My mother passed on many traits to her children. Some of us have her jaw, strong and square; some of us have her skin, pale and freckled; and some of us have her hair, dark and curly. Other siblings have inherited her aversion to messiness and her anxiety about heights. I have had the misfortune of inheriting one of her less desirable attributes – her telephoning phobia. To speak plainly, making a simple phone call is more terrifying than donning a string bikini and swimming through a raging river filled with piranhas and crocodiles while being shot at with deadly blow darts.
Phone neurosis continues to be a hardship throughout my adult life. I put off calling until the last possible moment, and sometimes I even resort to (Gasp!) little white lies to cover up my weakness. I refer to a recent calling incident. My school has one of those really cool antique popcorn-popping machines. As teachers, we are allowed to use it for family and neighborhood functions IF WE ASK. A few months ago I made the monumental mistake of bringing the popcorn machine to a neighborhood movie night. Everyone was intrigued and envious:
“Where did you get that? Do you think we could use it for our next (den meeting, family reunion, formal dinner party)?”
Here is where I really messed up because, in the pressure of the moment, I said, “YES.”
Now people occasionally call and say, “Do you think we could borrow the popcorn machine next week?”
The problem is that this necessitates a phone call to my school to ask if the popcorn machine is available. Notice that I say phone call. Email does not work for this particular task. So, I add the phone call to my list of things to do: sort my spices, dig up the backyard, translate The Iliad. These are all obviously top priorities and need to get done before the phone call. Day after day important things come up, and the phone call gets pushed to the bottom of the list. Suddenly it is the day of the event, and I realize I still haven’t called to ask about the popcorn popper. What am I going to tell the neighbors?
I resort to those aforementioned little white lies.
“Oh, I’m so sorry! I’ve been down with hand, foot, and mouth disease and haven’t been able to talk for a week, so I couldn’t call and reserve it.” (Unfortunately, I can only use this excuse once, so I save it for a real emergency.)
“I’ve been meaning to tell you that UDOT dug up the whole street outside my school; the phone lines have been down all week, and I couldn’t call and reserve it.” (This excuse is usually good at least once or twice a year.)
Or, my personal favorite, “I called and left a message, but Mrs. Fitzgerald never got back to me.”
I really do feel guilty about shifting the blame for my personal inadequacies onto poor Mrs. Fitzgerald, but I don’t feel guilty enough to actually make the call.
They say that karma never fails to get you in the end, and that’s what’s happening to me now. My 23-year-old daughter Alison inherited my love of literature, my dislike of cats, and my phobias about telephoning. The other day she actually paid my teenage daughter Megan ten dollars to pretend she was Alison and call BYU to ask some questions about an upcoming senior seminar. If you ask me, I think Alison got off pretty cheap.
I wonder how much I would need to pay Megan to act as my personal secretary for the rest of my life . . . The phobia is oh so real. The rest of the details may or may not be true – you decide.
I've been busily working on my reading endorsement. Here is the piece I submitted for the student anthology for my writing class:
RE-INCARNATION
A POETRY INTROSPECTION
By
Denée Tyler
This is just to say
I'm sorry I unfriended you on
Facebook.
I know it's never nice to get that
notification.
Forgive me, but I just couldn't
tolerate your posts about
angels,
visions,
divine intervention,
manifest destiny,
and Trump.
I am from the stenographer, the
sailor, the teacher, the rancher, the leader of the band, the child bride, and
the short order cook.
I am from lemons seasoned with salt,
sweet corn slathered with butter, and old fashioned popcorn oil-popped in a
pan, all served with a side of stories, Rook games, folk songs, and harmonica.
I am from wind that never ceases and
red dust that seems everywhere at once, the stench of pig on one side and the
miasma of wood pulp on the other, all smelling of money.
I am from the west coast and the
east coast and even the Gulf of Mexico, relocating again and again and leaving behind friends, memories, and a newborn infant
in a lonely grave.
I am from terrible secrets kept and
revealed, changing paths and changing lives, but never changing my love and
hope.
I see my students constantly composing: texts, notes to each other in class, silly sentences for grammar practice, lists of all varieties. I overhear the amusing and detailed things they tell each other, and I'm excited by their proficiency with words. But when they are asked to write for school, the work they turn in is generally less than stellar. There is a marked difference between their witty repartee in speaking and the dry delivery of their writing. Why is assigned student writing so often insipid, disinterested, and uninspired? In an article in the English Journal titled "Real-World Writing: Making Purpose and Audience Matter," Grant Wiggins says:
The point of writing is to have something to say and to make a difference in saying it. Rarely, however, is impact [emphasis added] the focus in writing instruction in English class. Rather, typical rubrics stress organization and mechanics; typical prompts are academic exercises of no genuine consequence; instruction typically makes the “process” formulaic rather than purposeful.
Thinking about some of the writing assignments I’ve given in the past, I recognize that my students felt that their writing didn’t exist outside of my classroom. They couldn’t understand any impact or genuine consequences that their writing might have. Could this dearth of imagination be the spark that student writing is missing? What could I do to ensure that impact – genuine consequence – exists in my classroom, writing workshops, and assessments?
Naming Audience
In an ideal world, every student piece would be published in a magazine or sent as a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. In the school world, this isn't always practical. It is still possible, however, to teach students to consider an audience as an integral part of every piece of writing. Students can’t really impact anyone with their writing if they don’t even know what audience they are writing for.
