Reflection on Kittle's 'This I Believe'

I completely adored this reading. Having read the prompt of 'skim the first chapter, carefully read the second', and thinking to myself "better just read the first one really fast so I can get this work done",  I proceeded to gobble up every word. Kittle writing is first and foremost, beautifully phrased and incredibly engaging, which proves her main point perfectly: "you really can't teach writing well unless you write yourself." She explains that through trial and error she found that the whole idea of doing a model in your class isn't actually a verb but a noun: the teacher has to BE a model for their students to really get them to understand the process.

 I also love that she mentions the not so sexy issue of organization, which as teachers we know is absolutely irreplaceable. She talks about the scaffolding that is tiresome but necessary and that organization can help "lead struggling writers to competence." Not only do students simply need to be consistent in their practice and diligent work but teachers need to make that time in writing classes to ensure the expectations and objectives are set that help them get there.

I definitely get hung up on the issue she talks about on page 9 that she compares herself to the fantastic renowned writers of the dozens of timeless novels in her classroom- why should I show them products of my own mind when these people had forged the way to introduce them to literature I could never even dream of competing with? She explains clearly that "those authors of books were great models of product not process."

Knowing that next year I will be teaching writing, not just English anymore, I was really excited by Kittle's passion about teaching this craft and hope that I too will be able to experience the joy she gets from teaching writing.

Thoughts on LaMott's 'Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life and King's

The first thing I enjoyed about LaMott's piece is the fact that the title recognizes that there are many instructions that apply both to writing in a learning environment and can also be analogous for life. My favorite of these being from someone else named E.L Doctorow:

    "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make      the whole trip that way."

One thing I thought was interesting is the way LaMott posited that writing me a routine focused process. While I agree that if we want to improve any art to the point of mastery we need to apply a certain amount of time consistently (I recall Malcolm Gladwell's magical number of 10,000 hours) I find this author's approach to writing unimaginative and somewhat suffocating to the creative aspect of the craft. Of course it is not LaMott alone that believes this, friends I have known who make their living from writing approach it in the same way, with a die hard attitude of self regulated writing hours or they swear they would never publish anything and hence go hungry. From my perspective though, there are many times where I feel as though my writing is forced and therefore underwhelming. Not having to do this for a living, I can allow myself more freedom, but LaMott suggests that after some time of this "you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively" something I would like to experiment with (over summer holiday perhaps?...) She also says that "the process is pretty much the same for everyone." I have no evidence to disagree with this except for my experience with humans but I find this unlikely. King seems to agree in the sense that he warns "you must not come lightly to the blank page". As we have discussed at length in our various classes at Fordham, the digital era means a whole lot of internet writing that has been clearly approached 'lightly' and agree with King's sentiment that "if you can take it seriously we can do business". He suggest that if not, close the book- something which nicely translates to 'x out of that page', there while just be a lot of time spent x-ing with the next generation of 'writers.' More on that another time, I'm fairly sure.

As the indented quote earlier referenced, I love LaMott's idea of doing short assignments to get to the finished project: taking on writing an entire personal narrative? Overwhelming. Writing about your favorite teacher in 5th Grade? Feasible! I can definitely see how much this would help my students tackle the writing task and how much it could motivate me to write more in smaller increments.

On a side note, though I read it a few times and still only saw the most tenuous of links between the anecdote of her swearing son and a useless hope of being published, I absolutely adored the story about her 3 year old locking himself out of the house and trying to use his toy keys- it gave me a much needed midday giggle.

My Teaching Philosophy

The way I approach teaching is first and foremost, fluid. As i read texts and critics and come to know the philosophies of other's, I adapt my ideas in consideration of what I learn that serves and excellent education.

There are a few constants, however, that I consider paramount to most of the new information I read about teaching. The first is some variation of a phrase I heard in my first week of 'teacher training' during TFA summer institute: 'if you fail to prepare you prepare to fail.' This was meant in a simple sense in terms of lesson planning- go into a classroom to teach without the most solid of plans for your lesson and students are bound to be riotous. It's as though they can smell teacher laziness and are harsh punishers. On a more in depth level though, planning is incredibly important for more than crowd management purposes. It is crucial that curriculum planning, followed by unit planning and then lesson planning informs every choice I make in my classroom so that I have a solid idea of the arch of learning and series of objectives I want my students to master. It is often assumed that students have no interest in this part of their education, that they prefer to enjoy each of their classes like a play in which they have no knowledge of backstage. On the contrary, I find that my students are far more invested when they understand how their learning builds on itself and why each class' objective is something I consider important to their education, and so should they. Of course not all students need this kind if incentivizing to want to learn each day, but in my South Bronx High School where students in 13th and 14th Grades are regularly enrolled in my 10th grade class, they absolutely do.

A second element that I consider pivotal in my teaching philosophy is that I relentlessly question whether what I teach is interesting to me personally. The best teachers I had growing up were those who you could practically smell the enthusiasm on: Ms. Roots' passion for Hamlet, Mrs. Harper's fervor for James Joyce, even the clear joy Algebra gave Ms. Sharma-Yun, these were things that inspired me as a student to throw myself into learning in the hopes that I too would get such joy from academics in the way they did. Not even the best teacher can imitate this quality when reading Lord of Flies for the hundred and eighty seventh time. I have had the pleasure of being able to design my own curriculum and hence I filled it with texts I knew that not only my students would enjoy reading but I would enjoy introducing them to. I am aware this is a privilege in our school system that is being saturated by anchor and scripted curriculum, a trend I disagree with.

Lastly, I find myself an active member of the 21st Century (involuntarily) and a focus on using technology to my students' every advantage is something that enables many other smaller elements of my teaching philosophy. This may entail writing essays on Google documents and partaking in virtual conferencing in the classroom to show students right on their screens exactly what to work on, or it could just mean including a lesson in my unit on how to a send a professional email. In either case, I strongly believe that would be doing my students an injustice if I pretended that the classroom was a place for old school methodology and did not expose them to the many ways in which tech is an advantage to them.