WSCTE

Washington English Journal

Contents:

From the Editor

Away from Boothbay: Applying Atwell's Writing Workshop in a Washington Middle School
Joe Santucci

Building Bridges with Multiple Intelligence Theory
Laura Jones

The Promises of Self-Evaluation
Stephanie Packwood

The Animals of November and Class Notes
Robert Schnelle

Psuedo Questions in the English Classroom
Robert Ridings

Reading, Writing, Thinking--and the Right to Bear Arms
Alex Whitman

A Coffee Connection
Laurie Michelle Flynn

After the Second Burning and The Game We Play
Steve Bertrand

Sidewalk Skaters and When William Stafford Gives a Poetry Reading
Betty Van Ryder

Quiet Connections
Rick Monroe

Accomplishment
Jim Hanlen

Book Review: American Street: A Multicultural Anthology of Stories
Debra Nickerson

NCTE Publications Highlights: Washington State Authors

SLATE Representatives' Report
Linda Brown and Jim Kistner

(Contents)

From the Editor:

I cleaned my garage and basement last summer. It wasn't just a superficial knock-down- the-cobwebs-recycle-have-a-garage-sale-haul-the-rest-to-the-dump cleaning. I finally broke down and sorted through 24 years of stored teaching materials--materials that weren't important enough to be kept in the limited storage space I have available in my classroom or crucial enough to rate a spot in my work station bookcases upstairs but that I had been reluctant to get rid of because I just might want to, or have to, use them again.

The length of time something had been in my garage did not make it any easier to throw out. After all, I hadn't taught American history since the fall of '69 and the district had actually adopted a different text from the one I used then, but the facts are the facts. Hopefully the current text presents a more multi-faceted picture of the times than the text I had used fresh out of college, but the dates, places, names hadn't changed, so--even though all of my hand-outs were hand-written on real ditto masters for reproduction on a pre-copier, cancer-linked mimeograph machine--mightn't I still need these? After all, hadn't I been trying to convince one of our eighth grade teams and most of my seventh grade teammates that we should keep our students for their entire two-year stay at College Place instead of handing them off after a year? Therefore, if I finally succeeded in convincing them that this was a good idea, wouldn't I need to have some eighth grade history stuff?

Except for the folders that were mildewed and moldy, there were still boxes and boxes of units to sort through, over two decades of educational trends. Some things went into the trash because they couldn't stand the test of time. They no longer matched my teaching style or philosophy--like various discipline programs. Maybe they never had, but I had been young and hadn't realized that there were a variety of teaching and learning styles. Some materials reflected the topical and the trivial--I actually found a unit I had taught on the occult. In some cases the information was out of date; I had several notebooks full of articles written in the early and mid-eighties about the issue of teacher leadership. After some agonizing I threw them out; surely teachers' positions in the decision-making process have significantly changed since then, and those articles are now of interest from a historical perspective only. In other cases the accompanying text for the activities was out of print, so the plans were useless. Most of what was discarded were simplistic, knowledge-driven, fill-in-the-blank dittos.

Surprisingly the debris wasn't filled with outdated educational research. Probably one reason is that I have been a secondary teacher and the rule of thumb for educational change is the higher the grade the more resistance there is to change. In some cases it wasn't so much that the research was passé; the innovation simply never got a chance, like transformational grammar. The district bought texts but failed to provide adequate training and support so that teachers who had been raised and trained in traditional grammar would feel comfortable enough to use this alternative. But I think that the main reason there was so little outdated research in the boxes is because when I started teaching, educational theory and research were in disfavor and art was everything. There was a reverse snobbery which new teachers soon learned from their more experienced colleagues: what had been learned in college--the theory--had little relevance in the classroom. Research where professors had observed groups of students that did not remotely resemble actual classrooms and then published mathematical charts and graphs of their findings in reports heavily laden in university jargon were regarded suspiciously, if not hooted at outright. It was only after the return to basics movement of the seventies that it became okay to let it be known that you actually read educational material for more than cutesy ideas or to recommend articles and books to others.

I am encouraged by this change in attitudes. How can we encourage our students to be life-long learners if we close our minds to new thoughts about how the brain works, how one becomes a writer, how on learns to read, how personal style affects learning? It seems that teachers are reading more about education than ever before. That they are more carefully processing what they read. That they are more willing to try something new if it has a sound basis. That they are less likely to pooh-pooh some new approach simply because someone has tried it some place else or written a book about it. That they are less complacent and, like the tabloid, more inquiring.

* * *

The theme for this issue is "Research into Practice." You will find articles written by practitioners who have taken current educational theories and research and adapted them to their own individual classrooms and students. Joe Santucci writes about his adaptation of Nancie Atwell's workshop approach to his own middle school classroom. And Laura Jones explains how she uses multiple intelligence theory to augment students' prewriting strategies. Stephanie Packwood, a pre-service teacher when she wrote her article about the purposes of self-evaluation, explains how she pictures students becoming less apathetic learners through the use of self-evaluation. You will find additional articles in which other educators describe their efforts to improve classroom practice. Robert Riding examines traditional questioning techniques used in teacher-student exchanges, and Alex Whitman writes about the ownership that results when students connect the substance of writing and reading assignments to their own experiences. As always, WSCTE's SLATE representatives, Linda Brown and Jim Kistner, have written about another crucial classroom practice--the need for teachers to continue to select the best reading available regardless of the temptation to pick safe literature and avoid the increasing number of book challenges in the Pacific Northwest.

Last summer WSCTE sponsored a second Teacher As Writer Contest. Most of the poems and memoirs published in this issue were contest submissions. Unfortunately, we are unable to include longer works, such as plays, that were submitted. Robert Schnelle also contributed poems.

Finally, in addition to Debra Nickerson's book review of American Street, an anthology aimed at a middle school audience and presenting stories that reflect diverse cultures, we have included publication information about some of the works by Washington State authors recently published by NCTE.

(Contents)

Away from Boothbay: Applying Atwell's Writing Workshop in a Washington Middle School
by Joe Santucci

    Joe Santucci teaches seventh grade language arts/reading at Washington Middle School in Yakima. He recently received his master's degree in English from Central Washington University.

Yakima is twenty-six hundred miles and three time zones from Boothbay, Maine, but it is more than time and distance that separate the students of Nancie Atwell's Boothbay Grammar School from those of Washington Middle School. Atwell's In The Middle is a benchmark for those interested in utilizing the workshop approach to teaching adolescents to write. However, the students described in In The Middle--students nurtured through years of Boothbay's writing workshop program--are more likely to reflect a state of writing readiness than those in the classrooms of Atwell's readers. In my case, they're not even close.

Construction of the Washington Middle School building was completed in 1929. It was the first school in the state of Washington built specifically as a junior high school. The building has remained virtually unchanged since then although its steam boilers were converted from coal to gas in 1963 and the "new" gym was added in 1973. Located on the poverty-ridden Eastside of Yakima, the school has an 87 percent minority population, predominantly Hispanic, and 95 percent of its students qualify for free or reduced lunch rates under state and federal programs. Over half of the seventh grade population is enrolled in the English as Second Language (ESL) program, and nearly the same number are classified under the Migrant program.

James Moffett, in Teaching The Universe of Discourse, strikes a chord when he paraphrases Earl Kelly: "We build the right facilities, organize the best course of study, work out the finest methods, create the appropriate materials, and then, come September, the wrong students walk through the door" (13).

Twenty-four of thirty-eight students assigned to my seventh grade classroom in two three-period blocks (language arts, reading, social studies) have been classified as having reading levels two or more years below their grade. Their individual reading abilities range from first grade (1.5) to post high school.

"Come September" my challenge is to meet the intent of my school district's published belief statement: "All students should have equal opportunity to learn at high levels." Though my students differ radically from those in Boothbay, Maine, I find that reading and writing workshops gleaned and modified from Nancie Atwell's In The Middle, Donald Graves' Writing: Teachers & Children at Work, and Linda Rief's Seeking Diversity are just the ticket. It is through the workshop approach that I am able to challenge all of my students while administering to their individual needs.

Supplies

My accumulation of student material for writing and reading workshop has become an enjoyable activity in itself and begins long before the opening day of school. I am continually in search of inexpensive or free supplies with which to outfit my workshop. One opportunity presents itself as early as the last day of school the previous year. As lockers are cleaned out to the final time, I provide cans for collecting discarded pencils and a box to paper. Summer garage sales are my primary source of books for which I will pay an average of 25 cents each. I am always on the prowl for pencils, pens, markers, art supplies, and paper of all sizes and hues. I often revisit, and have my family revisit, department store check-out stands where school supplies are sold at cut-rate prices in limited quantities. When school starts my students enter a classroom that looks as if it has been waiting for them. I am convinced that the benefits of providing this raw material to students far outweighs any inconvenience in collecting it or disadvantage associated with not requiring students to fend for themselves. There is virtually no time wasted at the beginning of a workshop session, and students who are unable to provide supplies suffer no embarrassment.

Though I consider workshop supplies expendable, I do try my best to keep them in the classroom. On each book, I print my name on the top edge across its closed pages. I put one band of the same blue cloth tape around each pencil, pen, or marker, and I restrict all supplies to one section of the room. Labels and tape will not stop anyone who wants to take something from the room, but they are a reminder of its origin.

Normally, students who enter my class are not inclined to read or write independently. They are a great deal more content with a blackline master than a blank piece of paper, a textbook rather than a novel. The text is comfortable because it is familiar and nonthreatening: What chapter? What page? What paragraph? Students can read without recall, proceed without passion.

The Reading Workshop

I hope that upon entering their new classroom, my students sense an atmosphere of purpose. From the start, I treat time as if it were a valuable commodity. Within a few minutes, reading workshop business has begun. "With the exception of a first novel that we will begin to read today, you will choose the books that will be used in this reading class," I tell them. "You will decide what books are worth your time and effort."

Reading workshop consists of three distinct divisions to each class: a 10 to 20-minute mini-lesson (often a read-aloud) where genre and technique are demonstrated; a period of sustained silent reading (SSR), in which the books read are of the student's choosing; and a response period, the length of which is largely dictated by the student. During the mini-lesson, students remain in their seats. I use carpet squares (free samples) during SSR to provide comfortable accommodations for my readers. Each student has a reading response journal that is kept in the classroom. Though no specific time is dictated for this activity, they are reminded often that I expect at least three entries per week to which I respond weekly.

The Writing Workshop

Writing workshop is purposely parallel to its reading counterpart. I want students to sense the interchangeability, to realize, as Atwell says in In The Middle, that "Writers write reading, and readers read writing" (21). The pattern of mini-lesson, writing, and response soon becomes so familiar that little time is wasted in transition.

Although Washington Middle School students do not arrive in seventh grade with the same skills as those who have progressed through Atwell's Boothbay writing program, they do possess varying degrees of writing and reading knowledge. They have written in different genres and read and have had read to them stories, poems, and novels. What most of them have not done is consider the whole range of genres in searching out a possible vehicle for a topic. What they have learned has been taught within the confines of units on poetry or fables or tall tales or the novel. Seldom have units been revisited.

"What We Write," a brainstorming session that asks the simple question: "What do people write?" always results in a spirited discussion. The first time that I facilitated this session, I was amazed by the diversity of answers. On that occasion, I was quick to attribute success to the particular students who participated. However, since then, I have had consistently positive responses from other classes.

After this brainstorming session, each student copies the list of genres generated by the class and staples it to the inside front cover of a writing folder under the label "Tool Box." An effective writing workshop depends on students being able to select the most appropriate tool for the job at hand. This concept of writer's workshop is grounded in classical rhetoric which concerns itself with both content and form. It seems that to address one without the other is to look at only one side of a coin. Prewriting (Invention) should include more than developing arguments or just generating stuff to write about; it should assist the writer in finding an effective genre with which to reach an audience.

Students are expected to view genre as choice, but they are then held accountable for their choices. They must learn to research and investigate what they have to say and what they wish to gain. They must analyze their audiences and themselves and only then make a conscious decision of what genre to employ.

Once students are comfortable with the freedom involved in choosing genre, they will be more inclined to write. When Donald Murray in "Write Before Writing" speaks of genre as a "Signal To Write," he is envisaging the student who thinks: "This would make a great short story" or "That sounds to me like a poem" (374).

The Mini-Lesson

The term mini-lesson is deceiving, and draws some unwarranted criticism from those who erroneously assume that they are lessons too brief to be substantial. To draw an analogy from television where adverting is testimony to the power of brevity, a mini lesson is more like an episode of a mini-series than a show in itself. At long as continuity is maintained, any unit, theme, or novel can be presented in a series of mini-lessons.

My students are introduced to mini lessons on the first day of class. Reading workshop commences with Robert Newton Peck's A Day No Pigs Would Die. I begin class by reading aloud: " I should have been in school that April day, but instead I was up on the ridge near the old spar mine above our farm whipping the gray trunk of a rock maple with a dead stick, and hating Edward Thatcher" (1). Anyone familiar with this young adult novel knows that the next few pages contain enough action and gore to be a surefire hook for a seventh grade class.

The setting and situations encountered in A Day No Pigs Would Die are very different from those in the lives of my students, yet there are some strands connecting the two: poverty, devout religious faith; and, come September, in both Yakima and in Learning, Vermont, the fair. One goal of using Peck's autobiographical novel is that students begin drawing on similarities to recognize differences in its author's language and values. For instance, Artemio and Matt work out the meaning of a phrase in the following example:

"What'd he mean--'Sorry him good?'" asked Artemio.

"Make him sorry he ever said anything," Matt answers before I can respond.

"What, like kick his butt?"

"Yeah, I guess," said Matt.

"Is that what it means?" Artemio directs his request for confirmation to me.

"Yeah, I guess," I respond, mimicking Matt as closely as possible.

The class gets a chuckle, Artemio is satisfied, Matt is proud, and students experience how they, as a class, are a resource for each other. I, too, benefit from the exchange, making a note to present a mini-lesson on idioms in the near future.

