I have now completed all of my teacher interviews. Phew. I have been pondering the best way to post about my interviews. I have come to the conclusion that highlights would be the best choice of blogging about all the information I received from these willing participants. I am so grateful that each of these teachers took time out of their busy schedules to speak with me.
My first interview, as I have previously mentioned, was with a private school ELA teacher. I was really excited about all the information she provided me with. She mentioned that she had learned of the lack of persuasive writing in high school and had began working with her students on improving these skills. We also discussed the problem of organization. Her students are taught to write in a specific way. There should be an attention getter, or quote, the thesis statement should come at the end of the first paragraph and so on... I believe what we may have here is the traditional 5 paragraph essay format. She was kind enough to bring me samples of her students writing and I must say the way they articulated their ideas was very impressive. I felt these would build a good foundation for their future writing. Students in this school begin learning MLA formatting as young as 6th grade. We also discussed how the implementation of common core is helping to bridge the gap between high school and college writing. Specifically with the lack of non-fiction writing. After doing some research and discovering in my secondary sources that the length of papers were an issue, I e-mailed her to find out what length of papers their students write. She responded that the Seniors write a 10 page paper as part of their Senior project.
My next interview was with a college professor who teaches Writing 100. She was pretty helpful in talking about some issues there are with teaching students about writing the 5 paragraph essay. Some students who are very successful with this type of writing may become arrogant and not believe they can improve or change from what they are already doing. In these instances, it may be better to have the students who do not have a strong foundation with writing because they are more moldable. She also brought up how some high schools are starting writing centers. She feels this can be very helpful in bridging the gap. She also agreed that although there is a lack in the length of papers high schoolers are required to write, teachers have too much on their plates to grade a large amount of lengthy papers.
My last interview was with a public school teacher. I think this was the most interesting of all my interviews because there were vast differences in opinion. One of the things she felt was a problem was that she was teaching her students MLA format, yet she had students coming back to her after they had arrived in college saying they weren't using it. I found this surprising since everything I've done in college has been MLA, with the exception of one APA paper for a psychology class. She also felt strongly that writing should be about the quality not quantity. She felt that if they could effectively write shorter pieces, that would give them a strong foundation for longer ones in college. She also suggested that perhaps there didn't need to be such a close connection with high school and college writing because after all, the work should get harder and challenge them more as they move up in their education.
One thing I was specifically impressed about in this interview was that she does engage her students with literary criticism. This is something that I have not found at the high school level. It makes me wonder if where at times we may fail to close the gap but may provide students with other useful tools that may help them succeed in their college careers. Hmmm....
These interviews brought me far more information than I could write here, and I will have the opportunity to elaborate more when I write my paper. I did want to highlight just a few of the things I learned because some related to my previous posts and secondary sources.
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