DIALOGUE -- A DELICATE BALANCE

Zoe Thompson

"I've written in my journal so much about this book. I've put a lot of work and thought into this writing. I'm not sure I have anything new to say. Do we have to do the final project? Like, how much more do you want me to do ?" Cynthia asked with that heavy sigh that goes with the adolescent favourite word, "like …"

We were almost at the end of reading the novel together. I was encouraging the free-write at the end of the reading.

A good question.

I do expect students to describe and explain in their writing responses. Cynthia's writing had shown an understanding of the events of the novel, the relationship between characters and some understanding of "writer language and techniques" -- the use of literary devices. What more could I ask of her? What further evidence could I possibly gather that I thought I needed to have about her understanding and appreciation of this piece of literature? What more would an additional assignment do to help her further develop her understanding and appreciation? Did she need any additional supports with writing, thinking, revisiting the work that might be found in an additional "project"?

"How much is enough?" was what I think Cynthia was asking. She wasn't looking forward to more writing about this novel. She was satisfied that she had written all she could. Because I encourage students to talk about their work and write about their understandings of content and of process, her question was not unusual. We were negotiating the curriculum. As a group, we discussed "the project" and talked again about the criteria for their evaluations. But I knew the question Cynthia had asked was a critical question for me.

*****

That reminded me of my own question as a teacher researcher; "What counts as evidence?" and "Who decides what is evidence?" This question is central in my classroom and because it preoccupies me, it preoccupies the way I intentionally go about my teacher work with students. Was Cynthia telling me that she did not want to engage in a game that had no value for her, or for me? I had already been looking ahead to the writing piece I had designed and was wondering about time-lines, moving on to something new, how would I fit this activity in? I was already considering the value of the project, not as a class project, but as an exercise for some. Her question forced me to make a decision. I told the class I needed to think about Cynthia's question.

What did I really want the students to be able to write about after their readings and discussions with the novel? What activity would best show their understandings and appreciation of the writing? I presented the students with three questions as a final writing piece that I hoped would show something about what they had learned from their writing workshop activities connected to the content of the reading workshop activity. What I read turned out to be some of the best writing they had done. Their explanations were concise, clear, communicative. They obviously loved the story and wrote convincingly. It brought closure to the novel study and brought closure to our negotiations of their curriculum. They wrote powerfully. Was it partly because they had been empowered to do so by Cynthia's question?

*****

"I've always done it this way! I can't do it any other way! When is this project supposed to be done, anyway?"
She was shrill, she was backing away, and she started to stamp her feet.
"Well," I said firmly. "Just try."

As we were discussing how to put the written report together for their research project, I asked the kids not to use subtitles. We used subtitles in their webs for note-taking and I wanted to move away from that "look" for organization to a new look for the written report. My intention was to teach them not to write about one topic on each page, but to have "the story" flow, paragraph to paragraph. I mentioned this because I had kept this in mind from previous work. I was surprised that students had handed in some written work previously that followed a format that resembled one page, one main idea, one subtitle. I looked at "where they were" and was making some decisions about where next I might lead them and was planning my next teaching steps after looking at their work.

Initially, they had selected topics of their own, were to brain-storm questions of their own to begin their searches, researched the topic, made a web for their note-taking. My agenda included the teaching of the web and note-taking format. They decided what to research and how best to organize their information. We talked about the main ideas for topics and how the research resources they had consulted already had the information organized. Did this help? Were these organizers enabling us to find out what we really wanted to know? Were we using these organizers to help us find out or were we depending on these organizers to tell us what we wanted to know? We had some interesting discussions about how text gives us messages through the organizers we see. I called titles, subtitles, bold face print, maps, illustrations, charts, graphs, etc. as the "organizers."

We spent one class discussing how best to present their work. Many suggestions came forward -- dioramas, posters, audio tapes of interviews, mobiles, videos. Some asked if they could write "a report." We didn't negotiate the details of these various ways to present. I felt that they were working with enough concepts right now. Note-taking and organization on top of content was enough for now. We could revisit much of this later in further mini-lessons and various other activities. This is how I go about assessing their progress as their searches unfolded.

