I am constantly defending public schools against people who are critical of teachers, but who don't have any first hand experience in the classroom themselves. The world is full of people who know all about how things should be done in many areas they have no knowledge about. I always wondered how these people got so smart. When I was coaching basketball I met these guys after every loss. It is surprising how ordinary people, not even "has beens" but the "never was" players, people who never even tried to coach the game, somehow believed they knew all about what should be done to, "get these kids on the right track." But it wasn't until I got interested in teaching writing that I met-the non-writer writing expert.
Near the end of August, as I was wrapping up a workshop at a school here in Maine, a man approached me. He said he'd heard that I, "work with teachers on writing," and that, even though he was not looking for a consultant, he, "just wanted to float an idea by ya' ... see what you'd think."
I love business-guy lingo. When I was a younger man I would have retorted with something like, "Sure, I'll be glad to give ya' a listen, maybe run your plan up the old flag pole and see who salutes it!" but lately I'm learning to shut up more and more. People don't hire smart guys and I have kids to put through college.
The fellow explained that he was a member of his town's school committee, and that he was concerned about student writing. "Our MEAs (The Maine State Assessment Test) are awful . We know the kids aren't being taught to write properly." His plan to improve writing instruction was to require teachers to submit ten student papers to the school board each month in order to insure teachers had corrected the papers and students were thereby learning to write properly.
I believe there exists in education, more than any other place, even basketball, an illusion of control. Many of our leaders and taxpayers find it comforting to believe they have real control over what occurs in the classroom. Most experienced teachers wink at this phenomenon, but this school committee guy was even more presumptuous and ridiculous than most. He assumed that membership on the school board somehow infused him with the ability to recognize good writing and good writing instruction.
I would be a rich man today if I could only shut up in situations like this. He might have hired me on the spot if I'd humored him a little, but I couldn't do it. That's probably why the mortgage on our house won't be paid off until I'm 83. Anyway, I looked the fellow in the eye and said, "Listen, answer a question for me will ya'? Do you write much yourself?" It wasn't meant to be a confrontational question, but it carried a little punch for the guy, I guess. He looked at me like I had suddenly grown an ugly green wart on the end of my nose. He said, "What's that got to do with anything?" What does writing have to do with writing instruction? I get that same look from many people: parents, college theorists, writing consultants, and curriculum directors who somehow know all about what should happen in the 1996 version of a "fully included" writing classroom, but who don't write themselves. These people are like scientists who never go into a lab.
Later, as I entered the school board member's proposal under the section of my journal entitled "Most Stupid Ideas in History," I glanced up the page at other examples of the illusion of control I had recorded there, along with the smart alec comments I made in response.
There was the superintendent who said, "I'll tell you one thing. We've gone too far with this Whole Language stuff." My ticket out the door that time? "Why," I said, "are your kids becoming too fluent in reading and writing?"
A principal said to me one time, "John, I'll be down this week to observe you. Listen, don't be doing groups, will ya'. I hate groups. Be really teaching." I was speechless that time.
My favorite comes from the Director of Curriculum and Instruction in a large school district in New Hampshire. I had just finished a week-long seminar with his teachers who assured me their curriculum had been written before the Civil War. After my last class, Mr. Director told me that he intended to implement a new plan for writing the following year. "Each graduating senior must demonstrate writing proficiency. We're developing a rubric, and if they can't write, they don't graduate." I said, "Tell me something, will you? Do you have a law firm on retainer?" (As far as I could tell that school system had ignored all research in writing instruction over the past 50 years. Now they have decided the kids can't write fluently so they were going to hold back diplomas from all the kids who can't write? As Bob Dylan said, "Somebody better investigate soon.") The old nose-wart look appeared on the Curriculum Director's face, and like Charley, endlessly riding on the M.T.A, I never returned to that school. Thank God there are so many school systems in the U.S. If I only work at each one once, I'll get that dammed mortgage paid.
One problem with the illusion of control is that it provides only a small measure of comfort and even that comfort lasts for only a short time. It isn't long before somebody realizes that things aren't working as planned. That person usually stands up at some meeting or other and says, "by God we've got to hold those teachers accountable," and the whole process starts over again. This process costs tons of money and hardly ever changes instruction.
Teachers can learn first hand about the illusion of control from how they approach writing instruction. Non-teachers prescribe for teachers in the same way that non-writers prescribe for writers.
Most people in the United States, and this includes teachers, do not write. They have only a vague understanding of what constitutes good writing and good writing instruction. Like State Assessment Testers, non-writers equate correctness with writing fluency. Grammar rules, and correct spelling are concrete and measurable, so non-writers have something solid to point to and, more importantly, content to test. You either know the possessive or you don't. You can spell idiotic or you can't. Real writers know that correctness is important, but only because it allows the meaning to be clear. The difficulty for writers is communication, not etiquette. "Writing is the toughest work known to man that does not require heavy lifting." By this John Gardner in no way meant editing skills are difficult. He meant getting the meaning right, which is extremely difficult. Meaning makers are millionaires. Correctness makers, although important, are hundredaires.
Non-writers who teach writing are forced to guess about what real writers actually do. They say, "We know how you should write, even though we don't actually write ourselves." An example of "should write" writing instruction is the outline. When I went to La Salle High School in Philadelphia, the outline was always due on Thursday, and the paper was due on Friday. Those assignments meant I'd have to complete the paper on Wednesday, see what it said, and write the outline for Thursday. (I could never figure out if that was a mortal or veniel sin) Non-writing writing instructors guess, "Writers must use an outline. If they didn't outline, how would they know what to write?" That seems logical, but is just not true. Few writers I know outline before they write. Most write their way to meaning and then craft and revise for clarity. Non-writing writing instructors usually equate revision with editing. Kids say, "I have to revise my writing." When asked what that means, they'll say, "copy it over." Revision has nothing much to do with copying it over.
