Nail in the Coffin

I always had an inkling that I wanted to teach in upper elementary, but reading Chapter 5 in Ms. Allen's book was the nail in the coffin for me. I struggled with some of our earlier reading this semester that encouraged "just getting words on the page." I have come to grips with that and agree it's best for younger students and beginning writers. But as I've workshopped with fourth graders over the past few weeks, it's become clear to me that getting words on the page isn't that hard anymore for the majority of them -- now the question is: how do they turn this into good writing? And that's the exciting part for me.

The first section of the chapter -- Show, Don't Tell -- is the essence of the difficulty I had with our first readings for the course. It is the opposite of getting words on the page. It's usually the act of taking them off. It's the ability to look at a very descriptive paragraph and boil it down to an essential action. I read the first book of the Twilight series and am reading the first book of the Fallen series now. The reason I won't ever make it to the second book of either series is their authors' inability to stop telling what the characters are thinking and put their desires/traits/emotions into actions the characters take. I hope that we can raise a generation of writers who won't make their audience put down a book in the middle and never pick it up again. I have read too many books like that in the past five years.

One of the closing sections -- Kill Cliches -- also made me happy. I wish, however, Ms. Allen would have offered some suggestions as to why they are so harmful and how to steer students clear of them. I also wish she would have expanded the idea a bit further -- far worse than trite axioms like the ones she lists (e.g. "heart to heart") are cliched characters and situations (e.g. the mother and daughter who need to have a "heart to heart" because there's a boy at school who doesn't know the daughter exists, etc, etc). Cliches like this come when students lack experience or research to develop more original content. Experience comes with time, but students can get in the early habit of doing research and developing more compelling material.

I was in publishing for a brief period, so part of me loves the red pen. I'm glad one of our authors is giving it some liberty.

Stop Being Funny

When I've read children's writing in the past -- and this has been evident once again in my field experience this semester -- it is clear that many (if not most) children make humor their primary goal in writing. I'm sure studies have been done on this, but I'm curious as to why this is the case: is it that children find life as it is to be generally amusing? Is it a stress release? Is it to gain social currency? Is it an act of mimicry? Of cynicism? It's probably all these things and more. I wonder, though, if it doesn't often get in the way of expressing other thoughts. How can we -- at least on occasion -- help students to shelf the jokiness and access other emotions?

I appreciated Ms. Allen's cursory take on this in the Poetry chapter, particularly in the six room technique. I'm not entirely sure the exercise necessarily diverts students from the "silly" as she suggests, but it could if handled correctly. Ultimately, I hope students have an understanding that there are many voices to use and each can be appropriate for different contexts and poetry is a natural method of teaching these voices. Garrison Keillor writes:

"What makes a poem memorable is its narrative line. A story is easier to remember than a puzzle."

Poetry does not need to be (nor should it be) cryptic or inaccessible. For young students, poetic writing doesn't need to be separated from story writing -- it's only a shift in rhythm and structure. An emphasis on story combined with a paucity of language can be a key for entry to stories that might not be funny, but are important for a student to communicate. While children will often gravitate to silly if given free rein or exposed only to "silly" poems as is sometimes the case (the only poems I remember my teachers reading were the funny Shel Silverstein ones -- not the reflective and sometimes dark portion of his work), providing children a wider poetic spectrum to consider can help them understand the far-reaching resonances of poetic voice. And teaching certain structures, like six room or using repeated phrases for emphasis, or imitating the voice of another poet can help them bridge the gap.

Here's a favorite of mine that I would use when teaching the "non-funny" voice:

Slowly (James Reeves)

Slowly the tide creeps up the sand,

Slowly the shadows cross the land.

Slowly the cart horse pulls his mile,

Slowly the old man mounts his stile.

Slowly the hand moves round the clock,

Slowly the dew dries on the dock.

Slow is the snail - but slowest of all

The green moss spreads on the old brick wall.

The (Little) Hole in the Donut House

First of all, it's probably becoming apparent that I like to play devil's advocate. So let me say first: I love the Donut House idea. It's creative, it's engaging, it's effective. I just want to suggest one more emphasis.

That students who dreaded writing were able to engage in so much of it in this project is astounding. And talk about confidence building: how many students at this age could claim to have experience in writing stock certificates and loan application forms? My one hang-up with this project is that it ultimately is a little one-sided. Encouraging practical literacy is at its core promoting literacy that is immediately beneficial for relevant communication. At only limited points in the scope of this project did students receive communication from others. The fact that they loved receiving personal letters from stockholders and returned to them often for re-reading is a crucial point, and one that could have been carried through to a higher degree.

