Jennifer+Fry

09/07/07 "The Winds of Change" - Maxine Hairston

First of all, I did feel like this article was as difficult to read as I thought it would be. (Maybe I was just trying to prepare myself for the worst after hearing that it was going to be really hard to get through.) While many of Hairston's points were not completely comprehensible to me, I still feel like I managed to get a few interesting thoughts from the article.//**Good, I'm glad.**//

I really liked the way Hairston started the article with a description of how paradigms shift. I feel that much of what she said could be considered slightly obvious, but putting it down in words with examples was a helpful way to get me thinking before going through her main points. It also got me thinking about how paradigm shifts take place in every part of life, not just in the writing situations the article focuses on. //**For example? I know science, obviously, is where this idea came from--where else would you apply it?**// I got sidetracked for a while when my mind went off on a tangent about random paradigm shifts in history! (Guess that's what I get for being a History minor.) **//I would have been interested to hear this--you should bring up this stuff in class!//**

It was really sad when Hairston went through all the facts about how many teachers are nowhere near properly equipped with the skills needed to teaching writing, let alone teach it well. I'm not completely shocked, because I've seen it firsthand mostly as a student, but also as teacher-in-training. But an argument could be made that this paradigm shift that Hairston believes is in the process of occurring could be just what writing teachers need in order to be forced to be able to teach helpfully. Not necessarily properly, but helpfully. I'm a believer in that a textbook can be very helpful, and teaching something in a very specific way can work for some subjects/people, but it does not work for everyone. **//Ah yes, the problem of multiple learning paths: some auditory, some visual, some by rote--how do we help everyone?//** I have been taught/shown throughout grade school and now in college in numerous courses that one way, one description, one style does not work for everyone. It might seem obvious to some; maybe not so much to others. But I feel like this paradigm shift is a way to communicating that theory to the masses of confused and stressed writing teachers (and their students.) After all, the pressures to change are internal and external. The feelings of inadequacy are widespread according to Hairson. //**How do you see this process-oriented approach helping teachers (and thus students) who are stressed? wouldn't the idea of having to adopt new ways of teaching actually add to their stress? Do you think there is a link, here, to so many teachers sticking with the old paradigm despite the new research?**//

And yet I wonder how we are going to positively move forward with a better writing process? I'm still confused about what exactly the shift is changing. Hairston used some phrases and words that made a little bit of sense to be, but grasping the entire concept got trickier. I think she discussed how the stress on grammar would be lessened and that the writing process would be emphasized (particularly due to the teacher's increased involvement in the writing process with the student.) But what is necessary when it comes to teaching those who have no (or next to no) previous writing instruction/understanding? When working with kids (and adults), I find myself often torn between having to teach basic, age-old skills (like grammar) and branching out and trying to be more open with concepts (such as allowing more freedom with writing.) Where's the balance? //**Hopefully after we get through the unit, especially after Cambourne, you'll see how this works and that emphasizing grammar really isn't helpful.**//

09/10/07 "Process and post-process" - Paul Kei Matsuda

Wow was this piece a chore for me to get through. It's not that is was extremely difficult to understand. I just found it to be very draining and all over the place. **//True drudgery, I admit. Sorry! But he sweeps the history better than anyone I've read...//**I kept having to remind myself exactly what were the differnces between all the shifts/movements as I read in order to keep them straight. (Of course, maybe I just read it on too little sleep!)

I was surprised to read the part on L2 writing. Despite talking a little bit about it in class on Friday, I hadn't reall considered how the process movement affected L2 writing - teachers and students alike. I like how Matsuda pointed out that the process movement was helpful and hurtful to second language writing by "clarifying changing currents" but also "oversimplified the multiplicity of perspectives" (74). I also found it interesting that since L2 writing is sort of in a class of its own, according to Matsuda the audiolingual approach is its own version of what the current-traditional method was to writing earlier. However, I am confused to exactly what the audiolingual approach entails. //**yeah, he never really explains or defines it at all. It's basically a "learn by hearing" approach.**//

