After much time thinking, reflecting, and panicking I came across an article on the National Writing Project website. "Ten Ideas That Get Kids Writing": http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/nwp/ten-ideas.html It was in this article that I read about a young girl whom had been struggling with Anorexia. She wrote about her journey with this disease and wanted to ensure that other students did not go through the same experience. It sat with me - that message that a child's words can change the world. I had often told my students of this important message, but rarely had I given them the opportunity to truly practice. This needed to be more than an entry or a final draft they created just for me, but there needed to be a way to share this message with the world. It amazes me how as a creator, and that's what we are as educators - a creator of lessons, once you are inspired you feel this overwhelming excitement and desire to keep going.
We embarked on the first day back creating lists and short entries about things in the world we wanted to change. I was beyond impressed by the variety of answers. Everything from animal abuse to school stress to (my personal favorite due to the sheer humor and innocence) "Boys with long hair. I mean seriously... What are they trying to say?!" I reflected with them on the importance of their voice, and the next day we defined the word activism/activist as a class. For quite some time I had been talking, fruitlessly, about being a "passive learner" - this was the perfect opportunity to reflect on wanting to change the world, or watching the world change. This was the perfect opportunity to teaching them all of the reasons why their voices matter.
The librarian/media specialist and I gave the students the freedom to select their own topics, responsibly. This invokes some natural elementary school teacher fear, as it often requires the move from database searching to true Google searching. However, these students live in a world where technology is in their faces all of the time, and at some point we have to teach them to search responsibly. Our students spent a couple of weeks researching their topics on the databases, and those that couldn't find enough supportive information, were taught how to "Google responsibly". The librarian and I closely monitored their progress, and bounced important lessons off of one another and the students.
The second struggle was WHAT to do with these pieces. It was important to me that they not only feel that they had a voice, but that they understood that other people would hear their voices - that's how you change the world. And so I found glossi.com. While I'm sure glossi.com never intended on being a website for educational purposes, it became clear that it was very user-friendly and, better yet, it was free.
We had previously created a singular GMail account where each student had their own folder on google docs and created any writing that moved through the drafting process. This made it most easy for my co-teacher and me to revise and conference with students online. We had the opportunity to offer feedback, students had the opportunity to make revisions, and we instantly knew which students we needed to check-in with at the start of class. Google docs had given me a sense of sanity during our fiction unit (where sixth graders often feel compelled to write a novel), and was once again one of the most useful tools in my writing class. Drafting began, online conferencing ensued, and I felt like I had a grasp on the progress of each of my students. In ten years of teaching, I have never been able to say that I had an understanding of the status of all students during a writing assignment. Google docs has changed that for me as an educator, and more importantly, for my students. It was easy to determine where students needed more research, more voice, grammar and punctuation assistance, etc.
As in all units, and teaching, nothing is perfect. While we spent a lot of time having them document their resources on their bibliography, in the future we will need to spend more time having them accurately quoting where their research was received. Also, a skill that I continue to struggle teaching, and the students continue to struggle learning is putting things into their own words. At the age of twelve this seems to be a hard skill to maintain throughout the whole piece. These will be skills and strategies I will work toward improving throughout the rest of this year, and figure how to address when I complete this assignment with next year's students. With that being said, my favorite moments in teaching continue to be the moments when my students' motivation to learn exceeds the hand holding and teacher-driven instruction they are so accustomed to at this young age. Teaching them that their words matter and can change the world is the first step in giving them a sense of power through the written language.
