Learning to Love the Questions: Professional Growth and Perspective Transformations Author(s): Rebecca Bowers Sipe and Tracy

Rosewarne Source: The English Journal, Vol. 95, No. 2 (Nov., 2005), pp. 41-46 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30046543 . Accessed: 16/12/2013 10:03
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PROFESSIONAL

DEVELOPMENT

AND

LEADERSHIP

Rebecca Bowers Sipe and TracyRosewarne

Learning
and

to

Love

the

Questions:

Professional Growth Transformations Perspective

For RebeccaBowersSipe and TracyRosewarne,collaboration provedto be the key to effective professional development.Workingtogether on evaluatingthe effectiveness of a writingworkshopin the high school classroomhelped them achieve insightsabout their beliefs and practices. sit tucked away in the corner of Tracy's high school writing workr shop classroom, my hand flying across the paper before me as I attempt to record the fast-paced interactions in the room. Tracy has structured these first few days of the semester to build community among her diverse group of students representing grades 9 through 12. From the first day of class, students have known who I am-the visiting teacher who will be a part of the class for the semester, both a participant and an observer who will work with Tracy to determine the effectiveness of a workshop structure for supporting their growth as writers. I think back to the sweltering day in July when Tracy and I ducked into our favorite Mexican restaurant. Within minutes the placemats were flipped over to provide white space for the notes that followed. "All right," Tracy had said with intensity, "what do writers really need?" We had reread Nancie Atwell and Linda Rief and were co-facilitating a summer workshop focused on the works of Louise M. Rosenblatt in which we worked with a dozen educators to apply Rosenblatt's transactional reading theory-a theory that describes meaning as a personal act, one resulting from the transaction of a reader and a text-to the teaching of writing. On that day these influences provided a context that shaped our thinking about the workshop Tracy began creating for her high school students. Tracy's class follows a block schedule. Because it is in an urban setting and is a school of choice, the learning needs of her students are amazingly varied. As a participant observer, I sit in on the class each time it meets: hour-and-forty-minute class periods on Tuesdays and We sharea sense of Thursdays and a one-hour urgencyto do this work period on Fridays. Tracy creates and teaches the curricuwell because, if we do, we lum; my task is to take note of might makea differencein everything. Later, in the quiet the lives of students. of my office, I carefully describe the day, examining students' comments and the multiple pieces of writing the students produce each session. On Fridays, Tracy and I meet for an hour or two after class to look over what I have written, to talk about specific student work or comments, and to think ahead to the next week. Our Friday conversations generate energy and excitement as we raise questions and make observations. From my vantage point as "the outsider," I can spot some things Tracy does not see; for me it is so easy to trace how she weaves her lessons, reflecting research and theory from an assortment of notable writers. From her vantage point as "the insider," she identifies many student-centered issues that amplify and illuminate my thinking. Together, we create a deeper, clearer understanding of her classroom environment than either of us could hope to do individually. We are committed to our collaborative project because it grows from a clearly defined set of needs. We come to each other with authentic questions for which we are seeking answers. For Tracy, a teacher who constantly seeks new strategies and practices to better support her students, there are questions of effectiveness: Does a workshop really

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Learning to Love the Questions: Professional Growth and Perspective Transformations

support student writers better than more traditional delivery models? Within this framework, is she able to address the vastly differing needs of her students while still addressing the curricularrequirements of her district? For me, a former secondary teacher who now works mostly with preservice teachers, the are somewhat differAs I watched,noted,and questions ent. Is it possible to balance found the competing demands for reflected, Tracy herselfwitha mirror of class time in high school and herworkto ponder. still allow sufficient opportunities for the types of reading and writing that a workshop should involve? Is it possible to develop a picture of a working workshop model that is clear enough to enable teachers who do not use workshop formats-including preservice teachers-to visualize the role of the teacher as one who weaves a complex curriculum? Tracy's school-like high schools in many at the end of many competing places-is receiving demands. There are local curricular expectations, state standards, and state-imposed exit tests. In addition, there is the real and present concern about college entry tests. Her instruction, she knows, must address all of these demands while still reflecting her high standards for the workshop. There is another reason Tracy and I have chosen to collaborate on this project. In terms of professional development, it doesn't get any better than this. Our collaboration around real questions that affect real students-at the high school and college levels-requires that we draw from previous learning spanning our entire professional landscape: From literature on best practices to research methodology, everything comes into play. We share a sense of urgency to do this work well because, if we do, we might make a difference in the lives of students. Moreover, we share the hope that our work will contribute to the national conversation about reading and writing instruction and, in so doing, provide support for others.