What if local bakeries had been enlisted not only to speak to students, but also to write to them? What if recipes had been contributed by older family members? What if customers had been asked to fill out comment cards? The result, I believe, would have been twofold. One, students would have made more explicitly the connection between literacy and shared ideas; a two-way street of communication. Two, they would begin to accumulate a broader vocabulary related to their interest: what is a business model? A whisk? What does it mean to be satisfied? After the joy of reading the letters they did receive, it seems there could have been many more opportunities to have written communication flowing to the students.

So that's it. One small beef. Speaking of which, who knows what kind of vocabulary the students might have gained if they had served something like this.

"Bad" Video Games & Literacy

The question I'm asking in my MGRP is: Is it OK for video game source material – even violent material – to comprise content of elementary students’ storytelling?

Not surprisingly, I've found a lot of material suggesting that "good" video games can be helpful in promoting some form of literacy among children. After all, they are learning much about why characters make decisions, conventions of story, and how to form compelling material. The articles I've read, however, have offered only a cursory treatment of what I'll call "bad" video games -- ones that offer heavy doses of violence and realism, ones that further offensive gender stereotypes, etc. While some games might offer content and depth that promote healthy literacy habits like those mentioned above, what about games such as these?

It seems to me that none of the authors I've read would be entirely dismissive of the violent/suggestive genre of gaming, although I'm yet to see the research to justify a claim of any kind. The question is, however, as one author puts it: "is one type of narrative better or more valuable than the other?" (Ranker, 2006) The driving question for this paper came about as I saw more and more students with whom I worked consumed with violent gaming to the point where any opportunity they were given to write/draw ended with gore-soaked depictions of the games they played. From a strictly literary standpoint, you could do work with their content and craft. But is it OK? Should these students (often low-income males in my experience) be told: "I'd like for you to make some other choices in regard to content?" And if so, when?

I tend to lean toward the literary -- let them write what they write and work on craft. But it's content I would hope my sons would not write, and as a teacher, where do we draw the line between explicitly promoting literacy and implicitly condoning sex and violence?

Creativity and Limitations

"Independence in topic choice is not something teachers should expect to happen naturally/ The phrase 'I don't know what to write about' can be a way for students to procrastinate, but it can also be a legitimate reason for not getting started." (Hale 195)

I thought this was a really valuable point. A common misconception about creativity, it seems to me, is that it is free-flowing, open-ended, a river without banks or a dam. But when we are encouraging others, especially children, to write creatively and with good intentions say, "write about whatever you'd like," we can be counterproductive to the creative process. We are fostering a paralysis of information -- "write about whatever" is simply too much to process on many occasions.

Creativity is in essence problem-solving. It is most satisfying when it overcomes an obstacle and serves a purpose. Think about all the years we spent banging that one spot on a glass bottle of ketchup, only to have either nothing or a far-too-generous blob flop out. Someone finally conceived the squeeze bottle. Then we spent another several years trying to balance that ridiculously proportioned bottle on its tiny head to drain the last bit out. Someone finally had the idea to widen the spout so the bottle could always be stored upside down, eliminating the balance problem and the issue of that nasty ketchup-water that gathers as well. Each step represents a creative process undertaken by creative people. If we were to gather the creative people and tell them to do something, they might or they might not. But if we say: apply your creativity to this problem, something purposeful happens and the creative fruit is most satisfying.

The same is true for writing. A writing assignment that is left entirely open-ended has one of two tendencies: to dry up or to sprawl. When we can give some limitations to the assignment, however -- some problem to be solved -- students can turn their creative efforts to overcoming the obstacle. For example, in a personal piece, suggesting to a student struggling for ideas that they think of a personal narrative from the second grade gives them a focus -- a boundary -- which has the dual purpose of both reining in and unleashing their creative energy. In a fiction piece, suggesting they think of a type of character (say, a sailor) who wants something (to ride on an airplane, maybe) gives them some walls off which to bounce. There are a million ways that story can turn out, and the creative energy of the student is turned from developing an idea to solving a problem.

I wish someone had helped me clear up this misconception about creativity at a younger age. Creativity was nearly always presented to me as: "do whatever you want." More often than not, this was a dead end. Did any of you have a teacher that was especially good at fostering creative writing?