Drill and kill won't teach writing skills!

If you've read a decent amount of my blog posts you should hopefully realize a few things about me as a teacher:

1. I don't like drill and kill work
2. I don't like tests - I prefer performance based evaluation
3. If something is not working - I want to find a new way to approach the issue

I can only speak for ,y school, but I am wondering if it is like this in most places. We have an extreme overemphasis on drill and kill, prescriptive grammar instruction. Students in almost every English class are given pages and pages of grammar worksheets as well as test after test on their memorization of the parts of speech and writing conventions.

The problem is that memorization is not internalization - it's not functional knowledge. The students do not become better writers because they can underline the subject of a basic sentence, double underline the predicate, or cross out any
prepositional phrases. They become better writers by writing, then revising, then getting revisions (and explanations for those revisions) from a more skilled and educated writer.

This is really hitting a sore spot for me right now because I have students who will have taken my class in the 6th grade come to me the next year and accuse me of teaching them nothing. Why? Because they have gone to a teacher who believes that learning is the preposition song as opposed to sitting by me - literally - as we pick through their writing to improve it. They are being inundated with worksheets as opposed to doing a research project that is synthesized into a documentary film and then a research paper.

The worst part of it all is that the standardized tests that I HATE back me up on all of this. Our school is the highest performing middle school in our district - I Think our API was a 908 the last 2 years - and the English department has plateaued at 88%. Our biggest area of need? Grammar - across the board - not just my classes.

Obviously something needs to change.

I would love any input on what the world out there thinks about my grammar debate and if you believe that I am right or wrong. Some clarity on the matter is greatly needed.

Teach grammar, expect perfection?

A hot button issue in the English department at my school is the teaching of grammar.

Let me be clear - the issue is on the expectation of prescriptively and directly teaching grammar to students via lecture and worksheets.

To be up front about this - I do not agree with it on any level. There are many reasons why, which would make for another blog post all in itself, a lengthy one at that. But, to sum it up, hopefully, it's because not all students need all grammar and learning it through direct instruction makes no clear connection or transfer to their work.

But, I think there is another huge issue with this. It seems from my perspective, based on the conversations that the department has had surrounding ideas like accountability and expectations, that we are expecting our students to stop making mistakes.

It comes down to the idea that if I've taught my students something, then they are accountable for that knowledge or skill and they are expected to demonstrate or perform it perfectly from now on.

This may or may not be their true and actual expectation, but it has to say something if that's what is coming across to me, at least.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but I make mistakes all of the time. I even make mistakes when I'm doing something that is ridiculously simple and something that I have done over and over already. But, I'm also human.

At the same time though, if I make a mistake, or if any of my students make a mistake, the accountability that they should feel and the expectation that they should have should be that they should look over their work, find their mistakes, and correct them. We need to learn from mistakes and fix mistakes, not be punished for them.

Bottom line - it is my belief that grammar should be taught as needed, when a clear pattern has arisen in a class or in an individual student's writing that necessitates the lesson. It should also be learned on a case by case basis through the student editing and revising their own writing. It should ALSO be learned through the student reading the works of other writers and absorbing through those experiences all that writing has to offer.

If you want students to write and write well then they need to do two things - read and WRITE.

I haven't abolished homework - I never gave any...

When I first became a teacher I felt a real internal struggle - I couldn't figure out what to give my students for homework. The system of assigning homework was so ingrained in me that I thought it was literally a job requirement.

So, I turned to fellow teachers who gave me worksheets, grammar practice, and links to websites to create word searches and crossword puzzles.

WHY WAS I DOING THIS???

Most people would probably view my personality as more of a leadership role, but I know how to follow when I need. As a student teacher and a beginning teacher I felt a real need to follow, to fit in, to be a "Teacher." But, that's not me. It wasn't really me then, it just felt like the person I needed to be at the time, the face I had to put on for my own personal good.

