I want to focus my response on the "The Politics of the Paragraph" article, because I thought that it was an extremely well written piece. I was troubled by the opening example where Kenney describes how a student felt that she was a "crappy writer" just because her thoughts didn't fit into three clean paragraphs. There is clearly a real problem with how we teach writing in our schools today. Due to the added pressure of standardized testing, students' creativity and talent is stifled because teachers are forced to get all students to produce essentially the same work as everyone else to prove their "proficiency." When I read the article I thought about how the PEAS formula seemed to get everyone to write coherently, but with little to no real substance. In my own experience as a writer, I have never been asked to use any type of specific acronym or formula, but rather encouraged to get all my ideas out and then channel them into a structured and organized essay. This approach is not perfect of course, but it reflects a different atmosphere, without the daunting presence of CCSS/standardized testing.
Much like Kenney, I do believe that there are both pros and cons to using essay formulas. It is nice to want to teach your students to be really engaged in their writing and inspire them to write authentically, but in our schools today, this isn't always possible. Like Kenney brought up in the article, many of her colleagues want a clean, easy-to-implement solution to teaching writing, which she acknowledges as completely reasonable. We all want students to love writing and love learning, but when faced with a standardized test, we also don't want them to fail. It is a difficult balance, especially when it would really come down to changing the whole education system to not be so hyper-focued on test scores. I wholeheartedly agree with Kenney that any type of formula used in writing is going to limit students' creativity. There is a reason that writing is considered an art form, because good writing can't be boiled down to a formula or acronym.
Both Christensen and Gallagher offer what Scott calls "initialisms" which in some cases offer starting points for writing as opposed to formulas (which makes teaching writing sound like teaching math!). These authors--and Brittany and Jason gave similar examples from their practice--show that students writing a lot and often are effective ways to address writing demands.
ReplyDelete