Mr. Buran

Each year I send out a flyer with information about the upcoming tennis season.  Once a year, I have to figure out how to use the “merge” feature in Word so that I don’t have to fill out each mailing label by hand.  It normally takes me about an hour of trial and error until I figure the “merge” feature out.  Although that hour-a-year is tediously spent (the “merge” feature in Office is so kludgy), the labels get printed and I quickly forget how to use this feature for another year.  Today, I had a grueling set back that has caused me to reflect on an upcoming teaching goal for this year.

I thought that I was doing myself a favor.  I created a spreadsheet so that any potential player could come by my classroom and “sign up”.  I added a name field, address field, phone number field, and e-mail field.  Any girl could stop by and add her name to the list in order to receive the flyer that I send out each summer.  I had another form filled out by incoming freshmen who were interested.  My teacher’s assistant dutifully typed out each name and address.  This morning I had some free time so I decided to prepare the flyers for mailing on Monday.  Due to the fact that my students apparently don’t know how to format their names and addresses for a piece of mail, those couple of hours turned into a four hour ordeal.

I generally dismiss the importance of formatting.  To the comment of, “Students these days only know how to write ‘text messages’ and don’t write properly,” I have flippantly responded, “You know, they are reinventing the English Language.”  I now know that I have to reassess this view point.

The students and potential players did not generally capitalize their names or street addresses.  They did not put a comma between their city and state.  They did not end abbreviations with periods.  All of these mistakes meant that I had to reformat 90% of these labels before they were printable.

Two out of 54 students formatted their names and addresses correctly.  Not surprisingly, these students were also top English students in their classes.  To her credit, my teacher’s assistant did format correctly.

Simple mistakes in formatting caused me significant real-world problems.  If my students don’t learn any better, they will make these mistakes again.  As a teacher and coach, I felt frustrated. If I were an employer, I would not tolerate these errors that affect productivity.

Formatting is going to be a topic of focus for me and my students this school year.  I believe that an important new teaching goal is to learn more about formatting, creating more opportunities for my students to learn about formatting, and to assess my students on their ability to format properly.  The ability to properly format a piece of writing is a skill that many studnets apparently don’t have. For thier sakes as much as mine, they need to learn it.

When I attended the Summer Institute, I was nervous because I didn’t feel very confident that my presentation would have much to offer the other participants.  Tom Fox set my mind at ease during my interview after he realized that I had more questions about my teaching practice than answers.  I was advised that it is encouraged to raise questions as much as to try to solve them.  The Writing Project values inquiry. The most useful insight that I came away from the Summer Institute was that raising questions is the first step to solving problems.

I gathered all of my resources and examples, reflected with the rest of the participants upon my practices, presented some specific questions about next steps, and we worked together to come up with some answers to my inquiry.  We all came away from the presentation with some new thoughts and ideas.

Now, whenever I give a presentation, I look for questions that I can raise more so than knowledge that I might impart.  I find that spending time with talented people while working through problems is much more valuable for everyone involved than simply presenting information.

My presentation on Wednesday, although full of useful skills to learn, is based again on inquiry.  I hope that the participants of the Summer Institute and I can figure out some next steps for this coming school year, propose new questions and insights, and each come away with fresh thoughts on developing practices.

In my professional life, I hardly ever think about how I write.  I have, however, learned certain skills by writing essays, letters, e-mails, presentations, and blog posts.  My drafting process is made up of a series of small revisions.  I choose the right words and formats.  I add style to impress my audience.

I would ask to like readers to think about how they develop writing to be “professional”?

Reflecting on how you moved a casual quick write into a public piece, consider what changes you made and what skills you implemented?

• What did you do first?
• How did you know it was ready to post?
• What skills are required make writing publishable?

I was amazed this year by how willing students were to published undeveloped writing!  My hope was and is that the public area will put constraints on their style so that they might develop academic skills.

Now that we have considered some examples of student writing,  what skills do these young writers need to learn in order to improve their online communications?  If we outline some skill sets, we will know which skills to teach in order to help them develop into future professionals.

• What specific skills do my students need to write more academically?
• How might these skills be taught?