kitchen table math, the sequel

Before I actually became a first-year teacher, I was all about the workshop model. I thought it would be helpful, as a new teacher, to have a script of sorts to follow. After all, every mini lesson sounds a little something like this, but with all the blanks filled in:

"Boys and girls, we have been working hard on _____. Today I want to teach you that ____. Let me show you what I mean. ________. Boys and girls, did you see the way I ______? Now let's try it together. Turn and talk to your partner about _______. Boys and girls, today and every day I want you to remember that _______. Now off you go!"

A month and a half into the school year, the workshop model is pretty much the bane of my existence. Remembering the script and keeping the mini lesson to a scant 10 minutes is not as easy as it sounds. Neither is trying to shoehorn all the aspects of my lesson into the workshop model framework. I'm used to teaching in a style where I ask lots of questions of my students and invite lots of discussion. During the workshop model mini lesson, there are no questions allowed from the students and no discussion (except during the active engagement); it's all the teacher, all the time. I see my students raise their hands with these hopeful looks on their faces because they have something they want to share or something they have a question about, and it breaks my heart to keep saying, "Hands down, it's my turn now."

I think the workshop model probably does work for the population of students in the school where I teach. After all, taking advantage of those "teachable moments" that lead the lesson astray can be really confusing for students whose native language is not English, like the students at my school. But at the same time, the workshop model feels really one-sided. I can tell that there are kids who are confused, who aren't getting it, and I'm supposed to pull those kids for a 2-minute "re-teach" at the rug instead of changing tack and trying a different method?

This weekend, I took two New York State teaching certification exams (because my teaching license is from another state, I have to pass New York's exams to get my New York license). Mostly they were a joke, but they included lots of samples of class discussions -- and I realized that's something I miss. In my workshop model lessons, there's no back and forth, no "What do you think?", no "Who else has an idea about this?" I don't get to invite my students' opinions, their knowledge, their ideas. All I get to do is tell them how to punctuate their sentences and then eavesdrop on them while they try it. And even though I allegedly have more freedom as a cluster teacher, I've still been told by the powers that be that every class I teach should start with a mini lesson. It's hard enough being a first-year teacher as it is, but trying to shoehorn every lesson into a framework I'm not all that comfortable with is overwhelming.

Apparently the workshop model is mandated for use in schools throughout New York City, so...I should use it or lose it, I guess? Or I should, as someone suggested, plan two lessons: one to be taught the way I want to teach, and one workshop model to pull out when I'm being observed.

I don't think I'm ready to be that much of a renegade just yet.

On an unrelated note, I love field trip days, because they let me get to see the best of my class. (i.e., my students are surprisingly enjoyable when I am not forcing the workshop model down their throats!)

I have anecdotal evidence for that, and then some. The scenario you describe was happening to A. She was developing acute writing phobia by fourth grade. This extremely verbal, well read, talkative child would have almost nothing to say when presented with a writing assignment or prompt. She would virtually shut down. Her confidence was almost completely eroded. Having a clear road map has been life altering. She's actually relishing her writing assignments and no longer goes around saying "I'm a terrible writer." This is where we were not too long ago. What's most amazing is how quickly things have turned around.

[snip]

Last year in fourth grade there were mostly shoebox type "writing" projects dispersed through the year. There was one big writing project about a U.S. state that was to be done completely at school which ended up a total disaster. The rest were really psuedo-writing with it becoming more of a presentation that didn't really require structured writing (she dressed up and acted out the characters of Sacagawea and Elizabeth Blackwell.)

It got more serious around testing time in the spring when everything was in preparation for the CMTs. It got to the point that this child, who reads and comprehends at about a twelth grade level, was having breakdowns over short answer response questions at the fourth grade level. This shouldn't have happened, but it did.

There were no traditional book reports and I rarely saw drafts going through any type of editing process. There just didn't appear to be a method for teaching writing going on at all. She was overwhelmed and really began to hate anything having to do with writing.

I agree that remediation with the right methods can make a world of difference in a short amount of time, particularly if the child is a good reader. Having a process puts it all together and it just sort of "clicks".