Reading mini-lessons will soon complement writing mini-lessons, but at the beginning of the year, the two start at opposite ends of the field and march to meet at the 50-yard line. Our reading of A Day No Pigs Would Die proceeds at a chapter-a-day pace with students responding to one [teacher-given] opinion each day:

Early writing lessons are designed to review and revitalize, and, if necessary, create a repertoire of genres. After an initial mini-course given on logistics and expectations, the search for genre begins. I ask students to write at least 150 words telling me about the best thing they have ever written. The response is automatic. This is what my kids expect: the teacher takes responsibility for topic, genre, and length. This exercise has value in that it reveals several forms of writing (narrative, letter, autobiographical sketch) from which I can draw the introduction to the brainstorming session on genre which was mentioned earlier.

In order to emphasize the importance of possessing a repertoire of writing genres, I revisit mini-lesson topics throughout the school year and make every effort to tie one to another. One mini-lesson extended over several days uses poetry to demonstrate tone and takes the class to Emily Dickinson (1035):

Bee! I'm expecting you!
Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due--

The Frogs got Home last Week--
Are settled, and at work--
Birds, mostly back--
The clover warm and thick--

You'll get my Letter by
The seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me--
Yours, Fly.

It is an easy transition from this Dickinson poem to a series of mini-lessons on letter writing.

The following are a few relatively unique examples of topics addressed and often revisited in writing workshop during the first half of this school year:

How To Choose A Book
Idioms
Obituaries
Prediction
Parody
Grammar Goofs

Workshop

Writers need time to write and readers need time to read. This is the simple premise on which the workshop approach to these subjects is grounded. Each day, students have the opportunity to read and write about what interests them. Reading workshop comes each day on the heels of the reading mini-lesson. It is a 20 minute period of silent reading of literature chosen by the student.

During this time, I sit near a different group of students and read. I read what they read--young adult novels: Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, Alfred Slate, Madeleine L'Engle, Gary Paulsen, Laurence Yep, Robert Cormier; these and many others are the adults who will introduce my students to a life of reading. I should know something about them.

Writing workshop requires more coordination than does reading. It is an environment of movement and noise that, at times, can seem quite hectic. Writers are encouraged to brainstorm ideas with classmates, to seek response to drafts, and to participate in revision and editing sessions. Each student must keep a writing folder in which rough drafts, notes from mini-lessons, and works in progress are stored. Students are welcome to take individual pieces home took on. I insist, however, that their folder remain in class. This policy not only insures a daily starting point for the student; it also provides the easiest means for the teacher to document one-on-one instruction by means of a "Things I Have Learned" list maintained in the folder.

The day that I knew writing work shop would succeed beyond my expectations was the day I found Olivia's poem copied on the cover of another student's loose-leaf binder:

A fading memory, a forgotten
    place,
A picture you remember, an
    expression on a face,
A very small moment, that is
    captured in time,
It stays with your heart, but it
    fades from your mind.
  (from "A Special Moment" by Olivia Jones, seventh grader)

It was the first instance of many illustrating the mutual respect and admiration that has grown from a community of young writers and readers for writers and readers. Students are confident that their efforts will not be ridiculed, and they are quick to share both writing successes and problems with the class.

Daniel couldn't make up his mind whether "Life In A Shadow" was prose or poetry, and his initial reason for choosing verse was that he perceived it to be the easier form: ". . Shorter" with "not as many grammar goofs."

    Life In A Shadow

It's a lot more darker
in here. All black no
light no color. It's
always lonely because
nobody's here that I
can see. Nobody cares.
Nobody remembers. It's
not fun to be alone,
because any minute you
could be gone. Pretty
soon you just fade away.
Disappear into the air.
Oh Lord, I wish someone
would remember.

It may have been easier for Daniel to select poetry as his genre, but it was not easy for him to write this particular poem. I watched this young man struggle through many drafts and agonize over whether to use disappear or dissolve after fade away. His decision was made after listening to the responses of his classmates. "Life In A Shadow" played a part in bringing a degree of excitement to the writing workshop. It demonstrated how a thoughtful piece of writing can take on a life of its own. This particular poem of Daniel's was recited at both a Lion's Club luncheon and a School Board meeting. It has been published in a newsletter, displayed on a bulletin board at the entrance to the school, and entered in a state-wide poetry contest.

For Josie Galvan, seventh grade represents her first year in a monolingual English classroom. At first, she wrote secretly in Spanish (a first draft) and later translated her writing to English. Now, encouraged by her classmates, she polishes and publishes bilingual poetry.

            Paque                                      Why

Una fresa, dos fresas          One strawberry, two strawberry
Si no me quieres                   If you don't like me
Paque me besas?                  Why do you kiss me?

Una perra, dos perras         One pear, two pears
Si no me quieres                   If you don't like me
Paque me esperas?              Why do you wait for me?

Mini-Conference

Individual mini-conferences between student and teacher are vital to the operation of a successful writing workshop. Like Nancie Atwell, I carry a small chair with me and conference at a student's desk. That is where the students are comfortable, where they do their writing. Mini-conferences usually address one of two broad problem areas--content or form. Either a student is stuck and needs some help (content) or is displaying some structural difficulty (form) that the teacher can correct. In both cases, the teacher should not attempt to do too much in one session.

Content conferences should not take more than four or five minutes. Questioning, listening, repeating what is heard, and asking more questions can help a writer talk through "I'm stuck." The purpose of these conferences is not to supply solutions but to help writers discover their own.

Conferences concerning form are nothing more than teaching grammar in the context of a student's own writing. This one-on-one instruction is far more memorable than group learning, but I have found that it must be documented and revisited. Thus, I have students note the essence of the conference on a "Things I Have Learned" list in their writing folder. These accounts are then used as checklists in editing sessions. When I return a finished paper to students, I do so in a conference. Here, too, I am able to check these efforts against earlier learning

Response

When I first interviewed for the position that I now hold, I was subjected to an employment interview during which the person conducting the interview asked questions and listened to my responses without any sign of understanding or emotion. Imagine talking to someone who refuses to acknowledge your voice: no "Go on" or "I see," no smile or frown, no rapt attention or wavering eye to talk to or play off of. This is what writing can be like to a student who is not given an audience.

Response is vital to writing: an experience begs to be shared. After struggling to teach editing skills to students who are proceeding on many different levels of writing proficiency, I have come to expect less editing, and I have come to expect more response. No longer am I concerned with every student being able to edit a piece of writing. Now, I have certain students whose strength in a particular skill area is known. Rosendo can help with dialogue. Angela has a great vocabulary. Louis can look up a word in a dictionary quicker than most adults. Jose is a "word man" and can give you a rhyme any time. Sandra and Vickie have always been good at grammar, and Daniel can set anything to music. This team of experts, and others 1ike it, does not let the rest of the class off the hook.

Response is a necessary part of the writing process, and it is a skill that can be taught and honed. I like to have one student, the writer, read his or her piece aloud to another. Peter Elbow, in Writing Without Teachers, explains:

Writing is really a voice spread out over time, not marks spread out in space. The audience can't experience them all at once as they can a picture; they can only hear one instant at a time as with music. And there must be a voice in it . . . Reading out loud brings that sense of audience back into your act of writing (82).

The response that I then expect from my student listener is "This is what I heard . . ." and "This is how it made me feel . . ." As a writer, I can think of no more valuable response, for it is my job to make my audience hear and feel.

Grading

Grading students engaged in writing and reading workshop is certainly more subjective than correcting grammar and spelling exercises, yet it can be substantive. I consider myself a coach, educated through years of playing the game. I try to build on one skill at a time, realizing that the needs of each player may be different. Not expecting a running back to play quarterback or a center to punt, I see no way to present a standardized-grading schedule to the class. Rather I let each student, with the benefit of my coaching, participate in his or her own grading procedure during a one-on-one conference.

Reading grades are based on:
    1. Bringing and reading an appropriate book during class.
    2. Reading accomplishments measured against goals agreed upon in individual conferences.
    3. Responses to readings recorded in a journal.

Writing grades are similar:
    1. Conduct during writing class, both as an individual and as a member of a community of                writers.
    2. Writing accomplishments measured against goals agree upon in individual conferences.
    3. Responses to the writing of others (respond/revise/edit).

Conclusion

Mini-lesson, workshop, response-- this is the simple formula which I have employed with substantial success in my very diverse classroom. It remains an experiment to be tinkered with. It is also very much teacher dependent, unable to yield the same results in every classroom. However, l see that as a strength rather than as a weakness. Each teacher will bring new insight to the process. When later, we share our experiences, we will all benefit.

Although there will always be distance and differences separating the students of Yakima from those of Boothbay, Atwell's workshop approach to teaching writing and reading in the middle school play well on either coast. I am convinced, when given designated periods of time to read self-selected materials, adolescents will read with increased frequency and a sense of discovery. When given an opportunity to express themselves, in writing, to a real audience, they will write, they will write well, and they will write well often. Reading and writing workshops are effective in Yakima and in Boothbay.

Works Cited

    Atwell, Nancie. In The Middle: Writing, Reading, and Learning with Adolescents. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1987.

    Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.

    Graves, Donald H. Writing: Teachers & Children At Work. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1983.

    Moffett, James. Teaching The Universe Of Discourse. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

    Murray, Donald M. "Write Before Writing." College Composition and Communication 29. (December1978): 371-381.

    Peck, Robert N. A Day No Pigs Would Die. New York: Dell Publishing, 1972.

    Rief, Linda. Seeking Diversity: Language Arts With Adolescents. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1991.

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Building Bridges with the Multiple Intelligence Theory
by Laura Jones

Laura Jones has taught at both the high school and university levels. She recently completed her master's degree in TESL/TEFL and is currently an ESL instructor for Asia University America Program at Central Washington University. She presented "Tapping Multi-lntelligences in the Multicultural Classroom" with a team of Central Washington Writing Project consultants at this year's NCTE conference in November.

Teaching writing for the last two years has given me an opportunity to watch a number of different learning styles at work. After introducing students to the recursive nature of process writing and helping them to see the difference between revising and proofreading, I noticed that many began to develop an understanding of the intrinsic link between writing and thinking. Some became heavy revisers who had to re-work their papers seven or eight times before their messages came into focus; others became heavy planners who made elaborate outlines and maps for themselves illustrating the progression of ideas. These students used writing as a means to discover, explore, and define what they found significant in their world and developed these writings into polished pieces to be submitted for evaluation.

However, despite the number of students who developed an ability to write with a sense of purpose, some still had trouble focusing on a topic, making a personal connection with that topic, and expressing it in a way that seemed significant to the audience. Many researchers have indicated inexperienced writers generally encounter high levels of frustration when they begin drafting a piece because they are not sure how to focus in on an intended meaning for an audience (Flower and Hayes; Hillocks; Sommers). I knew these students had something they wanted to say; they just were not comfortable expressing themselves verbally.

In Envisioning Writing, Janet Olson classifies students who find writing especially troublesome as visual learners. She states that "nothing is wrong with children who are visual learners. They are simply different from verbal learners. Teachers need to understand and incorporate visual thinking and visual learning strategies into conventional teaching methods in order to make it possible for both types of learners to reach their full language potential" (6).

In a journal where I recorded my observations of students' progress, I noted my own awareness of a student applying an alternative learning strategy in my Freshman English class, a student who had not contributed much during class discussions and was struggling greatly with the writing assignments. We had spent a good portion of a class period discussing a piece they had read that dealt with the issue of racial discrimination.

Today, I asked "Chris" if he would like to share his journal entry in response to the piece with the rest of the class. I thought it would be an opportunity for him to share his ideas with the group and to get some positive feedback from his peers. He started by apologizing, saying that he hadn't really done a "freewrite." He picked up his notebook and turned it to the rest of the class. There, on his page, were bold-faced, capital letters: L.A.P.D. vs. Rodney King. I asked him to explain what the drawing was supposed to mean and he went on to explain that L.A.P.D. stood for the Los Angeles Police Department and his freewrite represented the violence that occurred as a result of the police beating Rodney King. He said that this event captured what he thought was a perfect example of the racial tensions, injustices and riots that still occur in America.

This was probably one of the first realizations I had that different learning styles do exist. Freewriting did not work for "Chris." However, when he used drawing as a means to express his ideas, he was able to focus on a specific occurrence which evoked a strong response that he was able to explain to the rest of this class. In light of this evidence, I began incorporating drawing as an alternative pre-writing activity to freewriting.

My goal was to help the visual learners make sense of the text and to give them the means to establish a bridge which would enable them to express their higher levels of critical thinking on paper. Visual exercises worked for students like "Chris" who used drawing as a way to construct meaning, but for others the exercises did nothing to help them move beyond their cursory examination of the material. The drawing activities seemed to be just as inhibiting to the non-visual learners as the freewrites and group discussions were for the non-verbal students.

Despite my frustration, I knew that I was on the right track with the notion of helping students to build bridges in order to connect with the material, but I was running out of strategies. Was there a way to facilitate these cognitive processes for all my students when their learning styles were obviously so different? Shortly thereafter, I attended a workshop presented by Mary Stuart-Britton, at the 1993 Puget Sound Writing Project: Reunion Conference--and it all began to become clear.

Multiple Intelligences

I wasn't reaching all of my learners because I had only taken two ways of learning into account, but in fact, there are many. Mary Stuart-Britton, an instructor in the Northshore School District, introduced me to Howard Gardner's theory that there are many types of intelligences that individuals rely on in the classroom and in life. Gardner emphasizes that

Rather than use tests and correlations among tests to evaluate an individual's ability, such as Binet's I.Q. test, we should be finding ways to assess an individual's natural abilities to construct knowledge. We should look at more naturalistic sources of information about how people around the world develop skills important to their way of life ("Developing" 13).

In a later work, Gardner states:

Fundamentally, I think of an intelligence as a biopsychological potential. That is, all members of the species have the potential to exercise a set of intellectual faculties of  which the species is capable. When I speak of an individual's linguistic or interpersonal intelligence, then, this is a shorthand way of saying that the individual has developed the potential to deal with specific contents in her environment--such as the linguistic signals that she hears or produces, or the social/emotional information that she gleans from interacting with other persons (Multiple 36-37).

