Memo #2.5: Updates on Useful Secondary Sources!

There are a few more secondary sources that I have stumbled upon that could be useful to my I-search project topic. 

1.)  “Chapter 7: Using Assessment to Drive Better Student Writing” from Kelly Gallagher’s Teaching Adolescent Writers

Though this chapter is about using assessment strategies in order to extract the best possible writing from students, the chapter actually had a lot of strategies that could be used in making the student feel more comfortable in their environment. What really struck be about this chapter was the introduction about men in a prison that were asked to share their writing. Gallagher talks about how even inmates are scared and nervous about presenting personal work to their peers. She writes, “Here is a young man, Ruben, who had been hardened in the mean streets of Los Angles. A man who has been conditioned in jail to mask any weakness. A young man in jail for murder. Yet when it came time to share his writing, he shook like a leaf.” I think there is a lot to learn from this one observation that Gallagher presents to us as readers. He really gets to the heart of what I am concerned with in my I-Search project: comfortability and safety in the classroom as a writing community. 

He continues on to say “Salzman’s anecdote reminds me of the risks involved when we share our writing with one another. This risk is not limited to adolescent; it is a natural response among adult writers as well… I too plead guilty to being defensive about my writing” and then afterwards talks about “ ‘ritual apologies’ ” and how they are “defense mechanisms that spill out of us when it comes time to opening ourselves up to feedback”. Afterwards he states, “Ritual apologies that pour from my adolescents serve as a continual reminder of the risk my students take when they entrust me with their writing. As their teacher and primary responder, two central question come to mine every time I collect a set of student papers: (1) How can I respond to these papers in a  way that nurtures the trust my students have placed in me? and (2) How can I provide feedback that is not only meaningful, but that also drive my students to improve their writing?” 

What Gallagher is writing about in this text is a huge part of my research that I am pursuing.  He acknowledges the fact that writing is personal and that it is risky for the student to present this writing to their peers and their teacher for critical feedback. I acknowledged the same thing in my proposal. He then talks about two central questions that this chapter will be about. These questions are related to how a teacher can use strategies to make feedback in the classroom less harsh and more nurturing to the student’s fears and needs in order to create better writers. The teacher is always a huge part of the classroom environment, and, while the community of writers is more apparently about the students’ interaction with one another, it also includes the teacher’s interaction with his students. Gallagher expresses many ways through which he helps create a nurturing and encouraging environment through assessment strategies. These strategies make it easier for students to feel more comfortable and confident in their work. These strategies also allow the teacher to find a comforting way for students to receive feedback that is constructive without disheartening the student. Thus, in order to create a secure and positive environment, one major aspect of the classroom environment that needs to be looked at is the way that the teacher approaches graded the student’s writing and what strategies they use. 

Gallagher has about 10 billion great strategies that he uses to accomplish this goal including but definitely not limited to: “I Like…” Conversations, Golden Line Exchanges, Moving Away from “Sucker Punch Grading”, Conferences, only identifying two key problems with papers, creating rubrics with students, the Seven Commandments of Building Successful Young Writers, etc.  All of these strategies will be great ideas to talk about in my research paper. 

Overall, I think what I found most interesting and important from this source is that I learned about a part of my research that I hadn’t even thought of: how changing assessment and grading strategies is another part of how a teacher creates a physiologically safe writing environment that encourages the best possible writing. This information will most definitely be helpful in learning more about my topic and finding strategies. 

2.) “Fostering Self-Determination Through Building Productive Relationships in the Classroom” by Sharon L. Field, EdD, and Abigail S. Hoffman, MEd

I found this source to be very useful when thinking about my research topic and finding strategies to create positive classroom environments. Though the article is about creating “Self-Determination” the authors continue on through the article to state, “Self-Determination is essential to successful transitions…Self-Determination also supports academic success… and There is evidence to suggest that increased self-determination is linked to better mental health, which is also a contributing factor to both successful transitions and academic achievement”. The goal of this I-search project is to learn how to create physically and psychologically/ emotionally safe and positive environments where teachers can extract the BEST writing from their students (in other words, “academic success”). 

The text gets more in depth specifically about “positive relationships” in the classroom. It states, “Research…foudn that positive relationships were viewed by the majority of persons they interviewed as the most important support for self-determination, and difficult relationships were noted as the most significant barrier to self-determination”. The text continues on to state, “Because of the preponderance of evidence supporting the importance of positive relationships to promoting self-determination, Hoffman and Field revised their initial self-determination model to provide a stronger emphasis on the importance of relationships as a component element of self-detmintion. In the revised model, the importance of relationships to self-determination is specifically noted under Value Yourself (i.e., “develop and nature positive relationships”) and Act (i.e., ‘access resources and support’, ‘communicate’, ‘negotiate’, and ‘deal with conflict and criticism’).” 

What is even more interesting is when the text provides what a “positive relationship” is defined by: “(a) built on a support a foundation of relatedness, competence, and autonomy and (b) supportive of an individual’s ability to engage in the steps of self-determination”. In other words, a positive environment must provide support, and it must help a student become determined and, ultimately, successful. This is exactly what I am looking for. 

The text then goes on to provide strategies for building relationship skills. I really liked the introduction to this section. It states, “Teachers have a powerful impact not he growth of students’ ability to develop and maintain positive social relationships they have with students, and the way they manage classrooms. For example, the extent to which teachers arrange and organize features of the classroom environment to meet students’ social needs has an impact on social interactions and relationships as well s students’ perceptional of their social relationships”. I completely agree with this statement. Teachers hold the power to create a community of writers in their classrooms. They have the ability to create positive environments that encourage student writing. I especially liked the example the text gave in this excerpt. It talks about the physical aspect of my topic. Arrangement of the features in the classroom is important. Do you place everyone in rows where they are forced to stare at the backs of their peers’ heads? This allows students to become more nervous when presenting their writing because they cannot see other students’ facial reactions. Do you place everyone in a giant circle where everyone can see everyone? Do students sit in small groups to help create a smaller community? Does this leave the possibility of cliques in the classroom? There are a lot of things to think about! 

The text also talks about how “classroom relationships include, but are not limited to, teacher-student relationships and student-peer relationships”. I appreciate that the authors included both relationships because both are central to creative positive environments. Some of the strategies that the text talks about is stated as such: “Teachers can help students develop the ability to form and maintain positive relationships by (a) supporting students to increase their self-awareness, (b) implementing social skills training, (c) being a positive role model, (d) providing opportunities for positive teacher-student interactions, and (e) increasing teacher awards of and attention to classroom peer ecology”. The text then goes into detail about each strategy and why it is important in creating a positive environment. There are steps involved in each strategy and the text also provides examples. 

Overall, this text provides me with not only an idea of how relationships affect classroom environment and why they are important to create, but it also provides me with suggested strategies on how to achieve these relationships and create academic achievers. It will be very useful for my research.