I recently attended Our Mutual Estate, an education conference organized by the NYC Association of Assistant Principals Supervision– English (NYCAAPSE) and Long Island University (LIU). Writing was the focus of this year’s conference, and I decided to participate in the Teaching the Academic Essay workshop. I felt it aligned closely with the new emphasis on informational reading and writing in the English Language Arts classroom outlined in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
The Problem
The workshop I attended was organized by a professor from LIU, and a high school English teacher who has also taught at the university level. The guiding question for the session was, “What is the role of the personal in the academic essay?” I jumped in to point out that the CCSS are asking teachers to stop just asking students for their personal reflections, and to require them to make sound arguments based on evidence from the text(s). Other teachers in the room quickly agreed with me, and shared stories of how their students include personal anecdotes in academic essays once they run out of evidence. In other instances, they believe students have provided personal experiences rather than text-based evidence to support their arguments because they struggle to actually understand the text they were assigned.
Our opening discussion finally ended with a teacher confessing, “Although we complain about it when we grade essays, English teachers seem to spend more time on task asking students to share their personal reactions to a plot, character, etc. Then, we hold this against them when they are asked to write an academic essay.” I found it particularly interesting that this confession was addressed several weeks ago by David Coleman, “the architect of the CCSS,” who argued that teachers need to stop simply asking students what they think about a text, and instead require them to go back to the text and provide specific evidence to support a claim.
A Solution
Now that everyone in the workshop agreed that students were writing about their own experiences instead of the text, it was time to brainstorm some solutions to this problem. My favorite activity that was suggested is one in which students discuss the texts they’ve read as the author of the text. This helps students go beyond expressing their opinions because they are being asked to be someone else altogether. The workshop presenters had us try this activity ourselves, and it helped us create a strong table of text-based evidence to support our thesis statements. I imagine some of the teachers in the workshop will be trying this out with their students soon.
From a philosophical position, we could continue to discuss the initial question regarding the role of the personal in an academic essay. However, the practical matter seems to be straightforward—students are not including text-based evidence in their academic essays. As new assessments are developed for the CCSS that place a priority on using text-based evidence to support a claim, teachers will need to redefine the types of conversations and writing assignments they plan around texts, so that academic essays don’t continue to include, “this article reminds me of the time . . .”
I like this shift in perspective on student writing. Yes, let's ask students to think (in addition to feeling.
ReplyDeleteI battle to agree with the idea that tertiary-level students are not able to produce text-based evidence, or to provide evidence supporting their personal viewpoints/analogies.
ReplyDeleteAssuming that this is the case, the blame would actually fall on the CCSS - the first principle of academic writing involves the idea that one does not have the right to present a personal opinion or anecdote without adequate substantiation of one's argument.