This notion that potential cognitive processes or intelligences are the results of the social/emotional information that an individual gathers from interaction parallels Vygotsky's belief that knowledge has a social origin:

Vygotsky claims that cognitive processes are transmitted through social interaction. Joint participation in an activity permits cognitive processes to be displayed, shared, and practiced, so that the child is able to modify her or his current mode of functioning.... Cognitive abilities are neither magically generated in social isolation, nor innately given, nor passively assimilated. Rather, nascent skills emerge and are refined as children actively participate in supportive contexts that are structured by others (quot. in Day, French and Hall 35-36).

If these individuals are right, and knowledge is something that must, in part, be socially constructed, then what sort of intellectual or naturalistic resources were my students using to construct knowledge when reading and writing?

Gardner has proposed that there are seven different intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal (Multiple 17-26). Viewing our students as having this "spectrum of intellectual capacities" means we recognize that students have the potential to construct knowledge in a number of ways in the classroom, even though they may favor certain processes over others. I have used this approach to help students understand texts in both my Freshman Composition and Basic English classrooms.

Introducing Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom

The first step I had to take was to encourage the students to explore what they felt were the intelligences on which they most often relied when learning. Modeling my classroom workshop after Mary Stuart-Britton's, I gave the students a copy of Stuart-Britton's checklist that defined possible professions and educational implications for individuals according to their preferred intelligence. The following is an excerpt from this handout:

Linguistic Intelligence:

Checklist: thinking in words; sensitivity to sounds, rhythms, meaning of words; using language to express complex thought.

Professions: poets, fiction writers, essayists, journalists, speakers, broadcasters, translators, linguists.

Educational implications: journals, short stories, response logs, storytelling, essays, speeches, exhibitions, wide variety of texts, script writing, class discussions, panels.

After we read through the handout, I asked students to draw their brains with respective representations of all seven different intelligences. This procedure follows the same format as Stuart-Britton's. When I drew my own brain during the Puget Sound Writing Project workshop, I allotted the largest space for my interpersonal intelligence. I find learning the most meaningful for me when I can discuss my perception of the information with other people. I value the variety of ideas that I find when I work with other people. The smallest portion of my brain was designated as my logical-mathematical intelligence because I have the most difficulty when I have to rely on this intelligence to learn; nevertheless, I know there have been times when this intelligence has helped me construct meaning--i.e., in comparison-contrast activities, graphing information, and, of course, solving mathematical problems. Drawing their brains allows students to see that they possess all of the different intelligences even though they may prefer using some more than others.

In order for students to begin valuing their multiple intelligences, I provide them with a problem-solving task in which they would be required to use their preferred intelligence. After students have identified their strongest preference, they are grouped together with other individuals who also favored the same one--all of the visual-spatial people formed a group, all of the intrapersonal learners formed a group, and so on. Then, they received a piece of writing with these instructions:

1 ) Read the piece aloud twice. Choose a different reader each time and try to change the dramatic effect each time.

2) Discuss your impressions of the piece as a group.

3) Review the handout on Multiple Intelligences--i.e., your preferred intelligence.

4) Come up with a way to present your understandings of the piece to the class using your preferred intelligence.

5) Make a group presentation to the class.

One can always tell when I am running this workshop in my classroom because I will be staggering through the crowded hallways, loaded down with bundles of construction paper, larger butcher paper, markers, crayons, scissors, tape, glue--anything that I think the students may want to use. Even though the students are told that using these materials is optional, I try to bring as many different kinds of supplies as I can carry in order to give the students ideas for alternative ways to create their pieces.

I have introduced students to Multiple Intelligences in my Freshman English and Basic English classes. The Freshman Composition class analyzed the poem "What They Learn In School" by Joseph Stern while the Basic English class used their preferred problem-solving skills to interpret "The Middle Daughter" by Barbara Kingsolver. In both classes the groups responded in similar ways although their final products are always as original as the groups that create them. The visual-spatial groups always migrate to the colored paper and immerse themselves in creating visual representations of their interpretations of the poem. Sometimes the intrapersonal groups will incorporate a visual component in their final piece, but more often the students will spend their time discussing their separate interpretations of the poem and concluding that they will write separate responses which they would read to the class. The linguistic groups always find a way to incorporate their own words in their product; quite often they will create an original poem as a representation of their learning.

Musical Intelligence

The musical intelligence group reading "What They Learned In School" focused on the "dissonance" that the author was illustrating in the piece because of the different agendas that "they" had. One student said that he thought that the hypocrisy in the poem could be described with musical terminology such as contrary motion and dissonance. They paralleled this to the dissonance sometimes found in jazz and twentieth-century classical music. Another student in the group wanted to represent the poem as a piece of music using a group of instruments that would never work together: an accordion, a banjo, a piano, and a small oboe section; playing these together would express the various voices or they's in the poem. The group felt that if this poem was a piece of music it would be best represented by the awkwardness of these instruments when played together and the lack of synchrony or the rhythm of the piece.

This group of students had used their preferred intelligence to explicate the poem in an insightful and accurate manner. Their sense of themselves as musicians was illustrated by their ability to articulate the meaning of the poem in musical terms. They were careful to make distinctions about their interpretation though. For example, at one point during their presentation I asked them whether this dissonance could be represented by the seemingly disparate sounds that musicians make as they warm-up their instruments for a performance. They quickly said no. To them, there was still a definite pattern or uniform purpose for the musical sounds in a pre-concert practice session. If these sounds were to be considered dissonant, they said, each instrument would have to be out of tune.

What They Learn In School

In the schools now, they want them to know all about marijuana, crack, heroin,
                and amphetamines,
Because then they won't be interested in marijuana, crack, heroin, and amphetamines,
But they don't want to tell them anything about sex because if the schools tell them about
                sex, then they will be interested in sex,
But if the schools don't tell them anything about sex,
Then they will have high morals and no one will get pregnant, and everything will be all
                right,
And they do want them to know a lot about computers so they will out compete the Japanese,
But they don't want them to know anything about real science because then they will lose
                their faith and become secular humanists,
And they do want them to know all about this great land of ours so that they will be
                patriotic,
But they don't want them to learn about the tragedy and pain in its real history
                because then they will be ethical about this great land of ours and we will be passively taken over by a foreign power,
And they want them to learn how to think for themselves so they can get good jobs and be
                successful,
But they don't want them to have books that confront them with real ideas because that will
                confuse their values,
And they'd like them to be good parents,
But they can't teach them about families because that takes them back to how you get to be a
                family,
And they want to warn them about how not to get AIDS
But that would mean telling them how not to get AIDS,
And they'd like them to know the Constitution,
But they don't like some of those amendments except when they are invoked by the people
                they agree with,
And they'd like them to vote,
But they don't want them to discuss current events because h might be controversial and upset them and make them want to take drugs, which they already have told them about,
And they want to teach them the importance of morality,
But they also want them to learn that Winning is not everything-it is the Only Thing,
And they want them to be well-read,
But they don't want them to read Chaucer or Shakespeare or Aristophanes or Mark Twain or Ernest Hemingway or John Steinbeck, because that will corrupt them,
And they don't want them to know anything about art because that will make them weird,
But they do want them to know about music so they can march in the band,
And they mainly want to teach them not to question, not to challenge, not to imagine, but to be obedient and behave well so that they can hold them forever as children to their bosoms
               as the second millennium lurches toward its panicky close.

-Joseph Stern

The Middle Daughter

If you threw her in the water
she would float upstream.
What if baby Moses had floated upstream,
bobbing toward Lake Victoria in his bullrush
        boat,
passing the transfixed laundry women,
leaving them behind in a wake of
        amazement?
What would have become of the children of
        Israel?
This middle daughter forgets,
there is always history.

Show her white, she sees black.
The problem is her vision.
From infancy she has thrown off every color
        we wrapped her in:
first the pink, contemptuous
and later even the blue, for reasons
we hadn't the nerve to be thankful for.
She wants to wear red, or nothing.
And you should see her with her red shirt
flapping on her spindle body
like some solo flag,
marching up the river,
leading the salmon to slaughter.
She says they aren't really dying.
She says something is born of
        swimming upstream
that finds its way back to the sea
and spreads like a grassfire through
        the seaweed
across the floor of underwater continents
and finally comes back to the very same river,
not one, but a thousand fish,
a generation of fish.
This middle daughter believes
she will make history.
        -Barbara Kingsolver

Kinesthetic Intelligence

The kinesthetic group that read "The Middle Daughter" created a role play to represent the voice or persona of the young woman in the piece who "floated upstream" and was destined to "make history." The group consisted of three student athletes from our school's football and basketball teams. They felt that the voice in the poem represented some of the frustrations that they had experienced in trying to get to college. They created a skit about a young high school athlete being interviewed by a talent scout who was considering him for a full-ride scholarship. Knowing that a scholarship was the only way he would get to college, the athlete in the skit tried to appear self-assured to the scout, even though the coach tried to intimidate him and make him feel inadequate.

When I asked the rest of the class to comment on whether or not this presentation was an accurate interpretation of the poem, they responded that they had never thought of viewing it this way, but it made sense; I had to agree with them. The kinesthetic students' interpretation focused on a theme similar to the experiences they had had: an individual's perseverance in the face of adversity. As one of the students in the kinesthetic group said, "No one showed the middle daughter the way, just as the athlete in the role play had to find his own way in the world." The middle daughter thus served as a point of entry into the piece; once the students were inside the poem, they could then explore the meaning more fully using their preferred intelligence.

Incorporating Multiple Intelligences into Writing

A goal common to many instructors is to help students take charge of their own learning. Because when they do, they become more motivated to learn and value what they learn (Hillocks). When students are given the freedom to construct meaning in their own way, they are able to take control of their learning processes. As a result, not only are students able to reach higher, more-critical levels of understanding, they are also more likely to value their learning because they relied on their own intellectual strengths to get them there.

Teachers who apply the research of Multiple Intelligences in the classroom will help facilitate students' awareness of and regards for their learning processes. In my classes, students are given an opportunity to understand that there are many ways to solve problems and create products, and they have the potential to use all of their individual resources, provided that they understand how and why they are using them. In addition, I also think this research holds potential for facilitating cognitive development in classes across the curriculum. Teachers in all fields could experiment with similar activities or projects that ask students to use their preferred intelligences to make  sense of information and to create original products which demonstrate the complexity of their understanding.

In both of the classroom situations I described, students were asked to come up with a premise for a composition based on the issues, topics, and ideas that were highlighted in presentations and discussions. When we brain-stormed topics students should write on at the end of the workshop, I was bombarded with suggestions as I tried to write them all on the board. The presentations had brought forth a wide variety of issues which they could explore further in their papers. In addition to using their favored intelligences to demonstrate their new knowledge, the students had found the bridges on which to build their understanding of the information.

The complexity of the students'  writings also increased due to this activity. Usually the thinking in the first set of final papers is still quite superficial, despite the fact that students are drafting and revising their pieces. Pat D'Arcy states:

If we try to push children too hastily into the acquisition of new knowledge, we shall only be laying in store for them all of those negative feelings of confusion, frustration and dismay which only serve to make learning difficult. In order to think forwards we continually have to think back. I suggest that this is as true for speculative and imaginative modes of thought as it is for the analytic and the explanatory (12).

When the students used their multiple intelligences to respond to a text, they had the time they needed to grapple with the intricacies of the issues. One student from the musical intelligence group was really impressed by the absence of student voices in Stern's piece. He felt that this poem reflected the absence of student opinion from the educational reform movement that has been happening all over the country. He wrote a paper which addressed the reasons why students should be included in these conversations about "what they should learn in school." This student had identified with an issue that held a certain amount of significance to him, as well as his audience, and he began to examine and grapple with the complexities involved in his writing.

It is possible that he might have reached this level of understanding without using his spectrum of intelligences to reach this new knowledge, but it is not certain that his recognition would have been as significant if he hadn't been given the opportunity to explore the issue in his own way--by using his preferred intelligence. Giving him an opportunity to make sense of the information in a way that was most comfortable, before attempting to express it in writing, allowed him the opportunity to build a connection, a bridge to a higher level of understanding.

It is important to note that the resulting students papers were not perfect; the students still had work to do as they developed as writers. However, it was clear that they had begun to find significant issues to discuss. They had found something meaningful about the topics they had chosen and were beginning to examine the complexities of the issues in writing.

Incorporating multiple intelligences in any classroom gives the students the time they need to understand, value, and use their own preferred learning styles when they are engaged in learning. This time is crucial if students are truly going to develop as thinkers as well as writers. In addition, students also have an opportunity to use their other intelligences as well as the one's they initially prefer. By including multiple intelligences in the curriculum, teachers can help their students begin to find ways to build the bridges or the critical thinking processes which are necessary for success in the classroom and in life.

Works Cited

    Day, Jeanne D., Lucia A. French, and Lynda Hall. "social Influences on Cognitive Development." Metacognition, Cognition, and Human Performance. Ed. D. L. Forrest-Pressley, G. E. MacKinnon, and T. Gary Waller. Vol. 1. Orlando: Academic Press, 1985.

    D'Arcy, Pat. Making Sense, Shaping Meaning: Writing in the Context of a Capacity-Based Approach to Learning. Portsmouth,NH: Heinmann, 1989.

    Flower, Linda, and John R. Hayes. "The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical Problem." The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook. Ed. Gary Tate and Edward P. J. Corbett. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

    Gardner, Howard. "Developing the Spectrum of Human Intelligences." Cognition, Curriculum and Literacy. Ed. Hedley, Carolyn, John Houtz and Anthony Baratta. New Jersey: Ablex, 1990.

    Gardner, Howard. Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. New York: Basic Books, 1993.

    Hillocks, George. Research on Written Composition: New Directions for Teachers. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1986.

    Kingsolver, Barbara. "The Middle Daughter." Another America--Otra America. Seattle: The Seal Press, 1992.

    Olson, Janet. Envisioning Writing: Toward an Integration of Drawing and Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1992.