When Professional Development Informs Practice

We make the argument here that successful professional development is situated in research that matters, teacher research that provides the opportunity to look both ways-at the knowledge base of the

profession beyond the classroom and at the classroom itself-to intensely seek new levels of understanding that will support student learning. Just as any research is framed by emerging questions, so too has our time been shaped by initial and unfolding inquiries. Moreover, just as the students in Tracy's class experience a highly recursive writing process in a workshop classroom, Tracy and I find our work weaving in and out of a process that includes reading widely from professional literature, focusing carefully on observations of student and teacher behaviors, conversing regularly about what is happening as represented by two sets of professional eyes, reflecting on beliefs and practices and on emerging and refined questions. Long beforethe semester started, we had identified the elements that Tracy considered core for her workshop. Our early discussions about what a writer needs were fueled not only by well-recognized practitioners in our field, such as Richard Bullock, but also by mentors to our personal writing lives, such as Julia Cameron. We also considered influential documents such as "NCTE'sBeliefs about the Teaching of WritStudent Writing Improving WritingMatters: ing," Because in OurSchools from the National Writing Project and CarlNagin, and TheNeglected "R":TheNeedfor a Writfrom the National Commission on Writing Revolution in Schools and Colleges. Regardless of America's ing whether the lesson was one that reflectedmore teacherled instruction in genre-based study or the time was more student-shaped,open-ended workshop, core values including time, community, ownership, and responsewould be honored in the overall plans. Each week my work in Tracy's classroom consisted of capturing pages and pages of observations that reflected a complex of nuanced teacher and student behaviors within an energetic and interactive working environment. One Friday,as we sat together discussing my notes, I described for Tracy my excitement at watching how she articulated a set of skills and craft lessons. Based on a need she had identified as part of her analysis of students' writing, she had fashioned a minilesson on sentence construction that helped students see how an accomplished writer might use various types of sentences to create a particular effect: to improve the flow of a passage, to slow the readerdown, to build to an emphatic point. She built on this minilesson to give practical application for the use of the semicolon an element of

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Rebecca Bowers Sipe and Tracy Rosewarne

punctuation that her students clearlydid not use--as a way to pull together short sentences that work better when combined in this way; students added the information to the skills and craft section of their writers notebooks, joking about how Tracy had woven the use of the semicolon into the written notes for the notebook in the same way I did in the previous part of this sentence! Over subsequent classes, like an expert weaver with a light hand for adding color, she pulled in reminders, connections, and touches of new material, highlighting in microlessons sentence structure variations (including semicolon use) in shared class readings such as Night by Elie Wiesel, in examples of peer writing from fastwrites completed in class, in her writer's reflection that used these writing qualities, and by sharing a series of correctly constructed passages, allowing students to identify and discuss which of the passages sounded more effective. When she met with small groups or with individuals during writing workshop time to discuss work in progress, she was apt to raise effective sentence use, among other things, in relation to a piece of emerging writing. Tracy did not credit herself with these and other teaching behaviors. "I did that?" she asked. Or, "I didn't realize that was happening," she observed. Of course she was aware that she intended to teach and reinforce the skills associated with effective use of varying sentence structures. However, with twenty-eight students to attend to, she was only dimly aware of how deftly she moved about the classroom, continuously reinforcing concepts and skills that she expected students to internalize. As I watched, noted, and reflected, Tracy found herself with a mirror of her work to ponder. Teaching has traditionally been an isolating activity (Lortie). Seldom do we have the benefit of another set of eyes to help us think about what we do in the classroom. Generally, when we do, it is for the purpose of evaluation and not collaborative feedback. Our project allowed Tracy to objectify her practice, to think about how her actions align with her beliefs as exemplified by the core values above; it gave her moments of dedicated time to pause and consider what might happen if she approached a lesson or an encounter from a different way. It also allowed her to see how many things she does-and does exceedingly well-in her classroom. Of no

