Entry # 10

   " Giving students choice is something that we have talked about in class and a topic I've addressed in previous posts, however, this idea of passion and students having opportunities to write about things that they are interested in exploring connects to a writer's voice." While reading through my classmates blogs I found this quote in Jamie's entry.  It was he response to our other classmate Lindsay addressing students voice in writing.  This quote in particular struck me because every class in literacy that I have had so far has had some focus on student interest.  And the more time that I spend in schools the more I see how students choice can fall to the wayside in the rush to get everything else done. I think that student choice plays a huge rule in student engagement and motivation.  Think about it we have all had to do those assignment that we have not connection to but instead just do for the sake of the grade. I don't know about you guys but for me I didn't take away much from assignments like that, and I didn't put my best effort into my work either.  There was a lack of passion,  which Jamie address in the quote above.  How can we as teachers expect our students to learn as much as possible an engage fully with an assignment when we know full well how we have done in the past in our own educational careers?

     This idea of interest, passion and engagement all come back to the idea of authentic experiences with text.  Something that I had never thought about in depth before I got to graduate school. We as teacher have to create a classroom that allows students to interact with text in an authentic manner, meaning that it fits into the real world and their real lives.  This also comes down to writing that matches up with how they write and fits into the real world.  I think that this is where writing workshop really comes into play.  The way writing workshop and digital writing workshop are discussed in Hicks(2009) and Tompkins(2012).  Both want students to choose what they are writing about and work through the writing process at their on pace.  This will allow students to work on a piece and become truly involved with thier project not just do it to get it done.

   After listening to all the differnet genre presentions and seeing all the different ways that we can help kids to interact with and create text of all different types.  The more I think about it the more I think that the only way to achieve this is to create a writing workshop enviornment where kids want to work together and feel comfortable.  If students feel comfortable and understand that everyone is different and everyone is in different places in their writing process.  I have always known that for me creating the most comfrotable and safe enviornment for my students was my main goal when I start teaching and I think that is what sets the foundation for successful writing workshop as well as everything in the classroom.