Author Archives: Jeremy Voigt

On Leveraging Technology—Part Seven

Posted by Jeremy Voigt on June 7, 2019
Education, Social Issues, Web/Tech

Well, it is June. I’ve been writing about technology all year (for the most part) and I hoped to have come to some conclusions by this time. All I know for sure is technology is here to stay, and I can hope we begin to use it, and implement it, thoughtfully. Or, for those who already do so, to continue thoughtful implementation.

Often I worry I’m making a bigger problem out of this than it really is. I mean, technology has always advanced over time and humans and societies adapt. But this technology seems to come with specific and deeply problematic long term issues both for cognitive and physical development of children. I tend to be affected by my environment in moderate ways. Therefore, too much screen time leaves me bleary and with headaches. I know this is not the case for everyone. Though this week, I’ve had two conversations leaving me confident that I’m not the only person with these concerns. My child’s ophthalmologist said that since the school district moved to 1:1 implementation, her office is selling more and more glasses to kids who do not have a stigmatism, but need glasses with blue light filters to prevent headaches from extended screen exposure.

I’ve also heard students discussing in class, hallways, and in their final papers how concerned they are about government, the environment, and society in general because they see their own generation as one so distracted and ignorant they feel no sense of hope for positive change. That seems dismaying. It seems a rite of passage to me for teenagers to feel their generation will improve on the faults and errors of the previous generation. To be misanthropic as a seventh grader or a junior in high school, seems problematic.

My juniors were given a final research paper under the theme, “the language of social media.” No one has a positive take on this theme. There are some balanced perspectives. My favorite phrase so far is, “the conundrum of constant connection,” read by a student who delivered her paper via reading it off of her phone. She stood before us and criticized the medium while utilizing it. A perfect visual of the benefit while presenting thoughtful questions of concern. Some have humorous explorations on how the language is used, or has changed. One student is writing a wonderful exploration of slang, and catch phrases. It is funny and engaging. Most are writing about how social media causes isolation, depression, a sense of time wasted, and—yes—a misanthropic view of the world.

I don’t really know how to help them. How does one change the larger habits of a society? Especially, pleasurable habits. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell keep being called upon in their papers. One student said, “if in Huxley’s day a citizen was handed a smartphone and told, ‘here, this will allow you to be in contact with anyone you want all the time, but will record everything and monitor your location—the citizen would decline in a split second.’” These students seem convinced we are the frog, in the kettle, the stove on, and the water warming without our awareness. But they also seem to feel, that there are some frogs who know the water is warming and are fine with it. And some who feel the pot’s sides are so steep, escape is impossible. Though there are some resisting this. Some are grabbing on to Clay Shirkey’s wonderful ideas about accepting everything from the internet. We get amazing things (Wikipedia, genius, go fund me, kickstarter, improved research abilities, citizen reporting from previously closed societies, etc.). This is just our cultural moment.

I want to offer them hope, because I believe it is possible. The hope comes from them. From people. From our ability to stop, look at someone we are working with and to see them. To see their humanity, despite differences of any kind. Hope comes from the “civil conversations,” of Krista Tippet. Comes from the student who reads books in their spare time in classes, rather than hopping on social media. From the student who uses their phone mindfully as well as for distraction.

Last week, I participated in an international literary festival. I met writers from Greece, Ireland, New York, Florida, and Spain. We were a diverse group—different ages, languages, skin colors, sexual orientations, life experiences. By the end of the week, we were old friends, for the most part. Mutual respect, the ability to listen, and a focus on language brought us together. Now technology will keep us in touch, email, facebook, etc. I see these same qualities in many of my students. I hope I’ve cultivated their desire to engage with these things in their life now and in the future. That’s where my hope lies—there, and in the belief that they will see it within themselves and their peers in the not so distant future.

On Leveraging Technology Part Six–Essential Questions

Posted by Jeremy Voigt on April 29, 2019
Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Web/Tech

I keep trying to put down the topic of technology in the classroom, and I keep finding it impossible. Last week two things arrived in my inbox.

The first is a short article summarizing decade long research comparing reading comprehension from a screen with comprehension from paper. The conclusions were unambiguous: reading from screens harms comprehension compared to reading from paper. This is one of the first articles I’ve read in some time offering such clear conclusions:

“More evidence is in: Reading from screens harms comprehension.”

