While reading Vicki Spandel's The Nine Rights of Every Writer I found myself becoming frustrated with the content inside it, especially while reading right number eight, "the right to go beyond formula." Now, before I get into the argument that I have, I must state that I do agree with many of the things Spandel states in this chapter. I do agree that formulaic writing is boring and an "easy fix" for struggling writers. I believe that to be a good writer doesn't necessarily mean that the students have to follow a preset formula where in they simply fill in the missing comments in order to create an acceptable essay. I believe that as an English teacher I will want to encourage my students to take chances with their writing. To explore new ways of explaining and expressing their topics. I want my students to display passion and complexity and growth in their writing.
I suppose that my frustration with the Spandel chapter is that it isn't practical or realistic for the high school English classroom. I am student teaching at Washburn High School in Minneapolis in Ms. Blair's eleventh and tenth grade English classes. For the past two weeks while observing Ms. Blair has been preparing her tenth grade students for the Minnesota state writing test, a test that I myself had to take in tenth grade. A test where the formulaic five paragraph essay is emphasized. My cooperating teacher has spent weeks filling her students heads with the "proper" way to write a one thesis, five paragraph essay. Not because she wants them to write this way, but because she knows if they don't learn the formula they will fail the test and won't be allowed to graduate until it is completed correctly.
In tenth grade, at South High School, when our writing test was coming up, my Humanities 10 English class spent weeks writing, and rewriting formulaic five paragraph essays merely for the purpose of preparing us to pass this one test. Even in eleventh grade I had an English teacher who had us write a five paragraph essay on how to correctly write a five paragraph essay. After writing this type of essay multiple times I felt that I knew how to write great essays. It wasn't until freshman year of college in my English composition class that I realized my perception of a good paper was wrong and I was angry at my high school English teachers for wasting my time with a formula for writing that was useless. However, in high school if we had finished with the state writing test and my teachers had turned around and told me that the formula I had just learned for essays was useless I would have held very little respect for them. So what is an English teacher to do? We have idealistic, fantastic notions for how we would like our students to write, for ways to encourage them to explore topics and play around with structure and organization. However when we look at the big picture, teaching writing in this way is almost impossible to implement.
My site for this week has nothing to do with my blog but I will post it anyway. My cooperating teacher has had some trouble getting books for all of her students so she has been getting copies of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew off of this site. It's completely legal and she tells me that many teachers and students use it. The site contains full books and plays available to read and print out.
1 comment:
Hey it's Dan from the cohort,
I just wanted to say that your "rant" as you call it brought up a good point. I, too, have seen my cooperating teacher spend an entire day getting students to study the 5 paragraph essay format for the MN writing test. My students were bored and didn't want to work on a mock-essay, even though I cared about them passing the test. It's always a tough to read one author who is bent on practicality and another who's idealistic. Maybe we as up-and-coming teachers might find that medium. I guess we'll see. See you in class. Dan
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