Recently, John T. Spencer wrote a blog post about why he loves teaching and it struck me profoundly. I'm always trying to explain and qualify teaching to my friends and people who don't really understand what I do. But, as John describes, the reason that I love teaching is that I love teaching.

So, how do my students feel about the classes I teach? I always tell people that if they walk away loving what we do, that's about 80% of my job. But, you can't be doing it ALL THE TIME. That's where abolishing homework comes in.

Students need their time away from school work, away from being told what to do, away from having deadlines and sheets to fill in and essays to write. They need time to be students. Especially in the community where I teach - most students have multiple after school commitments that are non-school related every week. How can they balance that, homework, school work, family, and just plain regular fun?

Dump the homework, at least that's what I say. If you can give me some sort of logical reasoning as to why students NEED homework for their growth as learners and as people, I would love to hear it. If not, then I suggest you hop on over to this pledge sheet and put your name down on the list of teachers who are going to let students have their lives back.

Do the Changes in My Teaching Make a Difference?

At this point, all I can really offer is anecdotal evidence. I don't have a research grant, or a research team, or even the personal interest to conduct research. I'm a teacher, not a researcher. But, I do have some things to share about the effects of the changes that I've made to my classroom instruction.

Before sharing the evidence, I should share some of the differences.

Writing:

• Teaching someone how to be a great writer is akin, in my mind, to teaching someone how to be a great singer. You can provide them with the basics, you can provide them with exercises, but eventually, they have to find their own voice, their own genre, their own direction. You can't just feed it to them. The same happens with writing. 
• In my classes, students are given very loose instructions for their writing. In addition, they create their own goals for their writing, which are then amended, at least once, and then adapted into commitments. It takes a while, but it's important. The students need to individualize themselves.
• In addition, I never tell them what to write about. The closest that we come to that is if the class votes on an overall, very general, topic for everyone and then groups choose sub topics.
• Format is a big deal in most English classes and it is in mine as well, but not in the traditional sense. My students are encouraged to seek out new formats for their writing that will engage them. Want to write a comic book? OK. Want to write a story so you can then script it into a film, film it, and then present it to the class? Why not? The goal is to teach students to fluently and coherently tell a story that makes sense to other people. How do those formats fail to accomplish that goal?

There are other things in my class that have changed over time, but the biggest aspect to the picture is the freedom for students to customize their work, their projects, and their learning. This happens when they come up with project ideas, writing ideas, format ideas, seek out help and collaboration from other students, seek out my help when they need it (HUGE SKILL IN ITSELF, FINDING HELP).

I DON'T TELL THEM WHAT TO DO. I guide them toward their goals and toward fulfilling the commitments that they make along the way. Learners who can do that can do pretty much anything.

On to the evidence.

Teachers - My best friend teacher Jean tells me this year that she can see differences in the students that had me for English the previous year.

• They don't ask nit-picky questions - where does my name go on the paper, how much do you want me to write, what font should it be in, what is the due date...?
• Those questions CAN have their place, but if teachers really want those things, they should hand out a manual at the beginning of a course for the students to follow
•  They think about things more deeply without being prompted
• When analyzing literature they are willing to pipe up and throw something out there without the fear of failing - they are not failure averse, they have begun to learn how to embrace

My other teacher friend, Cheryl, told me last year that she could see differences in the students I shared with her.

• They would look for opportunities to extend projects
• Not so much as they want to do more work, but they saw new opportunities and aspects that could be explored in ways that made everything so much more interesting

Parents - Parents like to drop anecdotal comments to teachers all the time. Sometimes constructive, sometimes in praise, sometimes out of confusion. However, I have been given some very good comments.

