From the Secondary Section
Reading and Writing with Purpose:
In and Out of School
Janet Atkins
Wade Hampton High School
Greenville, South Carolina
[email protected]
I see it every day in my classroom. There are electronic books (which I allow), cell phones (which I
don’t), assorted fiction (assigned and unassigned),
and the occasional note-passing in the absence of
texting. Students do read and write for their own
purposes and, increasingly, this reading and writing happens out of school: informal learning is a
big deal in 2011. Sometimes our students’ purposes
don’t match up with the purposes set for them to
achieve in school. It is becoming obvious that when
students become interested in the world around
them, and spend time texting, using Facebook,
Twitter, and other social media, they discover that
reading and writing help them pursue their passions as they connect with their peers—and the
world.
It is ironic that at the very time when our
students, by choice, are reading and writing—and
publishing—more than in the past, their opportunities for doing so in school are constrained by the
emphasis on mandated tests and assessments that
do not take into account the realities of 21st-century literacy. For example, “E-portfolios can document the process of learning, promote integrative
thinking, display polished work, and/or provide a
space for reflecting on learning” (James R. Squire
Office of Policy Research 4). These student-produced documents are much more effective in providing evidence of student growth and engagement
than a standardized test.
For one week in May, students in my school
faced AP exams, end-of-course exams, final exams,
and unit tests. Recently, they took the high school
exit exam. Then there is the SAT and/or the ACT.
With this kind of test-taking, most of us cannot
allow our students time to explore or time to experiment with purpose, audience, and voice.
What Might Students’ Passions
and Purposes Actually Be?
One student told me that when she reads she closes
the door on reality. Reading transports her into another world. “When I open a book, my world stops.
I become consumed. My world then becomes the
book. I love it.” When asked about what she writes,
another student said, “I have a journal that I keep
quotes in because I love to collect words of other
people that make me think.” Being transported to
another world, a motivation to think, and engagement are all wonderful purposes for reading and
writing. As Maxine Green, Jerome Bruner, Michael
Armstrong, and others have argued, our most important job as English teachers is to educate the
imagination so that our students can imagine different and better worlds. Many studies have concluded that being able to choose what they read and
write leads to more—and more engaged—reading,
writing, and critical thinking.
The idea of “audience” has been a bit of a conundrum for English teachers. It’s difficult to encourage authentic writing when students are asked
to “pretend” to write essays to imaginary audiences;
nonetheless, some argue that providing purpose
and audience is what gives them experience with
real-world writing. These days, for our students,
audience and purpose are an integral part of using
social media that is second nature to them; only in
school are they likely to encounter—or be required
to address—hypothetical audiences.
Copyright © 2011 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
12
English Journal 101.2 (2011): 12–13
EJ_Nov2011_A.indd 12
10/12/11 3:41 PM
Janet Atkins
Resources for Promoting Students’ Purposes
Among the many organizations that give students
an opportunity to write with relevant purpose is
What Kids Can Do (http://www.whatkidscando .org/). Their publishing arm, Next Generation
Press, “honors the power of youth as social documenters, knowledge creators, and advisors to educators, peers, and parents.” Students conduct and
publish research, analyses, and opinions about issues
and narratives about their lives and education. Students at the Center (SAC), an organization in New
Orleans, promotes critical literacy in public schools
and invites students to become community organizers, activists, historians, and advocates for equity in
public education (http://www.sacnola.com). This
organization believes that students are a resource
rather than an object of the education process.
The Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN), an
organization that is important to my personal and
professional growth, is “a social network of teachers educated at Bread Loaf (http://www.middlebury.
edu/blse/bltn/), and supported during the academic
year by Bread Loaf staff and faculty. An active member of BLTN for almost two decades, I serve on the
BLTN Advisory Board. BLTN’s primary goal is to
encourage year-round collaboration and provide
support. Bread Loaf faculty, teachers, and their
students use social media tools to read, write, and
act, with the emphasis on creative expression, collaboration, and academic writing. All teachers and
students should have access to networks like BLTN:
free and open access to progressive platforms makes
these learning communities a real possibility in
2011. An exceptional collection of essays sponsored
by the National Writing Project, Teaching the New
Writing: Technology, Change, and Assessment in the
21st-Century Classroom (Herrington, Hodgson, and
Moran), presents accounts of teachers and students
in diverse settings using technology to deepen and
develop reading and writing abilities.
With the proliferation of Web 2.0 tools, most
students have access to media that allow them to use
and create graphics, sounds, images, and words, and
to combine them effectively to make multimodal
statements and to communicate. New technology
embodies the old notion of “learning by doing,”
which is often a messy, developmental process. Over
the past decade or so my own classroom has changed
dramatically. This past year, my students and I created PhotoStory movies exploring topics related to
Albert Camus’ The Stranger. We regularly explore
important passages in plays and novels through
word cloud software such as Wordle or Tagxedo.
While reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, we participated on a blog where each student contributed
thoughts about guilt and innocence, science and
religion, and who the real monster in the novel
was. While studying the short stories of Jorge Luis
Borges, we divided into literature circles and posted
our findings on our class wiki. And just for fun, each
student collected photographs, wrote a poem called
Where I’m From,1 and put these together with a
voice-over in Movie Maker. Many of these projects
can be found on my teacher website (http://teachers .greenville.k12.sc.us/sites/jatkins/default.aspx).
This is an exciting and challenging time for
teachers of English. Possibilities and problems
abound. We need to be active, engaged readers and
writers ourselves, users of social media tools, and
advocates for policies and practices that place reading and writing at the center of our students’ learning. To ensure our students may participate fully
in their communities, local and global, we teachers
must participate ourselves.
Note
1. Based on a lesson plan by Linda Christensen from
Reading, Writing and Rising Up: Teaching about Social Justice
and the Power of the Written Word. Milwaukee: Rethinking
Schools, 2003.
Works Cited
Eidman-Aadahl, Elyse. Foreword. Teaching the New Writing:
Technology, Change, and Assessment in the 21st-Century
Classroom. By Anne Herrington, Kevin Hodgson,
and Charles Moran. New York: Teachers College,
2009. Print.
Herrington, Anne, Kevin Hodgson, and Charles Moran.
Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change, and
Assessment in the 21st-Century Classroom. New York:
Teachers College, 2009. Print.
James R. Squire Office of Policy Research. 21st Century Literacies: A Policy Brief. Urbana: NCTE, 2007. Web.
5 July 2011. <http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/ Resources/PolicyResearch/21stCenturyResearch Brief.pdf>.
Janet Atkins is a veteran of the English language arts classroom, and she currently teaches at Wade Hampton High School in
Greenville, South Carolina. She is a founding member of The Bread Loaf Teacher Network. Besides her professional website,
she also maintains a blog where she writes for her own purposes.
English Journal
EJ_Nov2011_A.indd 13
13
10/12/11 3:41 PM