Opening The Door A Bit Wider

The chaos of my learning

Premises I believe in:  People are messy.  Learning is messy.  And people learning stuff is super messy.

I kind of fell in love with Thomas Newkirk (shhh, don't tell Tobey) while reading the first chapter of his book, Holding on to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones.  I really liked how he described expression as "too individual and idiosyncratic to be evaluated by a machine" (4).  And then he started dropping expressions like "mechanized literacy" and "totalitarian logic" and I was hooked.

And while I could go on at length about the ideas I found interesting and applicable in this book, I am going to focus on two--depth over breath people!  My first "Ah ha!" moment in the reading was in Chapter Five "Popular Culture as a Literacy Tool" when Newkirk describes the use of movies as a "scaffold" for writing.  Mind blown.  Seriously.  I'd never thought of it that way. Allowing/encouraging students to create a new writing piece based on a pre-existing story is the equivalent of using sentence starters to help them transition to a new idea or refute a claim.  Students don't have to worry about being overwhelmed by the possibilities, the paralysis that sometimes overtakes us when we must build from scratch.

Unconstrained choice can be as disabling, as paralyzing as unconstrained direction (147).

The characters, conflict, props, setting, etc. have all been established allowing students to build upon or remix the basic elements of the story.  It's a way in for students who are overwhelmed by writing.  Training wheels for would-be storytellers.  Genius!

Newkirk also emphasizes the importance of validating student interest arguing that "the surest way to alienate any group is to indicate that their allegiances and interest are not respected." (109).  Just because you could care less about dragons or Asking Alexandria (ugh) doesn't mean that your students interests aren't worth exploring.  Interest fosters engagement.  If we forget this, we alienate students from their own learning.  At the high school level, the emphasis is on analytic writing.  All of our writing PD is focused on how to help the students craft better arguments.  Yet instead of allowing them to choose issues they feel passionate about, we force students to write about prescribed MCAS driven topics.  And we wonder why so many students hate to write.

I loved how Newkirk challenged the artificial dichotomy between "serious" writing and pleasure:

Any effort to teach analytic or reflective literacy skills [. . .] is built on the premise of engagement, for analysis is an unpacking of our reactions and involvement.  Without that engagement, there is nothing to unpack--indeed, no reason to read or write in the first place (129).

So that's my goal this year.  To provide students with more opportunities to play, to explore, to create.  I still want them to learn to construct powerful arguments but I'm going to take a cue from Gary McPail and open the door a little wider when it comes to what kids write about.