Moving from judgement to inquiry
My modified attitude also followed a series of instances in which I complained to my cohort and professors about the formulaic writing being taught in my classrooms. Their reaction to being shown the template almost always echoed my own dismissiveness of this approach. Yet despite the fact that they were validating my dismay at being placed in a classroom where I was expected to enforce this practice, in facing this knee-jerk reaction from ‘outsiders’ to my school environment I found myself backpedaling or modifying my original scorn. I went from complaining to defending and explaining the reasoning behind using the templates. In my heart, I did not believe that this was the way to engage students and help them improve their writing, but I also recognized that the teachers at my placement school had entered into this method consciously and must have some belief in its value and effectiveness (Artifact #17). This shifted my perspective from one of judgment to inquiry as I continued to observe my classroom mentors' teaching and their students’ learning. As the weeks went on, my curiosity about this subject emerged in my informal and academic discourse. In my Working Theory of Inquiry paper, I initiated a formal inquiry into this topic, declaring, “I am interested in learning more about the use of writing templates as a mediated activity in which teachers help students co-construct pieces of writing” (Kates, 2013). My interest has since evolved to focus more specifically on the ways in which students use the template as a tool in their writing. My inquiry question hence became, “How does writing “look” when writing templates are used, modified, or removed?”
Organization of analysis
In both my tenth and twelfth grade English classrooms, I have observed students using the templates in myriad ways, which I have classified as follows: Failure; Misinterpretation; Completion; Addition; Modification; and Application. Analysis of student artifacts has been organized around these categories. A small number of artifacts have been collected from across both classrooms and contexts for writing, but the majority of artifacts document the writing of my twelfth grade students in a unit on feminism. This curricular unit spans the entire period in which I was lead-teaching this senior class, and the writing done by students during this unit represents the range of writing processes and products I encountered and facilitated in my classrooms during my in service placement.
I want them not to feel stuck, like a 5 paragraph essay is too much to write and insurmountable. -Ms. RicciArtifact #17: English teacher questionnaire
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In my questionnaire to the English department about the writing template, Ms. Ricci wrote that the students "consider it a life-raft (often call from college asking for a copy). But they also sometimes fail to see the connection between writing parts and whole paragraphs." In the next sections, I will explore some of these contradictions, discrepancies, problems, and successes revealed by my inquiry in the use of the writing template in my student teaching classrooms.
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