In her article "A Cure for Writer's Block: Writing for Real Audiences" from NWP's The Quarterly, Anne Rodier relates how she encourages her students to think about who might be the audience for the kind of writing they are doing. Who would care about what they have to say? As an example, in the classroom, students might write their memoir to share with a family member or a best friend. An argument might be directed to a parent or an organization. In the beginning, students often need help figuring out whom they could be writing to, but once they have someone or a group in mind, it often automatically determines the genre, form, and tone of what they are trying to write.
One additional thing that Rodier emphasizes is that even with genuine audiences, writers are still "employing craft," or in other words, writers are performing, or acting through writing, using a specifically chosen and crafted voice or persona to "tell the right story to the right person in the right way." When students are consciously considering how to reach not just any audience, but a specific audience, they are going to be more motivated to fine-tune their writing.
Informative pieces especially benefit from audience consideration. A student of mine who was writing an piece on violins remarked, “I am writing this for my cousin. She knows all about how to play a violin, but she doesn’t know how a violin is made. So, I am focusing on that.” It was interesting to see how naming an audience directed her research and her focus and made the paper come to life. She looked for something that her reader didn’t already know, a way to impact the reader, and because she did, she wrote a better paper.
Giving Choices
In my adult world, I generally choose what I want to write about. I’m often motivated to write about things I want to remember or change. When I compose a letter to my senator, it is because I have an issue to discuss that I feel strongly about. When I write in my journal, it is because I've had an experience that has touched or profoundly affected me in some way. I have a very defined purpose, so I feel (hope) that my writing will make an impact on the reader.
Students aren't always so lucky. Few of them would choose to write an argument or essay on their own. However, we can give back the power of impactful writing when we give them choice about what to write about. On TalksWithTeachers.com, Ruth Arseneault says that:
So, how do we give students choice? I think it has to go beyond a list of topics they can choose from. Students need to realize that they have choices when it comes to the way they write things as well. I have found that mentor text studies are very helpful for showing students that they can branch out beyond the five-paragraph essay and still write a powerful paper. Writers such as Rick Reilly, Leonard Pitts, and even athletes from The Players Tribune show my students that arguments don't have to follow a set structure. The claim can come at the end, or they can begin their arguments with a personal story -- and it can still work.
After the students submitted their own work, I asked them about the choices they made. One student said, “I didn’t realize that a memoir could be about an object. I chose to write about my blanket that I’ve had since I was a baby. Writing about it was actually fun, because it brought back so many memories. I chose to organize it [chronologically], but I could have done it by place, too.”
Another student said, “I hadn’t thought about how short a core memory could be. I thought I had to choose something really amazing or life changing. Reading "Chalk Face" helped me see that I could choose something kind of everyday and quick to write about that was just important to me. So, I chose to write about when my brother and I slid down our stairs on a big piece of cardboard. The whole story took about five minutes, but it’s something I will never forget.” These student reflections demonstrate that the choice of how to write was just as vital as the choice of what to write when it came to engagement.
Performing Writing
In the past year, I read an essay in front of a packed crowd, presented at UCTE, gave talks, taught lessons, and led discussions. All of these involved writing that eventually had a live audience of real people. When we make time for students to present their writing, we allow them to experience the genuine consequences of writing. Some of the many things I've tried in my classes are writing circles, debates, Socratic seminars, poetry slams, occasional papers, pecha kuchas, and even just the everyday sharing of quick writes with the rest of the class. Students had to present writing in some fashion in each of these -- from formal to informal -- and that expectation made all the difference.
An example of this happened last year when our grade level team worked together to have our students write job descriptions, resumes and applications for jobs as Santa’s elves. Some students were employers and others were the prospective employees. Tension and stakes were high for both parties, and students were highly motivated to write a great resume or detailed and concise job description because 1) other students were going to hear them read it and evaluate it (and them), and 2) they wanted the best elf job/worker (everyone wanted to make candy canes, no one wanted to clean up after the reindeer).
Part of this exercise included a job interview. Both interviewers and interviewees had an authentic experience as they wrestled with what questions to ask and what answers to give. Although no one was really getting a job at the North Pole, having a continual audience for everything they did made the assignment matter to the students. One student said, “This was one of my favorite things from last year. I worked hard on it because I knew that people in my class were going to see what I did. I don’t care as much when it’s just for the teacher. I guess I should, but I don’t.”
I also had my students debate each other as part of our argument unit. Watch below to see what two students had to say about the experience. Obviously, the opportunity to hear others and be heard themselves made them feel like they were making an impact with what they had to say.
Reaching Conclusions
In "Real Voices for Real Audiences" from The Quarterly, Joan Kernan Cone writes that student writers will always "play it safe" -- writing as little as possible, with as little voice as possible, and "writing not for an interested reader but for a mistake finder" until they have a reason not to.
I’ve found that giving students choice, finding an audience, and offering performance opportunities allows student writing to have impact – the impetus that students need to open their writing hearts and minds to us. If we don’t want to keep reading student writing that we know isn’t the best that our students can do, it is our imperative to help students find the impact their voices, thoughts, and stories could have on the world.
Authentic and Audience Friendly Writing Assessment Resources
I refer to a recent calling incident. My school has one of those really cool antique popcorn-popping machines. As teachers, we are allowed to use it for family and neighborhood functions IF WE ASK. A few months ago I made the monumental mistake of bringing the popcorn machine to a neighborhood movie night. Everyone was intrigued and envious:
