Revision plan updated 11/26/07

The weekend I spent sorting through sources and discarding several. At the suggestion of Dr. O'Rourke, I spent a good deal of time with the journal "Voices from the Middle." Here I found many articles that will better tie in the methods being used by instructors at Northbrook School teach writing. Today I spent a good portion of the time composing paragraphs related to the school's ISAT scores. The school made a concentrated effort to improve test scores and that showed for many years. Recently, though, the scores have once more begun to slide, with 30.6 percent of the students operating below state standards for writing. This is the highest that it has been since 1999. With these scores in mind, I have additional questions for Ms. Pozzi and the writing instructors @ Northbrook.

Revision plan

My first goal for revision is to find an article regarding technology use in the classroom that is not so dated. While the article I have raises many important issues, it is somewhat dated since it is from 1995. I would keep the other one for comparison purposes but an article written within the last five years would be more timely, despite the fact Northbrook tends to lag behind in terms of curriculum. My next goal in the revision process is to add the actual notes from my interviews which take place on Thursday and Friday, respectively. That section of my paper was sadly lacking but as yet I have no material apart from classroom observations. While the classroom observations are useful in themselves, I need the interviews to further explain the methodologies being used in the classroom. My third and final goal is to work further on the summaries, which I feel could use more detail.

Inquiry Project Refined

Upon looking over my initial contract, I feel I may need to focus more on the freshmen year in composition studies. While eighth graders are preparing to make the transition to secondary education, writing instruction at this level may not be on par with what a freshman in high school is doing. The instruction of writing itself is such a large field that I wish to narrow the focus further. Persuasive writing seems to be prevalent at institutions, whether by accident or by choice. The methods of persuasive writing among freshmen students may ultimately be the focus of this project. Persuasive writing draws heavily from the notion of audience. What does the audience need? What does the audience want? What education does the audience possess and what could be done to further that education?

At LP High School, students are asked to actively participate in these questions through the use of writing journals. In preparation for persuasive writing, students are clearly asked to identify their audience in a brief passage. Students are encouarged to identify topics imporant to the audience while at the same time articulating whom they believe that audience to be. Mrs. H. takes the activity a step further by asking for outside interaction in regard to the student's work. Other faculty members, parents, or peers of the student give feedback before. Occassionally, an associate editor through the News Tribune enters the scene as well to read some of the more serious, timely, or well-written pieces. McCullough reviews the writing and a piece may sometimes find its way to being published in the teen section of the paper. McCullough and Honicker are two of the people I expect to interview througout the course of my research since they are integral members of this process. Newspapers in Education (NIE) works with many local school districts at several levels, but I find this one the most interesting since student work finds its way to an actual audience beyond the classroom. It is not a widespread event but occurs often enough that the students are given a window to the world of journalism. It teaches the student that many considerations must be taken in considering what words to put upon a piece of paper.

The articles reach a community at large, reach that extends far beyond the classroom. Since I expect to speak with both M. Honicker and J. McCullough in the course of my research, I think it may be useful to read other uses for the NIE program or to speak with the editor of this section. (whose name I am not sure of) McCullough is an editor of the paper itself, while the "Teen Trib" as its called, has its own staff and supervisor. I am fairly certain she is a former educator herself and it may be useful to find out what impact she feels the teaching of writing has on her contributors. After all, lessons from the classroom transform into newstories that cross her desk.

Any additional articles I could find detailing student work to publication may be another resource to consider. The work of literary magazines, often supervised by English instructors, are another source of student publication. LP does not have its own newspaper any longer but continues to have a yearbook produced by students who write the content as well. This may be another useful source. All these sources have an audience participating in and evuluating student work.

Apart from talking and reading, I believe observations themselves may be most useful. Detailed logs of students interacting with each other may produce information that students are reluctant to provide. I would like to follow the process an article goes through to make it to the "Teen Trib" but that may prove too long of a period to make it plausible for this project. However, studying the process of a past article would not possess such a time constraint. How has the question of audience affected the piece?

I would like ultimately to explore persuasive voice and the matters of audience in how it relates to writing instruction. One of the best ways to do that would be to follow this process in close detail and find out all that it includes. The proposal for students to create an imagined audience in detail is also something that I would like to possibly include in the project. Apart from exploring this issue in their writing journal, I would like to find out what students themselves think of in regard to audience.