*****

During each independent study class time, I conference with each group or individual. Sometimes the short conference goes like this.

"Mrs. Thompson, can I go to the library to work? My references are there and I want to finish this one section?"
"O.K. What other help do you need?"
Sometimes, the conference is a lot longer. I usually begin with, "Last day you said that you wanted to finish"…. ( I consult my notes that I keep on each session, each group). What do you want to get done today? What can I do to help?"

I knew with Sara's choice of a written report, she was fairly secure with topic sentences and supporting details in paragraphs now and I was hoping that her comfort with this would help her create a piece to present that showed some organization of the ideas. I expected her to use her questions as organizers, but I knew there were obvious organizers such as geographic location, climate, animals, vegetation, cities, transportation links, etc. for the topic Sara had chosen. I didn't want to use the word "essay" so I used the word "story" when I showed how a piece of writing would look if there were no subtitles. I thought this might help to wean her away from this apparently ritualized style of "doing a project." I knew I was in trouble because we were moving into unfamiliar ground for her and I knew Sara well enough to predict her frustration with new things. She always had to be perfect, and when she was starting to feel not in control, not able to get this perfect the first time, anxiety loomed. Sara was in a panic!

You really have to know Sara like I know Sara to fully appreciate her discomfort and her impatience. Our relationship had come a long way. She was learning to trust, to take more risks, to be open to new ideas, and to be more patient with new ideas. She was struggling with not having to be perfect the first time round. I was trying to teach reflection, revision, revisiting and all this was new territory. But, by this time of year, this was increasingly more familiar territory for her.

Obviously, I thought, we need to revisit some notions. Please don't let this be a stand off.

She had already handed in a gorgeous report with a plastic binding, typed carefully on her computer with an unusual font, accompanied by computer generated maps, captions, and a table of contents. Yes, and with subtitles; each section she research was presented in separate sections. I returned it to her. I had to.

My sticky note asked, "Why did you decide to do your report this way, with subtitles and separate sections?" my sticky note asked,
"Would you change my mark if I rewrote it without subtitles?" she asked later that day as she approached.

I was a bit confused because we hadn't discussed a mark. I thought we were working on format. But I knew Sara was always concerned about marks and I thought I had some understanding of why. I wanted her to think about something else for now.

"I only wanted to know why you decided to do what you did. We haven't discussed marks."
"Everybody knows that teachers like it when we hand in stuff that "looks good." Why isn't this way good enough?"

I wasn't sure where to go with this next. Sara was personalizing this. She was challenging me. We had been through this many times together. We had been here before. I was needing to spend time with others about their writing. I couldn't handle her demands just then. I had another piece of writing in my hand at the time. I tried one more time,

"Here is an example of what a report could look like without subtitles. This story has no subtitles and see how paragraphs flow into each other for about two and one-half pages. The transitions in each paragraph help the writer help the reader to go where the writer wants the reader to go without the visual cues that the subtitles provide for us. Try it with your writing."

And she did.

The next day she arrived at my desk with a smile on her face and a report in her hand. She made the changes I had asked for. I'm not sure what the smile was about. Maybe she needed to see a concrete example? Maybe she lost her fear to try something differently? Maybe she had learned to trust the re-doing, re-thinking, and was pleased with the results?

Maybe she was thinking about a better mark?

*****

I was soon to realize that the shift from one "look" to another required more than a shift in format. I was also asking them to do much more with the thinking through of the research details. I was hoping that they could write a "story." And I think what I meant by a story was in the words I used about how a story looks. There is of course, much more to a story than just how it looks. The difference between what her project used to look like and what it now looked like had the format changes but it also had some writing changes.

She saw the other piece I had helped two other kids with. She saw that I had photo-copied parts of their writing, cut it apart, pasted it on longer paper, left spaces between parts. All this in an effort to help show/explain about transitions. It had worked well with the other two. She needed to have a look at this "lesson" if she was going to understand something new.