“One likely reason: Readers using screens tend to think they’re processing and understanding texts better then they actually are.”

Virginia Clinton, heading up the study says, “Reading from screens had a negative effect on reading performance relative to paper.”

and,

“There is legitimate concern that reading on paper may be better in terms of performance and efficiency.”

Reading this threw me back into memory. Sitting in the Henier auditorium, at the community college where I work part time, listening to a recent PhD graduate from the University of Washington (forgive me for forgetting her name), report her research findings on reading comprehension and technology. Her findings seemed contradictory to me. She reported finding that young readers reading from iPads comprehended the content at similar levels but were slower in reporting it because they were interested in describing the technology.

For example, if a student read a paper copy of a picture book and was asked comprehension questions they immediately discussed the content. If a student read the same picture book from an iPad and was asked the same comprehension questions, they discussed what buttons they pressed, and the interactions with technology before they discussed content. The researcher presenting dismissed the delay, but it stood out as alarming to me. As a parent and as a teacher efficiency is important to me. My top rules for technology in my personal life and in my classrooms are:

It must add to life
It must not distract from life

Continue reading →

On Leveraging Technology—part five: a sorting

Posted by Jeremy Voigt on March 29, 2019
Education, Education Policy, Professional Development, Web/Tech

On Leveraging Technology—part five: a sorting

When I started writing about technology in the classroom back in October I began with these central questions:

How do we teach mindful use of technology to students who are already immersed in technology?
How do I deal with the inherent assumptions in the previous question that imply such immersion is negative?
Is such immersion negative?

A host of other questions has arisen from my explorations.

Context: My district decided against one-to-one technology adoption after passing our technology levy. The district my children attended adopted one-to-one. The comparison has been interesting. Of course, the comparison is not perfect. I’m a teacher in one district, and a parent in another. Obviously different perspectives. I’ve also made some clear decisions about my kids and technology, and technology in my personal life, which I laid out in the first post.

Here I am at the end of March, the longest month, and where am I really with answering these questions?

Continue reading →

What My Mom Taught Me About Teaching

Posted by Jeremy Voigt on January 30, 2019
Education, Life in the Classroom, Social Issues

On January 14th 2019 my mother died. I sat with her for nearly eighteen hours, and was there when her breathing slowed and stopped.

My mother taught in Seattle public schools for a decade before becoming a stay at home mom. Some of my earliest memories are of her classroom and the daycare adjacent to her classroom. There was a door with a window between us. A green cot I lay on, but never slept on for nap time. A paper mache T-Rex. It seemed huge. The drawer she said her purse was stolen from. A woman I was not related to, but we called Aunt. Dusty light in a 60’s style classroom.

As a stay at home mom, my mom thrived. She was the type that made things happen: lunches, events, or after school programs. Our county didn’t have a rec sports league so she co-founded one. She taught me to read. Put books in my hands. Drove me everywhere. Music lessons. Friends. Ballparks. Yelled louder than any parent in any baseball stands anywhere. Ever. A growl of a cheer.

She had a huge social network. And she was kind to everyone. My town was small enough, at the time, most people knew her, and therefore most people knew me in any given situation. I hated that fact as a kid. I’m a classic introvert preferring to be left alone often, and she a classic extrovert—thriving on the social network. But mom taught me to be kind, or at least civil, to everyone I met, no matter what. And to respect kindness as the highest form of human interaction.

My mother also was an alcoholic. She would not like me saying this. She would say I’m not preserving her dignity. And from her perspective, she’s right. But in my early life my mom taught me to be kind, she taught me to be honest, and she taught me to pay attention to language. And in her later life she taught me to practice these things under strenuous circumstances. I’ve learned over the years that accurately naming something is a kindness. I would argue acknowledging my mom’s disease, and loving her are one act. I would argue putting the truth on the table under bright light takes away its power. Alcoholism gets between people, naming it (without judgement) puts it to the side.

She struggled with that, and it is ok, because it is hard. She could not untangle the connotation of judgement from the word alcoholic. Perhaps that is a perspective from her personality or from her generation, either way it does not matter anymore. We disagreed on this until the day of her death. But what I’ve found over the last few weeks is that the people who love her most, knew and in their own ways acknowledged her disease and loved her all at once. Life is supposed to be hard. If it were easy there would be nothing to do and we’d have no sense of value. And the lesson of naming something, no matter how difficult, proved just as powerful as my mom’s early lessons about kindness.

