Memo #5: Taking Stock and Making Sense

Throughout the course of this project, I have been able to mostly stay on track.  However, that does not mean there have not been a few, slight hiccups along the way.  I am still on the look-out for secondary sources which will fit my purposes properly.  However, as far as primary sources, I have more information than I could have hoped for.  The time has almost come for me to bring this project to a close.

At this point in the process, I understand that students have, and always will have, varying feelings about writing.  Some love it, some hate it, and others could not care less.  It has been an interesting journey for me to get into the minds of many students and figure out how they feel about this staple of education.  It has been very surprising to me how many students have claimed to love writing.  Honestly, I was not expecting such a warm reception toward the subject from so many participants.  However, it is deeply frustrating to me why some students do not like writing.  From what I have been told, their distaste for the activity stems from situations which could have been easily avoided by instructors.

As far as conclusions go, it took me quite some time to realize that there is no true “conclusion” for my topic.  It is always fluid and changing, just as the students whose opinions I have gathered are always changing and becoming.  There is still one thing that has been bothering me, though.  How can I use the information I have gathered to help me become a great teacher?  Furthermore, how can I encourage my future students to be passionate in their engagement with writing?  I suppose these questions do not have simple answers; if they did, I would not need to ask them.  Time will tell if this project will be able to help me along my way toward becoming a teacher of writing.

Memo #4 Update: Teacher Interview

This morning I was able to meet with my former teacher, Mrs. Y.  After catching up with each other, we set to work.  I explained my complete idea for the project and shared the data I have collected so far.  She explained to me that studies have shown that almost 60% of students entering community colleges are severely under-prepared for college writing courses.  These statistics confirm what my research has led me to believe: writing instruction in primary and secondary schools is sorely lacking.  Mrs. Y told me that she has had college writing students who have never heard of the writing process.  They were essentially given diagrams for 5 paragraph essays and told to fill them out.  This led to the topic of students being unprepared for standardized test essays due to a lack of foundation in their skills. 

 

Students who have not been taught to embrace any room for error in their writing at the most basic level are unable to perform in highly stressful situations.  It is her professional opinion that students must be taught to embrace the hard work and mistakes they will encounter when writing.  If they are not, they will become discouraged, considering themselves to be “bad” at writing.  This lack of self-esteem in their creative process will only be detrimental to their academic careers.  She encouraged me, as a future teacher, to help my students find their angle—aid them in their discovery to find how they can approach a project in a personal way so every writing assignment holds importance to them. 

 

Hearing all of this from someone whose opinion I greatly value was very encouraging.  It makes me feel as if I may be on the right track for this project and my professional career.  Furthermore, she has offered to ask her students to fill out my questionnaire so I have more data to work with.  She said I should expect about 35 of them.  This, in itself, is incredible.  I will be able to access data from a broad range of students and use it to help me in my final project.  Once I receive the questionnaires from her, I will report back here with another update on my findings.

Memo #4: Making Meaning of Interviews

So far, I have only had the chance to conduct 5 interviews from my list of 13(+).  I decided to work on the lower grades.  My interviewees range in ages from 6 years old to 12 years old.  (However, I have a meeting with a former teacher tomorrow to understand a teacher’s perspective on how students feel about writing.)  One of the participants, female-6 years old, loves to write and create stories.  In fact, there have been numerous occasions when she has chosen to write stories after school instead of going outside to play.  Another participant, female-age 7, has let me know that she hates everything about writing.  She does not even like to do her “sentence worksheet” which her teacher assigns in order for the students to practice using their spelling words.  Once the sentences are written, the teacher gives her students the option to create a story with the spelling words for extra credit.  This particular student would rather not receive the extra credit.  The third participant, female-9 years old, does not dislike writing, but she prefers math and science classes.  She says that she enjoys creating stories at home but not at school because her teacher gives “boring work.”  She means that the prompts which the teacher gives do not hold her interest.  My forth interviewee, male-age 11, is an ESL student.  He has a very difficult time with writing in English.  However, he has taken to writing his feelings down in a journal to keep himself from physical outburst.  This seems to be very effective for him.  The final participant in this round of interviews, male-age 12, has told me that he has no strong feelings for writing.  He understands that it is necessary in gauging a student’s understanding, but he feels no enjoyment while preforming the tasks which his teachers assign.

 

Since I have not collected all of my information yet, it would be difficult for me to make any concrete assessments on the content I do have.  However, if these 5 students were the only points of reference I was able to encounter, I would say that there seems to be a fundamental flaw in writing classrooms.  When asked about fun writing activities they were able to participate in, only one student was able to give me an example.  Could this lack of practice and cultivation of writing in young students lead to detrimental repercussions in higher education?  How can this be avoided?  There will always be students who hate writing for multitudes of reasons.  (This does not mean that they should not write).  However, what about the students who like or love writing?  If they are not given the opportunity to exercise their skills, their desire to write could atrophy. 

