“Never a day without a line.” - Donald Murray

A letter to Penny Kittle, teacher and author.

Dear Mrs. Kittle,

Thank you for sharing your experiences as a teacher and a writer (and therefore as a student).

When you write about “the series of decisions [you] make each day to tune instruction to the needs of a particular group of personalities and keep all moving forward in their work” (Kittle 63), I think of three other brilliant quotes I cherish:  "The secret in education lies in respecting the student” (Ralph Waldo Emerson), "If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn" (Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Estrada), and “Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners” (John Holt). As fellow teacher and author H. Richard Milner IV explains in his book, learning can only take place when students allow teachers to teach them (53). Therefore, when you explain that a successful classroom begins with acknowledging the student’s personalities, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I have been compiling research on the step that naturally follows from acknowledging the students’ backgrounds- engaging those backgrounds. You acknowledge something critically important to education when you write “if [you] don’t know the kids before [you], [you] don’t have a chance. If [you] don’t match [your] content to match their particular interests, [you’re] not likely to hold their interest for long” (Kittle 94). The need for relevant curriculum is evident by the successes it has given. The individuals in the study "A Race Conscious Pedagogy: Correctional Educators and Creative Resistance Inside California Juvenile Detention Facilities"- individuals who had not been able succeed in the “traditional” classroom and consequently found themselves in juvenile detention facilities- were engaged and even excited by school when it became relevant to them.  A high school in New Mexico transformed very low graduation rates into 99% graduation with their Mexican American Studies program, which taught Latinx students with respect to their cultural identities and histories, documented in Precious Knowledge. Successful teaching begins with understanding the students’ backgrounds and incorporating those backgrounds into the classroom. From this foundational understanding, the specifics of teaching- here, teaching writing- may begin to be addressed. 

I enthusiastically agree with many, if not most, of your practices teaching writing, drawing on my own experience as a writer and a teacher (well, tutor) of writing. I am confident your methods and ideas will find their place in my own classroom. Perhaps most significant and certainly most novel is your emphasis on the necessity for a teacher to be a writer with their students. You’re certainly correct (even though part of me protests- but I don’t wanna write!). In her article “Writing Matters,” Rief quotes one of her students:

You know what I like about this class? You’re not like the gym teacher. Like when she coaches swimming, she never gets in the pool. She never gets wet. She just stands on the side yelling, ‘Go faster! Go faster!’

We do “have to ‘get wet’” (Rief 12) and do what we ask our students to do. We have to write with our students for our students… but also for ourselves. Thank you for helping me realize that.

            Although I anticipate adopting many of your practices, after reading Milner’s works and teaching in a tumultuous “high risk” middle school, I don’t believe some of these theories and expectations can work the way they “should.” The reality interferes with, or even prohibits, the success of theory- it cannot translate well into experience. Your zero tolerance policies (such as with classroom participation and paper submissions) are potentially counterproductive to student success. As Milner explains, many students do not have the time or place for homework outside of the school- they may have jobs, siblings they are responsible for, even unsafe or unstable living conditions. To punish these students under a zero tolerance policy is to contribute to their disadvantages. A teacher must be especially willing to work with these students. This is not to disagree with your high expectations for each student- all students, and perhaps particularly disadvantaged youth, need to be held to high expectations and assured that they can achieve as much as their peers. Additionally, for these reasons, while reading outside of the classroom should always be encouraged, a teacher must also be cognizant of their students’ home realities. (I do enthusiastically agree that reading should begin in the classroom because it increases the likelihood that students will read outside of the classroom.) As you said, “the flesh and form of my workshop comes from the eclectic mix of students who walk through the door” (Kittle 93); the classroom should be what students need it to be.

Thank you for sharing how you “found [your] own way” (Kittle 94) so that I may find my own way.

Respectfully,

Brittany Hayes

Works Cited

Flores, Jerry. "A Race Conscious Pedagogy: Correctional Educators and Creative Resistance Inside California Juvenile Detention Facilities." Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, vol. 9, no. 2, 2015, pp. 18-30.

Kittle, Penny. “The Opportunities in a Writer’s Workshop.” Write beside Them: Risk, Voice, and Clarity in High School Writing, Heinemann, 2008, pp. 62–95.

Milner, H. Richard, IV. Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There: Understanding Diversity, Opportunity Gaps, and Teaching in Today's Classrooms. Harvard Education Press, 2015.

Precious Knowledge. Palos, Ari L., Eren McGinnis, Sally J. Fifer, Jacob Bricca, and Naïm Amor. Dos Vatos Productions, 2011. 

Winn, Maisha T. “Toward a Restorative English Education.” Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 48, no. 1, 2013, pp. 126–135.