The day after my mom died, I went to work. I started my AP Language class with a colleague’s student teacher observing, something planned weeks ago. I tried to teach. I started talking about sentences, periodic and cumulative sentences. I thought I mixed them up. Fumbled through definitions. I couldn’t focus. I started sweating. I have never felt so lost in front of students. Even in my first years of teaching. So, I stopped.

I told my students that we knew each other too well after four months, and I could not continue without explaining why I was a mess. I told them my mom died. A subtle shock wave moved through the room. They went quiet. I’ve been teaching for fifteen years and I really believe the single most important thing a teacher can do is be authentic. I told them I was ok, and would be gone the rest of the week. We were quiet as a group for a few beats. That morning I held back because it did not seem appropriate to burden my students with my grief. But standing before them, I just could not fake it at that level. They saw right through the façade, because I’d worked hard to be vulnerable and real and together all year and when I wasn’t everything was wrong. Naming the reality put everything into the fluorescent classroom light. I stopped sweating. We could move on. They said they were sorry with murmurs, with their eyes, and with their awkward teenage silences. It was amazing.

On Leveraging Technology: part three of several–tools, devices, &iInstruments

Posted by Jeremy Voigt on December 17, 2018
Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Web/Tech

The main response to concerns over screen time and children that I have run into is that educational screen time is not the same as entertainment screen time. I take the point, but I have my doubts. One of my chief concerns is the blind belief in the goodness of technology. Anand Giridharadas illustrates this in a recent interview with Krista Tippet. Giridharadas points out that in Silicone Valley

“there’s this thing of dropping out of college because…they feel they have the technical knowledge they need to get started. And part of what they’re dropping out of, in many cases, is the liberal arts education that is precisely designed to give you these kinds of frameworks to understand things like, history is cyclical, and good things have bad effects, and things go ways that you couldn’t anticipate, and just this normal understanding of how the human condition,…works.

When you have people with that much power over humanity, that much power to decide more and more how children learn and how commerce works and how power functions, and they basically have a naïve, childlike understanding that any tool that they invent will inherently make things better, you go to a very dark place.”

I share his concerns. Teaching literature, the human condition is an obsession, so this resonates with me (plus, I believe in the philosophy of a liberal arts education), but I’m putting my doubts aside for the moment to consider how to maximize the positive potential technology offers the classroom. I want to illustrate a framework for technology in the classroom (or anywhere else).

Recently a friend of mine offered this distinction summarized from Andy Crouch: humans, as inventive, industrious, and inventive beings regularly use tools, devices, and instruments. The distinctions work as follows: Continue reading →

On Leveraging Technology: part two of several–does it really help?

Posted by Jeremy Voigt on November 29, 2018
Books, Education, Education Policy, Literacy, Web/Tech

To leverage is to use the power or force of a lever in the literal sense, and in the figurative—to advantage for accomplishing a purpose. This is a great educational word.

I once had a mentor tell me I should teach every day as if a parent were standing in the doorway demanding excellence for their child. This is a great educational standard. It is also a recipe for failure, which I’m ok with (as I’ve blogged about before, twice). The truth is, the days I really use technology in the classroom are the days I would never want a parent standing at the door.

A newsletter comes home every week from my children’s teachers. Lately, they are full of pictures. The most recent newsletter is full of pictures of students “doing science.” 50% of the pictures are of kids looking at screens. It is not an image of kids doing anything observable.

The image of my classroom or my children’s classroom should not trouble me if the technology is being leveraged, if the technology is being used to advantage to accomplish a purpose. I teach English and sometimes students are staring at books in my classroom, and other times computer screens. I completely get it is part of the fabric of a class. The trouble I have, more often than not, is with the word advantage. An old French word, advantage means a positon in advance of another. It means profit or superiority. It means before. More often than not my lessons that use technology could be carried out on paper. What advantage is the technology? It saves me deciphering handwriting. It is faster, mostly. This begs the question—why is speed something to value in learning?

