Art & Writing
These comments articulately raise a case for teaching code-switching in the elementary and middle school classroom. Certainly, all of us who taught last year in urban middle schools see the value and the need for teaching code-switching.
I perhaps didn't clarify my point enough, in that, at a certain point in education, once one has developed the skills of code-switching, sometimes writing in informal or dialectic English is the best choice. I think that many accelerated students, even in middle school, do have an understanding of code-switching (especially when you look into Advanced and gifted and talented classrooms), and I think that in many ways, as teachers, we have to support their choice to express themselves in the language they choose. I guess this is a pressing personal topic, because I loved creative writing when I was in middle school and high school and was always finding, what my teachers considered, "unconventional" ways of self expression--often in the form of prose-poetry. This often resulted in a lot of "Fs" and red ink on my paper. Granted, I was a bit of a pain in the a** in middle school anyway.
I read a number of high level proficient 7th grade portfolios during scoring last year. These high-level proficient portfolios used Standard English beautifully. You could tell that they had been coached well the whole year; that someone had been working very hard with them to incorporate figurative language, to develop amazing leads and to write stellar conclusions. However, the portfolio that stood out the most, and which I said was borderline distinguished, was a girl who, in her selection of poetry, consciously chose to use informal language, beyond dialogue, to express an idea. It was easier to mark it distinguished for me, because she had demonstrated a mastery of formal English in her other pieces, but the porfolio went through several readers to finally make that call. It will be harder to make those decisions with only three pieces in a portfolio next year and I believe that the poetry piece was the hang-up piece for many of the other scorers.
It concerns me sometimes that standard English is so valued in schools, when I believe, in creative writing, sometimes, the literature that moves you the most is the literature that takes the most risks and speaks from the authentic "you." I think we can accidently, and unconsciously, snuff a kid's artistic expression. So I guess I'm making a case for still valuing the practicality in writing, in which standard English is a key player, but also valuing the art in writing, in which case non-standard English can be a key player too.
I perhaps didn't clarify my point enough, in that, at a certain point in education, once one has developed the skills of code-switching, sometimes writing in informal or dialectic English is the best choice. I think that many accelerated students, even in middle school, do have an understanding of code-switching (especially when you look into Advanced and gifted and talented classrooms), and I think that in many ways, as teachers, we have to support their choice to express themselves in the language they choose. I guess this is a pressing personal topic, because I loved creative writing when I was in middle school and high school and was always finding, what my teachers considered, "unconventional" ways of self expression--often in the form of prose-poetry. This often resulted in a lot of "Fs" and red ink on my paper. Granted, I was a bit of a pain in the a** in middle school anyway.
I read a number of high level proficient 7th grade portfolios during scoring last year. These high-level proficient portfolios used Standard English beautifully. You could tell that they had been coached well the whole year; that someone had been working very hard with them to incorporate figurative language, to develop amazing leads and to write stellar conclusions. However, the portfolio that stood out the most, and which I said was borderline distinguished, was a girl who, in her selection of poetry, consciously chose to use informal language, beyond dialogue, to express an idea. It was easier to mark it distinguished for me, because she had demonstrated a mastery of formal English in her other pieces, but the porfolio went through several readers to finally make that call. It will be harder to make those decisions with only three pieces in a portfolio next year and I believe that the poetry piece was the hang-up piece for many of the other scorers.
It concerns me sometimes that standard English is so valued in schools, when I believe, in creative writing, sometimes, the literature that moves you the most is the literature that takes the most risks and speaks from the authentic "you." I think we can accidently, and unconsciously, snuff a kid's artistic expression. So I guess I'm making a case for still valuing the practicality in writing, in which standard English is a key player, but also valuing the art in writing, in which case non-standard English can be a key player too.
posted by Lisa Smith | 1:38 PM
1 Comments:
I think the three pieces are personal (narrative, memoir or essay), literary (poem, monologue, script, short story) and transactive (editorial, feature article, letter, pamphlet). I'm not 100% positive though; they still haven't updated the JCPS website. Atleast in my school, we usually start with the personal piece; and last year, I think they did the memoir in the 7th grade.
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