TL 525 - Week 8

I began this journey with a picture that I took of my 5th hour sophomore English class.  I took the picture to show the number of of empty desks I had that day.  Out of the 22 students scheduled to be in my class, six were absent.  I had found earlier a printout of our school's "Attendance Challenge" which put my sophomores in the lead with 91.84% for the month.  That, to me, means that almost 10% of our sophomores are gone every day, and they are winning!  My premise was going to be a letter to my students saying, "We can't teach you if you're not here!"

That changed when I started talking to some of my students about what they thought the issues were in our school.  (I will admit that my "observation walk" quickly became an "observation talk".)

One student quickly replied that the biggest problem in our school is that student leave in mass whenever there is an assembly having to do with the Native American culture (top one one the second picture).  This sparked a lively discussion with a group of students working in my room during my prep.  The thing that struck me was that she, a Native American student, was so obviously offended, yet she felt that there was no way to voice her offense.  She stated that there is nothing the school can do if the parents allow their children to leave.  Basically, she feels that there is no way to change the problem, so it's not worth trying.  Now, I don't know that I can change the problem, but I want her to see that there are ways to voice concern and to attempt to make changes.

At the end of the day, I went to our Indian Education Coordinator and asked her for some details I could use in my paper.  I was interested in the numbers of Native Americans in our school as well as the details on the two recent programs that were presented for our students.

Once I had a little more information, I began by deciding the audience to which I would write this letter.  Choosing the audience would help me determine how I would format the letter.  I had originally thought I would write to the students body encouraging them to stay for this type of programming, but then I remembered the crux of my student's argument.  She said we couldn't change the problem because parents allowed it.  That meant we needed to change the parents and guardians.  They became the focus of my letter.

This decided, I looked into more of the techniques I would use in creating this letter.

After working on a thesis and some ideas, I decided to use the Persuasion Map.  I absolutely love the Persuasion Map from Read Write Think.  (I have already recommended it to the others in my department as well.)  This is simply a wonderful tool for laying out a five-paragraph persuasive essay (or letter).  I found it to be simple to create and save.  It is a wonderful alternative for student prewriting.

Then I wrote the first draft of my letter.  I decided not to worry about letter head at this stage, but just to get the words down on paper.  I decided to type this draft rather than writing it in my notebook.  (I will glue it into my notebook, actually my notebook pages are already curling a bit from all the glued pages!)

Although I love persuasive writing, if the truth be told, this was a difficult letter for me to write.  (I am actually a little embarrassed by this letter; I usually write better than this.) Although I could understand my student's outrage, I don't know that my empathy was enough to create a truly effective letter.  Another reason this was difficult for me was that it seemed, even from the beginning, to be fictitious.  It is a letter that will never be sent (or at least one the school board would have to approve before it could be sent).  Throughout the years I have read articles about the importance of creating authentic assignments for students.  Taylor (2008) spoke of having real audiences for student letters.  Writing this letter, I never felt that it would be sent.  That made it more difficult to write.  (This has been a good learning experience for me in that respect.  Why write something that ends with me or my teacher?  I wonder how many of my students have thought that.)

Things to think about if I revise this letter:
1.  I would like to use an Ojibwe greeting and possibly a closing.
2.  I need to put the final letter on Onamia School letterhead.
3.  I need to pay close attention to tone as not to offend.
4.  I have to watch hyperbole or any of my usual writing yips.
5.  I would like to find the actual dates for the events.
6.  I need to be more specific in my details and consider combining the second and third paragraph.