My son has a lesson on water, and the way it forms land. The class starts on the computers looking at photos of Mars. Amazing. They observe how the land is shaped, determine there is sedimentary rock in a channel (full disclosure I don’t understand how they determined this) and deduce it was shaped thus by water. The homework is to look around their neighborhood, or town and describe land formed by water. This strikes me as odd, it seems the reverse path practicing scientists take. Don’t practitioners observe their world around them and then make connections to new discoveries and distant objects? My son can describe how water forms land, but does he understand how science works? How scientists have used observation since Galileo? He’s 13, what lesson is the most valuable? It didn’t take long for him to learn how water forms land, but did he miss out on a larger, more important understanding? It is possible I’m being persnickety, but I can’t shake the feeling the technology was used to be used and not necessarily used to the advantage of student learning. I’m not so much questioning a colleague’s choices here, as playing the role of parent in the doorway.

What advantage can these machines provide? How do I, as a classroom teacher, rectify the research showing the use of computers does not help much? It seems computers do not increase understanding any faster than any other educational innovation. The results of a seven-year study of the most scrutinized laptop 1:1 program showed laptops allowed test scores to raise at about the same rate as other counties without them:

“Test scores did go up a lot in Mooresville after 2008, when it started handing out laptops. But Hull calculated that test scores also soared by about the same amount in neighboring counties, which didn’t give laptops to each student.”

Additionally, Jill Barshay notes that the computer implementation had a negative impact on how much time students read books:

“From student surveys, the researchers found that Mooresville students reduced their time reading books by more than four minutes a day, on average, to roughly 40 minutes a daily in 2011 from more than 45 minutes daily when the laptop program was introduced. Meanwhile, kids in neighboring counties increased their daily reading by two minutes. Four minutes might not sound like a lot, but over the course of a year that adds up to more than 25 fewer hours of reading, which is substantial. Unfortunately, the state stopped administering that survey after 2011 and it’s unknown if book reading rebounded. But if time spent reading continued to deteriorate, that could partially explain why reading scores didn’t rise as much as the math scores did.”

I suppose this is natural, the new technology will eclipse the old. As mentioned above, I’m a bibliophile, so this sort of news is personally heartbreaking, but I recognize it is not for everyone. But even the lightest research yields rafts of studies where brain researchers are determining that, at best, the results of reading from a screen are only equal to reading from the page. The screen offers no advantage. The more troubling problem arises when one notes these even results occur when testing for basic comprehension not more complex understanding. Even then, the device sometimes can get in the way of the content. Students often report on how they use the device, and then on the content the device provided. The larger problem is, when asked more sophisticated questions, as described in Naomi Barron’s New Republic article, Why Digital Reading is no Substitute for Print, print wins every time. So, the clearest conclusion here is integration of technology succeeds most clearly in pushing out a more successful technology.

Barshay again:

“Students continued to spend as much time on homework as before but spent more of their homework time on a computer.”

The New Republic findings indicate this homework time is less productive, less focused, and equally concerning is this conclusion from Barshay:

“… the highest achievers and lowest achievers didn’t benefit more from the laptops than average students. One of the arguments ed tech advocates make is that educational software can help slower learners review material while quicker learners jump ahead to new topics, with each student learning at his own pace. But the researchers didn’t see stronger test score gains among the bottom quarter or the top quarter of students relative to students in the middle. They did notice, however, that higher performing students were more likely to increase their time on computers.”

The device succeeds most at encouraging more time on the device. A New Jersey school district (also reported on by Barshay) ditched the 1:1 program altogether. The device has some advantages, and is more popular, yet brain research holds with paper. This is not just the preference of luddites and bibliophiles. The long term scientific brain studies are continually reaching the same conclusions previously reached by authors such as Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Sven Brikerts, and Nicholas Carr in their fiction and memoirs across nearly 80 years. How do we leverage something not offering a clear advantage? Huxley and Neil Postman would argue that what we love will destroy us. Birkerts and Carr posit our love of technology is leaving us with a lack of depth. I suppose I’m arguing that we’re missing the important points. My son misses out on a clear experience of the scientific process, my students type drafts and feel they are done because they look done (all typed up neat and clean), and when we read from the screen we receive diminishing returns. I find irony in the fact that the term “leverage technology” comes out of a program adopted by my district titled “deep learning.” It seems technology is great for many things, but depth is not one of them.

So, in addition to my previous questions, we’re left with this: technology is here, and it will remain. How do we leverage it both in the classroom and in personal space so it works to our advantage and does not inhibit our learning and engagement with our lives? I’ve found some terms and am reading some research I will parse in my next post that attempt to offer some possible answers to this troubling situation.