    Sommers, Nancy."Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook. Ed. Gary Tate and Edward P. J. Corbett. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

    Stern, Joseph. "What They Learn in School." Conversations. New York: Macmillan, 1994. 70-71.

    Stuart-Britton, Mary. Workshop. "Integrating Writing With Multiple Intelligence." Puget Sound Writing Project: Reunion Conference. Seattle, Washington: Shoreline Community College, 6 Nov. 1993.

NCTE Passes Resolutions on Proposition 187, Inclusion and Other Issues

During the 84th Annual Convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, held November 16-21 in Orlando, Florida, directors and members of the Council passed resolutions on a number of education issues, including one which condemns Proposition 187, a recently passed piece of legislation in California that denies educational and social services to undocumented immigrants. NCTE also resolved to affirm the professional freedom of teachers; to urge schools to include special needs students in regular classrooms; and to explore effective ways of integrating awareness of the structure of language into classroom instruction without teaching such structure in a prescriptive manner. Finally, NCTE passed a resolution that addresses the failure of the Smithsonian Institute to acknowledge the contributions of Latinos to American culture and history.

On Proposition 187: Teachers who proposed this resolution said Proposition 187, passed earlier this year in California, denies educational and social services to undocumented immigrants, in this case, primarily Latinos. The proposition requires teachers to report their own students to legal authorities. They said the passage of Proposition 187 by an overwhelming majority reflects an attack on some of the fundamental tenets of American democracy, among them, that constitutional guarantees apply to all people on US soil whether they are part of the established majority or a socially stigmatized minority.

The members continued that Proposition 187 subverts basic American ideals and that denying constitutional rights to a targeted group jeopardizes the rights of all. When education is denied to some based on their immigrant status today, they said, education can be denied to others on some other basis tomorrow.

On Freedom to Teach: The members who proposed this resolution said that many teachers face constraints that make it difficult, if not impossible, to make professional decisions in their own classrooms. Such constraints are an attack on the professional freedom of teachers everywhere, they said. The solution's proposers noted that teachers who are highly educated and qualified, and well-grounded in theory and practice often are treated as if they are incapable of deciding what's best for the students in their classrooms. They concluded that it is important for professional organizations like NCTE to take the lead in affirming the freedom of qualified teachers to be professional decision makers.

On Language Study: The teachers who proposed this resolution said the response of many teachers to the "grammar debate" has been either to avoid explicit instruction in the structure of English or to continue to teach grammar in a prescriptive manner. These extremes, they said, emphasize the need for NCTE to articulate strategies of developing the language awareness of teachers and students.

On Inclusion: Proposers of this resolution noted that inclusion--the process of including special needs students within regular education--is under debate within both special education and regular education. Essays appear in established journals, they said, and new publications have been developed around the issue. Despite objections to some abuses and financial concerns, they said that much of the testimony is positive and that all students benefit if the decision for inclusion has been based on sound considerations.

The developers of this resolution believe that if regular education teachers receive professional development opportunities and the proper support for students with special needs, they will be willing to have inclusive classrooms.

On the Smithsonian Institution: The members who proposed this resolution believe that the Smithsonian Institution, a public repository of American history and culture, has ignored the Latino population of the US in terms of its mission in research, education, publication, and cultural representation. The failure to investigate, collect, conserve, and display significant contributions of Latino culture, they said, deprives the public of a complete and accurate portrayal of American history and cultures.

The proposers noted that the Latino culture is the largest language minority in the US, numbering 22,000,000 people. Latinos have figured prominently in the identity of America throughout its history, they continued, and in its economic and social development.

(Contents)

The Promises of Self-Evaluation
by Stephanie Packwood

Stephanie Packwood did her student teaching this fall at Central Valley High School and graduated from Eastern Washington State University at the end of fall quarter.

As soon as I made the decision to go into teaching, it began--being haunted by my own experiences as a high school student. I vividly remember the apathy that typically pervaded the classrooms. I remember students lounging as best they could in hard plastic seats with slabs of formica-covered plyboard attached, rehashing the high points of the weekend party, each student adding his or her two cents' worth until the whole group of students was laughing hysterically, wiping tears of laughter from their eyes and making already blood-shot eyes even redder. I remember how animated they were as they recounted their partying adventures and how the apathy abruptly etched its way into their faces as soon as the teacher walked into the room. The laughter died. The animation fled. The teacher had arrived, and it was time for them to be taught. It was time to soberly focus on learning, that process of soaking up enough information from the lecture in order to pass the next test and eventually pass the course. Learning was something that they allowed to be inflicted upon themselves because they had the big picture in mind: passing enough courses to graduate and thereby freeing themselves from further learning.

I well remember this attitude toward learning, and it scares me. It keeps me awake at night worrying, wondering what I'm going to do if I find myself teaching a group of students like my own former classmates. How can I cut through the apathy to reach students' intellectual curiosity? As I get closer to finishing my studies in education, and the time draws nearer for me to take up the role of teacher, I ask myself, "How can I make my students care about learning?"

Making Students Accountable

A classmate in one of my English classes recently introduced me to the concept of self-evaluation, and I have to admit that at first I was highly skeptical about how effective such a method could be. Students evaluating themselves? The very thought put me in mind of some of the less successful peer response groups in which I took part as a highschool student. In a flashback, I saw myself reading the paper of one of my group members in which grammar and mechanics were so poor the intended message was nearly incomprehensible; this group member was not a remedial student; instead, he represented the average skill level of my other group members and classmates. Could such students realistically be expected to evaluate themselves?

I wasn't so sure at first, but the more I find out about self-evaluation, the more I believe it's exactly what students like these and students of all levels need--and why not? Shouldn't the first step in making progress in learning be that each student be made accountable for his or her own performance and attitude? It makes sense, and this is one of the primary goals of self-evaluation. What's more important, using this resource does not hinge upon students' proficiency in grammar or mechanics but on their ability and willingness to take a good, hard look at themselves as learners and to then honestly and realistically evaluate what they see.

How It's Done

There are as many methods of self-evaluation as there are teachers who implement them in their classrooms and rightly so since each teacher must adjust this method to suit the needs of his or her own students. However, broadly speaking, there are four kinds of self-evaluation that are particularly useful techniques for students to learn. These four are as follows: self-evaluation on tests, self-evaluation in group work, self-evaluation on portfolios, and self-evaluation of the students themselves as learners.

Self-Evaluation on Tests

The goals of self-evaluation on tests are actually some of the same as those for self-evaluation in general. Students are made responsible for their own performance, attitude, and behavior. And they are allowed to develop security, self-reliance, and self-confidence by increasing their awareness of their strengths and weaknesses, especially as test-takers.

As research on this topic has shown, there are also several valuable effects of using self-evaluation on tests in the classroom. For instance, it has been proven to reduce test anxiety in students because it enables them to better judge their preparedness for tests before the fact (Csonger). Additionally, it gives them an incentive to go back over their work on tests and check for errors before handing in the tests, a skill which some more sophisticated learners might already employ, but which is so helpful and basic for all students that it makes sense to teach it. What's more is that teachers who have tried this method have found that students tend to learn it fairly quickly; according to junior high school teacher Julianna Csonger's experience, as recounted in her article "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Teaching Self-Assessment to Students," by mid-year at least half the students could come within three percentage points of estimating their test grades through self-evaluation, and all the students were "in the ballpark" (636). One final effect--and this one seems among the most convincing reasons for teaching this skill--is that self-evaluation on tests becomes a habit for students; after a while, they tend to do it on their own without the teacher prompting them to do so.

The method of teaching self-evaluation is basic. The teacher first comes up with a list of guidelines that helps students see which specific criteria they should look for when assessing themselves on a test. The teacher then types the criteria onto a hand-out which is distributed and explained to the students. The students are shown that they are to use the guidelines on the hand-out to review each of the problems on their tests. This review process is to be done during the last five minutes of the testing period. In order to give students incentive to evaluate themselves as honestly and realistically as they can, bonus points can be awarded for those students whose estimated grades come within three points of their actual test grades. One key element is requiring students who estimate failing grades for themselves to write on the test both the reasons for their projected failure and their reasons for not seeking extra help from the teacher before the test, a rule which Csonger incorporated into her program and which I believe is essential in establishing students' accountability for their own performance on tests (637).

Self-Evaluation in Group Work

The teacher from whose research I'm drawing to discuss this aspect of self-evaluation, Dr. Marvin Hoffman, turned to self-evaluation as a last resort. He had been working with peer editing and response groups, and--despite offering the best modeling and training of which he was capable-- student comments still tended to be vague and unhelpful; they were confined to "That was really good" or "I liked it" or--with a stretch--"it could use more detail" (79).

Out of frustration, he finally came up with some reflection questions which he posed to the students in an effort to find out if students themselves could offer him some advice to improve the effectiveness of the group work. The following questions were the ones which ended up evoking solid, helpful advice for him from the students, advice which he then used to turn around the group work in his classroom:

1. Would you prefer to do without groups at all and discuss your writing with the whole class?

2.What is the best size writing group?

3. Would you prefer to choose your own groups?

4. What changes have you made in your writing on the basis of the group sessions?

5. What other suggestions you have forgotten and giving more useful responses to each other's work? (79)

Written student responses to these questions resulted in the following findings: most students preferred small groups of three to four students, they liked choosing their own groups, and they felt "opportunities for frequent shifts in group members to avoid inbreeding" would be useful (79). A byproduct of the reflective questions used in this way was that this process sensitized the students to the problems inherent in group work and made them a part of the solutions.

Self-Evaluation on Portfolios

The goals of self-evaluation on portfolios are twofold: to force students to play a more active role in their writing than they would in a traditional English classroom and to teach students how to critically review their own writing. It is also a perfect venue for teaching skills which will be useful to students even after they've left the classroom. These skills include the ability to set and achieve realistic goals, the ability to honestly assess one's own strengths and weaknesses, and, most importantly from an educator's viewpoint, the ability to learn on one's own.

All of these skills are developed with portfolios and self-evaluation when such a program is properly implemented. One approach is as follows: first students are allowed the autonomy of choosing their own reading although the recommended amount of reading they do daily (at least half an hour's worth, as specified by middle school teacher Linda Rief in her article entitled "Finding the Value in Evaluation: Self-Assessment in a Middle School Classroom") is controlled by the teacher (28). Then they write often--five drafts a week. Free of the teacher's guidance, they select which drafts they revise. Although student-teacher conferences were not explicitly included as part of the revision process in the information I read, it was inferred that they took place, and I believe they would be a natural part of it. The student revises until satisfied with the resulting piece. This process is repeated with a succession of other drafts until each student has a collection of revised drafts. The best of these--and this is according to the individual student's idea of what is best--go into the portfolios. Then every trimester (or at the interval the teacher sets aside for this purpose) students put the pieces in their portfolios in order from best to least effective, and they critique themselves according to what they believe made their best papers effective and rendered their less successful papers ineffective. Additionally, they assess which problems they've overcome as writers and those which they still need to overcome. They set specific, realizable goals they want to achieve for the next evaluation period as well.

Self-Evaluation of Students as Learners

Not only is this a method that can be used to increase students' awareness of what they've learned, but since teachers can use the students' self evaluations to improve their own effectiveness, it's really a method that can lead to self-evaluation for both parties. The teacher's role in this method is that of writing reflective questions which the students use to evaluate their own and the teacher's effectiveness in making classroom activities successful. The teacher must then make every effort to incorporate helpful suggestions (made by the students in the evaluations) into his or her teaching; this is not only a way of demonstrating to students that the teacher values their comments, but also it's a method for the teacher to make his or her teaching more effective for the students. In "How Am I Doin'?: The Importance of Evaluation in the Classroom," Dr. Marvin Hoffman expressed this idea about his own classroom: "For us as teachers, it is both commonsense decency and enlightened self interest to listen to what our students are saying and to respond to their suggestions" (82).

The students' role in this method is to be as reflective and helpful as possible when filling out evaluations. Additionally, the nature of the evaluation sought to evoke insights from the students concerning how their own behavior affects the teacher's effectiveness. For example, two of the questions used by Dr. Hoffman in a student evaluation he held on journal writing read as follows:

1. What effect does it have on your journal writing to know that no one else will read it unless you want them to?

2. What suggestions do you have for making journal writing time more effective and enjoyable? (80)

There are some things to watch out for when writing the reflective questions. First, there's the danger of "laying oneself bare," as Dr. Hoffman puts it, to the students' criticism in ways that can be both "unproductive and masochistic" (80). Also be sure to pose questions that make students reflect equally on their own role in learning as well as the teacher's in teaching.

Apathy No More

As I've read about and reflected upon self-evaluation, I've come to value more and more what I've seen it can offer teachers and students. It's a way of prodding students out of an apathetic state toward learning. What's more, I've seen that it's a way of getting students and teachers on the same side; with self-evaluation, both teachers and students take on the responsibility for learning together, and I think that's the way it should be.

Works Cited

    Csonger, Julianna E. "Mirror, on theWall: Teaching Self-Assessment to Students." The Mathematics Teacher 85 (1992): 636-637.

    Hoffman, Marvin. "HowAm I Doin'?: The Importance of Evaluation in the Classroom." English Joumal 81 (1992): 79-82.

    Rief, Linda. "Finding the Value in Evaluation: Self-Assessment in a Middle School Classroom." Educational Leadership 47 (1990): 24-29.

The Sebesta Series: Celebrating Children's Literature July 7-8, 1994

This summer marks the fiat of a yearly series of summer institutes on children and young adult literature and response. The institute is in honor of Dr. Sam Sebesta's retirement from the University and celebrates his inspiration and leadership in the field.

The institute will be held in the Shoreline Center in Seattle and will include a teacher strand, a research strand, and an author/illustrator strand. Cost of the two day institute is $125 ($110 early-bird registration) or $75 for full time students. Both course credit and clock hours are available.

During the evening of Saturday, July 7, the institute will host an Evening With Sam, complete with slides, music, song and dance. Proceeds from both the institute and Evening With Sam will go to the Seattle Children's Theatre for a new program called The Sam Sebesta Scholarship: Schools Into Drama, Drama Into Schools.