It was then I was struck by the idea that stories are the result of understanding or that stories lead us to further understanding and that the part that was missing for the kids was this connection. They were working with the mechanics of this, the paragraphing, the transitions, and the hardest part -- the ending. Through their struggle with the change in how their writing looked, I was struggling with why the change was so important to teach. Maybe because some of the connections were missing for me at the time, too. There was a tacit knowing of where we needed to go with this; as yet I didn't have the vocabulary and hadn't thought through how to go about showing in a different way. How to move kids from simply reporting facts they have read about and written down to applying what they now knew in a different way?

I knew I wasn't getting at what I thought counted as evidence. I didn't know how to get at that. Yet. But I knew I could find another opportunity to try with different topics so was not concerned about immediacy. For now, what the kids seemed to value as evidence was facts, and well-organized facts at that. What I was trying to get at with them was the "so what ?" part, the part where they could show me that they could put some ideas together. I needed more time, time to teach with this concept again. More opportunities to see student work, to see what they were thinking.

To see what they were thinking … we make decisions based on what we think? How do we make visible what we think, what we think we know? Through writing about it and certainly by talking about it. E-mail helps me talk about it in writing and also allows me to see what I think. It is intellectually interactive, or "transactive" as Deweyians would say. How do I make student writing that we share become intellectually transactive, an exploration of ideas, expressions of our understandings ? Actually, I believe I do that. I set up the daily interactions/transactions with students to that our conversation about the learning at hand has the potential to be changed, transformed by the exchange. This is part of what counts as evidence.

*****

" How is she doing?" mom asked. "I have the document, the report to parents with me, but Adele has yet to show me her work. Until I see her portfolio, I don't get a full picture of what the document means."
"Adele will have time to show you now. Adele has a collection of five pieces and she is prepared to present them," I said.

The hallway was crowded with parents in overcoats. Not the best situation for an evening with students and parents that is so important. How to provide time for meaningful conversation yet accommodate everyone? As one family was preparing to leave the classroom, I had walked into the hall and had begun this conversation with another family. These are well-informed parents who are involved with the lives of their daughters as students and the talk quickly shifted to Adele's writing.

This was the first student led discussion time. And with the crush of people waiting, I could see that the quality of our talk was going to be in jeopardy because I was feeling a time squeeze. It didn't help that the principal had already casually made a remark to remind me of the people waiting. But I would take the time, even if I was on my feet.

Adele takes her life as a student very seriously and parents supervise often and helpfully. I explained that one way I thought I could continue to facilitate Adele's learning was with the development of her essay format. Mom thought the skills of debate would help. I countered with the skills of conversation that I was trying to develop. I was explaining that within the conversation of an essay format, students are learning to explain what they know from an informed stance. Knowledge of debating skills and how to skillfully offer those experiences for kids was something I thought I did not have as a strength so this Formal debate procedure had not been a part of teacher-student work in Room 8 but perhaps I could help in another way. There was a debating club in the school. Students were free to join.

I promised to talk with the teacher involved with debates and to think further about her suggestion. Mom ended the conversation with the comment that the document, the report to parents forms, was not enough detail about the student work if she could not have a portfolio to accompany it. Also, she wanted more anecdotal -style detail.

*****

I needed to talk about this with parents and students as much or more than I needed to document some detail on the report forms. Adele's mom reminded me that she needed more written information, because in the past I had given much written information to parents. She had appreciated the detailed anecdotal. She had received less this time because now we were going to hear from Adele. Adele's voice would be heard as she initiated the discussion that evening as we all sat around the round table. When I sent the written report home, I knew some parents would notice lesser amount of teacher writing. I was sure they would want more. I hoped that the student-led format would provide the "more." I wanted to show students and parents that this is an transactive process. Thank you, John Dewey (1938).

Conversation can be in written form or in oral form and probably I couldn't say one takes precedence; both are necessary and the conversation needs to be with students, parents, and teacher together. My written anecdotals are conversations with the person who is the reader. The reader is Adele. The reader is also the parent. The reader is also the principal, or a receiving teacher. My intentions were to have students lead the discussion with a showing of selections of their work accompanied by a brief description. The students opened the discussions by referring to goals we had set together in October at our first student, parent, teacher meeting.