On Leveraging Technology: part one of several–some background

Posted by Jeremy Voigt on October 29, 2018
Books, Education, Life in the Classroom, Literacy, Parent Involvment, Television, Web/Tech

This year I have more technology in my room than I have ever had in fifteen years of teaching. I don’t know how I feel about it. The phrase in my district is “leverage technology.” I like this quite a lot, especially in contrast to the experience my own children are having in a different district. My children’s district decided to go one-to-one. Technology immersion, seems to be the tactic. It has been a rough transition. As a parent who has used technology mindfully, and been very deliberate about my kid’s exposure to technology, seeing my child use it all the time because he “has to for school” is unnerving. I want to spend some time analyzing these two approaches, and see what I can figure out (if anything). But this post is just background, the setting of the stage.

My early mantra around technology for my personal life and for my classroom was: technology must enhance what I’m doing not distract me from it. I’m not convinced we’ve figured out how to do this in education, as a system. I’m mostly positive a few individuals have figured this out. I’m in the process.

I want to be clear: I am not anti-technology. I coupled my English major with a computer science minor and used contractor jobs building websites to help pay off my student loans. Though I write often in a notebook, all my writing eventually is on a computer. I did resist a cell phone for years, mostly because I didn’t want something else to carry. I teach and have taught hybrid and fully online classes for years. Though, my family hasn’t owned a television in fifteen years.

I am of an age where I can remember the world pre-internet, as I’m sure many readers of this blog are, but I mention it because watching the web come into being taught me something about how I would use it. I lost friends to computers. They just became more interested in the machine and then we spent less and less time together. Nothing too serious, or out of the ordinary coming-of-age stuff, but I noticed. Then, in college, I read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, and, being the serious minded young person I was, I thought hard about both the messages I received and the medium through which I received them.

Then I started teaching. I’ve had varying access to technology over the years, and I’ve used much of it. I’ve had a bank of computers, a smartboard, a small cache of laptops (webbooks they were called). But as the technology wore out, I did not feel a pressing need to replace it. It provided a way to do things, not necessarily a better way—as far as I could tell. Besides, a computer lab full of students, oddly silent, staring at monitors creeped me out. I only did it when it made sense—typing final drafts, et. all. Continue reading →

Short Talk on Teacher-Leaders

Posted by Jeremy Voigt on September 29, 2018
Professional Development, Teacher Leadership

It’s too early to feel this tired. But that is the word about school—in the copy room, teacher’s lounge, at meetings. Teachers are tired. Teaching is an exhausting job and there are millions of ways to wear out within it, but one element occurring to me is the (relatively) newly developed idea of a teacher-leader.

I think the term is a positive evolution, and it is one often worn with pride. I’ve been thinking about the idea of teacher-leader for some time, and I think the recent bargaining rounds coupled with a new team in my school has brought these ideas to the forefront of my mind. Plus, I read a great deal of writing by Tom Rademacher this summer. He’s become one of my favorite voices in education. Direct, explicit at times, but honest in important always. Here is a great piece about what is sustainable for teachers. It speaks exactly to why I think everyone in my building is haggard. I admire Rademacher’s ability to hold cynicism and optimism in one space—something teachers do on a daily basis. In my role as English chair, I tell my department, my pessimism comes from a sincere desire for optimism. And it does.

The idea of teacher-leaders is not new, and it is a good idea. The term floating through the air at my school is “flatten the hierarchy.” I believe it is necessary to have teachers join the larger conversations about education. Ideas in schools should come from the ground up and include as many voices as possible. I like that our professional development days involve presentations from our own teachers. I like that the presentations are not slotted with outside “experts” telling other teachers what they should do, but teachers/friends/colleagues who are sharing what they have tried in their classroom. We have veterans and younger teachers alike presenting. It is bumpy, slightly messy (mostly because everyone is already taxed), but is going in the right direction.

Here is the question puzzling me: how can we do it without stretching teachers to the point of unhealthy exhaustion? How do we make space for thoughtful reflection and philosophical and invigorating discussion and sharing in a profession so rife with practical demands? I agree with Rademacher—students first. But those larger conversations at conferences, at district offices, in-building presentations, at negotiation tables, in picket lines, in books come from an intentionality to create the greatest conditions for students. I don’t think that is lost for anyone. The demands on teachers have always been great, and the added dimension of teacher-leader extends them exponentially.

