SCET Journal 2020

Reconsidering

Our Practice

How Veteran Teachers Can “Do Better” by Learning from Novices: One Teacher’s Experiences with Writing Instruction

Caitlin Rasmussen & Victoria Oglan

“When you know better, you do better.” ~Maya Angelou In 2006, I [first author] graduated from college with a B.A. in English and thought I knew it all. I then be- gan an M.A.T. program, but midway through the sum- mer semester, I was offered a teaching position with an option for alternative certification. So, at age 22, having never taken a pedagogy methods course and having never stepped foot in a public high school, I began working as a full-time English teacher at a high school in a low-income, high-minority suburb of a large southeastern city. I loved this job and worked hard at it, but I real- ized that I did not know what I was doing. I had little knowledge of adolescent psychology, classroom management, instructional practices, or culturally relevant pedagogies. Everything was trial and error, but being a person who learns best by experience, I did not mind. I thought I had the potential to figure out how to be a perfect teacher all by myself. Not until six years later, when I enrolled in an M.Ed. program did I begin to recognize that an enormous body of research exists to inform teachers about what works and does not work in education. Flash forward to the present, where I am in the fourth year of a Ph.D. in Teaching and Learning program, and after courses on curriculum theory, epistemologies, critical pedagogy, and research methods, I have increased my knowledge of best practices and the theoretical underpinnings which govern what we as teachers do and why. Thinking I now knew and did better than most teachers, I was excited to begin the teaching intern- ship component of the doctoral program in the fall. My research interests nestle the intersection of litera- cies and travel abroad, so being a teaching assistant in a writing methods course might have seemed like a strange choice, but I felt confident that as a 13 year veteran English teacher who had mastered the art of teaching grammar, test prep, and the five-para- graph essay, I would have much to offer the graduate

pre-service teachers; this mindset could not have been more misguided. When the class began, I realized I would glean far more from the course than I could give to it. It be- came evident my teaching methods were based on a traditional model of teaching writing that no longer served a diverse population of students. However, because I am hard working and open to change, I am learning and growing from being around the pre-ser- vice teachers. I can, want, and have learned to “do better” because of them, but I might be the excep- tion. When it came to teaching writing, I had an excuse: I did not know better. Now that I do know better— know from theory, praxis, peers, mentorships—I can do better. But what happens when teachers know better but do not do better? Or what if they think they know best but are misguided? What if they once did better but now do worse? This is the phenomenon I have observed since beginning my teaching assistant experience. I have an eye now for best practices in the teaching of writ- ing, but I have not and do not regularly see them in practice. I do not understand how very few teachers with whom I have worked—including myself —fail, refuse, or do not know to use the strategies offered in writing methods courses. We know what research suggests: writer’s workshop works; error-correction disheartens budding writers; formulaic writing fails to translate into the real-world. But what do we see in classrooms: five-paragraph essays, grammar work- sheets, and teaching to the test. There exists a disconnect in what pre-service teachers learn about how to teach writing and what veteran teachers do in the classroom. My questions are: How do novice and veteran teachers’ perspec- tives about writing instruction differ? What is the nature of this disconnect? And what solutions exist for bridging the gap? Statement of Problem and Research Question

South Carolina English Teacher

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