(TxR/NM)-L=I

(Testing x Remediation/Numerical Measurement) - Learning = Inflation

Sometimes when I read, I sketch--not to be cute, but to figure out where I fit in. Where have I made these mistakes? Where have I fallen into the trap? Where have I been swayed by external expectations. And I guess this sketch (inspired by The Testing Charade by Daniel Koretz) emerged as I kept thinking about the low-scoring students we try to help or remediate. The image of patching a leaky balloon just kind of emerged as I sketched what troubled me.

We say that we are helping students...now, I'm not so sure. At the very least I am questioning how helpful remediation is in the long run or in the trajectory of student learning. Maybe remediation isn't about learning. Maybe it is just about testing.

In my imagination, I see more, smaller, balloons with "skill" written on them than what I drew here. I see a whole room of listless, ignored balloons. Some on the floor. Some barely floating a few inches from the ground. I find myself thinking about everything I do not emphasize today and how my actions may, indeed, be helping students raise their scores (a.k.a inflating the scores).

But am I helping students learn anything that they can use (other than on a test)? Maybe. Maybe not. Although. at least on this page, the thinking in my sketch may be more certain of the truth than the thinking in my words.

The Process

My ideas for writing travel from my eyes and ears to my brain. From my brain, they move to my mouth sometimes (if someone is nearby who understands what I am thinking). If no one is available to talk, my ideas go into a notebook in the form of rough hewn words--quick scratches of pencil against the paper. If an outside idea is being blended into my thinking (something I read perhaps) I tend to sketch it out so I might better understand it. I write again. Sometimes on paper. Sometimes on a digital document. Mostly on a digital document at this stage. I revise and revise and revise digitally.

I share the draft with someone closely connected to the thinking. Perhaps a co-author. Perhaps a colleague. If I am fortunate enough to receive feedback (it is a huge request to ask someone to read your work), I apply what I hear. Maybe not right away on paper. But I think about it. I turn it around and around like a small, smooth stone in a child's hands.

And then I make the changes that make sense to me and what I am discovering what I am trying to say on paper. And this is the key--I don't plan writing. I write writing. I am an over-writer. I write to think. YA author Gary Schmidt burns his drafts as he moves forward. He sticks them right in the wood stove like he is burning the boats on the beach and committing himself to attacking newly revealed territories,

At a stage that feels right (I can't define it any better than that) I print and I revise on paper with a paper. Without this step (as with any of the other stages), the writing stops. I walk away from a lot of pieces at this stage. But if I am energized and confident enough (brave enough) to keep going, I cross out, circle, scribble.

I go back to the digital document to revise.

More writing leaks out.

Trickles of ideas.

Clearer ideas.

Small additions.

One big idea

cinched

to

another.

Do we allow for this kind of time...do we share the magic that happens as ideas move from one destination to the next...with our students? Or do we focus solely on the destination?

Or have we, do we, can we, will we make it about the journey and the inn?

The Slow Burn of Analysis

Adolescents spend time outdoors. At least they used to. I have been thinking about tapping into experiences in nature as a source for writing--especially for middle school students.

I spent several days sketching a "neighborhood map" or a collage my recent experiences with nature. The act of focusing on what I see and know now allowed some more distant memories to make it to the page. I am not talking about earth-shattering stuff. I am suggesting teaching giving value to all of our experiences.

Annie Dillard's narrative prose does this for me.

I do not know how Dillard words, but the slow form of analysis that comes to me when I read her, arises during my sketching, coloring, and annotating my thinking. Slow analysis appeals to me--and I wonder if we can't teach that to adolescents? Too often, adolescents want to launch themselves into analysis and then frustrate themselves immediately when each detail writing is not clear, is not planned.

Analysis doesn't always have to be called--or thought of--as analysis, does it? Not that analysis is a dirty word, but certain academic vocabulary seems to trigger certain acts. We teach what analysis is by definition and by practice with a short shelf life, but do we teach the underlife of analysis?

Analysis is a slow, slow burn fed by tinder gathered as we willingly travel greater and distances to discover.

I have written about the blue owl in the center of the page. When I first sketched it, the owl was only a light pencil sketch. Over time, I colored it as I thought about the night when it startled me. When its head turned towards my noise. When it fell forward like an uprooted tree. When its great wings expanded in silence. When its great wings caught an invisible track of air. When it glided, in silence, only a few feet above my lawn, up the slight rise, over the post and rail fence, into my back yard, and vanished through the weeping willow and then the darkness. All in utter silence. It was all effortless.

My thinking about that owl from 2012 is still not finished.

Yet, what I have done and what I am doing right now is a part of the journey of analysis so often squeezed out of our classrooms.