Teachers and parents who don't write regularly squirm when required to write. When I asked one woman why she was so threatened, she said, "My writing is so poor, I don't know what you'll think of me." A Maine high school student said, "When I write a story it always sucks wicked." I know a third grade teacher who had a student who's mother was complaining about the lack of spelling instruction in the classroom. The woman wrote notes in which she said, "He's not getting his basics. How will he learn to write if he can't spell cat? You people are not teaching my Brain how to spell." The teacher assured me the kid is no brain, but she resisted my advice, which was to return the woman's note with a circled Brain and a (-2, SP). I can't even shut up on paper, can I? That woman would never hire me.
The school board member's requirement that his teachers submit 10 papers would be threatening. Most teachers suspect they need help and support with writing, but education is a business where few people are willing to stand up and admit that. It's almost as though a teacher is vulnerable if he or she admits that they don't know everything. We teach the way we were taught, and the way we were taught to teach in college courses. Unfortunately that preparation rarely allowed us to see how real writers go about their craft, or what they need to grow in that craft. Real writers need safe territory to practice their writing. They need safe audiences and real, meaning-centered response in order to understand first, what it is they have to say, and then what their writing means to others. Learning to teach writing in a classroom that facilitates real writing is like learning to write. Both are best accomplished in collaboration with others and in a place where honesty, failure, risk and celebration are expected and encouraged. Writing does not usually flourish in response to directives from above, except in the Bible maybe. Writing that matters doesn't either. Not much real learning does. As I started writing this paper I worried that some smart English teacher, probably somebody who actually finished and understood "Finnegin's Wake," would find my participle dangling. I pictured him saying to his buddy the Advanced Placement teacher, "Ha, this guy Brogan calls himself a writing pundit? God, what's his point?"
I wrote a letter to the school board guy trying to get him to hire me. I know I'm the original whole language hooker for doing that, but my mortgage is due on the 1st of the month and my children are resisting educations at some of the best institutions of higher learning in the country. Also, I love to go to schools and show what I know. I love finding out what teachers know, too. I've included excerpts from the letter below. Rather than attack the guy's ten paper idea, I tried to win him over with the truth. I was not trying for a victory, but to persuade him to recognize that people do not change and learn when motivated by fear. I tried to get him to see that, "It's not what we know that's wrong. It's what we know that's wrong that's wrong.
(I've inserted ellipses between sentences for clarity, and to remind you why there is little transition between one of my great ideas and another.)
(Dear Sir)...you and I seek the same goal-improved instruction.
You should go right out and buy a copy of Glasser's "The Quality School." It provides philosophical ammunition against the adversaries of change.
Teaching rarely changes ... most teachers have seen it all blow through. We've weathered Behavioral Objectives, Models of Teaching, Curriculum Mapping...now the politicians are telling us they will hold us "accountable." Although we aren't exactly sure what the word "accountable" means in this context, we're guessing that once again there is trouble in River City. "...think about shirt-tailed younguns' peekin' in the pool hall window after school ... them no-account teachers ain't doin' sumthin' right up to the school agin'... Oh, we got trouble ... I can deal with that trouble, friends, with the wave of my hand, so vote for me."
...Change is a pain in the neck under these circumstances. Most people want school to be, not like it actually was, but like they remember it was in the good old days. The mind is kind.
Real change requires teachers, administrators and parents to cease thinking of schools as warehouses for kids and of learning as something that can be doled out as bits of measurable information. In the last 20 years we have identified multiple intelligences, different learning styles, and the left and right sides of the brain, yet we cling to this 19th century ideal of the teacher "holding forth."
...The sportswriter Red Smith said, "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down in front of a typewriter and open a vein." The same goes for teaching. There's nothing to teaching a bunch of kids: "...open a vein."
...Most writing teachers know about writing like a war corespondent knows about war. They discuss the battles back at the hotel bar, but they never climb down in the trenches themselves. Once they do everything changes...
...significant change in teaching practice requires more than the "big blow" theory of staff development. (The big blow is when an "expert" blows in, blows off, and blows out again.) Teachers need on going help...writing is only one part of the picture, but it is a great first step in helping teachers change toward meaning centered learning, because writing is a powerful learning tool in every content area.
...the curriculum often has little to do with what actually happens in the classroom.
...90% of kids in elementary resource rooms-the kids who are coded as learning disabled-are boys. My mother went to school in a one-room schoolhouse in County Cork and her only memory of that school is, "teaching the boys their letters and numbers. God save us, everybody knows boys mature later than girls." The writer Mem Fox said, "Unjust though it is, we tend to lay all the blame on children when they fail to become readers and writers. We call them "reading disabled" or "learning disabled," whereas "teacher disabled," "text disabled," or "relationship disabled" might be more apt in the circumstances."
The system kills teachers. They are beaten to death by unrealistic expectations and meaningless directives. Behavioral Objectives alone killed several of my friends and seriously wounded others. Also, educational leadership constantly discusses the generic child. There is no such child. Teachers see only flesh and blood kids.
... the ten papers you'd receive each week would be English-correct, lifeless writing... your teachers will simply wait you out...that's what we do every time a new pain in the ass rears his head. We're good at waiting. Meanwhile instruction goes on, "as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end"...
If you are interested in beginning a process to improve instruction, I'd like to discuss my process with you in detail. (As I wrote that last line I thought to myself, "Then, maybe I'll remove you from my list of biggest weenies in the history of education." (I didn't include that line, although I might have when I was a youngster of 45 or so.)
comments?
john_brogan@freeport.maine.com