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Inspire Why Student Voice Matters"Write with your own style, write with your own voice, write what interests you and don't give up." (Malorie Blackman – Young People's Writer)1By Mary Jennifer Payne As a writer and a teacher in the inner-city, instilling in my students the belief that their writing, and more importantly their voice, matters is critical to me. It is my belief that a teacher cannot 'teach' someone to use their voice in writing. However, writing teachers have a duty to teach the mechanics of good writing, to model and guide students in developing their own unique voice and, most significantly, to encourage students to take risks in their writing. By doing all of the above, a teacher will be enabling and inciting a passion for writing in his or her students. In turn, students will be more dedicated to writing in which they have a vested interest and which allows them to cultivate and use their voice. Though this seems straightforward, teachers know this process is not as easy as it sounds. There are many factors to consider when teaching writing. Some students, particularly boys, seem turned off from reading and writing as they reach pre-adolescence. Students may rush through their written work and/or are indifferent to the assignments they are given. Literacy itself is a socio-cultural construct and, with the rise of new technologies, the relevance of textual versus visual, media-driven literacy in our students' lives is another issue that frustrates many teachers. There is little doubt that literacy is evolving at a rapid pace as evidenced through the proliferation of email, text messaging, blogging and social networking taking place throughout the world. In the future, the need to be a competent writer in terms of being able to construct lengthy text may be eradicated. However, at this point in time, enabling our students to write with voice and clarity in a variety of genres and forms is still an empowering and necessary skill. We must not embrace a 'one-size fits all' philosophy in our valid quest for more data. Some standardized tests can be valuable when the information gleaned from them is used correctly. They are designed to provide boards, schools and teachers with a snapshot view of where their children are against the provincial curriculum and where they may need more support. The assessments along with many other data sources – such as student work, observational notes and more, are a way to inform potential directions, open lines of communication and gain deeper understanding of student learning. Teachers should also realize that summative, content-based knowledge is not the only way in which our students demonstrate 'knowing things.' The mechanics of writing must not be emphasized over the development and expression of voice in our students; creativity, critical thinking and empowerment must not be devalued. Recently as I sat in a room full of teachers engaged in the moderated marking of students' writing, I was dismayed to observe that students who wrote formulaic pieces of writing which clearly answered the question but contained no real sense of voice or creativity were marked much higher and deemed to be more 'writerly.' Other pieces of writing in which students answered the question in a more roundabout way but displayed metacognition and voice in their writing were judged as being far inferior. Though some may argue that content should be valued over the presence of voice, when it comes to the craft of writing, I disagree. So, how exactly does one go about helping students find and develop their writers' voice? First of all, we must concretely define and understand what authentic voice in writing means. In researching for this article, I was surprised to find that voice in writing is defined in many different ways. Some describe the process in ways that are quite mechanical and simplistic, referring to conscious choices made by students in terms of vocabulary and sentence structure as the means to achieving a "writerly" voice. I disagree with this. Whilst acquiring these skills is essential in order to become a competent writer, these skills alone do not necessitate or ensure the emergence of voice. A competent writer simply has the skills necessary to express ideas in a coherent fashion within a range of forms and genres. It is the emergence of personality combined with a unique writing style that constitutes voice. These are the essential elements in the development and emergence of a writer's voice. A piece of writing can still contain a strong sense of voice without being flawless in terms of sentence structure and grammar. Instilling in our students a love for writing and a belief that they are writers with legitimate voices, means we must genuinely value what they have to say and the way in which they choose to say it. For our students, particularly those in the inner-city, infusing their writing with voice is a very risky proposition. They've often already felt the impact of being marginalized in terms of class, race, gender and religious or cultural background within the education system and the wider context of mainstream society. In order for our students to take the risk of writing with authentic voice, they need to feel that their experiences are valued within the classroom. They need to feel safe speaking from the heart. Helping our students find their "voice" means establishing a safe writing environment in which everyone's diversity is respected and acknowledged, fostering a love of reading and words and allowing students to be "experts" in terms of the subject-matter they are writing about. Writers are always prolific readers. Whenever authors are asked what potential writers need to do, the answer inevitably is to both read and write. UK author Malorie Blackman has this advice for aspiring, young authors: "Find your own style and your own way of expressing yourself. Don't copy anyone else. And most importantly, READ. In my opinion, if you don't read, you can't write." 