For more information, call Bonnie Campbell Hill or Chris Schaefer at 281-2794.

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The Animals of November

Despite such fog and ripe, inviting mist,
despite those weirs of aspen sifting sight
a hundred paces from the classroom where I wait,
my students feel the chill of tube lights
overhead, and writing to compose themselves,
brave novices, allow, A job should bring
together the individual's business and pleasure.
Nudging ballpoints in search of azimuths
a notebook lacks, week after week
since Labor Day tolled, how can they help
but feel the trees now crowding at their backs?

In the pause of a late November woods
nearby, hunters hear the pulse in the ears
that I feel now indoors, but
those that wade shadows hiding lithe deer
will stipple red as sumac fruit the snowpack
underfoot--they know their quarry's tithe.

By forefather covenants, they barter work for breath
unseen by students boxed in insulated brick.
Yet we, too, sense mystery afoot, and surely heed:
our heartbeats measure darkness by the pool of light
my desk lamp throws. I say so, knowing
the essays in my drawer take heat from embers
we have nursed, and into schoolroom prose I track
the animals of November.

Out beyond the tamaracks and paper birches,
where seeds of old jack pine await some quickening flame,
the ones that stir in countries of the mind
by some unquenchable grace, take us.

Beside these students in my button-down shirt
I therefore bend to punctuate, I muse on how we labor.
Unbidden, unfelt but as a pang
the fray of blood through muscle wakes,
migrations of these hours
convene in those who seek such prey.

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Class Notes

The stalwart heel that marched in radical youth
emerges well-shod with the bourgeois blues.
Before, uncouth, you stood for uplift--news
was all of riches for the commonweal.

Then Marx led to India, but who saw
Recovery steal your heart for good? If dissing
"the mind's impurities" could feather your nest
will privilege lick wounds left otherwise sore?

"Suffering is the test!" you one time bored
your family by dinner-time decree,
though sterilizing the poor and real estate fees
improve our talk in your clubhouse today.

Now, farther, too, from ways we would conceive,
I write what I don't speak of this--and grieve.

                                                --Robert Schnelle

Robert Schnelle, recently immigrated from Vermont, teaches general education at Central Washington University.

NEH Summer Seminars for School Teachers

The National Endowment for the Humanities is sponsoring severity seminars on a variety of texts in the humanities for four, five, or six weeks during the summer of 1995. Each seminar will provide 15 teachers with the opportunity to work under the direction of a distinguished teacher and active scholar in the field of the seminar.

Teachers selected to participate in the program will receive a stipend of $2,450, $2,825, or $3,200, depending on the length of the seminar. The stipend is intended to cover travel costs to and from the seminar location, books and other research expenses, and living expenses for the tenure of the seminar.

Although seminars are designed primarily for full-time teachers, grades 7 through 12, other school personnel, K-12, are also eligible to apply. Applicants must be US citizens, native residents of a US territorial possession, or foreign nationals who have been residing in the United States for at least three years immediately preceding the application deadline, March 1,1995. Partcipants in  1993 and 1994 seminars are not eligible to apply for 1995.

Applicants may receive a complete list of seminar offerings from NEH but must write to the seminar directors for application instructions and forms and for detailed information about the structure, special requirements, site, and housing of seminars. Applicants may apply to only one seminar. However, applicants may write to more than one seminar director for information. The complete application should be mailed directly to the seminar director and should be postmarked no later than March 1, 1995.

For a complete list of the seminar offerings write Summer Seminars for School Teachers, Division of Fellowships and Seminars, Room 316,1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20506 or call (202) 606 8463 or FAX (202) 606 8558.

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Pseudo Questions in the English Classroom
by Robert Ridings

Robert Ridings is Associate Professor of English and Co-director of Secondary English Education at Eastern Washington University. He is currently editor of Inland: A Journal for Teachers of English Language Arts.

"Girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind.... "Give me your definition of a horse."
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
"Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!" said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. "Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours."

--Dickens, Hard Times
    (bk. 1, ch.2)

When I was a first-year teacher, I relied heavily on two discourse strategies which I make a conscious effort-- not always successfully--to avoid today: I lectured a great deal and conducted "discussions"which, nowadays, I would no longer characterize as discussions. I used these strategies, I suppose, for two reasons. First, I thought lecturing and discussing were what English teachers were supposed to do. This was not an unreasonable assumption; after all, I had just spent four years as an undergraduate watching English teachers lecture and discuss. Second, I believed that these strategies increased my chances of maintaining orderly relationships among 25 to 30 students in a small classroom just down the hall from the cafeteria. This, too, seemed like a reasonable assumption, especially at the end of the school year. At that time the principal offered me a second-year contract and complimented me on running an orderly, well-disciplined classroom. He also praised me for my skills as a discussion leader, remarking that students in my classes generally seemed attentive and eager to participate in discussions.

As delighted as I was to receive my principal's approval at the time, in retrospect, I must challenge his assessment of me as a discussion leader. I do so because I now realize that the staple of my discussion sessions was--more often than not--the pseudo question.

The Pseudo Question:
Defining and Analyzing the Problem

As far as I know, the first researcher to use the term "pseudo question" and discuss its use in schools was the British educator Douglas Barnes. In his influential early essay on classroom discourse, "Language in the Secondary Classroom," Barnes refers to questions that are not genuine requests for information because the teacher already knows the answer to them as "pseudo" or "closed questions." In later studies, such questions are referred to variously as "test questions" (Labov), "lesson" and "known-answer questions" (Cazden), and "convergent" and "guess-what-l'm-thinking questions" (Postman and Weingartner).

One of the most interesting things about pseudo questions is that they are often the prominent feature of discourse sequences that purport to be dialogues or discussions. Atkinson describes such dialogues as elaborate "information games" operating on the "shared pretense" of genuine questioning and answering (179-180). Note, for example, how often the pseudo question appears in the familiar teacher-led exchange cited below:

T1: John, can you tell me what a gerund is?
S1: I'm not sure, Mr. Jones, but isn't it something like a noun?
T2: Right, now--in what ways is it like a noun?
S2: It does some of the same things that nouns do.
T3: Exactly--so gerunds function like nouns in a sentence, which means they can act          as subjects and objects.

For most of us, the above dialogue has an all-too-familiar ring. (I've certainly played the part of Mr. Jones on more than one occasion.) That it does is hardly surprising since the basic structure underlying this particular teaching sequence has not only been around a long time but has proved to be extremely resistant to change. Since Plato's brilliant teacher-polemicist began using it over 2300 years ago to persuade a variety of antagonistic "students" to accept his conclusions as their own, teachers everywhere have sought to imitate the Socratic technique of skillfully directed questioning in their classrooms. In fact, so pervasive and long-lived has been the influence of Socractic questioning that linguists Sinclair and Coulthard consider it to be nothing less than the defining feature of the basic type of teaching structure. They identify the constituent parts of this structure as follows: (teacher's) initiation, (pupil's) response, (teacher's) feedback--or IRF for short (21).

An analysis of the dialogue cited above reveals a number of things. To begin with, the exchange obviously conforms to the IRF pattern, with each of the three parts (linguists call them moves) easily identifiable. Obvious, too, is that within this particular IRF pattern, the question is the dominant sentence type. In fact, we come away from the dialogue with the sense that the question is the rhetorical glue that holds the whole sequence together. Looking next at the questions themselves, we discover that they are both pseudo questions. Clearly, the teacher knows what a gerund is (T1); likewise, he knows in what ways it is like a noun (T2), as his third feedback move demonstrates (T3). Finally, we note that the teacher uses pseudo questions to initiate discussion on a topic he has chosen, to keep discussion focused on that topic, and to judge the accuracy and relevance of what the student says.

Although it would not be difficult to carry this analysis a good deal further, the fact is that this type of verbal exchange, that between teacher and student, has already been exhaustively analyzed by researchers from a wide range of disciplines. (For a useful one volume review of forty years of multidisciplinary literature on the subject, see Wilkinson's collection of essays, Communicating in the Classroom.) So instead of covering that well-travelled terrain again, I would like to focus on the question that doubtless has been forming in the minds of many readers: Precisely what is wrong with teachers using pseudo questions? I can best address that question by listing and discussing briefly the most prominent reasons for not using pseudo questions in classrooms.

    *    They encourage teacher dominance. The teacher who begins a discussion with a pseudo question immediately establishes an asymmetrical relationship in the classroom, with himself or herself at the top of the pyramid of power. In Questioning: A Path to Critical Thinking, Christenbury and Kelly warn us of questions in general:

If all questions come from the teacher, then the teacher must be the arbiter of all questions and classroom concerns. When all attention is centered on the teacher, questioning may militate against a student-centered, student-concerned learning environment (23).

This is true a fortiori of pseudo questions. These questions are not only posed by the teacher (instances of students asking one another pseudo questions, as teachers know, are rare) but answers to them must be directed back to the teacher. Hence, the teacher controls the flow of information both ways.

    *    They encourage teachers to paraphrase. The reader will have observed that the teacher in the above exchange interweaves pseudo questions with paraphrases. In my experience, not only is this interweaving common practice in classrooms, so is the way in which the teacher arranges the two in the sequence. Typically, as here, the teacher poses a pseudo question; the student answers it; the teacher reshapes or paraphrases the student's answer and, in the process, asks another pseudo question. Now, I know that reasonable and conscientious people can disagree on the importance of teachers paraphrasing in the classroom. I have a good friend, for example, who insists that paraphrasing is one of the most important types of verbal behavior that a teacher can model, especially for students in teacher-training programs. Nonetheless, I agree with Gene Stanford that teachers who continually paraphrase students' responses unintentionally diminish their value:

This habit of repeating reinforces students in the habit of not listening. Why bother, when the teacher is going to repeat everything anyway? It communicates to the students that they don't need to listen to one another, only to the teacher (123).

    *    They cast students in the role of classroom ferrets. The ferret, of course, is a small, weasel-like animal noted for its ability to crawl down the tunnels of other animals in search of prey. The word derives from the Latin fur, meaning "thief." When we ask students to ferret out answers to pseudo questions, we are, in fact, asking them to behave like intellectual ferrets--to crawl into the tunnels of our minds in search of answers and, if they're fortunate, to "steal" those answers from us. If I may be allowed a short digression here, I wonder if I am alone in having felt mildly annoyed, from time to time, at having a student early in a period "steal" from me the answer to a pseudo question that was supposed to have generated discussion for at least half an hour.

Answering pseudo questions is a frustrating business for students, and I am constantly amazed by the patience and goodwill that many of them display in trying to do so. Nonetheless, sometimes even their patience runs out. I recall a student in one of my classes who, after several unsuccessful attempts to answer my pseudo question, threw up his hands in exasperation and said, "OK, I give up. What's the answer you're looking for?" It's the question most of them are dying to ask.

    *    They promote passivity among students. Even though ferrets are active, energetic creatures, it must be remembered that they tunnel because they must, not because they choose to. For our students, tunneling into the teachers mind is not a matters of biological necessity. On the contrary, many of them quickly conclude that answering such questions is just another school game which requires them to play the familiar role of follower and supplicant, and they choose a perfectly sensible means of preserving their dignity and self-respect. They withdraw from the game altogether, taking up in the process the only weapon of protest at their disposal, sullen silence. Like Stephen Dedalus, they choose as their credo non serviam, which translates roughly in this context as, "You can make me come to school, but you can't force me to play the school's game."

    *    They prevent students from developing critical thinking skills. Since 1980, there have been over 350 national reports decrying the condition of American schools, and many of them have taken teachers to task, specifically, for failing to teach higher-level thinking. Pseudo questions do very little to encourage students in processes such as suspending judgment, approaching a problem logically, and reaching an evaluative decision or action. As we know, the content of pseudo questions has already been selected, organized, and evaluated before the questions are asked, leaving students little to do but parrot the teachers' answers as best they can. Interestingly, evaluation, supposedly the highest of the higher-order thinking skills, is rarely called for in such known-answer exchanges. Can we imagine, for example, a student in the above-cited grammar lesson saying "That's an interesting point" or "I think everyone should know more about gerunds"?

    *    They deprive students of the opportunity to display a representative range of oral communication skills. Increasingly, English teachers are recognizing that teaching speaking skills is one of their most important responsibilities. After all, while some of our students will soon stop reading novels by Nathaniel Hawthorne and writing essays on his use of symbolism in The Scarlet Letter, none of them will stop using language orally to achieve (or fail to achieve) a variety of personal, social, and academic goals. The first of these, for some of them, will be securing a decent job. Before we can help students improve these critical oral communication skills, we must diagnose their strengths and weaknesses. The pseudo question makes this difficult to do because, as Michael Stubbs correctly points out, it is impossible for students to display verbal competence if they are "restricted to a passive role, sandwiched between the teacher's initiation and feedback" ( 116).

    *    They create an air of artificiality in the classroom. It is now widely accepted by language specialists and educators alike that language is learned most easily when it is real, relevant, and meaningful. But for most students, classroom discourse that contains a high proportion of pseudo questions strikes them as unreal, irrelevant, and meaningless. They describe such language disparagingly as "teacher talk," to distinguish it from the sort of language used by real people in ordinary conversations. In many ways this is the most unfortunate pedagogical consequence of using pseudo questions because, as anyone who has taught English in a public school knows, it is nearly impossible to be effective in a classroom that has divided into an our-language camp and a their-language camp. In such situations, students can hardly be expected to choose against the language of their peer group or, for that matter, of real people.

A final point of interest related to this matter of artificiality. Michael Stubbs notes that the only other common conversational sequence following the pattern of question-answer evaluation is the riddle, and he goes on to observe that some teacher-student dialogue is "quite literally composed of little riddles" (125). Speaking for myself, a riddle or two a day goes a remarkably long way.

