SCET Journal 2020

Reconsidering

Our Practice

effort to get to know them.” Again, it seems novices care more than veterans about students’ personalities and personal development. Conformity vs. Authenticity The most obvious way veteran teachers condone conformity is by teaching to the test. This sentiment arose repeatedly in our roundtable discussions and also in written responses. “I feel pressure to prepare students for the writing they’ll experience on test- ing,” wrote one veteran. I have also witnessed this in action. The only writing our AP Literature and AP Lan- guage students get is practice versions of the essays they will encounter on those tests. The novice teachers are must less concerned with testing: “I’m really not sure I believe that standardized tests are a great indicator of either a teacher’s ability to teach or a student’s ability to learn. If we teach the important stuff well, it seems that the testing stuff may fall into place – teaching to the test won’t work for me.” Aside from testing is the phenomenon of each teacher’s beliefs about what is good writing. Vet- eran teachers often take a prescriptive formulaic approach, more often than not some mutation of the five-paragraph essay. This type of teacher-de- termined, criterion-referenced standard for writing is problematic because it conveys a fallacy to students that there is only one way to write and they must master it. Novices share a dislike for prescriptive, formulaic writing and want students to authenticate writing. They embrace using mentor texts or allowing stu- dents to choose what they want to write and the form which best accomplishes those goals. They value the process as much as the product and they normalize writing as a struggle for all writers independent of age or experience. “We tell students to create meaning, and structure, to come up with unique ideas, to be an individual,” and “I would much rather have my students…be true to themselves and their expression of thought,” one novice shared. The veterans’ use of rubrics and traditional grades—and by contrast, the novices’ skepticism towards grading in accordance to a single standard— also speaks to the conformity versus authenticity dichotomy. “Knowing that it is possible to assess students for what they know rather than expecting

them to learn exactly what you prescribe is a great way to grade in an authentic and encouraging way” explained one novice. Veteran teachers adhere to the one size fits all approach to rubrics and grading since it seems to simplify the process. Myopic vs. Holistic Approaches Myopia figuratively connotes a lack of imagination, and the inability to see the big picture. On the flip side, to be holistic means to view the parts of some- thing as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole. In terms of their perspec- tives on teaching, the veteran teachers’ surveyed trended myopic while the novices trended holistic, and their attitudes towards the teaching of grammar, specifically. The teaching of grammar in isolation or in context remains a divisive issue among English teachers. Some veterans cite Braddock, Lloyd-Jones, and Schoer’s (1963) finding that “the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible, or even harmful effect on the improvement of writing” (pp. 37-38), and teach grammar in context only, if at all. Yet, the issue of grammar in the modern curriculum has, at times, been metaphorized as a war (Myhill & Watson, 2014; Halpern, 1997; Kamler, 1995). In my roundtable discussions, one veteran stated, “Ignoring grammar is bad!” Aside from this teacher, among those with whom I currently work, six of the ten of us teach grammar to some degree, at least four of us, includ- ing myself, in isolation, and the two I know that do not teach grammar at all are second- and fourth- year teachers, the youngest in our group. In short, teaching grammar in isolation, which I categorize as myopic rather than holistic because its role in a larger context is ignored, correlates with the teachers’ years of experience. Novices appear more united in their gram- mar-in-context-only stance. Not one of them indi- cated they would teach grammar in isolation. One wrote, “Ideally, grammar should always be taught in context,” and “We don’t have to police grammar mistakes.” They believe writing is about ideas not spelling and grammar which is a more holistic view of writing. “I hope that someday I can teach writing in a holistic, unforced, and natural way so my stu- dents can be flexible and prepared writers,” wrote one novice.

South Carolina English Teacher

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