2This means that teachers need to help instill in students a passion for reading and for words. In order to do this, particularly with students from the inner-city who are often at-risk for academic difficulties due to a number of factors, it is important that both the non-fiction and fiction texts teachers choose to teach and make available to their students are relevant to their lives and experiences in a meaningful way. All readers gain a richer experience and become more involved in their reading if they can connect to the text on some level, whether it be text-to-self, text-to-world or text-to-text. Our students in the inner-cities come from a diversity of religious, racial and cultural backgrounds and hold a wealth of knowledge about the world around them. On a day-to-day basis they face a myriad of challenges and stresses associated with poverty and often see or have first-hand experience with violence, racism and other forms of systemic prejudice. By introducing our students, particularly those who are reluctant readers, to text that is engaging and which they can relate to, we are showing them that their experiences and the experiences of others, particularly those whose voices have been marginalized, matter. We are legitimizing their voices. Due to the release of the Hollywood movie, Freedom Writers, many people are now familiar with the work of teacher Erin Gruwell and her students from Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. On the Freedom Writers Foundation's website, her original group of students explain how Gruwell initially hooked them into reading and, subsequently, writing: "She gave us books by teenagers that we could relate to …We felt like Anne Frank, trapped in a cage, and identified with the violence in Zlata Filipovic's life."3 Like Gruwell's students, many of the students I began working with this year were disengaged from the act of reading for a variety of reasons. For some, the act of reading was simply too onerous. These were my emerging readers. They are eleven and twelve year olds who began the year reading at an early primary level. Many of them are boys and have met the criteria for Special Education exceptionalities. My third period reading group consisted of one girl and three boys all of whom could barely read independently at a Grade One or Grade Two level. Over the course of the year, I have watched them go from flatly refusing to read to arguing over getting a chance to read out loud in the group. We've read a variety of texts together, including a number of graphic texts focusing on the life of Nelson Mandela and Ruby Bridges as well as ones exploring the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s and the origins of jazz music in New Orleans. The chosen texts allowed students to make connections between the struggles of Mandela and Bridges and the challenges they faced in their own lives as well as allowing them to use their background knowledge about apartheid, segregation and the American Civil Rights Movement in order to enrich their understanding of the text. We examined voice and analyzed the underlying, inferred themes in the texts we read together, including poetry by Benjamin Zephaniah and Tupac Shakur. Many of the students made substantial leaps in their reading levels. One of the boys went from reading independently at a Kindergarten level to reading independently at an early Grade Three level. Another boy who was very reluctant to read and to write any sort of response to text now takes the lead in our discussions and reading circles. His written response Tupac Shakur's poem, The Rose that Grew From the Concrete, demonstrated a strong sense of voice and metacognition. He began his response with the following: "I think TuPac was trying to say no one cared about the flower. For real I don't know what Tupac is trying to say but I am going to try and tell you. I am going to talk about how dose it relate to human life as well." I cannot emphasize enough that writers read voraciously and love words. As Carol Wells of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute points out, "Lack of motivation- On the part of the student and teacher. It is my firm belief that this is one of the most important factors underlying the low performance in reading of inner-city high school students." 4Teachers in the inner-city not only need to motivate their students to love words and the act of reading but need to be motivated themselves to discover their students' interests and seek out texts that will engage their classes. I'd like to quickly address why it is so critical to make relevant text available to our students as we help them on their journey as readers and writers. One important reason to consider is the fact that buying books is a privilege for those who have financial means. Books are often prohibitively expensive for students and families living in inner-city neighbourhoods. Both school and local libraries are a good option if they are resourced and funded well. Helping your students connect with their local library and obtain their own library cards will go a long way in making it easier for them to continue reading during school holidays. However, students will only utilize these resources if they are motivated to want to read. This brings us back to making text available that reflects and legitimizes our students' experiences and allows them to make meaningful connections. As Pooja Makhijani states in her work on South Asia and the South Asian Disapora in Childrens' Literature: "So why do we need people "like us" in the books we read? Finding themselves in books gives children a sense of their culture, history and importance-especially when their cultures and experiences have been marginalized by the mainstream."5 One of my colleagues who grew up in social housing and now not only teaches in the inner-city but is also a well-known spoken word poet in Toronto, reiterated the importance of the connection between the love for reading and the development of a writer's voice, stating that: "..You have to definitely love reading and do a lot of it to really find your own style and voice when it comes to your own writing. The key is being able to identify with what you are reading and that can mean so many things from the character to the subject matter, setting, problem, the solution, themes and so on."6 When we had this conversation, he'd just finished reading, discussing and deconstructing The House That Crack Built by Clark Taylor with his Grade 5/6 class the day before. Providing whole-class time when a teacher is reading out loud from a novel or short story is also a valuable opportunity to guide students in making their own connections to text. Reading aloud also allows students with reading difficulties or disabilities to be exposed to and explore texts that they would otherwise be unable to read independently. The shift from oral language and discussion about text to writing is not an easy or automatic one for all of our students. It is vital that a great deal of oral discussion happen