    *    They prevent students from talking to one another. Although research shows that cross-discussions--discussions in which students talk to one another instead of to the teacher--are rare occasions in high school (see Lemke) and college (see Kuhn), Camden points out that when such genuine interchanges between students do occur, they are remembered by teacher and observers alike as the "intellectual high point of the lesson" (62). Known-answer exchanges between teachers and students, on the other hand, seldom allow for cross discussions and are remembered by observers as contributing to a classroom ambience which Goodlad describes, in a word, as "flat" (108).

Conclusion

Readers who have agreed with what I have said so far probably share my bias towards an open-inquiry, student-centered classroom, one in which students are encouraged to take risks, to become independent thinkers, to engage in genuine and meaningful speech and literacy events, and to draw on their own knowledge and experience as much as possible. If these are our educational goals, then the pseudo question, as I have argued, is a lamentably poor tool for achieving them. Consequently, teachers who would create such a classroom environment, might consider, as one way of doing so, reducing the number of pseudo questions they ask.

As it happens, this is an important, but not especially difficult, thing to arrange. Unlike some of the other choices that English teachers make on a daily basis, the choice of the appropriate discourse structure for the class at hand is one over which they still have a good deal of control. When they exercise this control to include in their class discussions more genuine questions ("Does sharing your writing with your classmates make you nervous?") and fewer fake ones ("What is iambic tetrameter?"), a lot of things that are valuable to students and exciting to teachers begin to happen. The thoughts and feelings that come pouring out may take the form of "wild and whirling words" (Hamlet 1.5.133) at first, but teachers who exercise patience and keep listening will discover that they are also words that are genuine and deeply felt, unlike the words that teachers typically get in answer to pseudo questions. More importantly, they are words that, with any luck, will get better each time students are encouraged to use them.

Works Cited

    Atkinson, Paul. "In Cold Blood: Bedside Teaching in a Medical School." Frontiers of Classroom Research. Ed. Gabriel Chanan and Sara Delamont. Slough, England: NFER, 1975.

    Barnes, Douglas. "Language in the Secondary Classroom." Language, the Learner and the School. Douglas Barnes, James Britton, and Harold Rosen. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1971.

    Cazden, Courtney B. Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1988.

    Christenbury, Leila, and Patricia P. Kelly. Questioning: A Path to Critical Thinking. Urbana: NCTE, 1983.

    Goodlad, John I. A Place Called School. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984.

    Kuhn, M. A Discourse Analysis of Discussions in the College Classroom. Diss. Harvard University: UMI, 1984. 384-21, 215.

    Lemke, J. L. Using Language in Classrooms. Victoria,Australia: Deacon UP, 1986. Teaching

    Postman, Neil, and Charles Weingartner.  Teaching as a Subversive Activity. New York: Dell, 1969.

    Sinclair, J. M., and R. M. Coulthard. Toward an Analysis of Discourse. London: Oxford UP,1975.

    Stanford, Gene. Developing Effective Classroom Groups. New York: Hart, 1977.

    Stubbs, Michael. Language, Schools and Classrooms. 2nd ed. New York: Methuen, 1983.

    Wilkinson, Louise Cherry. Communicating in the Classroom. New York: Academic Press,1982.

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Reading, Writing, Thinking--and the Right to Bear Arms
by Alex Whitman

Alex Whitman teaches integrated reading and writing courses at Lower Columbia College. Previously she taught at Spokane Community College.

It seemed all the hands were in the air. Dennie stood at the head of the class, book in hand; I was sitting among the students that day. Behind me and to my left, Rosa and the two Eric's thrust their arms toward her, demanding to be heard. Kyle and Jason who seldom participated in class discussions sat behind me; I turned to watch them talking to each other and simultaneously waving their arms toward Dennie. There was a commotion toward the front, too, and arms were raised. In the very front row, three women with the shadow of maturity in their eyes--Dennie and my contemporaries--were attentive as usual, but today Cheryl's eyes seemed especially thoughtful. women looked at Dennie and held their hands high. To my left, even more hands, Dennie stood frozen, momentarily stunned by the tremendous response to her question. The class was clearly agitated.

Only a few students had not put their hands up. Tuan, Jin San, Zova, and Vladimir may not have had the cultural context to understand the power of  Dennie's question. I looked at Frank, another one of our chronological peers. He sat still. He turned, caught my eye, then held the gaze. Melissa, the young red-haired woman who sat beside me, lowered her head and clutched a handkerchief.

Dennie had opened the hour by introducing a new unit. The assigned text was Warren Burger's essay ``The Right to Bear Arms." On the board she had written the engagement topics:

The Right to Bear Arms
Second Amendment
First draft 1787, finalized in 1788
What was America like in 1788?
Why were guns needed?

The class had already answered these questions rather perfunctorily. The king of England had become a madman; people came to America to escape his tyranny. The new land was undeveloped, and the towns were isolated; communities were small, so people needed to share goods and labor in order to survive. Guns were used to enforce the law, to protect the settlers from marauding animals. The settlers had to shoot game animals for food. Russ pointed out that sometimes they had to scare away occasional persistent British soldiers. And then, said Darrell, there were the savages, the Indians. The settlers had to shoot the Indians. As best they could, our students were remembering something of early American history.

The discussion had continued in this way until the question that caused the upheaval: "What's so different now?"

The fierce 20-minute discussion that followed seemed to recount the worst of local and national news headlines. Most students resented the government's inevitable regulation of private gun ownership.

The two Eric's, who hunted for sport, cherished--even revered--their shotguns and deer rifles. Rosa, a recent immigrant, insisted that owning a gun came with American citizenship and the right of free speech. Kyle, Jason, and others believed the Second Amendment must be upheld at any cost. But several other students were quite disturbed at Dennie's question, for they had seen firsthand the horrors of gun-related incidents. Some feared going out of their homes at night; Spokane had experienced much gun-related bloodshed in recent months--homicides, armed burglaries, domestic shootings, senseless drive-by shootings. Teenagers were sneaking weapons into school buildings. The sound of shots interrupted the middle of the night. America isn't safe anymore, and guns are the reason, these students said.

The contention raged. Emotions quickened as the arguments ricocheted around the room. Cheryl said she drove her little boy to school everyday so he didn't have to walk by the house on the corner where a known handgun owner lived. One student reported that he lived in a neighborhood patrolled by gangs so he wore a bulletproof  vest. That doesn't mean "I can't go elk hunting," said another. "We need a better police force," said Diane. "Only gangsters use guns to commit crimes." The Vietnamese and Russian students sat quietly and took it all in. Dennie and I watched and listened.

Finally, his voice shaking but controlled, Frank shared his experience, "On March third of this year, on Spokane's South Hill, two brothers shot each other in an argument. Those two men were my brothers, and today I have no brothers." Now the room was quiet. For a long moment, no one spoke.

Then, as if given the opening she needed, Melissa told her story. Her brother had been shot and killed that summer in an argument, and she had had the task of cleaning up afterward. She had washed his blood off the floor; she had scrubbed the chalk outline of her brother's body. Tiny fragments of his red flannel shirt had stuck to her sponge. Now Melissa wept, and the room was quiet again. I reached over and placed my hand on her shoulder. Stories of contemporary America were coming alive in the English Studies classroom.

The hour nearly over, I stood up and gave the reading and writing assignment that would be due the next day and that Dennie and I would grade together. The students would read Chief Justice Burger's short essay. They would learn about the early Americans' "deep-seated fear of a national army" and think about the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. They would read Justice Burger's remarks about preserving the "domestic tranquillity" promised in the Constitution. Then, they would write a paragraph that expressed their view on private gun ownership.

Two days later, we hefted the papers one at a time, then spread them out on the table in descending order according to sheer poundage. No, the students had not written the paragraph I had assigned. Instead, they had written essays--23 of them. These papers were the neatest I have ever seen. They had no frilly edges. The students had skipped lines, had used fine-point pens, had centered titles carefully on the top line. The penmanship was regular; the letters formed carefully with only occasional ornament. Clearly, there was pride in this writing. Even the sentences were quite good although seasoned with the usual faults and colloquial diction, and, of course, there were paragraphs--plenty of them.

I thought for a moment that perhaps I hadn't made the assignment very clear. But I remembered my presentation, the review of paragraph form--topic sentence, development, closure. I hadn't forgotten anything. The students, obviously caught up in their own concerns about this volatile issue, had simply missed the point--my point--about the differences between paragraph and essay, and substituted their purposes and forms. This was no longer an assignment for English class;they made it an opportunity to explore and, in some case, strengthen their commitment to freedom, their love of harmony, their devotion to America. Reading, writing, thinking, and the learning community had worked in partnership to accomplish these ends.

This experience represented what Dennie and I had imagined when we planned the course--that, through the single process of integrated reading, writing, and thinking, students would learn more about themselves, their capabilities, and the importance of their roles in the world at large. We had hoped to orient students gradually away from themselves and toward the widening circles of community, ultimately aiming at responsible citizenship, and we had hoped to take them beyond the bumper-sticker philosophy to which many were accustomed. But in this assignment, the students shook us right out of our English-teacher comfort zones. Equipped with the volley of arguments in the classroom and empowered by their own experiences, they took the text and made meaning from it.

A few years ago, when I was an undergraduate English major at Central Washington University, Professor Tom Blanton told me something I've never forgotten. He said that it's not what teachers give students to read that's important; it's what students do   with the reading that matters.

AEPL Conference to Explore Spirituality in Education

"Feeding the Mind, Nurturing the Spirit," a conference-symposium for K-college educators interested in topics such as holistic learning and spirituality in education, will be held at Snow Mountain Ranch, Colorado, Friday, August 11 through Monday, August 14,1995. James Moffett, whose most recent book is The Universal Schoolhouse: Spiritual Awakening through Education, will be the main presenter. The program, sponsored by NCTE's Assembly on Expanded Perspectives on Learning (AEPL), will include small-group discussions; interactive teaching demonstration; and participatory sessions involving meditation, guided imagery, body wisdom, the role of feelings and emotions in teaching and learning, and other topics. Total cost of the conference per person is $329 (multiple occupancy), $399 (double occupancy) or $499 (single occupancy). The fee includes registration, lodging, and meals for the event. For a registration form and further information, contact Dick Graves, Curriculum and Teaching, 5040 Haley Center, Auburn University, AL 36849 (334/844-6889).

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A Coffee Connection

Lush trees
Obscure the scene
Through the glass window;

White walls,
White cabinets,
White counter,
Small round table,
Lacy white tablecloth,
Bunches of dried hanging flowers
What will take place?

Familiar sounds awaken the sleeping house:
The soothing notes of Enya's compact disk,
The cracking beans in the slender grinder,
The hissing pressure from the sleek black espresso maker.
We anticipate the coffee connection.

The moment has come.
Two women share hopes and dreams,
Fears and pains
And friendship.

Bottle after bottle of chocolate syrup disappear.
Bag after bag of coffee beans vanish.
Jug after jug of 1% milk is consumed.

Nothing can take the place of the coffee connection.

Whether we are here or there,
We remember and cherish
Our special moments together
In our kitchen . . . over coffee.

--Laurie Michelle Flynn

Laurie Michelle Flynn teaches at Villa Academy in Seattle and completed a master's degree in Education in Curriculum and Instruction at Seattle Pacific University this fall.

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After the Second Burning

For Loretta Contraro

In memory of her son, Albert Young, Tulalip Indian, who drowned in a fishing accident southwest of Jetty Island at the mouth of the Snohomish River December 9, 1993.

She gathers herself in a winter coat
upon the beach, wisps of gray hair
scattered about by an icy breeze.
Her swollen eyes search the sea
for signs of her lost son. A gull's cry
carries the pain in her heart, as waves
gently lap the sandy shoreline.

Every so often, she wipes tears
from her cheeks with the back
of her hand, thinking about Albert,
the jokester, who wore his smile
like paint, always horsing around,
hanging out at the tribal gym, Mr.
Happy-Go-Lucky with the fancy moves

and clean jump shot swishing through
the basket. Games came easy to him,
and even at thirty-one the children
followed him like the Pied Piper. Albert,
who caught the chum, steelhead and
touchdown passes for the Snohomish people,
teaching the young his love of sport.

And she wonders, "Why my son, so full
of life, whose body now sleeps amongst
the kelp and fish, his soul having crossed
over to the other side?" She recalls the first
burning, when Albert's clothes were heaped
upon the cedar fire, and family and friends
sang spirit songs, tossing clams, deer, Pepsi

and oysters, his favorite foods, to the flames,
preparing him for the journey beyond
the setting sun. But she couldn't completely
let go, and so the soothing medicine didn't
totally ease her mind. In a vision she
saw her son at midnight, fishing under

the faint moon for steelhead, in a fifteen
foot skiff, attempting to earn a little
extra Christmas money. She watched
as the storm came fast and hard, clouds
darkening, tide rushing in, wind picking
up, as the rain fell and the calm sea
grew rough. She heard Albert's laughter
rising above the cold, choppy current

as he cast his net, drifting close to the bar.
One moment he was standing like Jesus
upon the water, and the next the boat
capsized, and he was sinking in his heavy
boots and rain gear, beneath its silent
surface, reaching upward for the rim
of the full moon and stars, his lay-in falling

one hundred yards short of shelter. When it
was over, the small gill-netter lay grounded
at the mouth of the Snohomish River. Loretta
Contraro was without a son. Maureen Young was
without a husband. Rudy, Clarissa, Melissa,
Marsha and "Little Slick"-Albert Junior were
without a father. And the Salmon People were
without their trickster. Still, the waters

did not give up her son. The tribe mourned
and the old people shook their heads as they
warned "We must let him go. Life must go on."
So a second burning was prepared, and Albert's
boat was laid upon the burning cedar boughs
at the water's edge. The tribe sang their
traveling song, and this time the medicine men,

in their smoke house paint, saw the ancestral
canoes paddle ashore and carry Albert to
the other side. He is now a fisherman in
the spirit world, teaching his slick basketball
moves to Chief Joseph in his spare time.
Later, in the gym, they hung his lucky teal
jersey with the white owi eye numbers

from the basketball rim, and held The First
Annual Albert Young Memorial Basketball
Tournament in his honor, the tribe gathering
to remember the good things, promising
not to forget him. But she still takes it
hard, laying a wreath upon the sea, knowing
it never did give up her son.