Inquiry Project Article---Translating Ong into Reality

In paging through Cross Talk, the revelance of Walter Ong's Article jumped out at me. "The Writer's Audience is Always Fiction" is relevant to my topic in that I feel one of the methods used to teach writing these days to presecondary students is taught in terms of audience. Students are being instructed heavily in the use of persuasive arguments to an imagined audience. While most students still regard their instructor as the audience, teachers do encourage the students to think in broader terms as to whom they are writing for. One class observation yielded to me a useful tactic: Have students use a writing journal to capture ideas about who they believe their audience to be. In doing so, they might wish to consider what kind of questions the audience might ask. While the audience is usually still imaginary, this lends weight to the "mind" of the audience so to speak. This (sometimes) helps writers formulate strategies for organization. It also helps narrow or broaden the topics a piece of work might address.

The second part of this activity was to seek out feedback from a potenial member of that audience.
Although this part of the task is trickier, it speaks volumes for the willingness of the instructor to involve student's work beyond the classroom. The teacher admitted to me that most audience participation comes from either parents, other instructors, or friends of the student. But she has had some success in working with a local newspaper to review and sometimes publish student writing in the News Trib teen section, which is published twice a month (on alternating Thursdays, I believe.) I believe that Ong would approve of this method. It brings a reality to audience participation that students sometimes lack in the classroom.

Content over form

Lu's article seeks to promote the importance of ideas within an author's work. Content should not be disregarded simply because of problems with sentence structure and grammar. Although an absence of good structure may take away from the work somewhat does not mean the ideas are without merit. Take for instance the case of writers whose native language is not English. Should their experiences be disregarded and should they be termed "bad writers" because they cannot properly conjugate a verb? The article points out that these issues are remedied with tutoring. A teacher can easily do a unit that focuses on grammar or sentences structure or a student can usually find help in a writing center. One of the writer's within the article felt that since his work would be edited at some point anyway, why worry so much about a few dangling participles, such as it were?

Perl is another theorist that emphasizes the importance of good structure. While I agree with both that the distractions caused by poor writing can take away from the overall experience of a piece, I also side with Lu in that we should not disregard the voice behind the writing. Sometimes the most powerful voices of experience come from those not well versed in academia. We cannot regard ideas to be without merit simply because of poor grammar and sentence structure. Such things can be taught and improved upon, strong experience seldom can.

Lu points out an irony in her article. Those writers perceived to be "good" are encouraged to throw caution to the wind when it suits them and write beyond accepted boundaries should the need arise. Poor writers are penalized for not following the rules of an institution. This sets for a poor standard for any classroom. If ideas are the backbone for a piece of writing for one set, why emphasize mechanics for another set of writers?

For the most part, I believe we adhere strictly to the rules of structure. While style is always appreciated in a paper, writers need to find the path that allows for structure and style to coexist, which is not always an easy task.

In Class Writing

Part I: Exploration
1. Identify the issue or problem that you plan to focus on in your Inquiry Project.
2. What is your personal connection to and interest in this topic?
3. What opinions do you already hold about this topic?
4. What knowledge do you already have about this topic. What are your main questions about this topic? What are you most curious about?
6. How might composition theorists and researchers approach or study this topic? Does this approach differ from those of other related disciplines (such as communication studies)?
7. How could you research this topic outside the library (for example, through interviews and/or observations)?

Part II: FocusingWrite an initial claim, or an open-ended question, to guide your research on this topic. Make it specific but exploratory. Remember that a good claim opens up an area of inquiry about a topic; a claim should invite evidence, support, and debate.

The issue I plan to focus on in my inquiry project is the various techniques of teaching writing at the presecondary level. How do these methods help or hinder the students in preparing for secondry education? I want to focus on what methods teachers are currently using in the classroom. What do they feel the benefits or limitations of those methods are? If a student doesn't fit into the standard "mold" when writing is taught, what options does an instructor have to help them?

My personal connection through this project is I have a daughter that is currently at the start of this stage and it is one I will continue to observe as her education progresses. I believe that the methods we are taught at the earliest stages of writing tend to stick with us as writers, whether they are beneficial are not. Seldom do we stray from the norm as writers. I have little experience beyond my own personal education. In school, I was taught the five paragraph method by one instructor and to write a draft for everthing by another instructor. However, he made the class write the draft and finished product immediately after, without any input from the class or himself. The draft was for his own use, so he could see how we had specifially changed our writing based on our own proofreading and ideas about revision. I don't feel this helped the students much apart from making me hate to proofread assignments.

What most interests me about this assignment is how teachers deal with students who don't seem to "get it" in regards to traditional writing instruction. What fall back plans do instructors have in place for students whose writing skills do not improve over an extended period of time? Are the students assigned a tutor? Do the instructors spend extra time coaching or assign additional work for those students who are falling behind their peers? Or are the students merely left to fall behind or placed in a remedial class?

I honestly have little information on how a theorist might address this. Although a few have addressed how unsophisticated writers approach an assignment, most theorists do so in a manner that benefits whatever method they advocate is the best way to teach writing. I have yet to find a theorist who focuses exclusively on the dilemma of the student. Research will be required to see what has been done already, although I have a feeling that the research is limited. Part of this project will clearly have to address what the current methods of teaching writing are.

