Steven Singer’s post is part of the series that Anthony Cody is running on his blog about the importance of the arts in education.
He writes:
Sometimes in public school you’ve just got to cut the crap.
No testing. No close reading. No multiple choice nonsense.
Get back to basics – pass out notebooks, crack them open and students just write.
Not an essay. Not a formal narrative. Not an official document. Just pick up a pencil and see where your imagination takes you.
You’d be surprised the places you’ll go.
You might invent a new superhero and describe her adventures in a marshmallow wonderland. You might create a television show about strangers trapped in an elevator. You might imagine what life would be like if you were no bigger than a flea.
Or you might write about things closer to home. You might describe what it’s like to have to take care of your three younger brothers and sisters after school until just before bedtime when your mom comes back from her third minimum wage job. You might chronicle the dangers of walking home after dismissal where drug dealers rule certain corners and gangs patrol the alleys. You might report on where you got those black and blue marks on your arms, your shoulders, places no one can see when you’re fully clothed.
My class is not for the academic all stars. It’s for children from impoverished families, kids with mostly black and brown skin and test scores that threaten to close their school and put me out of work.
So all these topics and more are fair game. You can write about pretty much whatever you want. I might give you something to get you started. I might ask you a question to get you thinking, or try to challenge you to write about something you’ve never thought about or to avoid certain words or phrases that are just too darn obvious. I might ask your opinion of something in the news or what you think about the school dress code or get your thoughts about how things could improve.
Because I actually care what you think.
Methinks that Steven is thinking of the famous line by David Coleman, architect of the Common Core standards, who once said that when you grow up, you learn that no one gives a —- what you think or feel. Steven Singer cares what his students think and feel. He wants them to think and feel.
He writes:
At times like these, I’m not asking you to dig through a nonfiction text or try to interpret a famous literary icon’s grasp of figurative language. It’s not the author’s opinion that matters – it’s yours – because you are the author. Yes, YOU.
You matter. Your thoughts matter. Your feelings. YOU MATTER!
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
the famous line by David Coleman, architect of the Common Core standards, who once said that when you grow up, you learn that no one gives a —- what you think or feel. ”
Who actually believes that that is a “normal” attitude for someone to have, especially when they were in charge of writing standards for millions of school children?
In my non-psychologist opinion, I’d call it “deeply disturbed”, especially given that it essentially came out of left field.
I’d call it one of the few honest statements Coleman, or any other so-called reformer, has ever made.
I will say that schools have done a great job of killing the process of writing… And I won’t blame it all on reform – but reform makes it far worse.
Was talking with my oldest last night who starts with writing challenges (dyslexia to begin with). But his comment is: “Dad. All these other kids know how to write drivel that fills 3-5 pages. And they good grades for it. But I just can’t do that. What I want to write is what I think. And when I do that, I get graded down.”
I’d dismiss it as student frustration. But he’s right. He sees clearly and is highly articulate. He is highly visual and will seek a career in a visual field. But he’s been taught a tortured writing process that kills his ability to communicate in writing.
Orwell is reported to have said “I never put pencil to paper until I SEE what I want to write”. Why don’t schools help students write short pithy things by “seeing” before they write?
So I love the comments in this post. But there’s an even more serious way where I think we’re lost.
—>The point of writing is to communicate what someone thinks, sees, feels, hopes, … It’s personal and internal.
I find the students I work with write better when they spend most of their time figuring out what they have to communicate. NOT when they spend all their time sorting out semi-colons, paragraph breaks, and more. (Of course, the Journalism majors I know quickly found out that semi-colons were more important than what they had to say – but that’s a unique field.)
And, finally, what standardized testing can NEVER understand is…whether a student communicates well in writing.
“But he’s been taught a tortured writing process that kills his ability to communicate in writing.”
I bet he got taught the five paragraph essay format, which isn’t bad except when it is considered to be “the way” to write an essay. It is useful for helping children learn how to support their ideas. It is useful for helping them articulate an idea. It is not in and of itself great writing. Punctuation is a visual tool to replace all the auditory cues we get in spoken language. If I am speaking clearly, everyone knows when I pause, when I am asking a question, or when I am adding a little aside. Punctuation should be treated as our attempt to turn these auditory cues into visual cues. We may play with them in the editorial and proofreading processes to make our thought process clearer. The thinking behind the writing is the most important piece. I am sorry your son run afoul of a system that values a rigid format above the thinking that is the core of writing
Agreed 2old2teach… The start was with the 5 paragraph layout. I’m sure some students like the layout – it gives them a way to “fill in the blanks”.
I know I don’t like anything of the sort for my own writing. And in his case, he wrote a quite brilliant 5 paragraph piece for social studies – except he didn’t align his writing with the 5. The opening intro was an opening – not an intro – because a true intro would have been bad writing for communication.
AND… his student teacher graded him down. So that what should have received a B+ or A received a low C… (I write for a living so I believe I was able to be objective about the work he did.)
Sigh…
Watching how I work, I’ve concluded that lit classes focus on these structures that make teaching easier and work for 30%-40% of the class. The rest of us arrive at our brilliance non-linearly…making it hard to help us with firm structures.
The 5 paragraph format only provides a framework for beginning efforts. If a writer never moves beyond it, then their writing will remain basic. That’s not bad if you are a sixth grader. I hate to say it, but when I took a basic skills test when I was thinking of renewing elementary certification, I guessed that the grading would be based on 5 paragraph proficiency. My essay received 6/6. There were teachers there who had flunked that portion of the test. Most of them were just ignorant of the “required” format. It’s easy to grade with a rubric. Your son is lucky to have you as his parent.
Guess this is a classic example where the need for an education organization to use bureaucracy (common, constant instructions) fights against finding the thing that works best for the individual student. The schools here started, so early, to care more about 5 paragraphs than about whether the writing said anything worthwhile.
Mr. Singer, my grandchildren would love you for a teacher!!!!!!
“Just pick up a pencil and see where your imagination takes you.’
Common Core has snagged my one granddaughter especially many times for not letting her imagination sit in the driver’s seat. Already in first grade she would write fantastic imaginary stories as well as poetry. Since first grade, she comes home devastated all too often because her teacher doesn’t affirm her creative writing. She is knocked down because a non-fiction piece was assigned. She embeds the facts with a fanciful tale.
When a grandson was only three he would go into his bedroom and close the door, When his mother asked him what was wrong he responded that he needed quiet time to think about his story.
Having been read to since infancy all my grandchildren have phenomenal imaginations but Common Core doesn’t support the imagination. You can’t evaluate that on a standardized test.
Mr. Singer, with you as a teacher, my grandchildren would have a party everyday – you would fill their sails so they could fly to the highest heights with their imagination.
BEAUTIFUL!!! I wish I had said i t.
History’s greatest minds have said very similar things. Do we believe in our humanity and promote the things which make us human or promote the things which make us “its” to work for those people who are in power? Are our children to be raised as pack animals as slaves or indentured servants for the powerful or raised to their highest potential as human beings.
We educate people, we train animals. At least that used to be the thought.
YES!!! THIS!!!!!
When I was in school, I lived for those times when the teacher let us write whatever we wanted.