Mark McBeth on Sharing Assignments
To join the LBW project, teachers sent in an assignment which they felt represented their teaching style. Even before the sessions began, it was obvious by reading these classroom descriptions that some very thoughtful and talented instructors were going to bring a lot to the table that LBW had set — a sort of pedagogical feast, so to speak. One participant submitted the following classroom exercise:
Last year I taught a course in the ESL department for ninth graders with low literacy skills. I worked with these students for two forty-minute periods each day. I observed that the majority of students were not doing any homework and I became more and more frustrated by the fact that they were unprepared for class day after day. I was curious to know what exactly they were doing after school that took so much of their time, so I started asking them. I asked them to keep a record of the things they were doing at home. I discovered that most of them spent several hours a day watching T.V. That's when I decided to create an inquiry-based project with "television" as our topic. The rationale for the project was for each of us to become more aware of how we spend our free time, to evaluate the effects that television has on our lives, to consider alternatives to watching T.V., and then to make more conscious choices about our television viewing time. My hope was that increased awareness would lead to a reduction of the time spent watching T.V. and perhaps lead to an increase in the time spent doing homework.
For me, this teacher's assignment pays attention to the students directly in front of her and to whatever issues that might deter them from academic achievement. Instead of allowing her frustrations to get the best of her, she uses the students' free-time activities (they are going to watch TV anyway) as a basis for her lesson. She continues later to tell of the results of this television assignment:
Providing the students with different source materials led them to be more critical thinkers and gave us something "meaty" to read and write about. Not surprisingly, everyone had something to say. Since the topic was so personal, students became introspective. Students who were previously unwilling to write a paragraph were writing three to five pages for the final project and the pieces they wrote were incredibly thoughtful and creative. In addition to all that, I know from reading their journals that some of their television viewing behaviors changed, too!
Her ingenious teaching strategy was only one example of the fine and innovative assignments submitted by participants.
Beyond just being practical applications of teaching and learning, their stories were warm, amusing, touching, sometimes sad, and very enlightening. Teaching, as portrayed by these instructors, is an occupation in which human interaction remains key to the endeavor. Without attending to both the intellect and the emotions of the classroom members, a teacher cannot hope to reach students in a productive way, nor can they expect their students to engage in the activities which will help them to intellectually develop. Furthermore, as practitioners of the classroom, they understood that their work needed constant inquiry if it was to serve their students and, accordingly, if it was to allow them to evolve as teachers; this is what made them such exceptional educators and so appropriate for this joint high school/college exploration.
Again, to reiterate an important theme of LBW, classroom assignments and practice must always be devised with a particular group of students in mind. What works for one group could fail with another. We always tell our students to be aware of their audience and the advice holds true for teaching as well. LBW shares these assignments and writing activities, hoping you will find useful ways to adapt them for the students you instruct.
...Further Thoughts on LBW Teaching Assignments
With this group of assignments, I want to show a number of classroom assignments and activities that teachers in LBW devised which enable students to progress while also giving them a sense of pleasure about their work. As Lex Runciman states, "When we do acknowledge pleasure or satisfaction arising from the writing process, we tend to assign it to literary writers whom many of us still view as, by definition, loftier than we are, certainly loftier than our students" (202). Don't students deserve to feel the pleasure of the text?
We often assume that hard work must be accompanied by displeasure and discomfort. Dealing with unfamiliar material that may challenge one's sense of self in the world can be discomforting, but it can also be enlightening. For most eager undergraduates, this kind of introspective writing work creates for them an incredible amount of security and pleasure when offered as manageable tasks and assignments. Most often when they enjoy the writing process, a more enjoyable, more readable product happens; the self-satisfaction gained by writers in making the product helps them understand a "real" relationship with their audience, one in which responsibility to the reader's understanding is central. They think, "I enjoyed writing this piece of writing. I want you to enjoy reading it as well."
The LBW teachers often found creative and divergent ways to approach the tasks they asked their students to do. Sometimes they needed to transfer knowledge deemed required by their local institutions, and sometimes they wanted their students to practice a certain linguistic skill that would prove beneficial for later study. In these assignments teachers set up structures in which students could investigate a topic, and simultaneously learn about themselves and their world. Underlying these assignments is teacherly skill about making students agents of action. Students were opened to the possibility of their own meaning-making and, therefore, had to be accountable for their own composing performances and their writing products.