I was surprised to find myself agreeing with a lot of what the process and post-process movements advocate. Perhaps that's because I feel I was taught mixtures of both in school. Writing was something to do for a grade and we had to make sure we had correct grammar, spelling, and format. But it was also something that had numerous steps invovled, and teachers were usually looking over our shoulders to help along the way. Certain parts struck a chord with me, such as, "each student be at all times engaged in an internal dialogue," "writing as a process of active thinking is inextricably linked to student independence and student accountablit," and "assigning grades is not the primary aim of the writing class; teaching students how to write is!" (77). These seemed "right" to me, again probably because this is how I was taught to write and to view teaching writing. //**You've pulled out some key ideas here. Although he has a lot of extraneous information, he has some excellent points as well.**//

I liked Matsuda's final definition of post-process: "the rejection of the dominance of process at the expense of the other aspects of writing and writing instruction" (79). //**Yes. He puts it clearly here.**// It points out that there is no set beginning or end to these movements. We can research all we want, but pieces will still remain of "old" paradigms, and how will we really know when exactly a "new" paradigm begins? Overall, I'm just intrigued by how much has changed and how much has not changed in writing over the last century. I'm beginning to see more and more that it really depends where you are that determines what type of pedagogy is used. (That may seem like a very obvious statement, but it never ceases to amaze me how and what is being taught around the country at the same point in time.) :-) //**Actually this is an excellent point. Can you speculate about where things may be more advanced and where things might be slow to catch on?**//

09/12/07 "Toward an educationally relevent theory of literacy learning" - Brian Cambourne

Was it just me or did this article make a lot of sense to anyone else? **//It's a great article--clear and sensible.//** Maybe it was because I was fully awake and in a good mood when I read it! Or maybe it was just nice to see an author put in lots of stuff about application/practice, instead of just theories and revelations. But I felt that Cambourne has a lot of good, reasonably clear-cut points that he outlines very well in this piece.

I was really intrigued in his opening about how students were always viewed as "deficient." I know for a fact that it's still true today. Perhaps the label is not as negative as it used to be, but being labeled as LD (Learning Disabled) is one of the most commonly-used terms I've seen used in education today. //**Well now they're just stigmatized by the whole "no child left behind" crap...**// Of course, now we also talk of students have "impairments" instead of them being "slow," "stupid," "retarded," etc. But Cambourne pointed out that so many of these seemingly negatively labeled children have this "deficiency" in only one certain area of learning. This reminded me of a book I just read for my Elementary Reading and Language Arts Methods class (got to love when classes overlap!) The book detailed the process of a professor teaching an illiterate mother and her illiterate son to read. The mother had gone through seventh grade in public school and had made it through almost thirty years of her life not being able to read. And yet, she was still able to live her life, get around, pay the bills, buy groceries, and take care of her family. Granted, she had to have help whenever she wanted to read anything (signs, bills, notes, etc.) But somehow she managed to get by with what most people would consider to be a great deficiency. **//And we can imagine that this woman was "literate" in many areas where others of us would be highly deficient. Makes you question the idea of literacy, doesn't it?//**

Perhaps another reason why I liked this article was because I felt that so much of it overlapped with what I've been taught in my Edcuation/Linguistics courses here at Alma. Cheesy, but true. //**if it's good, you'll hear it over and over.**// The processes of literacy learning made sense to me and I can see them actually working in a classroom or elsewhere. Cambourne's conditions of learning (immersion,deomstration, engagement, expectations, responisbility, approximations, employment, and response) seemed to be right on. I believe the following statement to be very true from my experiences working with children: ". . . if students didn't engage with language, no learning could occur." How can you teach someone unwilling to learn? Regardless of their "deficits," someone that does not engage is not giving themselves a chance to learn or anyone else a chance to truly teach in my opinion. //**On the other hand, do you think it's possible for someone to be immersed but not engaged yet still learn? Imagine moving to France, for example. If you lived there, immersed in the language, you'd learn it whether you were "engaged" and trying to or not, wouldn't you? Or would you? Sounds like a fun research project...**//