I've begun to realize how little of what I considered to be pretty pervasive professional books (Calkins, Atwell, Fletcher) have actually become part of writing instruction in real classrooms. Maybe my perception is skewed since I hang around with so many NWP people, but it seems that the more you move out of the realm of NWP or schools that provide a lot of professional development, there is really very little understanding of how best to teach writing. You begin to see a lot of "hamburger" paragraphs and 5 paragraph essays - not that that is always a bad thing, but there is certainly more to life than the five paragraph essay. But my guess is, there are few kids that know more than that. And even fewer who have been exposed to writer's workshop.
I've begun to question why theory (research?) does not enter more into practice. I was talking to a friend who was going to do her dissertation on narrative and expository writing. One of her advisors convinced her to switch the terms to to transactional and poetic writing. (She mentioned Britton, but I wasn't familiar with him.). We sort of laughed and I said, "Now no teacher will actually know what you are talking about."
I had always intended to pursue a dissertation topic that was relevant to teachers. In my opinion, if not relevant to practicing teachers or parents or administrators, why do it? Who reads it? Twenty other college professors? But I've begun to sense that there is a disregard in the Academy for the practioner. But if there weren't practioners, the Academy wouldn't exist. And this is my struggle of the week!
I wanted to add this poem that I wrote as a part of Jen's presentation, as I thought it resonated with this post:
Implication and inference
can have so many
different
contextual meanings
the sordid
the cerebral
the mundane
the absurd
and my meanings
may differ wildly from your meanings
As our scholarly lens becomes more focused on our topic
does our view of others
become more distorted?
We must be careful
not to view as grotesque
or ill-formed
the views of those
who do not look at life
through our
lens
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I know NWP is a strong presence in your life. Have you always viewed teaching using NWP's philosophies (and the work of Atwell, Fletcher, Calkins), or did this just happen after you participated in the summer institute?
ReplyDeleteMany teachers find the NWP summer institute changes their lives. For me, it was a homecoming. During my undergraduate experience, I learned from many teachers affiliated with the NWP, including my cooperating teacher who is now a co-director of the Ohio Writing Project.
I wonder what would happen if more professors participated in NWP. Instead of K-12 teachers finding this resource 10 or 15 years into their careers, they could benefit from the philosophy early on through their teacher education professors, like I did. K-12 teachers would still be included in NWP, but instead of summer institutes being dominated by K-12 folks, would it have even more impact if the mix included more teachers in higher education?
Petra, your final paragraph really strikes a cord with me. I've always felt my writing isn't going to make an impact if I write it in a way that makes it inaccessible (or boring) to my target audience. Do I want to reach out to the masses or have 10 people in the world think I'm really smart?
I've also felt the tension between being a practitioner and a scholar. I'm really proud of my presentations at NCTE, but lately I've been given the impression that doesn't count for much since it wasn't AERA or even CCCC. If scholars write in a way that's inaccessible to most practitioners, and then the scholars quit attending practitioner conferences because they don't count enough towards tenure and promotion, who will scholarly work impact?