"We never learn anything in
this class, Mr.
Taylor."
This report was written as part of a Teacher as Researcher project sponsored by SD#36 (Surrey). It was first published in BCTELA Update 36, no. 1 (Fall 1993): 9-10.
These words affected me as no others have this year at West Whalley Junior Secondary. They led me to ask some questions about the Atwell-inspired writing/reading workshop model I was using in my English 9 and 10 classes. I distilled these questions into one that I wanted to answer this year: how can I organize the writing/reading workshop so that students take greater responsibility for motivating and monitoring their learning?
My philosophy in setting up the workshop seemed simple. I vowed to give students freedom, time, and responsibility. I wanted students to be able to find writing and reading pleasurable and rewarding. I wanted students to be able to harness the power of words, to turn vague ideas into insightful prose, to organize tortured feelings into palpable passages, to objectify their experience, to recognize and accept parts of themselves by sharing their writing with others.
At this point I ran into some philosophical rough ground. What is the optimal balance between self-directed and teacher-directed learning, between nature and nurture? Is it my job as an educator to decide when personal needs outweigh social needs? I needed to find some answers to these questions to become comfortable with my role in the classroom, so I began with some research.
I surveyed my one hundred English 9 and 10 students, asking the following questions:
1) Define learning - what do you do when you are learning?
2) How do you know if you are learning? How do you monitor your learning?
3) What motivates you to learn?
4) What do you consider success to be in this class? When do you feel successful?
The answers I received to these questions, along with observations that I made while conferring with students throughout the year, led me to some conclusions about how and why adolescents learn. In our society, success in school is closely tied to a young person's sense of self-worth. Learning becomes more than an intellectual act; it becomes an expression of self, and a confirmation of identity. A study of student responses to this survey yielded interesting results.
The responses I received to question one were surprisingly uniform. Students saw learning as "gaining knowledge." "Learning is retaining knowledge...picking up facts." Some students went on to comment that understanding and retaining these facts is also a part of learning. There were some aberrations to this trend. Three students mentioned that learning could take place in any situation, as long as the learner was able to better deal with a similar situation in the future. Some students, in the context of the writing workshop, did mention that writing helps them learn. One wrote "freewriting [allows me to] learn more about myself."
Students, then, seem to hold to the notion that they are receptacles into which knowledge is placed. The majority of students surveyed believe that being taught is integral to learning. Who then is best able to determine whether learning has taken place? If being taught is essential to learning, then the teacher holds the role of judge. I wondered how students monitor their learning. I asked them the following questions on the same survey: how do you know if you are learning, how do you monitor your learning? Their answers to this question showed that students do not give a great deal of thought to monitoring their learning; they expect to have this done for them.
The most frequent response to the question of monitoring included the idea that you know you are learning if you remember something from the class that you did not know before. Students answered fairly honestly that they had not given much thought to monitoring their learning.
The next question on the survey generated some more considered responses. When asked about what motivated them to learn, students revealed that their understanding of learning went deeper than the traditional definition most offered in response to question one.
Students named three sources of motivation most frequently: teachers, parents, and the future. Most students' answers included the belief that learning was important for their future well being, and this motivated them to continue learning. Of equal importance to students was feedback given to them by parents and teachers. Many students also indicated that they become motivated to learn if they feel that they have done a good job with an assignment and the teacher's comments reinforce this belief.
My snapshot of student learning became more complete when I looked at student responses to the fourth and final survey questions: what do you consider success to be in this class, when do you feel successful? Student responses to these questions were more varied than their responses to the other questions. Many students attributed feelings of success to an inner pride of their work done in writing/reading workshop. Many students answered in the following way: "I feel successful when someone tells me I've done a good job, especially when I feel I have." To feel successful, students answered, involves getting positive feedback and feeling good about the effort put into work. The general trend revealed by the students' answers to the questions on success is that students are, for the large part, externally motivated but there are a large number of students whose motivation and feelings of success are intrinsic.
This survey seems to point at a truth about adolescence. Young people are struggling to develop ideas about who they are: external support must be provided to reinforce fragile, emerging identities. The view that learning is directed and controlled by outside forces is prevalent because, up to this point in their lives, students' identities have been moulded by their environment. For the first time, students are realizing that they have a part to play in developing a sense of self, that they are not merely receptacles to be filled. Students realize that success is not wholly dependent on external feedback.
Writing/reading workshop allows students to make statements about the dearth of learning going on in class because students have the freedom to explore personal growth when many do not have a secure sense of person: students' previously held view of learning becomes bankrupt in this environment. It is at this time that the question of freedom becomes crucial to the running of the workshop. Is the goal of the workshop to allow students to become better writers and readers through a process of self-discovery and growth, or is it to make students into better writers and readers through a linear mastery of skills? Language use -- reading and writing -- is an integral part of a person's make up in our society. Language, to a great degree, determines how we think; it determines who we are. English classes, then, deal with not just the acquisition of skills, but with the acquisition of identity.
In terms of organizing the workshop, it becomes clear that students will take more responsibility for their learning as their sense of self strengthens. Writing and reading should be used to encourage the development of identity so that students can become intrinsically motivated learners. My job as a teacher becomes one of inviting students to succeed, inviting students to explore who they are.
Whether I like it or not, grading remains an important form of external feedback in a secondary school classroom. If students are to take responsibility for finding success, then they must be given a role in the evaluation process. Along the lines of Atwell, I set up student/teacher conferences to determine grades for each term. My students seemed as confused as I did as to what type of success translated into what letter grade. Is it possible to quantify success, especially when success is tied to personal growth? If we assume that each student is at a different stage of personal growth, then each student will meet with a different type of success. While one student may need a structured environment to succeed, another may need one which gives them the freedom to explore and question. What may be seen to be freedom by one student is seen as a hopeless lack of direction by another.
I am no longer devastated when the odd student proclaims that he or she has learned nothing in reading/writing workshop. I now take such a comment to be indicative of that person's needs as a learner. I am not being told that my teaching strategy is failing; I am being invited to witness the growth of a critical thinker.
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