"With this essay I am trying to get Adele to write about the connections she sees between what the Sumerians and Egyptians accomplished and what conditions enabled them to accomplish those things."
"Does she get a chance to talk about these things before she gets a chance to write about them?"
"Most of the conversation has been about the organization of the ideas as well as an understanding of the organizers we use. I expected the students to use Participants ( who were these people?), Time ( when did this happen?), Place (where in the world did all this happen?), Action ( what did they do, what evidence do we have of what they accomplished, what is of importance to the person who is writing about this evidence? -- we talked a bit about what makes history), and Cause (how were they able to accomplish what it is we think they accomplished? what helped them? -- environment, geography? climate? trade with other cultures?)."
"She is not able to make connections with these ideas?"
"We are working on it. This is her first try at it. The research was done well, she has obviously been taking some risks with her writing because I can see she is trying to think about things differently. Our next step is to sit down with this piece together and continue to work on it."

I think I had to say, "We are working on it" because I really was struggling with this as much as Adele was. I was struggling to find ways for her to understand connections as much as she was. In a way, I was also struggling with her problem, "How can I show my understanding of the connections with these ideas?" If I was clear about the connections, would she be clear. I am always struck with the notion that if I don't really understand something well, I always end up in a struggle to teach it. I have to be patience with myself knowing that it is through the teaching/sharing/discussion .. the intellectual transaction … that my understanding is increased.

Here was another chance for me to try to articulate what different understanding about concepts I expected from student writing. I was forcing myself to revisit, reflect, revise with this mom.

But I also got the response from students in the class when we were discussing this.

*****

"Why don't you just tell us what you want before we do all this writing? Now it is not good enough. Now we have to do it all over again," lamented Margaret with an attitude I was learning to understand.

Transmission notions set us up for power struggles. Margaret thrives on power struggles. She loves to talk through what's on her mind. She writes well. She prefers to write at home although she appreciates quiet writing time during class. She has often spoken of her need for the quiet of her room, the time to carefully form her written letters as she writes, the time to organize her papers together to have all ready to hand in. In class, she likes to dominate discussions by speaking first, speaking well. As the teacher, I have to be careful that her strength does not silence the others. It is a delicate balancing act.

It is a delicate balance when trying to develop with the students their faculty of judgment, evaluation, and rational criticism (Goble, 1985). I try to give students vocabulary for questioning. We have had conversations about different learning styles and I provided some activities for kids to work through to help them see the different styles, help them see their strengths. Often I refer to this past work. My purpose in doing such an activity with the class is to show them that we all learn differently, that we have strengths, and that we need to respect the various ways we go about learning in the class because sometimes we need to act as a group, a class, even though we are all different. We need to be aware that some people learn best by talking, asking questions. Sometimes, the "oral learner" gets annoying. People who don't need to talk a lot about what they are doing and why get interrupted by the student who does. I share this information as a way of contributing to their self knowledge but also as a way of getting to the notion of respect for each other. It is a way of foregrounding my philosophic intentions, my way of teaching. I believe that transactional experiences demand equality and respect. I won't give in to the inequalities in the classroom and the heap of disrespect that it festers.

My delicate balancing act with Margaret started a year ago. I was the assistant coach on her basket ball team.

The coach was a university student who donated her time between her classes and her job. My role was to provide a connection with the kids and the school, because the coach did not know the kids, was not of the community, and had never "taught" before. If we didn't have an "outside" coach, we couldn't have a team. Having an "outside" coach was not going to be easy all around, but the kids did get to learn more about the game.

Margaret was among them who were anxious to have the team experience. She was athletic, competitive, wanting to work hard, wanting to learn more about the game, wanting to win. On the losing days, she became a not-very-nice person because it was always someone else's fault when we lost. Usually the coach's. Jane, our coach, never came back to the school with us after a game when we had games away. She brought her own car and usually was rushing off to her part-time job. The first time the conversation on the return bus ride became all about Jane's shortcomings, I stopped the complaining. I told the girls that we needed to talk about this when Jane was with us, as a team. I acknowledged their frustration by saying that I understood how they were feeling, but that a better way to handle this would be to have a team meeting. The second time this happened, both girls' teams were together on the return bus ride, our team had lost, the other girls' team had a victory. The complaints started. Both teams of girls were involved in an instant, and before I knew it, so was the other teacher/coach of the other team. The other teacher? Now what?

