“Ill-fitting grammar are like ill-fitting shoes. You can get used to it for a bit, but then one day your toes fall off and you can't walk to the bathroom.” ― Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Week Eleven.

Challenge Writing Tasks.

I.
A revision of my Reflection on a teaching placement

A few moments’ drive, walking distance really, from over-priced coffee shops and an expensive grocery store and nestled inexplicably between apartments and restaurants is   ______ Middle School. You won’t see these kids or their families at that coffee shop and if they dared to venture into the aisles of over-priced organic produce, they would certainly look out of place. This isn’t for them.

No, these kids are of buildings, of a school, where absent ceiling tiles reveal leaking roofs and many of the ceiling tiles that have resolutely stood their ground have scars and smells and discolorations to show for it. More often than not, the walls and the floors match.

These are the kids of parents who enter the school screaming, stomping in with a bewildered baby on their hip as they howl at their child. The mom paying too much for organic fruit just a few minutes away would never do that, would never even look at the mother yelling here. She wouldn’t recognize this mother's love, all tangled up in fear, because when you look a certain way, you just can't do that, the rules are different for you, it's a dangerous place when you look the way you do.

These are the kids that can’t afford the luxury of childhood. 

II.
A new reflection, this time on teaching (writing) as taught by Anderson, Crovitz, Kirby, Kittle, Anderson, Gallagher, Crovitz, Rief, Bomer, Kirby and Murray.

In addition to the middle school classroom, I have the slightly unique opportunity to experiment with all these ideas on a smaller scale when I tutor my three budding non-native speaker students in English fluency. The most important (and my favorite) focus from these authors has been been learning how to articulate in my teaching (and my tutoring) what I've always felt: focus on achievement; encouragement. So many of these readings and authors have showed me how to focus on what's good in a way that is productive toward improvement to encourage and empower student writers. My previous reflections and posts show my enthusiasm here- looking at the methods of praise, "next steps," and community building in the classroom that scaffold an environment where student writers  can write confidently and better. With regard to revision, Jeff Anderson showed us how it can be a place of play where patterns are found and understood and capitalized on- all in context and therefore meaningful. Crovitz continues this discussion, adding in a greater emphasis on literature and life.