As part of this, I would like to focus exclusively on my own community. The high schools of the area---Streator Township High School, Ottawa Township High School, LaSalle-Peru High School, and Mendota High School---tend to be "behind the times" so to speak. Through prior observations, I learned that the book "Speak" only made its way into the curriculum of LP within the last year. This is only true for LP, which is usually the case for most changes in the curriculum. Streator, Ottawa, and Mendota tend to follow along after LP has already implemented changes.

The research for this type of project I believe will have to be two-fold: What has already been done by way of research? I will have to scout out academic texts and articles (preferably recent ones that have been published in education journals). After reading over the available material, I believe that the vast bulk of my research will have to come from interviews with instructors and possibly students. Instructors may not be the best source about how the students feel personally about how their writing is impacted by the methods their instructors use. The instructor aspect may be useful in terms of chronicling progress. However, a writing method that produces passing grades may still leave the student feeling uncertain about how to write.

I believe my specific claim boils down to this: What methods are currently used to instruct presecondary writers and what is to be done for students who cannot learn writing via these traditionally accepted channels?

A Difference of Opinion

The scene is a basement classroom in the education department of Elmhurst College. An English 315 class is discussing the book "Monster," in small groups. The premise of the discussion is a view of the guilt of Steve (the main character of the novel.) To offer a brief summary of the story, it is entirely about a young African American's brush with the criminal justice system. Supposedly, he was the "lookout" during a robbery in which the store owner died. He and another boy were arrested in connection with the crime. Two others involved in the crime were also arrested but served as witnesses for the prosecution.

I have found for the most part that any discussion concerning the criminal justice system tends to be volatile. The criminal justice system must be one of the most hated---and yet one of the most talked about systems in our society. During class discussion of this book, I expected nothing less than the strong opinions of my classmates, which may be why I never expected to find myself so blindsided by the comment a classmate made. As I said, during the discussion, as we discussed whether or not Steve's not guilty verdict was justified, a classmate blurted out, "The entire criminal justice system is corrupt anyway."

"The entire criminal justice system is corrupt anyway." I'll state it one more time for emphasis. To some, the statement is not so important and easily ignored. To most, it is seen as a merely an observation about a system that is not always portrayed well. It is a statement that generally 80% of the population would make. I don't fall in with that 80%. Instead, I fall in with the minority. The comment was enough to make my stomach drop in both disbelief and disgust. After all, how does a well-educated, seemingly intelligent individual make such a blanket generalization that condemns not only part of, but an entire system?

My first response was to blurt out, "Watch what you say." It was not the most mature of responses to what I viewed as an immature comment. What came out was only, "Watch---" and then a disturbed silence on my part. The other girl asked in what I perceived as a annoyed tone, "What? What did she say?" while all I did was stare at the page of my notebook while feeling my face burn from forehead to chin to the very tips of my ears.

I stopped because I felt I interpreted correctly that my involunary and instinctive defense of the criminal justice system would be not welcome in such a place. Although my experience with the criminal justice does not really qualify as academic, I do have an extensive knowledge of it through personal means. My husband has served in varying degrees of law enforcement for nearly ten years. He served two years as a guard in the department of corrections, which included serving on a tactical unit. Shortly after his 21st birthday, he moved into his position as a patrol officer for our small rural town. After serving five years in that capacity, he moved onto become a police officer for a considerably "rougher" town fifteen miles south of us.

Looking back, had I explained all of this to the girl, I might have clarified my stance on what she said without increasing the tension. But my contact zone, as it was---an adult student in class with students who are at most in their midtwenties---my contact zone was severely stressed and it pushed me farther away from where I wanted to be in the discussion. Before that, I had always felt on an even keel with my classmates, regardless of the age difference. I felt we had much in common, hence a common "contact zone." Were we not education majors, with a good majority of the class seeking degrees in the same field as myself? Not as many members of the class were English majors, but a class composed of students studying adolescent literature share many things in common, regardless of background. That had always been my position---until my classmate opened her mouth.

Now I'm forced to ponder. How many adult students with a major in English and secondary education are there? Of those, how many are "married into the blue wall" as it's commonly referred to? When I ask, "How many of you know what it feels like to be married to someone who straps on a bullet proof vest everyday to go to work" know what I mean?

I'm afraid the answer is no one, which makes me feel alienated beyond words. How did I come to be at a college where so much cynicism exists in regard to individuals who perform a public service? Is that not what educators do? If public services and those who serve in its sector are subject to such criticism and ridicule, why on Earth do students become involved in the education field?