important, but the opinion of their peers really holds the final say. Students want to be social and don't want their classroom performance to affect their relationships with their friends. Some students assume they have to fill certain roles in the classroom and are more concerned with these roles than with their grade. I've often wondered how we can encourage our students to forget these roles and just share. The demo that Ben provided would be a great icebreaker and hopefully lead to fostering a judgment free zone.
P.S.- I decided to publish the first draft of my blog today in the spirit of bad writing!
Ooh I like your reflection as a teacher and as a writer about the sharing of our writing. I often ask myself if I'm asking the wrong questions or if there's more I need to do to make my students more comfortable with sharing (my inquiry question!). I definitely feel invested in my writing and am afraid of judgment when sharing and I know my students feel that even more acutely. I liked how knowing every one was sharing bad writing lowered that pressure. I'm totally using this activity with my students towards the beginning of the school year. I like your use of the term, "a judgment free zone."
ReplyDeleteYes, likewise. There's something important that happens when we write with permission to write badly. Some of my best writing grows out of it. And if I didn't give myself that permission, I would never have gotten there.
DeleteAshley, I was thinking about the idea of a "judgment-free zone" as I was working on my Day in the Life. As dumb and childish as it sounds, after the epic piece that Kendra and Nicholas created for yesterday, I was feeling very uncreative and hesitant to share my own text. I realized that I was judging my own ideas based on the response K & N received (rightly so - they totally deserved it!) instead of simply doing my best. I think these feelings, which are real no matter how much I hate to admit them, come from years of competition and push to succeed and win and earn the most gold stars. Don't get me wrong - I am staunchly against the idea that everyone should get a trophy and participate in a kindergarten graduation ceremony (more on that later). But, I really empathized with my students who think of themselves as bad writers or incapable of making something worthy of praise. I felt some of the pressure they must feel to live up to certain expectations. My students are never going to be "good" at all of the same things. I need to make sure that I vary our assignments and activities and assessments enough to get a snapshot of each of my students at their finest. Is it possible? Maybe not. But I'm still going to try...
ReplyDeleteAshley, I love your thinking! I feel that when we put ourselves in the shoes of our own students, we can begin the journey of becoming better teachers. I think it's so human to feel the need for acceptance in our work as writers and as social creatures in general. I could totally relate to your line" almost holding our breath until we receive some form of praise from the audience." That truly hits the nail on the head with the way we all feel. Thank you for articulating what has been my head this entire time in SI! The great thing is that we are working through this discomfort every day. This is the gift we can give back to our own students, being sure not to forget how we felt in the same position. Lovely!
ReplyDeleteTiffany and I also had a discussion about this topic earlier last week. Maybe it's something we are all thinking...
DeleteI like the "bad" writing approach you took in writing the post. Yes, definitely doing these activities and technologies helps me to remember and have emphathy for my students when I ask then to do something. Yes, Sarah everyone should not get trophies,yes acknowledgement for participation, but there are different levels of achievement.
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading this post, the idea of it being "bad writing" or a first draft didn't even enter my mind, but your mentioning at the end got my thinking about why I didn't think this. Maybe it has to do with my purpose for reading it. I wanted to learn about where you were in your reflections about today, and through commenting, enter into a conversation with you about your ideas. This has me thinking about how student writing gets read in school, and related to that, how students learn their writing will be read in school. I'm seeing this paradigm of evaluation. Wondering about what we can do do make reading school writing more about about meaning, and less about evaluation, and how to guide students in re-seeing it that way too. It seems that putting that vision into practice starts with us beginning to consider our own needs as writers, just like you are doing in this post here, which by the way, is awesome....thanks for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, thanks for pointing out that you published your first draft. It inspired me to publish my post that I have been agonizing over the last couple of days :) You rock!
Good to know that I am not the only person re-writing my blogs every five seconds! I also thought today's lunch discussion with Lil about assessment was helpful for guiding how we read and assess student writing.
DeleteYes, again I consider the social aspect of writing and try to put myself in my student's shoes- there are definitely times when I feel vulnerable sharing my writing so how much more do my students? As Ashley said there is the added pressure of a grade! :-( instead of writing for the sheer pleasure of writing
ReplyDelete