"We don't talk about this without Jane. This is not a team meeting. We wait until next practice when Jane can be with us."

If the other teacher could have shot me down with her look, she would have. I had shut the conversation down with the kids and also with a colleague. The other teacher never spoke to me in months. The team meetings were never as ugly as the bus conversation started to be, but Jane was always defensive. She had a tough job and the learning to do it well was causing her some growing pains, but she was progressing with the kids and they were learning to improve their skills. The dynamic in the group could have been healthier.

When I knew Margaret was going to be in my classroom this fall, I knew I would need to watch for chances not to get into power struggles with her. Others would follow her lead.

One the first day of school when going through the class list and asking for clarification of the pronunciation of names, I had an opportunity to ask Margaret what she preferred, "Maggie" or "Margaret"? I told her a quick story about how much I liked her name. A university friend from my past was a Margaret and she was very important to me. She said I could call her Margaret, but that most people just called her Maggie. "Margaret" it was. I needed something to put me into a different space with her and just my saying her name differently would help me think this through.

We have a good working relationship. She tells me when I go too fast for her with my explanations, she reminds me that she gets confused with too much information, that she needs information in small amounts, step by step, as discussed with learning styles. She contributes to class discussions, often initiating issues that most students find difficulty discussing. At times we have disagreed on how discussions should flow.

In class, I have several students working fairly independently and begin new sections with an overview to show the class where we are going with content and evaluations. I do this for two reasons; one, is to provide the global view, the second, is to provide the students who are working ahead with a general idea . That seems to be all some need to take off with their own inquiries. She interrupted the class on three occasions to remind me that all students didn't need to hear the overview. It didn't suit her. Two other students agreed with her.

"Fair enough", I said. "Would those students who need this information meet with me before the end of the morning so that we can make a plan, please? Now, for those just staring to read, consult pages 79-83 and begin your note taking with your web."

I stopped "annoying" her with my approach. I met with the students who were working ahead, separately. I got to spend more quality time with a small group of students needing very little direction. The small group was able to ask specific questions very quickly and they were then set free to proceed with their own ideas. I also arranged to spend more time with the small group of kids having the most difficulty staying on task, reading the resource material, putting ideas to paper.

*****

The only thing I can think of in response to Margaret's opening question is that I have to see how they think before I can help them with their writing and their thinking. They have to have something on paper, some thoughts, some decisions, … then I believe that as their teacher I have some THING with which to work.

Of course, I am battling process writing notions. Why is it that students have not met Donald Graves (1989) through his work with students, nor Nancie Atwell (1987)? Students who are more comfortable with a process approach to learning (writing) write and write again. They are less resistant to try again, take risks, not worry so much about getting things perfect.

There is another thing I am battling too. And I think it has to do with power in the classroom. Students (people in any group, not just kids, not just classrooms) have connected schooling with power struggles. The heart of the story starring Margaret is that her notion of learning is transmissional and it gets confusing for her because she has met a transactional teacher. She said, "Why don't you just tell us what you want before we do all this writing? Now you are telling us that it is not good enough. Now we have to do it all over again."

What I try to do is teach by revisiting, reflecting, revising. The dialogue between student and teacher, parent and teacher is vital to the transaction. The exchange of ideas furthers the understanding. It is the understanding that is important. What is also important is finding ways to make my practice visible in helpful ways.

It is indeed a delicate balance when trying to develop with the students their faculty of judgment, evaluation, and rational criticism (Goble, 1985). I encourage the students to question the process as it unfolds in the classroom. I encourage them to be critical with informed opinions, not just to say something "sucks" but what it is that they feel is unjust and what they would like to see done about it. In my attempts to " … plead today for attention to the deepest and most difficult goal of education -- the effort to increase the sum of wisdom, and diminish the power of stupidity" (Goble p.6) I need to keep in mind the consequences for these efforts, consequences for me, consequences for the students who I hope are learning how to make reasonable decisions.

I avoided a power struggle with Margaret. Acknowledged her needs. Was more than able to spend quality time with others who needed it. I could only have accomplished this so efficiently because of Margaret's suggestion. This move was a reflection in-action and on-action (Schön, 1987). Some of the enabling conditions I had actively sought were respect, open discussion, encouraging the asking of many questions, trust.