Almost all assignments with which I came in contact during LBW proposed a similar strategy with their students. If they could create pedagogical situations in which students achieve literate behavior on their own, the students would, as a result, gain confidence in their abilities to fulfill other literate activities independently. Learning one skill perpetuated further learning.
With these LBW inspired assignments, writing did not serve the purpose of merely regurgitating information but allowed students to accumulate information, analyze it, and achieve new meaning-making. As another LBW participant eloquently put it, "One value, which has been confirmed by my LBW experience, is the emphasis on capitalizing on the personal as a means to validate my students' sense of intellectual confidence. These types of writing experiences will facilitate introspection and will allow students to consider themselves as writers with purpose, with something genuine to say." I would elaborate upon this statement to say that these types of writing experiences also validate the student's role in educational systems that oft times make them invisible and voiceless. Students truly gain intellectual confidence and power.
There were other more conventional assignments produced by LBW teachers, but their more traditional approach was a conscious decision by the teacher. The teacher who worked with mentally and emotionally challenged students kept his lessons very controlled because his students needed that stable structure. He wrote:
I work with moderately to severely learning disabled young adults in a career education environment. Up until about ten years ago it was presumed that this population would never learn how to read and write to function in the larger society and therefore the educational design became one of obtaining and maintaining employment. Many of my students lack the educational background and success to complete many of the simple tasks students often negotiate and therefore require a large amount of 1:1 time that only a specialized environment can provide.
In a city school, which cannot provide adequate private office space, he designated a place where he could meet with individual students to discuss their writing. Having their writing taken seriously was a consideration probably not often done prior to this exercise. The teacher continues:
During our first couple of sessions together at LBW, the group began to discuss what "Literacy" and or "Reading" meant to us and how that relates to our shared history.... I began to think of my current objective for my students. It was African American History month and I wanted my students exposed to some historical information as well as basic research skills. At the same time I wanted them focused on our daily activities of organization, handwriting, focus, etc. I wanted them working on their individual writing skills and needed an opportunity to respond to their writing in a very different way than they were accustomed to.
The "Office Visits" designed for my students grew out of discussions at LBW. They provided us with a predetermined date and time that we would be discussing their work. This not only served as a reminder to keep my students working but also gave me the opportunity to get to know the voice behind the writer. It informed my daily practice and I was able to provide to my students added structure and feedback.
Although the students this teacher works with have very different obstacles than the rest of our LBW group, he found a way to incorporate the student-teacher teamwork that we discussed at LBW. He engaged his underprepared students in the process of literacy by reevaluating their needs as well as his own. They developed together as a learning cooperative.
I conclude with another quote from a Brooklyn LBW participant whose opinion parallels one which I heard as an ongoing tenet in the writing and talk of all the LBW groups:
[The] best learning takes place when we begin where the students are. For me, this means getting a sense of where we are (and keep looking there) — individually and as members of various groups. Learning also begins where I am/my teaching is. It is important to be open about this with the students. I believe that we do teach who we are and students should have access to this information. Pedagogy, in general, should be made as transparent as possible.
As in the assignments exemplified in this section and as this teachers reiterates, the students must be the prime initiators and agents in their processes of learning and knowing. When the LBW participant said pedagogy should be transparent I think she meant that the students should be made cognizant of the educational goals expected of them, and that their teachers should have a self-awareness that allows them to clearly see the relationships between themselves, their institutions, and their students. By questioning the structures and accepted ideals of education and reviewing their histories and roles within those educational environments, teachers can better "place" themselves within the position of their students and teach from an intersubjectivity that better ensure students' interplay and motivation. In this way, a clarity of motives is established that can be fulfilled by all the players in the educational game.
Works Cited
Brook, Robert
E. Writing and Sense of Self: Identity Negotiations
in Writing Workshops. Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers
of English, 1991.
Runciman,
Lex. "Fun?" Landmark Essays on Writing Process.
Ed. Sondra Perl. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1994. 199-205.