small importance was the realization that her workshop allowed her to include explicit teaching, group and individual application, and peer-group interaction and feedback daily. As Tracy was afforded the opportunity to see her classroom with new eyes, I was able to identify and track the ways an expert teacher constructs community, builds understanding, and engages students. As a university teacher, I have felt it painfully easy to slip away from the day-to-day realities of the high school classroom, and I believe that I cannot teach with authenticity if I allow that to happen. I brought to Tracy's classroom my questions and those of my students as well. Theirs tend to be fundamental: How do I manage a classroom? How do I motivate my students? What does it mean to teach skills in a meaningful context? Each day Tracy met her students at the classroom door with a pack of playing cards in hand. Previously, she had taped a Throughidentifyingthe matching card to each of the desks in the classroom and core values that she believed essential in a arranged all the desks into pods for four. From the first workshop classroom and moment of class when she met infusing them into her students with a smile and a daily planning,Tracy card, encouraging them to moved towarda new find their writing partners for vision of the 3 Rs for her the day, she made it clear that in this class students: respect, working together a would be priority and that a relevance, and sense of safety was essential. relationship. At the end of the first day of the semester she gathered her high school students together in the middle of the room, everyone sitting on the floor. She held a ball of string that she tossed to a student across the circle while still holding on to the end of the string herself. She started by sharing a writing experience of her own from second grade. As the ball of string was thrown from one person to another, new stories about writing, both positive and negative, were shared. One by one the students tossed the ball, creating a tightly woven web around the circle. She used the web as a metaphor to explain how much they would all need to depend on each other during the semester. "How long do you think it would take for us to make a pulse go all the way through our circle?" she asked. Then, she plucked the string before her, and one by

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Learning to Love the Questions: Professional Growth and Perspective Transformations

one students did the same. The pulse slowly made its way around the circle in twenty-three seconds. "What do we need to do to be more efficient than this? Look at the person in front of you. Pull the string tight. Focus." And they did. With the second and third tries they observed that the pulse literally zinged around the web in nine seconds, and finally in five. Quickly, Tracy turned what seemed to be a game into a lesson on community. "Every time someone is late or comes unprepared," she explained, "the effect will be felt in our entire group just like we felt that pulse." She described how in a writing class everyone is connected. What one person does affects everyone. I, too, sat in the circle, my hand holding a part of the web, realizing how important it was for me to share this day with my students. My daily journaling was not just for Tracy and her students. It was for me and for my students as well. As important as the theory and research we read and discussed would be for helping my preservice students understand why they should structure their lessons in a particular way, it was just as important for them to glimpse the work of a teacher who has internalized theory and research so thoroughly that it becomes the landscape upon which she creates learning environments for her students. Through identifying the core values that she believed essential in a workshop classroom and infusing them into her daily planning, Tracy moved a the 3 Rs Thetypeof professional toward new vision of for her students: respect, relegrowththat has been so vance, and relationship. As and these values blossomed in the instrumental to Tracy botha classroom, even her most relucto me requires substantial willingnessto tant writers inched forward in take risksanda high level their willingness to compose of opennessto new and share. For some, exploring various genres of nonfiction as experiences. they immersed themselves in works by Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King Jr., and others and then writing original nonfiction in a chosen genre was the highlight of their time together. For others, kicking back with self-selected booksfrom comics to fantasy to biography-and then producing original works in any genre they chose proved to be their favorite moments of the semester. For me, watching a highly skilled teacher weave an instructional plan that balanced the myriad demands

on her classroom provided me the opportunity to see theory and researchin practice and to raise new questions for future work as our recursive process of professional development evolves.

