Memo #6

Where am I? I can honestly say that this morning I wasn't sure I was ready to end the journey but then I had my last interview. I feel like it helped me close some of my still existing questions. I am okay with the fact that there may be problems I can't provide solutions for. I also feel that I've learned a lot about the gap and I think that both high school teachers and college professors want what's best for their students. To some that may mean laying a strong foundation and to others it may mean giving them a variety of opportunities to write. I know that high school teachers cannot assign the kind of writing that college professors can because their jobs vary. What they can do is encourage their students to write in a variety of ways so that students can enter college feeling comfortable with writing. I have had the opportunity to teach a couple of classes this semester. Although my lessons needed to be based on literacy strategies, I always made sure there was an opportunity for the students to write something. You know what I realized? They know how to think. It may not always be about the writing, it may be about the thought process. The students I worked with responded to my questions or prompts far better than I expected and I could almost see their thought process. So maybe bridging the gap isn't just about writing long research papers. Maybe, it's about helping students to get thinking. The last teacher I interviewed has her students write all the time about various things. Those are some of the students I had the pleasure of teaching. Honestly, reading their responses, I don't doubt that they would be ready for college, even if they never wrote a 10 page paper.

I still need to find a more recent secondary source. This is something I don't want to let go of; I need something more to close this out. Everything else, I feel is falling into place. Is it perfect? No. Does it need to be? No. Have I learned something? Absolutely!