Kittle: Finding Form for Ideas

"I make decisions about teaching and then wonder if it is the best thing just about every week in my class." Kittle struggles in a very real way with being able to step back and watch her students apply the skills she's taught them over time. Naturally this is always a conflict for me: as much as I want to gradually release responsibility to my students so that they can perform highly on their own, I find that they have a hard time with being able to remember and apply the skills we've learned as we've learned them. This of course leads to sweeping mistakes and either low grades which affects their confidence and morale, or general frustration on my part: cue unreasonable "haven't they learned anything??" rants on my part.

Kittle's description of students struggling with creation, as she did over the emotional multigenre scrapbook piece she wrote in memory of a friend killed in a car accident, is especially poignant when we consider how to push our students to that point that they independently apply their skills to really become writers. They need to have the motivation and the inspiration to write something, of course, and this is one aspect she touches on in the article. She mentions that, "this is the process that leads to confidence as a writer" and it's something our students rarely get the chance to attempt, between common core standards and Regents exams. As she says, this is foggy territory. Easing into this creation process with quick writes makes a lot of sense, and using topics that will spark the collective class interest is key (finding that is trickier!)

Importantly, on page 167, Kittle mentions some 'WhateverYouDoDon't' pointers, such as avoiding trying to inauthentically cram content into the multigenre project. I can completely understand that this should be a writing exercise and a development of creating, not exam prep in a snazzy new format. One of the reasons for this project being daunting to me is that I don't necessarily know what it will look like: choosing a topic, choosing my formats and making it materialize from some thoughts floating around in my head is confusing and challenging but completely worthwhile. She mentions this as one of the criteria for setting the project up: don't have too narrow an topic area, and "don't narrowly define the product".

Reading about how Kittle ensures her students pick something worthwhile was one of the most intriguing parts of this chapter: she tells them to pick something that's been circling at the back of their minds, that requires emotional investment. This gem definitely pushed me in the right direction for my project so it's easy to imagine how well it would go over in my classroom.