(insert dream sequence here)

[on the board]

Objective: We will learn how to bake a cake.
Do Now: What is a cake? Describe 3 characteristics of a good cake.

Lesson:

Mr. V: “OK, class, let’s look at the Do Now. A lot of you put down characteristics about what a cake should look like, and that’s great. Now, let’s look at this cake.”

[puts up cake]

“What do you notice?”

Student1: “It has pink frosting on it.”
Mr. V: “Yes, what else?”
Student2: “It looks good.”
Mr. V: “OK, you’re getting there. Anything else?”
Student3: “It’s cylindrical about a y-axis.”
Mr. V: “Hmm, OK. I’m glad you’re thinking about it. Now, I need a volunteer.”

In this necessarily brief essay, I argue again that the supposed revolution in composition has in fact been a conventional campaign for academic status and privilege-a campaign that has eventuated in a culture richly comic. Instead of the compositionists' struggle for upward mobility in the academic pecking order, I propose 1) a meltdown of academia's detestable frozen hierarchies by the abolition of rank and tenure, 2) the formation of militant, inclusive unions of faculty with staff to battle swarming administrators in corporatized education, and 3) the serious teaching of the general-purpose prose that our students need and our colleagues want. Proposal, of course, isn't prophecy; but something is accomplished just by speaking the officially unspeakable-namely, that composition's "revolution" has left all the old hierarchies intact while producing a new group of hierarchs, the boss compositionists. I make no apologies for undignified concern with maligned Freshman English, a course whose careful teaching is infinitely more important than the further development of "composition theory."
Return to Service
by James Sledd

Reading that blurb closely, I take it as evidence for my conclusion that upward mobility for a minority of lower managers has been mistaken for deep change. The mobile managers-good professionals sincerely devoted to high principle-have lacked only the imagination to escape professionalism. They've made themselves upwardly mobile, but in so doing they've duplicated the wider society's division into haves and haven'ts. They now are boss compositionists, overseers (obishas) on Pomocompo, the plantation of postmodern composition. Under their administration, exploited field hands (TAs, part-timers, and untenurables) still teach the vast majority of the thousands of sections of the freshman course in writing.

A method for teaching writing called the "process approach" is on the increase in many school districts. Supporters of the method are admirably enthusiastic. They have publicized it widely through articles in professional journals and worked diligently to stamp out the use of other methods such as sentence combining which they call "unnatural writing" or "mechanistic." [Rousseau alert]

However, there are signs that the process approach may look better in professional articles than in practice. Recent studies show it is not particularly effective in typical school settings....

The growing use of the process approach is reflected by this statement in The Writing Report Card, the report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress on our students' writing skills:


The emphasis in writing instruction moved from the final product to the process--planning, drafting, revising, and editing. As a result, school districts across the country have begun to institute process-oriented approaches to writing instruction.


But The Writing Report Card is not able to give the process approach a high grade:


Some students did report extensive exposure to process-oriented writing activities, yet the achievement of these students was not consistently higher or lower than the achievement of those who did not receive such instruction. At all three grade levels assessed, students who said their teacheres regularly encouraged process-related activities wrote about as well as students who said their teachers did not.

For example, they have trouble with expository prose; producing clear, written summaries; or writing on demand.

Oh, yes! This is where my boys are after 3-4 years of "Writer's Workshop" (one time, my younger son had to write and rewrite the same piece for about 10 weeks).

I have so many horror stories about the process. But the end result is this: I have two otherwise academically capable kids who hate to write, who have terrible writer's blocks, and who don't know how to do expository writing at all...

And if reader's workshop had been implemented as enthusiastically as writer's workshop, I'm sure they'd both hate to read, too. Luckily, one of them escaped that fate.

I have two otherwise academically capable kids who hate to write, who have terrible writer's blocks, and who don't know how to do expository writing at all...

Same thing here, Vicki. After years of mimicing structure points to regurgitate on the state tests, my bright kid is now frozen.

So, along with all of the other stuff I have to finally force him to write, which I have done.

He even forgot cursive since no one has made him use it for years. He writes like a third grader, very labored.

Now, after having him write (and rewrite) several short bios and a couple of essays in cursive, he seems to be getting smoother and faster.