Should Teachers Express Their Own Opinions?

Note: The National Council of Teachers of English was founded in 1911. The organization is celebrating its centennial. As part of this celebration, College English is publishing excerpts from its predecessor, the college edition of The English Journal. The excerpts are timely, a bit wordy and take their time to get to the point. However, I believe my readers will find them of interest. RayS.

Bergen Evans, “English and Ethics,” Vol. 24 (September 1935), 541-45.

Quote: “Those who maintain that the teacher has no right or need to express his personal convictions are not without some justification. A persistent or excessive intrusion of personal approval or disapproval is bad. Everyone has suffered from teachers who made the work being read merely a text from which they expounded their own ideas….” (543-44).

Comment: It’s even worse when a student contradicts the teacher’s convictions on feminism, etc., and the teacher penalizes the student’s writing because of it. I have read several articles in College Composition and Communication by teachers defending this practice. I disagree! RayS.

Title: “College English’s Precursor: Excerpts from the College Edition of The English Journal.” College English (November 2011), 157-191.

Advice for Commenting [On Student Compositions]

Note: The National Council of Teachers of English was founded in 1911. The organization is celebrating its centennial. As part of this celebration, College English is publishing excerpts from its predecessor, the college edition of The English Journal. The excerpts are timely, a bit wordy and take their time to get to the point. However, I believe my readers will find them of interest. RayS.

 Robert G. Berkelman, “A Letter to My theme Reader,” Vol. 22 (January 1933), 62-66.

Quote: In order to help rather than condemn, I have found that it is better to word comments positively, even when the criticism must be adverse. That is, instead of stating the faults bluntly, show the writer what virtue he should strive for. To the student a guide-post pointing to improved thought and expression is far more inviting than the flourish of a pruning knife. Which of these comments, for example, would you prefer on an effort of yours: ‘This is clear but rather dull’ or ‘Commendably clear, now aim at liveliness?’ ”  (63-64).

Comment: The idea behind this advice is worth thinking about. RayS.

 Title: “College English’s Precursor: Excerpts from the College Edition of The English Journal.” College English (November 2011), 157-191.

What Freshman Writers Need

Note: The National Council of Teachers of English was founded in 1911. The organization is celebrating its centennial. As part of this celebration, College English is publishing excerpts from its predecessor, the college edition of The English Journal. The excerpts are timely, a bit wordy and take their time to get to the point. However, I believe my readers will find them of interest. RayS.

H.W. Davis, “Mastering Principles of Composition.” Vol. 19 (December 1930), 795-803.

Quote: “People who write well must have something to say to somebody and they must want to say it Purpose, audience, and zeal are requisites to effective composition—all the freshman rhetoric courses in America to the contrary notwithstanding. I will back them any day in a race with unity, coherence, and emphasis.”  (801).

Title: “College English’s Precursor: Excerpts from the College Edition of The English Journal.” College English (November 2011), 157-191.

Publishing Students' Papers

Note: The National Council of Teachers of English was founded in 1911. The organization is celebrating its centennial. As part of this celebration, College English is publishing excerpts from its predecessor, the college edition of The English Journal. The excerpts are timely, a bit wordy and take their time to get to the point. However, I believe my readers will find them of interest. RayS.

Topic: Publishing Students’ Papers

Albert Morton Turner, “Publishing Freshman Themes.” Vol. 18 (March 1929), 242-43.

Quote: “Two ever present bugbears of Freshman English are the lack of any desire, on the part of students, to write and, when they are compelled to do so, their frequent tendency to regard themes as a mere field to show their proficiency—or the want thereof—in the use of commas and semicolons. In the effort to counteract these difficulties, the Freshman English staff at the University of Maine is publishing a series of leaflets composed of themes written during the current year, leaflets which are distributed to all the first-year students and which are discussed in class. At the beginning of the year, before their pockets have been depleted by purchasing textbooks and ice-cream cones, we collect the sum of twenty-five cents from each of our 425 Freshmen. With this sum we pay for the printing, from time to time, of the necessary number of copies of eight different leaflets, four in each semester…. Both bad and good themes are printed…. Bad themes, it should be observed are always printed anonymously; good ones, on the other hand, may appear with their authors’ names….” (742-43).

Title: “College English’s Precursor: Excerpts from the College Edition of The English Journal.” College English (November 2011), 157-191.

Ten Books on Writing

Lit from Within: Contemporary Masters on the Art and C raft of Writing. Edited by Kevin Haworth and Dinty W. Moore. Ohio University Press, 200 pages. Paper, $19.95.

Help! For Writers: Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Faces by Roy Peter Clark. Little, Brown, 304 pages. Hardcover, $22.00, digital, $9.99.

Write Your Book Now!: A Proven System to Start and Finish the Book You’ve Always Wanted to Write! By Gene Perret. Quill Driver Books, 160 pages. Paper, $14.95.

Promote Your Book: Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author by Patricia Fry. Allworth Press, 224 pages. Paper or digital, $19.95.

Many Genres, One Craft:  Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction by Michael A. Arnzen and Heidi Ruby Miller. Headline Books, 384 pages. Hardcover, $2995.

Language Wars: A History of Proper English by Henry Hitchings. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 416 pages. Hardcover, $28; digital, $14.99.

The Story Within: New Insights and Inspiration for Writers by Laura Oliver. Alpha Books, 224 pages, paper or digital, $13.95.

Write More Good: An Absolutely Phony Guide by The Bureau Chiefs. Three Rivers Press, 272 pages. Paper, $13; digital, $9.99. Guaranteed to get you fired for any job requiring writing.

Write Fantastic Nonfiction (Teach Yourself) by Claire Gillman. Hodder & Stoughton. 196 pages. Paper, $16.95.

The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, edited by Jeff Martin and C. Max Magee. Soft Skull Press, 192 pages. Paper, $14.95. Will books survive?

Title: “10 of This Year’s Terrific Writing Books.” Chuck Leddy. The Writer (December 2011), 19-21.

Merit Pay

Question: What’s wrong with merit pay?

Answer/Quote: “…the problems with individual merit pay are numerous and well documented. It has been shown to undermine teamwork, encourages employees to focus on the short term, and leads people to link compensation to political skills and ingratiating personalities rather than to performance.” 26. Jeffry Pferrer. Harvard Business Review: Six Dangerous Myths about Pay (1998).

The author points out that improving education for all students is the goal. Merit pay undermines that goal.

Comment: I have had several experiences as a supervisor in which teamwork was undermined by teachers’ unwillingness to share their successful methods with other teachers, most notably in a primary grade writing workshop. RayS.

Title: “Teacher Evaluation, Teacher Effectiveness, and School Reform.” Richard Long. Reading Today (October/November 2011), 26-27.

Science and Poetry

Question: How introduce first-grade students to writing poems about science?

Answer: Research an animal. Students create an acrostic poem using the letters of the animal arranged vertically as the first letter for each line that says something about the animal.

Found poems: Arrange words from a text in the form of a poem.

Title: “Creating Poems from Science research: A ReadWriteThink Project for Bilingual Students at Hodge elementary in Denton, TX.” V Rojas and E Manning. Reading Today (October/November 2011), 12-13.