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The Game We Play

I'm
                        having trouble
understanding
                        the game
                                                we play,
You see
                        I know
I
                        want you,
                                                and
it's apparent
                        you
want me,
                        but
                                                there seems
to be
                        this catch,
because
                        when I
                                                mention
the word
                        "SEX",
you
                        frown
                                                and say-
let's wait
                        and see
if you
                        can't come
                                                up
with
                        a word
that hints
                        at
                                                permanency.

--Steve K. Bertrand

Steve Bertrand teaches English at Cascade High School in Everett, Washing ton, and also works as a free-lance photographer and writer. Year of the Dragon Press published his collection Don Quixote Gives Up on Chivalry and Other Bar Poems in late 1994.

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Sidewalk Skaters
by Betty Van Ryder

Betty Van Ryder teaches in the gifted program in the Yakima School District.

I wonder if the sidewalk behind Washington Elementary School where we skated as third and fourth graders is still there. The building is no longer used as an elementary school. The grounds haven't been jump roped or hopscotched by children for a long time; the teeter-totter where Ruth chipped a tooth was removed years ago. That sidewalk, filled with skaters each noon, probably now is filled with weeds and rubble. I haven't thought about roller-skating at Washington for a long time, but it's easy to recall the scene.

"Betty, hurry up and finish your lunch." Virginia stands over me chewing the last bit of her peanut butter sandwich. "We'll be the last ones out."

I look up at Virginia who glares at me when l don't do exactly what she wants. Since I like to roller-skate as much as she does, I get up, crumple the wax paper from my peanut butter sandwich and throw it in the wastepaper basket. As usual, Virginia has left her lunch sack, bread crust and paper strewn on her desk. I pick them up and throw them away so that the teacher won't stop us from going out to skate.

We get our skates from the floor of the closet and our jackets from the hooks. Virginia rushes out of our classroom ahead of me yelling, "Hurry! Hurry!" Banging her skates against the door leading to the playground, she opens it and runs across the gravel to the sidewalk bordering the school grounds where the third and fourth graders are allowed to skate. I follow her.

"Betty, I need your skate key," Jerry, Virginia's cousin, yells at me from the north end of the sidewalk where we always start. I pull the string that holds the skate key over my head and hand it to him. Everyone who is lucky enough to have skates knows I have a skate key.

I put my roller skates on over my saddles and wait until Jerry is through with my key. "Here ya go," Jerry grins as he tosses the skate key back to me. I tighten my skates, put the skate key back around my neck, and tuck under the leather straps, so I won't trip on them. Virginia skates south along the block-long sidewalk between Sixth and Fifth. Jerry follows, then I do.

We like to swing our arms when we skate. It helps the rhythm of the skating, but we have to hold our arms tight to our sides when we pass someone heading the other direction. About halfway down the sidewalk, roots of an oak tree have broken through the cement. I get up enough speed to jump over that part of the sidewalk. Once I didn't make it and got a skinned knee.

When I get to the south end, I stop. Both Virginia and Jerry stop also. "Virginia, Virginia manure pile, get out of my way!" Jerry calls his younger cousin by his favorite name for her.

"Come on, Jerry, don't call her that," I say trying to appeal to his better nature. Jerry just laughs and pulls the sash on my dress. He darts off with Virginia in pursuit. I retie the bow on the back of my dress wishing we could wear jeans to school like the boys. It's not much fun to wear dresses when you skate. If you twirl around, your dress goes up, and that's embarrassing. Virginia doesn't care, but I do. I follow the wild pair, swinging my legs and arms in rhythm with my braids following suit. The exhilaration of the moment makes me forget the limitations of being a girl.

Half a dozen block-long circuits and the bell rings ending noon recess. I hurriedly take off my skates, tie the straps together and head to the school. Virginia is skating one last swoop.

"Virginia, you'll be late again," I call out as I run toward the building.

"Wait for me," she yells as she runs across the blacktop with her skates on. I reluctantly slow down. She yanks her skates off and walks in with me. We're the last ones in, but as usual Miss Mitchell gives me the smile that says, "Thanks for getting Virginia back to the room on time again."

I've lost track of my daring friend, Virginia.

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When William Stafford Gave a Poetry Reading

Like paper chains his poetry loops together
untitled poems filling spaces
between poems we'd read or heard
before
quiet spaces
we fill with phrases that
echo in our ears

--Betty Van Ryder

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Quiet Connections
by Rick Moore

Rick Monroe teaches English 11 and is the yearbook and news magazine advisor at Woodinville High School. He is also the author of Writing and Thinking with Computers: A Practical and Progressive Approach (NCTE).

The family cabin on Camano Island is not modern or orderly, but I like its random charm, the way one room sprawls into another like puppies falling over one another, and how during winter, the wood stove pumps heat over us while we gaze out a wall of windows to snow-capped Mt. Baker, imagining how our breath would smoke like dragons if we stepped outside. It's a rustic beach cabin, but it's ours, and we go there to recover ourselves when the city and work impose their will. On lazy summer evenings I like to sit on the front porch, its planking yawning ninety feet, the length of the cabin, and sit and watch the tide ebb listening to the haunting cries of the loons, watching the eagles that nest in the giant fir behind the cabin make one more foraging swoop for supper. Sometimes a grey heron will pick its way along the shore in front of me. Herons don't like people--they squawk and push up into the air and then skim just above the bay's surface whenever people approach.

At Camano time doesn't matter. Maybe that's why this place is so attractive; we all need a place where the spirit can rest, where the lullaby of memory can be sung.

I remember the smell of worn leather and grease while flying over Hood Canal. The fall days were the best. A coyote would wander over to the edge of the runway, cock its head the curious way they do that makes them look as if they know more than they're saying, and watch the planes take off and land. Maybe this one was trying to conjure one of the metal birds into a pheasant, a meal. I don't know what he thought, but he looked happy, his tongue lolling, his head cocked sideways.

One time, long after I earned my pilot's license, I was circling over the Dosiwallops River, just riding an Indian summer wave of warm air to see how high it might take me. That's when I saw the hawk. It was flying in formation with me just off my right wing tip. We both kept our wings steady, slightly tilted, spiraling up together until the airflow crested just below eight thousand feet. Maybe that coyote turned himself into a hawk because he had grown lonely for my return.

Memory is a slippery business, but so much hinges on those quiet recollections. It's remembering that helps me feel as if I'm part of something lasting and bigger. All of us need that sense of feeling connected, especially in a world that is rapidly transforming itself. That's why I like to finger memories, wearing them smooth like rocks in my pocket.

Whenever I go home to visit my folks, I am reminded of the world's transience. Every time my parents meet me at the ferry dock, on the way home, they drive past a vacant lot--a huge block of empty space that used to be my high school. It was torn down years ago. The only part the workmen forgot was the main entrance steps. As we drive by, if I look just right, I can reconstruct my ghost high school. I can smell wooden floors waxed thousands of times. I see the trophy cases leading to the main office even though all that remains are a set of marble steps leading into my past.

The Rask's laurel hedge, the bump on Rainier Street I loved racing over on my bike--all the small details that made Bremerton my home betray me now. The roads have all been newly paved, and the laurel hedge has been chopped down.

I used to climb trees and look out over my neighborhood. Later, I climbed the high dive at the community pool, bouncing higher and higher, somersaulting through the air. Long before I learned how to turn a twist off the high dive, I rode the swings, pumping up until gravity jerked me back into the stirrup-like seats. I dreamed of rotating around the swing set, making a perfect 360° arc. It couldn't be done on the swings so I learned how to dive, and later how to fly.

To find my place with others I need some time alone. It helps sometimes if I am quiet for a while. Feeling connected means facing yourself  by yourself. When I'm at Camano and the tide is high and the smelt are flipping; when I'm gazing at Mt. Baker and it's reflecting the amber from the setting sun; when I'm still, tasting the twilight dew, I can hear a soft voice whispering what I need to know.

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Accomplishment

One mountain bragged it could cast
The longest shadow. Sun was miffed
And clouds whispered overhead.
Pines said they would cooperate
If wind did not pull too hard.
Someone said after what could be eons
Stones moved a little ways today.

--Jim Hanlen ~

Jim Hanlen has retired from teaching at Kelso High School where he taught creative writing and humanities. He has also had poems published in TapJoe, Modern Shaman, and Season of Dead Water. Currently he conducts work shops and inservices and gives readings.

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Book Review
by Debra Nickerson

Debra Nickerson teaches sixth grade social studies and LAP at Mill Pond Intennediate School.

Review of America Street: A Multicultural Anthology of Stories. Edited by Anne Mazer. New York: Persea Publishers, 1993.

When learning becomes emotional, the concepts we desire our students to translate are more readily comprehended and retained. Therefore, in order to increase awareness in our English classes of the power of written language, we need stories which are poignant and relevant to the lives of today's young adolescents. However, finding short stories that fit this description is not always an easy task.

In my teaching of middle school language arts and social studies, I spend a great deal of time focusing on the history of the lives of common, everyday people--those considered by many historians as not having great impacts upon the direction of our society. Collectively, however, many changes have been brought about by everyday folk and therein lies the importance of reading about them and their relevance to our lives. The new anthology, American Street, edited by Anne Mazer captures the intense emotion involved with coming of age in our diverse American culture. Written through the eyes of children, the stories are very moving in their portrayal of adolescence now and in times long gone. In a total of fourteen stories, eight contain female protagonists and six male. Just about every cultural background is given voice; from Asian to Hispanic, African American to Jewish, our social mores and norms are questioned in the context of growing up. There are only two stories in this volume that I believe are too often anthologized: "Raymond's Run" and "Thank You, M'am." Both of these stories are well written and valuable in their messages but often found in both junior and senior high school collections. As a teacher I seek out volumes wherein lie poignant but lesser known works. Most of the stories range between seven and ten pages and can easily be read and discussed in a 45-minute period. There are several longer ones which would take two or three days to fully read and analyze. While most middle school students would be able to read the stories independently, many would miss the subtleties that lie within; oral reading would enhance the enjoyment and the emotional impact of the story.

This collection is a valuable supplement to social studies or block classes; one can use a selected story as a jumping-off point to teach such topics as Jewish immigration, cultural assimilation, classism, racism, barriers to cross-cultural communication, or migrant worker lifestyles. When used in my eighth grade United States history classes, the stories expose students to the cultural mores, values, and norms of a particular time period through the eyes of an adolescent.

The story called "The Circuit" by Francisco Jimenez is one I will never forget. The protagonist, a young female migrant worker, moves with her family to yet another ranch and finally in November gets to attend the sixth grade in the local school. As she gains more confidence in her academic capabilities, school becomes a central part of her life. She is elated at being invited to learn how to play the trumpet, an instrument which holds special meaning for her. Running home to inform her family of this opportunity, she is met with boxes packed full and piled by the door. From this powerful prose, children may begin to gain a sense of the emotion that must be involved in such a nomadic lifestyle.

Learning to empathize with the emotions connected to a situation may make students more understanding of past and present perspectives about the human condition. "Sixth Grade" by Michele Wallace explores the discomfort of being an eleven-year-old black girl in "that little lily-white Lutheran school way up in the then safe and silent Bronx" (72). Her subsequent encounter with a teacher who ignores her may impress upon the reader the concept of alienation--involving an individual or an entire cultural group. The story is heart-wrenching; the manner in which the girl's mother handles a discussion with her daughter's teacher captures the essence of human dignity and self-pride.

I truly appreciate how gender stereotypes are not adhered to in this collection. Strong-willed, loud, athletic, highly intelligent females are highlighted; males who are not afraid to cry, have a social conscience, and do not always appreciate competition make for characters we, as readers, want to relate to or spend some time with. The wide range of human personality traits are presented to us on a collective stage. We want to examine how various characters cope with the cards they are dealt and perhaps attempt to model ourselves after them.

The common thread, which weaves its way through just about every story, is one of maintaining a sense of dignity in the face of adversity, coming to terms with one's own sense of right and wrong, and developing the tenacity we all need at some point in our lives to survive a difficult situation. In "The Journey" by Duane Big Eagle, Raoul, a young Mexican boy, must travel alone on a long train ride into the United States to get the medical attention he needs to combat his illness. The visions seen throughout his trip have great significance when he finally arrives in Oklahoma and is healed by Rosalie Stands Tall, a medicine woman. The journey, of course, represents not only one which culminates in the required medical care but one that takes the boy to manhood; with the aid of the spirit world the pain is forever gone as is the young child:

Papa said softly, "Raoul, you have changed completely. You're not anymore the young boy I left in Mazatlan." I wanted to tell him everything! There was so much to say! But all I could get out was, "Yes, I know, Papa, I've come on a journey out of childhood" (9).

The stories, for the most part, are hopeful, inspiring the reader to persevere through life's trials and tribulations. Such is adolescence, that period of establishing and defending one's identity. Just as it is a time when one needs to hear the message from Hamadi in the anthology's final story of the same name by Naomi Shihab Nye: "We go on. On and on. We don't stop where it hurts. We turn a corner. It is the reason why we are living. To turn a corner. Come, let's move" (146).

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NCTE Publications Highlights: Washington State Authors

Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy
Wendy Bishop and Hans Ostrom, editors

Co-editor Hans Ostrom of the University of Puget Sound writes in the introduction to Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy that among teachers who react to the abundance of theories which can drive classroom teaching by retreating into so-called theory-free teaching, creative writing teachers represent a disproportionate share. He and co-editor Wendy Bishop of Florida State University believe resistance to theory can lead creative writing teachers to use familiar, but not necessarily sound, teaching methods. The essays in Colors of a Different Horse, examine what takes place in the creative writing classroom and why.