Perhaps leadership roles should come with class reductions, sabbatical like? Perhaps, we should reduce class hours overall and provide more breaks, Finlandesque? Here is a peek in a teacher’s lounge in Finland, where coffee breaks become professional development. Plus, they have massages.

These ideas involve policy decisions far above my pay-grade. And might not work. I’ll admit, these days I’m more interested in finding good questions than answers. More interested in failing well than success—both in the classroom and as a department chair.
Enter the new leadership model experiment in my building: the Professional Risk Takers (PTR). It is an interesting idea. Our main objective is to direct and lead professional development for our staff. Our job is to live in the discomfort of holding “model classrooms,” remaining open to learning walks (both leading them and welcoming adults into our classes), taking time during our prep period to reflect and discuss together. The idea is to live more in a professionally vulnerable space. It is going to be more work, and tiring, I think it is a step in the right direction. I think it will be difficult in all the right ways, hopefully invigorating, energizing, and sustaining.

Thinking about Feedback

Posted by Jeremy Voigt on June 17, 2018
Assessment, Life in the Classroom, Literacy

In the last few weeks of school I was admonished by two students from different classes, and different schools actually, about the feedback I’d given them on their writing. There was not enough, basically, is what they both said.

I don’t disagree with them.

I remember the power of teacher feedback when I was in high school, and college. In fact, my graduate program did not give out letter grades. Each semester our professor/mentor/writing guru would write a half-to-full page review of our work. I was not alone pacing in the vestibule before the wall of student boxes afraid to pick up that powerful envelope, open it, and read what those professors said about me and my writing.

And that was after a semester of generous feedback. My whole master’s degree program was modeled on writers in conversation about their work and the great writers of the world.

As a professional I have read Nancy Sommers’ Harvard study, Stanford’s information on how to improve student writing through feedback and many other sources.

I get it.

Currently I teach four different English courses across seven sections, and they are all writing intensive. I love it and I don’t want a different course load. But there are realities I must face with this course load, like the amount of hours I can remain awake. And I don’t need much sleep.

I have rubrics designed to give as much feedback as a rubric can with the circling of a box. I hold individual student conferences, a few times a semester because I can say more than I can write, and I strive to, at bare minimum, note something working and something not working in a piece of writing so students can give it attention and amplify it or rework it. I think that works. And I know for a fact there are weeks and, sometimes months, where I do this really, really well, and there are weeks or months where I do not do this very well.

Here is what I am thinking about, offering up, and plan on working on next year: the way students ask questions about their writing. The students who questioned my level and quality of feedback had a legitimate concern. I looked back at their documents and remedied the problem by offering feedback and asking them multiple questions. I don’t mind doing that. But what has stuck with me most in the exchange is the fact that these writers (these student writers—though I’d argue we’re all student writers) did little more than complain about a lack of comments and never engaged with their own work at any level.

If a student won’t engage with their own work beyond, “is this good?” or “what’s wrong with this?” or “I need your feedback to reach my full potential,” then one problem in my classroom is not my feedback or lack of feedback, but the way these writers are engaging with their work. I have not taught them how to ask questions about their own writing. Good writers are good tinkerers. They always look at their work from one direction, then another direction, delete something, add it back in, re-arrange, etc. I need to find ways to foster that mentality in students. I never know if a piece of writing is “good,” and I know for sure I have nothing to do with a student’s “full potential.” Those, of course, are things they must work out for themselves.

I read interviews with writers obsessively, and can say with some confidence that the majority of great writers will acknowledge that the quality of a piece is ultimately measured by the writers’ internal satisfaction with it, with the knowledge they’ve done everything they can and it is time to abandon the work. What the world does or does not do with it is, well, up to the world. All artists know this.

Therefore, the writers I know and share my work with have conversations about our writing that center around language such as, “I’m having a problem with the ending….” Or “is the tone off in the third paragraph?” or “do you believe this character?” or “dear god, I can’t think about commas any longer, but I’m sure some of the commas are off in this, could you take a look?” The point is the questions are specific and come from a perspective of deep engagement with the piece of writing.

That is my new teaching focus in writing instruction. How do I foster attention (beyond telling them to pay attention to their language and to ask specific questions, which I’ve done for years) in a student writer?

Good thing I have some time to think about it.

Stories From School

Practice Meets Policy