Professional Development: It's Not Always as Good as It Gets

When I describe the professional development Tracy and I are experiencing in our collaborative, ongoing work, I am struck by the stark contrast to the inservices of my early teaching career. Consider Andy Hargreaves's analysis: "In the United States, the tendency is to treat and train teachers more like recovering alcoholics: subjecting them to step-bystep programs of effective instruction or conflict management or professional growth in ways which make them overly dependent on pseudo-scientific expertise developed and imposed by others" (xiv). I'll admit it: When I first read this quote, I laughed. But then I thought back to the early days of my teaching, to the inservices and workshops presented for us as secondary teachers. I know there were at least a dozen over those first four years. And I suspect that these sessions had a few consistent qualities: they were done for us, they were planned without our involvement, and they were offered by informed outsiders who likely presented on topics we did not choose. The significant memory is this: I do not recall details of one single workshop over a four-year period-not even the topics covered. All that changed for me in the fall of 1975 when two teachers from my school district traveled to Berkeley,California, to attend a session of the Bay Area Writing Project. They returned to Anchorage, Alaska, excited about the potential of the teacher development model they had seen and set to work gathering us into a series of weekend classes that ultimately led to the first Invitational Institute of the Anchorage Writing Project (AWP). What that institute did was remarkably different from anything I had experienced before. Not only were the stories and practices of our classrooms honored but we were also thrown both the challenge and the expectation to identify our questions about teaching, questions that grew from our lived classroom experiences and the needs of our students. Moreover, we were surrounded by an environment that supported sustained study within a safe space.

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Rebecca Bowers Sipe and TracyRosewarne

Our emerging cadre of teachers experienced nothing short of perspective transformation,a phenomenon Jack Mezirow describes as a life-changing situation that helps us see the world and our place in it differently than we have before. Among the sobering aspects of perspective transformation is the effect it has on everyone and everything else in an individual's life: as the individual changes, so must all those in relationship with him or her. So it was for us as we reentered our schools and sometimes found ourselves alienated, a source of threat to individuals-including administrators-who have been more comfortable with routine than may with our constant mantras of "what if?"and "why?" Mezirow encourages us to rememberthat once a transformation has occurred,there is no way to take it back. Once we realized that our stories were important and our questions worthy of research, there arosea need for more opportunities pervasive for collaborationand growth. For us, the writing projectled us naturallyto questionsabout the teachingof literature, carryingus to the creation of a new institute focusedon the teaching of literatureand the works of Rosenblatt. Later still, new questions emerged,questions that led to a yearlong institute dedicatedto classroombased research. With the help of wonderful mentors and friends such as Kathy Short, Dan Kirby, Peter Stillman, and the late James Moffett, we developedour skills in refining questions, designing research,collecting data, interpreting findings, and sharingour results. For Tracy, there was a writing project and constituent community of learners waiting for her as soon as she completed her teacher education. She was encouraged as an undergraduate to think of herself as a lifelong learner, a teacher-researcher. Despite the fact that she, too, was likely subjected to a few inservices that didn't quite meet her teaching needs and didn't build from her interests and questions, she found rich opportunities to work with other teachers through her local writing project, to shape professional opportunities to focus on mutually identified areas of interest. And, she found individuals who longed for the opportunity

to enter into her teaching world so that she and they could continue learning and growing together. There'sno need to chroniclehere the specificsof these institutes, teacher-research networks, or other sustained professional learning experiences. Various models of these offerings are well established in our professionaldiscourse already (Blau; National Writing Project and Nagin). However, it is significant, I think, to observethat these professionaldevelopment models grew from common seeds: a belief that the knowledge and stories of classroom teachers are important,an understandingthat teachers-with the right kinds of skills-could make a significant contribution to the knowledge base of our profession,

Archie; courtesyof DetroitFreePress. by William Photograph

and an acknowledgment that teachers have much knowledge to share with others. These tenets have accounted for leadershipand change at many levels, contributing to personaland professionalgrowth for individuals and resulting in curricular change in entire schools and school districts. The type of professional growth that has been so instrumentalto Tracyand to me requiresboth a substantial willingness to take risks and a high level of openness to new experiences.It is a risk to question what feels comfortableand normal in our classrooms. we began to see how However, as teacher-researchers, and how we could be a part of that knowledge grows conversation. We learned how developing challenging it can be to look at our teaching practicethrough the lens of newly informed beliefs and-with a sharp intakeof breath-view the disjuncturethat sometimes

