How's It Going?

I’ve never considered myself to be a writing guru. In fact, writing was one of the hardest subjects for me teach. I had such different ideas of writing and what it was to look like in a lower grades elementary classroom. However reading, “how’s it going?” is helping to feel more confident in the area of writing instruction.

While reading there were some things that squared with my thinking as well as some things that pointed me in new directions, and some things that were left circling in my mind. Being that I was not as confident in this area, I think that in relation to other course readings that there were more things that pointed me in new directions and were left circling in my mind as opposed to things that squared with my thinking.

One thing that squared with my thinking was, "Although today I see conferences as a means to get to know students and as a powerful way of teaching them to be better writers, I have never stopped considering these one-on-one talks as conversations" (Anderson, 2000, p. 6). I do use conferencing time as a way to hold individual conversations with my students. Often times, I do find; however, that we sometimes get distracted by what we’re talking about and lose focus on what it is that we are supposed to be conferring about as writers. Being that we are a family in our classroom, we often times get off track talking about things but I find that those seem to be the things that matter to my students. Knowing that my pedagogical practice resembles that of love, I found it hard to accept Anderson’s assertion, “…we need to remember that we are writing teachers, not therapists" (Anderson, 2000, p. 8). That particular quote is one that is circling in my head.

Something that pointed me in a new direction is something that reminds me of our DRC process. The purpose of the DRC is not to change the child but rather offer solutions for the teacher to help the child. Anderson references Calkins (1994) stating, “…Our decisions must be guided by ‘what might help this writer’ rather than ‘what might help this writing’. If the piece of writing gets better but the writer has learned nothing that will help him or her on another piece, then the conference was a waste of everyone’s time” (Anderson, 2000, p. 8). I was able to make a connection with these two things because I gathered that the purpose of writing conferencing isn’t to change the writing, rather off strategies to the writer so that they are better equipped moving forward.

Another thing that pointed me in a new direction with writers workshop is Anderson’s reference to Don Murray (1985), “[Conferences] are not mini-lectures but the working talk of fellow writers sharing their experience with the writing process.  At times, of course, they will be teachers student, master and apprentice, if you want, but most of the time they will be remarkably close to peers, because each writer, no matter how experiences, begins again with a draft” (Anderson, 2000, p.7).  I enjoy this quote because it supports everything we have been learning in our program and especially Freire’s notion that our students our not empty vessels and we are not simply depositing information to them. Just as we are writers so are our students and it is important that we remind them of that as they build confidence and writing stamina.

As Anderson, “I finally realized that my role in a conference is to find out from students what work they are doing as writers and then teach them how to do that work better” (Anderson, 2000, p. 25). Our students know what they need them. If we listen to them in conferencing and by their work, we will better be able to help them.