 

My next step in this project will be to conduct the remainder of my interviews.  Afterword, depending upon the data, I will be able to begin to form an outline with my findings.  As far as I can tell, there will be three sections/ headings which the students will fall under: those who love writing, those who hate writing, and those who tolerate it.  I will continue to post my updates.  Stay tuned…

Memo #3: Planning to Use Primary and Secondary Sources

As far as secondary sources go, I have the scholarly journal articles referenced in Memo #2.  I think they will help me develop a thesis once I have a completely clear view of where my project will end up.  As things are right now, I am still exploring and trying to wade through the many questions I have and plan on asking.  This leads me to my Primary sources.  I have 3 Elementary students, 2 Middle School students, 3(+) High School students, and 2 college level students who I have asked for interviews and received confirmation (all of whom I know on a personal level).  I also have 2 of my former English teachers who have said that they are willing to give a teacher's point of view.  One of the teachers, Mrs. Y, who was a student of Tom Newkirk and Don Murray at UNH, has also offered to pass my questionnaire out to her students. The list I have acquired is very encouraging to me.  I feel as if the range of students will greatly help me develop a better understanding of the subject matter.

Here are some preliminary questions I plan on asking.  However, this list only constitutes the questions I have formulated up to this point.

1.) Do you like to write? Why/ why not? (Academic or recreational)

2.) Do you feel as if your work is valued by your teachers? Why?

3.) Do teachers’ opinions of your work influence your views on writing assignments?

4.) Specific types of writing you enjoy/ dislike—poetry, short stories, book reports, research papers.

5.) If you do not like writing, can you pinpoint your negative feelings to a specific instance?

6.) Do you feel as if your opinion of writing is greatly affected by your feelings for a specific teacher?

7.) What could teachers do to make your writing feel more valued?  Would this help you to enjoy writing more?

8.) Do the pressures of standardized testing affect your views of writing?

Memo #2: Searching for Scholarly Sources and Educational Research

During the course of my research, I found a few scholarly articles for my project from the RIC library database.  I feel as if each of these articles will help me better articulate my points and my research for my final paper.  Each of the articles discusses the importance of writing in schools and the best ways to keep students engaged.  The key ideas, however, articulate student viewpoints about writing and the effect on performance in the classroom.

·         “The Most Important Thing: Students with Reading and Writing Difficulties Talk About their Experiences of Teachers' Treatment and Guidance”

Author: Cecilia Nielsen

Publisher: Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research.

·         "’I Hate To Write!’ -- The Critical Importance of Writing Gateways... And the Librarian's Role in Opening Them”

            Author: Kendall Haven

            Publisher: School Library Monthly

·         "’Writing wasn't really stressed, accurate historical analysis was stressed’: Student Perceptions of In-Class Writing in the Inverted, General Education, University History Survey Course”

Author: Daniel S. Murphree

Publisher: History Teacher

·         “Attitudes Toward Writing in Fifth Grade Students Preparing for State-Mandated Writing Exam”

Author: Karyn W. Tunks

Publisher: International Journal of Applied Educational Studies

Memo #1: Exploratory Writing

For a few years, I had a chip on my shoulder about writing in school.  When I was a freshman in high school, my English teacher required us to write in journals every day in class.  At the end of the week, what we had written was graded and turned back to us.  My teacher would critique our grammar, vocabulary, and the over-all content of our daily writing assignments.  Before this assignment, I had a love for creative writing and would do it quite often.  During that class and in the following years, my love for writing all but evaporated.  This assignment left a bad taste in my mouth and it affected my feelings for writing until my freshman year of college when I grew to love writing again.  I know that no two stories are the same.  Some people have loved writing since the first day they picked up a pencil and squiggled lines on a piece of paper (or, in my case, my mom's cook books).  Some have never liked writing.  Others have no strong feelings either way so they hold a more neutral view on the subject.

 

This topic is very important to me for many reasons.  First of all, it is interesting to discover how others feel about writing and why they have those feelings.  Secondly, I would like to find a way to incorporate what I learn into my future classrooms.  There are so many different approaches to teaching writing.  If I can figure out how students feel about writing, my teaching methods and assignments can be geared for my students.  I can learn other stories like my own and find creative ways to avoid these unfortunate experiences with my students.  I will be more confident while creating lesson plans that deal with writing because I will have a better grasp on what assignments will help my students become proficient in this art form.  This topic should be important to every single person in the field of education.  If the voices of the students are never heard, educators will never know how to cater to individuals--this is the most important aspect of teaching.

How Students Feel About Writing