Not impressed with this stuff....

Week 4 Discussion: Mo’ problems

My project focuses on improving writing scores.  Upon the suggestion of my district coordinator of English (this crazy smart lady), I attended the Heart of Texas Writing Project and planned to implement these strategies in my class.

So…..I have been attending the training. We are currently on day 3 of 4, and I couldn’t be more bored.

Here are my foreseeable problem areas:

1.     Including “research”. It’s all very theoretical, which, as we know, is not practical in real life situations.  I guess I am already implementing good practices in teaching writing in my class, but I went the long way—I just had to figure it out myself as opposed to doing the research (and I can’t exactly cite the “Amanda Gripp” way, can I?)  So…while I agree with much of what they are saying, I am already doing these things in my class.

So what to change/add/delete?

2.     I like their idea of writing in a journal.  I have tried this approach in the past though and it was SOOOO  frustrating!  The kids wouldn’t buy the stupid notebooks. And where to store 160 notebooks so they are safe and other people won’t mess with them?  If I let them take them with them….they will lose them (bc 9^th graders lose everything) or they will forget it and be unprepared for class. Or they will purposely leave it, and it will be a darn mess.

3.     Also…in this training, the approach is very “hippie” like –they are like, “Write whatever you want, as long as you are writing”  Well, I get that, but if you think about it, I have from now until the end of March to teach these kids how to write two very different types of essays.  7 months.  Out of those 7 months, if you split them in half, you really only have 3.5 months for each essay. Since we are on block schedules, we only see the kids every other day. So, split it in half again.  That’s like 2 months. So then, take out testing dates, days off, etc, I have about a month (maybe a little more) of instruction time. This is not enough to lead a hippie writing workshop, letting everyone explore their feelings and whatnot.  It NEEDS to be more structured. 

4.     When I argued the above point, the leader of the training argued that her way works and that I should just trust it and that all the research backs up that it works.   Ummmmmm……

5.     I would TRUST in her system if my own system wasn’t already proven to be successful.

6.     AND FINALLY…..I am soooooo bored with this.  The entire training is based around us having time to “write in our journals” so we can feel what our students are feeling—which is an excellent approach.  What I am feeling is: this approach is lame, I don’t like it, and I am bored.  I would never do this with my kids because I will be bored grading their boring writing and I will be bored teaching it. 

Something needs to change.   To summarize, my problems basically are that I don’t believe in this particular approach, don’t know what I need to do to improve it, and I think it’s sort of boring.   Can we use our own approach, and then just find research to back it up? 

ANY suggestions.....