(This is something I wrote for writing teachers.)
Some years ago
I spent a great deal of time looking at houses with a real estate agent. After
awhile I noticed that each house visit tended to follow its own particular
ritual. On this particular day the agent pulled up to the house and headed toward the front door,
muttering: “The lock box should be around here somewhere…”
The
lock box was usually attached to the electric meter. She found it, unlocked the
box, and removed the house key. The first door was a glass storm door. She
pulled it open and used the key to open the front door. It was dark inside.
“Let’s
see,” she said, reaching around to the right. “There should be a light switch
right here.”
Sure
enough there was. As a house-savvy agent, she knew that for safety reasons
building codes require easy access to light switches upon entering a house. She
flipped on several lights until we can see enough to get our bearings. I
glanced at the living room on the right, the den on the left, and a stairway
straight ahead of me.
“I
figure the kitchen should be right through there,” she said.
“Do you think that door
leads to the basement?” I asked, pointing.
“Probably,” she replied.
The
first few times I felt awkward and alien entering a stranger’s house. But after going through the same
ritual, over and over, I soon knew what to expect. Soon I found that I could anticipate the
features of each house I entered. Occasionally I’d find a surprise—the
fireplace in the kitchen, the lavish hot tub in the middle of the living
room—but most houses followed a predictable structure determined by cost,
efficiency, building codes, and common sense.
Our
students live in word houses. Many of them would choose to live in video houses,
or houses of sound, but in school we expect them to spend hundreds and hundreds
of hours dwelling in texts. By “texts” I don’t mean spoken language. I mean
reading and writing.
Are our students comfortable living in the textual world? Some may be but surely many students are not. They stumble blindly into word
houses (whether in reading or writing), unsure of themselves, feeling their way
through the darkness. They bang
their shins against stairs, crashing against railings, tripping on risers that
are invisible in the dark. They feel disoriented, anxious, perhaps even a
little bit panicked. Look at the
body language exhibited by these students during the act of writing:
*She slinks low in her desk.
*He awkwardly encompasses the sheet of paper with his whole right arm,
covering it so that nobody can read what he has written.
*He writes, bites his pencil, erases a word, writes, erases until there
is a hole in the paper. Then he gets up, sighing loudly, crumples his paper,
and stuffs it into the trash.
Many students don’t look comfortable reading, either. My stepson, Adam,
devoured fantasy novels, the longer the better. But he discovered that school
was full of required readings. He had very little choice about which textual
world he inhabited, and how he could occupy that space.
I remember one day when I helped him decipher a difficult poem by Conrad Aiken. I thought
of his bedroom. He would never allow me to barge in and tell him where to put a poster, where to
position his stereo in that personal space. Yet he looked passive, dispirited,
as we tried to climb into this poem. Finally he sighed in exasperation and
cried: “Just tell it what it means!”
Most students look ill-at-ease as they slink through the textual houses we provide for them. If they aren’t comfortable
inhabiting these dwellings, how can they learn?
The
word comfortable has a suspiciously
laid-back feel to it, one that feels out of step with today’s educational climate
where rigor is the operative word. Comfortable
makes me picture overstuffed pillows, thick rugs, beanbag chairs. But I believe
that being comfortable is more than window-dressing. I believe it’s a crucial
condition for all language learners. How can we make the classroom a place
where students can become comfortable as they think their way into the new,
challenging textual worlds we provide for them?
For
me being comfortable starts with wearing the right clothing. In my closet there
are certain shirts, loose slacks, and cotton sweaters I think of as “writing
clothes”. They feel good against my skin. I have found that I when I am physically
comfortable I can be myself. Being myself is an essential reference point if I
am going to write well. And it is crucial if I hope to write with any kind of
voice.
To
feel comfortable I require a familiar place: my office, or certain airy and well-lighted
public places. Now I am almost ready to begin. Like most writers I have developed a particular routine, a
personal writing ritual (mine involves great quantities of coffee) that allows
me to smoothly enter the textual world and stay there.
Helping
students live comfortably in the textual world begins with creating true
community in the classroom. (Many other educators have explored this topic. I
particularly like Life In A Crowded Place by Ralph Peterson.) Here’s an
eclectic list of some ways you can help your students feel more comfortable as
readers and writers.
*Create a more
beautiful place. Norman Mailer once wrote an essay in which he argued that
the very architecture of urban housing projects represents a kind of violence
to the people who live there. No wonder, he said, these structures so often get
vandalized and defaced by graffiti. In a similar way, many teachers are
recognizing the need to transform the unattractive rooms in which children read
and write and breathe.
A truly comfortable place recognizes that each student is different and
will use the space in his or her own particular way. Some kids like to work at
their desks. Other kids need more space and choose to write/read at a big
wooden table. Still others want to lie on their stomachs with a clipboard, or
sit in a rocking chair, or on a couch.
*Build on familiar texts.
Many teachers fall back on the familiar novels, tried-and-true writing
assignments. Over the years we become so comfortable dwelling in these texts
they begin to feel like old friends. These texts may be comfortable to us,
though not necessarily to students. It’s easy to forget that our students, who
are entering these textual worlds for the first time, may not feel nearly so
comfortable.
Nancie Atwell says she often begins the school year by asking her 7th
and 8th graders to return to a book they have read before. This is
like visiting an old friend or relative. Students who have already inhabited a
particular book can bring a wealth of prior knowledge to the new reading. They
will feel more comfortable rereading it than they would walking into a brand
new textual house.
*Encourage kids to keep a writer’s notebook. My colleague Artie Voigt says that the
notebook is a “low-risk, high-comfort place in which to write.” The writer’s
notebook is a place where students can write in a safe place. This is a
personal place where you can loosen your tie, stretch out, and take off your
shoes. This is a place where we can write without any danger of ridicule,
judgment, or grades—the great killers of comfort.
“I think writing
notebooks are important because kids are very comfortable writing in them,”
says Franki Sibberson, a teacher in Ohio and author of Day to Day Assessment in
Reading Workshop (Scholastic). “And because they are comfortable, they produce
good writing. And then, when they go to craft a piece, they have lots of
writing to start with. Once they have a notebook, they never stare at a blank
page again. They can always find somewhere to start by looking at past entries.”
*Think about
language. In her book Going Public (Heinemann), Shelley Harwayne says that
the way to transform a school is to look at the language we use to talk to
students. She asks her teachers to talk to each student as if the teacher’s
words are being broadcast over the loudspeaker to the entire community.
Dear Mr. Fletcher,
ReplyDeleteI often tell my students to "write" to an author who has inspired you! While truth be told, you have inspired me for MANY, MANY years, this morning, as I read this blog post, I really felt you were talking to me and inspiring me on a mission to create more comfortable, student centered writing workhops! Like the great mentor of writing you are, you inspired my own thinking and writing this morning. http://drferreri.blogspot.com/2013/02/fluffy-bathrobes-english-breakfast-tea.html
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