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Learning to Love the Questions: Professional Growth and Perspective Transformations

exists between those beliefs and practices. Being a we learned, was far from linear. teacher-researcher, we discovered a process that is totally recurInstead, sive, one that generally begins and ends with "why?" Because we found ourselves occasionally surrounded by colleagues who preferred predictability, familiarity, and routine, we discovered a strong need for networking and mentoring one another as we invited new questions and engaged new possibilities. By finding safe communities of educators, we were able to stay alive in our professional knowledge building. And, by finding mentors and collaborators, we were able to create opportunities for growth as we observed students, discussed observations, and thought hard about beliefs and practice.

as co-collaborators. My preservice methods students gain insights continuously as a result of my work with real students in real secondary classrooms. Today, we know so much about effective professional development, and there exists a wide variety of opportunities for teachers to find collaborators who will support their efforts in sustained learning. In addition to writing and literature projects, other models, such as NCTE's CoLearn Project, provide support for teacher research and open up a multitude of opportunities for individuals and groups of teachers to work together on real questions that affect real students. When professional development takes on that level of authenticity, it really doesn't get any better than that.
Works Cited Atwell, Nancie. In the Middle: New Understandings about Writing,Reading,and Learning.2nd ed. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1998. . In the Middle: Writing,Reading,and Learningwith Adolescents. Upper Montclair: Boynton/Cook, 1987. Textsand Blau, SheridanD. TheLiterature Workshop: Teaching TheirReaders. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2003. Bullock, Richard, ed. Why Workshop? Changing Coursein 7-12 English.York:Stenhouse, 1998. Cameron,Julia. The Artist's Way:A SpiritualPath to Higher Creativity.New York: Putnam, 1992. TeachHargreaves,Andy. ChangingTeachers, ChangingTimes: ers' Workand Culturein the Postmodern Age. London: Continuum, 1994. A Sociological Lortie, Dan C. Schoolteacher: Study. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1975. Mezirow, Jack. "A Critical Theory of Adult Learning and Education."Adult Education 32.1 (1981): 3-24. National Commission on Writing in America'sSchools and Colleges. The Neglected"R":The Needfor a Writing Revolution. N.p.: College Entrance Examination Board, 2003. 15 June 2005 <http://www.writing commission.org/report.html>. National Writing Project and Carl Nagin. BecauseWriting Matters:Improving StudentWritingin OurSchools. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass, 2003. NCTE. "NCTE's Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing." Nov. 2004. 20 June 2005 <http://www.ncte.org/ about/over/positions/category/write/118876.htm>. Arts with Adolescents. Rief, Linda. Seeking Diversity:Language Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1992. Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader,the Text, the Poem:The Transactional Theoryof the LiteraryWork.Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1978. 1.Literature as Exploration. 3rd ed. New York: MLA, 1976.

It Doesn't Get Any BetterThanThis

The Conferenceon English Education'sCommission on Inservice Education describes ten principles for highquality professional development.Among them we find for reflective support practice,ownership,collaboration, agency, sufficient time, and explicit tangible support. Similar qualities are found in recommendationsby the National Writing Project and numerous agencies who advocatefor professional development for teachersat all instructionallevels. ForTracyand for me, our collaborative work reflectsmuch of what we know to be "best practice"in professionaldevelopment. Our collaboration allows us to support and nurture one another as we think hard about instructional issues that matter to us. Though we can offer only a glimpse of the insights we have achieved through our collaboration, we have each learned much about the relationships among theory and practice, about the dynamics of a complex environment, and about the ways a workshop environment supports teachers as they honor best practices and the essential values of time, community, ownership, and response. Because we collaborate, there is a sense of safety, and the feelings of alienation that have been reported by many experientially open teachers are kept at bay. Our work energizes us and helps us gain perspective on ways to engage students. Tracy's high school students view themselves

Rebecca Bowers Sipe is associate professor of English education at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. email: rebecca.sipe@emich.edu. Tracy Rosewarne is a teacher at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. email: trosewarne@yahoo.com.

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