before writing begins. Incorporating the arts is another great way to foster a sense of safety and success for those students who find it difficult to get their ideas onto paper. Of course it is critical that teachers take the time to scaffold any writing with modeled, guided and shared writing lessons. When it comes to voice, a teacher modeling his or her authentic voice in a piece of writing is a powerful lesson. If we are asking students to take the risk of writing journal entries, memoirs, poetry or any other form of writing with voice, we also need to share our unique voice when modeling the writing for our students. Many of my students also utilize assistive technology, such as text-to-speech software, when writing. It is important that students with fine motor skills difficulties also be given the choice of composing their writing on a computer, rather than on pen and paper. The goal is to get the student to write and to feel good whilst doing so. Another strategy that helped students focus on their thoughts and ideas and took the pressure off in terms of organizing their writing was a four-step approach in which students were asked to: 1) Rephrase 2) Answer the question 3) Support their answer from the text 4) Make a connection (text-to-self; text-to-world; text-to-text). This organizer really helped my struggling students and was the first step to the development of their voice through the connection. The most valuable thing a teacher can do to support students in developing their voice as writers is to empower the students by allowing them to be the "expert" writers. Our students living in the inner-city have a wealth of experience and knowledge to share. Many were born outside the country or are first-generation immigrants with stories to tell. Giving students the freedom to teach us and to learn from them is so important. After reading and becoming immersed in texts they could really relate to, the Freedom Writers detail their journey to becoming passionate writers: "We began writing anonymous journal entries about the adversities that we faced in our everyday lives. We wrote about gangs, immigration, drugs, violence, abuse, death…and all the other issues we never had the chance to express before."7 My first year of teaching was spent in a school on a large social housing estate in Southeast London. One of the writing assignments I gave my students was to design and write a travel brochure for tourists visiting Greenwich. Rather than celebrating the work my students gave to me, I was initially dismayed when they described their experiences at Wimpy's Burgers, shopping at the Iceland grocery store or playing football at the park rather than detailing tours through the Cutty Sark, the Maritime Museum or the Royal Observatory. Their work was full of voice and they were risking so much sharing their experiences with me. The connections that my students made to Greenwich were authentic and based on their experiences with the area. The writing within those travel brochures displayed the voices of marginalized, socio-economically impoverished students living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. It was the perfect opportunity to allow my students to become "expert" writers and to teach me about their lives. Unfortunately I did not fully recognize at that time the value in the pieces of writing they submitted. It was a lesson I never forgot as a teacher. Currently I work at a school situated in Canada's oldest and largest social housing project. The community is being redeveloped which means most of the townhouses and homes are being torn down to make way for a mix of social housing, privately-owned condominiums and businesses. A few years ago before the redevelopment was underway, I asked my Grade 5/6 classes to write persuasive or expository pieces on the change that was about to take place in their community. Giving the students the chance to write about their experiences and on a topic that was highly personal to them gave them the opportunity to be the experts. The students were passionate about the pieces and the writing that resulted was rich with voice. Below are a few excerpts from some of the students' work: The first reason I will mention is that the design of the community is dangerous and hazardous because there are too many dark places for the criminals to hide. Further more the security cameras are being painted black and no one can see what's happening down in the lobby. Also the main locks are broken and there are lots of drug dealers who sell drugs and weapons. How would you like it if you walk down to your main door and you see drug dialers smoking and drinking? Another student wrote: The final argument I'd like to talk about is about our schools. Most of the schools are old and they're breaking apart and if you don't believe me hear this, a few weeks ago at school one of our water pipes broke and there was a flood and the electricity went off…..Do you want our future generation to experience all this mayhem that is going on in our community or are you going to stand tall and make Regent Park a better place? If you are than thumbs up to you and thank you for helping us make Regent Park a better place for everyone. And yet another student in Grade 5 wrote the following when given a free-choice poetry assignment: The War of Life Every day you go through a war Ultimately, empowering our students in the inner-city to use authentic voice in their writing and elsewhere in their academic lives is a critical part of a teacher's job. In order to do so, teachers must value the knowledge and experiences our students come to the academic arena with. There are many issues involved with this topic that I have only had the chance to touch upon. One of the most important is the marginalization of our students and their families via institutionalized class, race and gender-biases in our education system and the wider society. Our students in the inner-city may be socio-economically challenged but they are not in a deficit position when it comes to knowledge and experience. It is a fact that the type of knowledge and experience they bring to the table is often not reflected or valued in the curriculum and standardized assessment methods of the educational system. The stories and voices of our marginalized youth are important. They need to be heard. -- Mary Jennifer Payne is a teacher at Nelson Mandela Park Public School 1. www.bbc.co.uk/blast/writing/blast_writing_section_coming_soon/72239 |
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