Even the most antitheoretical reader should not be put off by these essays, however. Written as they are by men and women who are themselves creative writers, the essays couch discussions of theory and practice in imaginative and engaging prose. In a set of essays on the creative writing workshop, for example, Eugene Garber and Jan Ramjerdi of California State University- Northridge share an exchange of letters triggered by Garber's curiosity as to how the environment of workshops changed from one of "gentle formalism" to one that is "contentious and problematical." He and Ramjerdi go on to examine the place of the writing workshop in graduate academic programs

In a later essay, Ann Turkle of Florida State University poses questions to which she and four other writers/graduate students/teachers--Julene Bair of the University of Iowa; Ruth Anderson Barnett of Grossmount Community College; Todd Pierce of the University of California, Irvine; and Rex West of Florida State University--respond: How do they balance the three roles? How does the graduate student perspective influence their teaching? How does their teaching affect their own writing? The essayists respond to each other's responses as well, creating a lively dialogue on some interesting issues.

Subsequent essays address the theoretical contexts of creative writing; classroom practice, imagination, oral literature, and collaboration; and creative writing in a computerized world. Co-editor Wendy Bishop closes the collection with an essay in which she describes her own journey through undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs, and how it left her feeling unprepared to teach others. Bishop recalls for the reader the process by which she came to terms with the deficits her own creative writing education had left her, and how she learned to like teaching creative writing.

Bishop's essay ends Colors of a Different Horse on a high and affirming note. It is followed by an exhaustive bibliography with entries grouped in such categories as "Discourse Theories," "Journals," and "Writers on Writing." The comprehensive list of resources alone is worth the time and attention of creative writing teachers. Indeed, it is a bonus in this thorough, and thoroughly enjoyable, discussion of creative writing instruction.

316 pp. 1994. Coll. ISBN 0-8141-0716-8.
No. 07168-0015 $22.95 ($16.95)

Crossing the Mainstream: Multicultural Perspectives in Teaching Literature
Eileen Iscoff Oliver

Schools across the country are exploring ways in which to represent diverse cultures in their curricula. Some are required to do so by law, but whether the effort is mandated or arises from a sense of fairness and equity, the classroom teacher is ultimately responsible for the success of that effort. Even those teachers who embrace the idea of expanding the canon may find the actual task daunting. How do they justify their efforts? What African American, Asian American, Latino, Native American, and other literatures should they incorporate? How do they teach knowledgeably the literature of diverse cultures with which they've had no experience?

Eileen Iscoff Oliverof Washington State University reaches out to these teachers with her book Crossing the Mainstream: Multicultural Perspectives in Teaching Literature.

Oliver begins by developing a rationale for expanding the traditional canon. Some of the most compelling evidence she offers is from her own classroom experiences with students of color. They, as much as students from the dominant culture, need the opportunity to read literature that offers characters and events with which they can identify. Moreover, Oliver argues, the changing demographics of American culture make it increasingly important for students from the dominant culture to read about and come to understand those cultures that have been marginalized. Rather than enlarging differences, she points out, multicultural literature typically leads students to see the similarities in values and in issues of growth and development among cultural groups. Oliver makes the case that the term "multicultural" should be interpreted broadly to include any group that has the characteristics of "otherness," as she puts it. She offers practical advice about preempting resistance from students, parents, and the community to the inclusion of non-mainstream literature.

Following this thorough response to the "why" of teaching multicultural literature, Oliver addresses the "what." She offers comprehensive bibliographies of African American, Asian American, Jewish, Latino, Native American, and cross-cultural literatures, including within both the Asian American and Latino lists references that are specific to a particular subculture, such as Hmong or Puerto Rican. Also included are bibliographies of literature addressing emotional/mental and physical disabilities, homelessness, homosexuality, older adults, teenage suicide, and Vietnam veterans.

The final question, the "how" of teaching multicultural literature, is answered with a variety of teaching approaches and strategies. Also helpful are discussions of incorporating multicultural perspectives within composition classes and assessing student writing, and making interdisciplinary connections in teaching multicultural literature.

In closing, Oliver introduces us to an African American man, a college dean, who attributes his success to two caring teachers who gave him the opportunity to read literature that meant something to him. She urges all teachers to provide their students with the kind of experiences they can use to build their own successes.

235 pp. 1994. Grades 8-Coll. ISBN 0-814 -0972-1
No. 09721-0015 $19.95 ($14.95)

Pedagogy in the Age of Politics: Writing and Reading (in) the Academy
Patricia A. Sullivan and Donna J. Qualley, editors

"The teaching of writing has always been political," writes Patricia A. Sullivan, University of New Hampshire, and Donna J. Qualley, Western Washington University, in the introduction to Pedagogy in the Age of Politics: Writing and Reading (in) the Academy. While the 1960s expressivist movement centered writing instruction in the individual struggle against societal authority, current composition instruction shifts focus from the inner life of the writer to the social contexts of writing, from the self that writes to the sources of that self. Now, as then, forces also debate the relationship of reading to writing and whether their separation is artificial. Editors Sullivan and Qualley urge their readers "to attend carefully to the sounds of our own dissonance, for they are pointing up to the work we have still to do."

In this collection of essays by teachers, scholars, and theorists, the editors hope to promote discussion of what it means to study and teach writing and reading at a time when the academy itself is struggling to define the educational needs of an increasingly diverse student population. Authors explore the ways that students and teachers respond to tensions arising from encounters with ideas, people, texts, and technologies; examine the history of writing in the academy; and critique the content of composition courses.

Among the many noteworthy contributors to this collection is Maxine Green of Columbia University, who writes of her efforts to break free of conventional notions about teaching in the academy so that she may in turn create openings for her students' own self-exploration. She writes, "I want us to work together to unconceal what is hidden, . . . to mediate the dialectic that keeps us on edge, that may be keeping us alive."

Peter Mortensen of the University of Kentucky explores how the narratives that inform our perceptions of literacy originate. Sharyn Lowenstein, Lesley College; Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater, University of North Carolina at Greensboro; and Cinthia Gannett, University of New Hampshire at Manchester advocate a new vision of school-based journal writing which offers "the intellectual and social empowerment that results from harnessing students' expressive languages."

Robert Scholes of Brown University argues for a central role for the theory and practice of intertextuality in academic writing courses. His belief that "texts are made mainly out of other texts" provides a backdrop for a utilitarian approach to the teaching of writing, in which students are provided with the constraints surrounding their writing assignment and positive and negative models of writing for analysis and are taught how to address information in areas outside their direct experience.

These and other entries on advocacy and resistance in the writing class; teaching diverse literatures from an outsider perspective; feminism and power; and more will surely accomplish the purpose Sullivan and Qualley set forth for their volume: to provoke, to instruct, and to stimulate thinking and debate among educators of all political stripes.

256 pp. 1994. Coll. ISBN 0-8141-5890-0
No. 58900-0015 $21.95 ($15.95)

Writing and Thinking with Computers: A Practical and Progressive Approach
Rick Monroe

The assumption underlying Writing and Thinking with Computers, according to author Rick Monroe, is that English and language arts curricula should be developed by committed teachers, not hardware and software representatives. This ensures that teachers will teach what they feel is important and that neither schools nor individual teachers will have to compromise their values to fit commercial curriculum programs. The book is designed to be a practical guide to incorporating computers into instruction "without abandoning reading, writing, thinking, listening, and speaking."

One of the benefits Monroe has observed in using computers in the writing classroom is a higher level of motivation among his students to write and to edit their work. In addition, because computer networks allow for the sharing of work instantaneously, students can evaluate their work in progress by showing it to and receiving feedback from classmates as well as from teachers. Monroe feels this strengthens students' understanding of the relationship between reader and writer, which further improves their writing.

The first chapter in the book details how Monroe integrates computers into his writing curriculum. In relation to topic development, for example, Monroe both identifies existing commercial software that helps students develop and arrange ideas and explains how teachers can create their own lesson files to meet the same needs. Monroe also gives examples of computer-assisted lessons in collaborative writing, literary analysis and criticism, and a variety of creative writing projects.

In Chapter 2, Monroe explains how to establish a networked computer lab that allows individual stations to share information through a central computer.

Because he himself went from managing a stand-alone lab to setting up a local area network, Monroe is able to provide a comprehensive, step-by-step accounting of the process, as well as an informed discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of networked labs.

The book's third chapter shows readers how to expand their thinking about the classroom use of computers--to go beyond viewing the computer as a tool for writing to using the computer as a tool in problem solving; to employ desktop publishing programs to create school literary arts magazines or class newsletters, as a way of showcasi ng student writing; to consider tapping into networks outside the school computer lab by exploring the area of telecommunications; and to encourage students to create their own data bases in all disciplines.

Finally, Monroe devotes a chapter to a discussion of cross-disciplinary work with computers and provides a variety of sample lessons linking writing with math analysis, biology, art, and history.

Despite all the many applications Monroe sees for computers in the classroom, he cautions teachers against seeing computers as a panacea. He sees computers as another classroom tool, albeit a highly flexible one, with which to tap students' potential.

121 pp. 1993. Grades 7-Coll. ISBN 0-8141-5893-5
No. 58935-1330 $16.95 ($12.95)

To order, call NCTE toll-free at 1 800 3696283.

Orwell Award to "Doonesbury" Creator

Garry Trudeau, creator of the comic strip "Doonesbury," was named the recipient of the 1994 George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. Keith Gilyard, chair of the committee on Public Doublespeak of the NCTE, made the announcement at a session of NCTE's Annual Convention at the Clarion Plaza.

Trudeau was nominated for the Orwell Award because of his consistent attack on doublespeak in all aspects of American life and for all parts of the cultural and political spectrum. His targets have included Republican and Democratic Presidents, religious leaders, political commentators, and educators. In announcing the award, Gilyard said Trudeau was honored for his "revealing looks at issues and public figures, thereby making an admirable contribution to public discourse."

Trudeau is the twentieth recipient of the Orwell Award, which was established in 1975 to recognize writers who have made outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse. The award is named for author George Orwell, who in his writings called attention to what the NCTE committee giving the award had dubbed "public doublespeak."

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SLATE Representatives' Reports
by Linda Brown and Jim Kistner

Linda Brown and Jim Kistner are WSCTE representatives for SLATE (Support for the Learning And Teaching of English), an NCTE standing committee on social and political concerns. Linda can be reached at A. C. Davis High School, 212 South Sixth Avenue, Yakima, WA 98902. Jim can be reached at Meridian High School, 194 West Laurel Road, Bellingham, WA 98226.

On August 30, the Yakima School Board announced its decision to retain four novels being used in an honors elective class. In the wake of the ensuing euphoria of winning a hard-fought victory for academic freedom, there can be hidden costs. Within days, teachers who had watched the book challenge from the sidelines were excluding good books that they thought might lead to another challenge.

After a challenge, even one that teachers win, it is natural to be a bit frightened. But, fear can create a victory for those who want only one view of the world presented. What have we profited if, in keeping books in an attack from even well-intentioned challengers, we eliminate books that we think might cause a concern? If we self-censor, we do more harm than any outside threat.

Nancy Nelson, co-chair of the Material Selection Committee of the Yakima School District and a librarian for twenty years, is no stranger to this phenomenon. She has seen many teachers fight the good fight for literature only to lose the war through self-censorship. Nelson says that whenever teachers, administrators, or a community survives a challenge, it is human nature to recoil and to think two, three, even four times before showing a particular film or reading a particular story. But even though we might be frightened, we must persist.

Many teachers hope to avoid any literature that is controversial, hoping that sanitized works will keep them safe. However, Nelson claims that a challenge does not come because a teacher has picked the wrong book or that some passage in the book is disagreeable to the challenger. Materials challenged are usually those directed to the very young and appear to be innocuous.

"There is a faction in our society," Nelson says, "who have strong values that they perceive to be different from those being taught in the public schools, and this faction thinks they have a corner on morality." They value the world as they think it should be and "abide by the status quo of yesteryear." That's where challenges come from.

No teacher can protect him- or herself from a potential challenge. What each teacher can do is to use professional judgment to select the best books available that meet the established criteria. "The teacher," Nelson says, "has a responsibility to make careful selections based on the right criteria. Be confident that what you pick is the best available for kids. Know why you have selected a book. Be prepared to answer when a concerned parent asks if the book is age-appropriate or appropriately challenges students. No matter who raises the questions, you should be able to answer with confidence. You are the professional and have made your choices intentionally and wisely."

Rush Limbaugh Receives NCTE Doublespeak Award

Controversial conservative radio talk-show host and author Rush Limbaugh took first place in voting for the 1994 Doublespeak Award from the NCTE. Members of NCTE's Committee on Public Doublespeak gave runner-up nods to anti-abortion activists Don Treshman, John Burt, and the Reverend David C. Trosch; and the National Rifle Association. The award was announced during NCTE's Annual Convention.

Committee chair Keith Gilyard of Syracuse University said Limbaugh's use of language that distorts the truth, broadcast over nearly 1,000 media outlets, has had a major negative impact on public discourse. An Associated Press article in June cited a report from the liberal watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting as saying, "From AIDS to ozone, from Whitewater to the Bible, Limbaugh seems to be able to dissemble and disinform on virtually any subject." Among the instances of Limbaugh's verbal distortions quoted in the article: "Banks take risks in issuing student loans and they are entitled to the profits." FAIR said banks take no risks in issuing student loans, which are federally insured. Limbaugh has said, "Those gas lines were a direct result of the foreign oil powers playing tough with us because they didn't fear Jimmy Carter." FAIR responded, "The first--and most serious--gas lines occurred in late 1973-early 1974, during the administration of Limbaugh hero Richard Nixon." According to an article in the New Republic by Joshua Skenk entitled, "Limbaugh Lies: Anatomy of a Yarn Spinner," Limbaugh reported that during the Gulf War, "Everybody in the world was aligned with the United States, except who? The United States Congress." In reality, both houses of Congress approved the use of force.

"Because of the size of his radio and television audiences, Limbaugh's grossly deceptive language has clear pernicious social and political consequences, making him a worthy recipient of NCTE's Doublespeak Award," Gilyard said.

The Committee on Public Doublespeak of NCTE has been giving its Doublespeak Award annually since 1974. The award is an ironic tribute to public figures who have perpetrated language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-contradictory. The committee also reports on issues involving public language in its Quarterly Review of Doublespeak edited by Harry Brent.

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