When do we show off?

As if we didn’t have enough crowding our plates in this WAC extravaganza, I’m throwing out a new resource (well, not new to the world, but new to our conversation). I have known of this group all my adult life and benefited from it in a number of ways–through friendships with those deeply involved, by the thinking coming from the organization, by the work done by the teachers involved, the students who were involved. For many years, I was indebted to the work of the National Writing Project for a lot of my professional development while writing K-12 literacy curriculum and designing literacy programs as my one and only job.

If you go to the main page and search for “writing across the curriculum,” you’ll find a ton of links, .pdfs, studies, and resources. If you click on the “Resources” tab at the top of the page, you’ll see a lot of options. This is a place for writers, teachers, students, and anyone who cares about writing and the writing lives of children (I know–that last is heavy handed… juuuuust a little bit). But the point is that there’s something for everyone.

And if anyone asks you about the veracity of writing across the curriculum, then direct them to this article about Judy Willis, teacher and neurologist who worked with a NWP site in California. Willis practiced neurology, has taught, and studied the brain on writing. Here’s your brain: __________. Here’s your brain on writing: $%j*&ger^$’#m@!>?{]~//*#”;+POWER.

I was deeply saddened to learn that direct federal funding was cut this year for the NWP. I knew it was possible, and I added my voice to those who said, “NO!” But there it is. Cut. That’s a grim thing. Perhaps the universities that support NWP sites on their campuses will be able to save the project and sustain some of it until funding might be restored in better times.

Until then, this is a lovely place to find loads of information about writing–especially if you want to teach writing, tutor writing, or want to be a writer (check out “Being a Writer” for amazing info about, yes, you guessed it: being a writer). Many are open resources, but there are many books very reasonably priced, too.

At a conference recently, I attended a presentation by the authors of this book: Because Digital Writing Matters, Danielle DeVoss, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, and Tony Hicks (with a couple of other teachers). They made me miss the K-6 classroom–the time I had with those students. In second grade, I had my kids all day. They reminded me that everything you do in a classroom you’re in all day is across the curriculum. We wrote constantly–on everything and for everyone. If I was teaching now, I know I’d be grieved by the test-them-to-death circumstances of the 21st century classroom, but I would have found a way around that somehow. I taught social studies through MGM musicals. I would have found a way for my students to be creative and engaged and write about everything in paper journals, on cards, on sticky notes, on the walls, on wood, on anything not moving, and most of all online.

If I was teaching elementary school now, I’d also probably be fired when my students didn’t do well on standardized tests. But maybe not, I might have been able to do both: write about everything and teach to a test. I can be creative sometimes. But no matter what, my students and I would have had a blast, and they would have remembered our year together. Life-long learning trumps testing, but employment does matter at some point.

If we rethink who we are because of the WAC learning and writing we do this summer, then our rhetorical velocity ought to be partly directed toward the writing lives of our children, the children of our friends, or the children we will have in the future–or even just kids in our neighborhoods. Share the fact that you are writing this summer with some kid you know. Just let them see how creative you are being–tell them why you picked the theme you did for your blog, show them your favorite post, be sure they know you are part of a community, a commons. Let them see you writing, or better yet, write with some kid.

If we are writers in front of children, what will they think? They will think they can do it, too.

That’s what the NWP is all about. I hope they make it past these hard times.

I asked this question to get my writing started: when do we show off? I say do it now. I just shared this blog and entry with my son who was very impressed until he learned this was not a Wikipedia entry.

Tech disconnect redux or TKO?

This afternoon, I just happened to be reading the letters to the editor in the Smithsonian (June 2011), and came upon this one:

Letter to the editor at Smithsonian (June 2011)

You can see the original article, Turn On, Log In, Wise Up if you like–it got a lot of negative commets online. Hello, world–did you forget the last editorial in the Smithsonian is a joke, often silly, sentimental, odd? It’s not always but it often is.

“Tech Disconnect” reminds me a lot of the things we’ve reading about the literacy crisis in our summer class–oooh it’s so scary that Johnny can read or write–but as wacmrsl just pointed out in a blog post, the more writing we do, the better we get at it. And I think this is about any literacy practices we engage in: blog, phone, academic paper, journal article, book, poem, speech. The more we do the better we become–or can become. And in fact, the general rule is that if you do something stupid while in texting or on the web, the bigger the consequences: lose a job, blow up a relationship, hurt someone’s feelings, get famous (for all the wrong reasons). But in the case of the digital, the words (or video or photo) don’t dissipate into thin air, either, they go viral. Hence the possible infamy, and hence the sense that folks who take communication seriously, are taking literacy seriously, all literacies.

I also quibble with the fear-inducing “As electric gadgets become more intrusive, will all human socialization cease?” No. I think the “electric gadgets” can make us more social–we build a network we carry with us. It’s comforting to not lose friends or family when I’m somewhere other than with them. I loathe some aspects of being turned on, logged in, and wised up, but I am glad I am.

I wanted to call this letter writer a Luddite, but then I started to rethink what I really might mean by that because of an article I read on Luddites (same magazine) this last March. (The Smithsonian is one of my favorites.) I have even called myself a Luddite or suggested I had tendencies in that direction–meaning I didn’t keep up with all the latest, hippest technology. But I would have been far off the mark. All that serves as a reminder that writing on the web is so powerful because I can talk about a letter to an editor from a June issue of a magazine, then also reference an article from March–and send you right where you can find each of these things to make up your own mind. You don’t need to get the Smithsonian anymore in your snail mail box, nor do you need to go to a library to look up these two articles. Right here, right now.

If the web 2.0 ain’t supporting literacy learning, and I mean lots of different kinds of literacies, why, I reckon I deserve to lose this argument on a technical knock out (TKO).