• The best comment that any teacher can get from a parent is that their student loves the class
• It's not a love of it being easy, but a love of it being interesting, or even entertaining. It's a love of getting them to think.
• One parent, very recently, said this: "As I would tell my wife you brought [our son] closer to learning than the traditional method of "enforcing" learning."
• As Daniel Pink, and many others in similar fields, would say, you can't force anyone to do anything, you can only set up a best case scenario situation that can encourage them, hopefully intrinsically, to do something. I can't enforce learning, I can only encourage it through allowing the students to learn as opposed to constantly being taught.

These things are all really exciting for me, but I'm always interested in what others think. How do you teach your classes? Better yet, how do you look back at your previous classes and see what you can, or even need, to change?

Comments below would be great!

What co-teaching has done for me!

This year I started out by being informed that one of my classes was going to be co-taught.  At first I really didn't know how to handle that notion.  I'm a pretty free thinker and I like to keep things loose with my classes.  That doesn't mean that I am one of those fly without a plan kind of people, but if something isn't working, or if something strikes me as interesting, I will divert.  But, can that be done with a co-teacher?  Do I need to ask their permission before I make every move?  I wasn't really sure, and I think that is what scared me.

(Picture is not of myself or my co-teacher) 

At this point, I can say, I was wrong.  My co-teacher is one of the best things that has happened to me as a teacher.  She is knowledgeable in an area that most teachers with my level of experience (this is year 4) know little about (special education), and she is incredibly flexible, helpful, and laughs at my jokes (mostly 80's movie references my students are too young to understand).  But, why the apprehension?

Everything I have ever read about co-teaching has said one thing: Co-teaching should be done by choice.  In some ways I agree with the sentiment.  Major changes to your teaching are not things you want to leave up to another person.  However, how many teachers out there, already set in their ways, would choose to have another teacher come into the room and share their responsibilities, their power, on an equal level?  If I had not been forced into co-teaching, I would never have learned its uses, its benefits.

First Benefit: 2 Adults in the room.  Feeling outnumbered by your students?  Well, divide the odds in half and it makes a big difference.  You could be able to give two individual students one on one attention - simultaneously.  It doesn't seem like much, but you have literally doubled your productivity.  Also, there are two teachers to do the most annoying things that we don't like dealing with.  For example: I don't have to hand select and approve every single person to go to the restroom anymore.  We both do it!

Second Benefit: Shared instruction.  Each of us has our own brain.  Obvious, right?  However, we both look at our lessons in different ways.  My co-teacher is able to explain things to students in ways that I had never thought of because she is not me.  In addition, we are teachers of two different subjects.  She is actually in the room because of the special education population.  Because of that she is an expert on how to differentiate to those students.  This makes them more likely to succeed.  Not only that, but she is able to translate their Individualized Education Plans to me.

Third Benefit (possibly the best): Shared responsibilities.  As an English teacher I get a lot of work to grade.  My co-teacher said the greatest 5 words to me that I have ever heard, "I can grade this class's papers."  Though I will be providing input and making sure that our grading is on the same page, this is going to be a HUGE weight lifted from me this year.  Day to day assignments will still be graded by me in the class since she has 3 others she is co-teaching, but the papers are always any teacher's albatross.  We have a lot of trouble allowing ourselves to be helped.  Try letting someone help you today, you'll love it!

Co-teaching has been a scary endeavor, but it has so far been quite rewarding.  It is NOT for everyone, but I am willing to suggest that everyone should at least try it, given the opportunity.  Like anything else in education you have to give it a shot, see if it can work for your curriculum, your teaching style, maybe even your ego.  If it doesn't, call it a failure and move on.  If it does, and I bet it will, you will love everything you have to gain.

There is one thing to note.  Just like in a marriage, it takes two to make it work.  Both teachers in the co-teaching setting need to share the responsibilities and treat one another as equals.  If either side cannot handle the symbiotic relationship that must be formed, then it will be doomed from the beginning.

Interested in learning more about co-teaching?

Try this link to a description of what co-teaching is, and almost more importantly, is not
CLICK HERE

Also, here is the link to Dr. Marilyn Friend, an expert in co-teaching.