"Good" Writing

     This week I had sort of an "aha" moment. 

      All this reading on writing and assessment recently has had me questioning every form of assessment ever made. Particularly those that judged me. Why was I labeled a "good" writer in seventh grade? Why were other classmates not? Why was I not given "freedom" in writing expression until an 11th grade AP class, and therefore only in a "college-level" class? If we are preparing many of our students for "college," anyway, then where TF did the 5 paragraph essay, and essay "outlines" come from? 

     Reading Ball's "Cultural Preference" (1992), I did not know that African Americans' preference for oral communication stems back from them being systematically isolated and removed from equal access to education (p. 507). I did not know that this research had been done, and that it had been around since 1992 (16 years). I would challenge her, however, on calling it "quality education." What is non-quality about a reliance and a preference for oral communication? Why do we so prefer written and structured language, as an institution? Once again, I'm questioning everything I know about the way my education has been framed. 

     At the bottom of everything has to be our desire for equity and treating people as we would want to be treated. If not that, what else? It will be no longer be someone else's assessment which determines which students are successful and not, no one else's attempt to keep a hierarchical, status quo order in society; it will be ours. Our ignorance of and suppressing of other ways of knowing and ways of expressing or communicating knowledge. Our ignorance of "place," as Ross (2003) might say. Our assessments of students which will contribute to their perceptions of themselves, their motivations in our content area in the future, our say which will have that lasting impact on their lives. This is something we cannot take lightly. 

     Looking back on my experiences, it wasn't until college when I was allowed to answer simple prompts in any way I wanted to that I realized writing could be fun. It used to seem like a puzzle - like I had to get everything in the right spot or else it wouldn't be "good." And maybe that created the foundations for what I was later able to do - but when suddenly it was as if I could write any way the wind blew me, I felt like I finally found some footing in the world. I could write about my feelings, my impressions, my questions, my doubts. I could write in a dialogue with the poets. 

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     My resource for this week is a website called Canva: an option for teaching the many ways there are to map-out writing plans. I have known for a few years now that there are multiple ways to make connections, but reading Ball's research really makes me feel strongly about using this kind of thing all the time, to present students with all possible options, to help them lead themselves to their conclusions, whichever way they want to get there.