I’ve read a lot of bad books about teaching English.  Books that are all practice without any explanation of the theory behind them; books that recommend “research-proven” strategies without mentioning any of the research; books about teaching English that carry a tone of disdain toward literature (or at least, the aesthetic experience of it).

Blau’s book is so great, that I hate to write a negative post in response to it.  But with it’s hard not to when there are 32 instructional days until the DC-CAS (big NCLB test).  While reading The Literature Workshop, I felt a little inspired, but mostly discouraged.  I’m sure other teachers had a similar experience.

I could relate to the teacher who created an essay assignment that asked students to show “how their knowledge of a set of literary terms contributed to their understanding of a literary work” (154).  I can imagine exactly how this high school English teacher came up with this assignment.  She looked at the learning standard that said something like: ‘students will analyze how tone and point of view contribute to the theme of a literary text,’ and wrote an assessment to match it.  She then probably planned her unit or text module by breaking the standard up into objectives and creating daily assessments to measure student mastery of those.  That’s how I’m expected to plan.

Blau goes on to say about this assignment that “we need to acknowledge that such papers function largely as essay tests on what students have already learned and are quite limited as opportunities for students to experience genuine authorship” (154).  It’s difficult to give my students this opportunity when my lesson plans aren’t experiences in genuine authorship.

The portfolio assessment poses a similar problem.  My classroom is not a place where it’s acceptable to take risks and make mistakes (at least at this point in the school year). Just like a student who’s inhibited by fear of how they’ll be graded, I’m nervous to try something out when I know I might get a surprise visit from administrators, DCPS Master Educators, the DCPS chancellor (that happened twice!), OSSE, or the charter school organization that has a partnership contract with my school.