Where is all this leading? Each of the stories in the classroom that give me pause all are about assessment of learning. I think they all show that students and parents are involved in this. Their involvement shows that assessment, discussion about it, reflection upon it, is part of a complex educational process -- that it has come to be seen as an opportunity to develop more complex understandings to allow students to take more responsibility for their work. It is the provoking and engaging in reflection and revision that allows us a window into richer understandings (Schön, 1987; Stenhouse, 1975, 1988; Hollingsworth & Gallego, 1996).

Five years ago I learned that when I taught differently I needed to assess student work differently. At that time I was exploring cooperative learning theory (Johnson & Johnson, 1986, Kagan, 1990, Slavin, 1990) and quickly realized that the assessment practice I followed did not fit the different way I was teaching. I needed to assess differently and this led my inquiry in a direction connected to assessment and instruction as it was connected to the learning and teaching that I saw and felt taking place. I had started with a concept and ended up looking for tools to help students understand the concept better. Dialogue, reflection and revision became the necessary tools for understanding.

As I look back through the gross amount of writing I have completed on the topic of assessment and instruction, really an attempt to answer for myself an on-going question which is "What's going on here?", I see that authentic assessment is accomplished with the tools of dialogue, reflection, and revision -- doing again, revisiting work. Simply stated, assessment becomes a tool for learning, a cultivated habit of mind. (Perrone, 1993).

What this writing has been about this year has been assessment and evaluation . The stories are real and situated in my practice. I trusted that if I could just write, get my ideas on paper for me to see, somehow my perception of the concrete would unfold into some sort of knowledge with which to proceed. Knowledge about teaching is formed from perceptions that have been captured in concrete situations. The knowledge I have been seeking, in some ways the answers to my questions, is inside this experience. The best way "to have" these experiences is to write them down. Then they are mine to reflect upon, to revisit, and to help me revise then, renegotiate their meanings to help me understand my work as a teacher. They have a way of existing so that I can explore them, think about them, reflect upon their particulars in particular places in time. Because it is so subjective, there is nothing to transmit, only to explore.

Our teacher research group has a task. It is to help us explore our perceptions, reflect on our practical experiences, So that we can perhaps put plans into place for ourselves, the consequences of which are to be reflected upon. The theoretical knowledge or conceptual knowledge that I pursue is of no real value unless chewed and digested, to paraphrase Stenhouse (1975). I don't want to be a collector of knowledge although the "stuff" of that collection stimulates and inspires.

I want to be a good teacher, I want to be a good learner, and I want to be able to show students in Room 8 how to go about this. I think I can do this by teaching them tools for exploring their knowledge, for showing them about exploration.

Atwell, Nancie 1987 In the Middle: Writing and Reading and Learning with Adolescents. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook & Heinemann.

Dewey, John 1938 Experience and Education. New York: The Macmillan Company.

Goble, Norman M. 1985 Learning to live. Address to the Conference on "Directions. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, October 16-19.

Graves, Donald 1989 Investigate Non-fiction. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

Johnson, David W., & Johnson, Roger T., & Johnson-Holubec, Edyth 1986 Circles of Learning: Cooperation in the Classroom. Edina: Interaction Book Company.

Kagan, Spencer 1990 Cooperative Learning Resources for Teachers. Riverside: Printing & Reprographics, University of California.

Hollingsworth, Sandra and Gallego, Margaret 1996 Toward a collaborative praxis of multiple literacies. Curriculum Inquiry 26:3, 255-292.

Perrone, Vito 1993 A Pedagogy of Understanding in the Classroom. Paper presented to the Seven Oaks Symposium Series. Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Schön, Donald A. 1987 Educating the reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Slavin, Robert E. 1989/90 Research on cooperative learning: consensus and controversy. Educational Leadership Dec/Jan: 52-54.

Stenhouse, Lawrence 1975 An Introduction to Curriculum Research and Development. London: Heinemann.

Stenhouse, Lawrence 1988 Artistry and teaching: the teacher as focus of research and development. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision Fall, Vol. 4, No. 1: 43-51.