Relevant Scholarship
As I formulated my units, I drew many ideas from scholarship on teaching writing. Maxine Hairston (1982) explores a revolution in teaching writing that moves from a focus on product to a focus on process. She describes the importance of not teaching “students to write by looking only at what they have written. We must also understand how the product came into being, and why it assumed the form that it did” (pg. 84). In other words, Hairston advocates for not just showing students successful products but guiding them through the various stages of creating that product. I took this idea to heart and, as I formulated my intervention, instead of simply showing my students successful papers, the different units that the class proceeded through focused on different elements of a successful paper, specifically, argumentative writing and close reading.
Much has been written about the danger of deficit thinking. This project is fundamentally one where I work to react to and overcome a deficit I see in my students. Accordingly, the writing of Tyrone Howard (2013) on the danger of deficit thinking with regards to Black male performance has helped me conceptualize how I will think about the deficits that my students have. As Howard wisely explains, the data that accounts for Black student academic deficiencies “suggests that the deficits may lie in the structures, policies, practices, and programs in schools that Black males attend” (pg. 60). The teacher that my students had for 9th and 10th grade is excellent. However, by dint of his having to prepare the students to succeed on the PSSAs and address the various skills that, because of the students’ previous schooling, they did not all possess, he was simply not able to support the students in the extended way necessary to build their thesis paper writing skills. In this context, my project locates the deficit not in my students but in their prior preparation.
In fact, it is important to note that it is precisely the strength that my students already possessed in using language in sophisticated ways that allowed me to pursue this particular inquiry project. Smagorinsky (2011) explores a beginning teacher’s struggle between teaching grammar and teaching larger writing skills in the Deep South. The teacher in question was dealing with a population with such large grammar-based limitations that she could not push her curriculum in as writing-based a direction as she initially intended (pg. 262). This context, which is far more prevalent in American Public Schools than the sophistication exhibited by my students is, lays the foundation for how central my students’ strengths were to my project formation. I could not have used non-traditional forms of writing assignments to teach my students traditional writing skills if I were constantly addressing grammar needs. Rather, the trust I had in my students to construct sentences meant I could focus on how best to craft the arguments they were using those sentences to build.
Much has been written about the danger of deficit thinking. This project is fundamentally one where I work to react to and overcome a deficit I see in my students. Accordingly, the writing of Tyrone Howard (2013) on the danger of deficit thinking with regards to Black male performance has helped me conceptualize how I will think about the deficits that my students have. As Howard wisely explains, the data that accounts for Black student academic deficiencies “suggests that the deficits may lie in the structures, policies, practices, and programs in schools that Black males attend” (pg. 60). The teacher that my students had for 9th and 10th grade is excellent. However, by dint of his having to prepare the students to succeed on the PSSAs and address the various skills that, because of the students’ previous schooling, they did not all possess, he was simply not able to support the students in the extended way necessary to build their thesis paper writing skills. In this context, my project locates the deficit not in my students but in their prior preparation.
In fact, it is important to note that it is precisely the strength that my students already possessed in using language in sophisticated ways that allowed me to pursue this particular inquiry project. Smagorinsky (2011) explores a beginning teacher’s struggle between teaching grammar and teaching larger writing skills in the Deep South. The teacher in question was dealing with a population with such large grammar-based limitations that she could not push her curriculum in as writing-based a direction as she initially intended (pg. 262). This context, which is far more prevalent in American Public Schools than the sophistication exhibited by my students is, lays the foundation for how central my students’ strengths were to my project formation. I could not have used non-traditional forms of writing assignments to teach my students traditional writing skills if I were constantly addressing grammar needs. Rather, the trust I had in my students to construct sentences meant I could focus on how best to craft the arguments they were using those sentences to build.