Professional Development

I attended the Rhode Island Writing Project’s annual spring conference on March 8, 2014 where I learned the value of the first person tense in a classroom and the benefit of creating a personal teaching manifesto.  

The keynote speaker, Thomas Newkrik, inspired me to think about using first person writing in my future classroom. Newkrik stated that narration is actually “at the heart of everything” including argumentative and informational writing, which is where the Common Core invests too much of its time. For Mr. Newkrik, narrative writing is the most interesting and engaging to readers because of the highly personal final product. As such, Mr. Newkrick believes that no one should “apologize” for writing in the first person. His words really stuck a chord with me because I was taught the opposite method. Starting in high school my teachers drilled into my mind that using the word “I” in a graded paper should never happen.  This concept carried over to my undergraduate courses as it was also improper to state your opinion in any history paper. After really mulling over Mr. Newkrick’s presentation, I think he made a semi valid point. First person writing has many merits. However, I also believe that a narrative can be different from argumentative writing. In fact, argumentative writing was the style I had to use when writing all of my history papers at URI. While my papers were typically advancing a point I believed in, my points sounded better when I had evidence from a credible source rather than my own musings. Therefore, first person narrative should be separated at certain times, which is why I will continue to teach my future students that formal historical assignments should include no direct evidence of bias. Unlike my past teachers I will allow my future pupils to freely advance their opinions regarding history through more informal writing projects, like reaction journals. The reason I will slightly modify the routine of my past teachers is because narration is engaging— not just to read like Mr. Newkrick mentioned, but also write. What someone believes in often interests them the most and when a student is interested they learn. Thus, Mr. Newkirck made me see that a mix of prompts encouraging the use of first person tense and ones that do not are both needed in a history classroom.

After the keynote speaker I was introduced to the idea of a teaching manifesto in a workshop entitled “overcoming novice teacher fails.” This particular part of the conference didn’t give me anything concrete to apply in a classroom. For instance, if I went to the session on digital media I would have come away with some digital media technology to incorporate into lessons. Instead this session made the participants focus on internalizing their teaching believes, which I think was in an effort to help give the members of this group a feeling of inspiration to look back on during a tough teaching day. The first step in the writing process was to first consider a series of questions about what I wanted out of my students, school, and self and to discuss this with a partner. Next the individuals running the session provided example manifestos that were all corny advertisements. Since my mind kept echoing the words and attitude of the previous ads, my manifesto turned out to be cheesy. Writing a horrible manifest was a refreshing task because it made me keep in mind the reasons I chose to teach and just reaffirm that even though I may get frustrated with requirements or be fearful of my first year, this career is what I want. I actually like the idea of keeping a written manifesto for me to glance at on days that will be challenging to remind myself of my goals. Therefore, I am going to write a whole new manifesto one day when my mind is more focused on writing a professional sounding piece, which (as mentioned later in class) will be something I need to do anyway because it will be useful for interviews. So even though I cannot use a manifesto with my students directly I can use a manifesto to keep myself positive when teaching my future class, thereby creating a better environment for the teenagers. Also, I might be able to use the manifesto to obtain a job as I now have some great questions to think about that every educator should be prepared to answer.   

Overall, the Rhode Island Writers Conference provided me with some good tools for the future. The key note speaker had some thought provoking insights that made me re-evaluate that type of writing assignments I will give my future students. In contrast, the novice teacher workshop provided me with a document that will act as a reminder to lend me strength and confidence during days in which I will need a boost to teach my best.