English 344: Tuesday, March 1

I have virtually no experience working with elementary school children (other than an unfortunate incident when I was in high school regarding an attempt to cut my hair with scissors haha), so I began to read Toohey's article a bit skeptically, wondering if I would be able to relate to it all. Surprising, I have taken a lot from the article, and much of that information gleaned from it can be nicely summarized in the author's own words:  "The individualizing of children starts a process of community stratification that increasingly leads to the exclusion of some students from certain activities, practices, identities, and affiliations" (80). Essentially, I saw basis for a lot of the culturally-constructed practices we have here in America (and, apparently, in Canada, as welll).

I remember when I was in grade school having each of my teachers drill into our heads to "do your own work" and "to not copy." Those commands led to the construction of mini fortresses during tests and other assignments, with students completely surrounding their desk with a blockade of folders. Yes, some saw this as a joke; still, all knew how important it was to do our own work. This thinking, along with the Americanized definition of plagiarism, has continued with me through my educational career. Yet, I am now questioning things. How could grade school teachers build better "dialogic communities" of learning within their classrooms? What is so wrong with ESL student mimicing what other say--if that practice helps them learn? When is it okay to copy, or perhaps borrow, someone else's work--if the concept of plagiarism is socially constructed to begin with?

I am also curious about the arrangement of seats in this classroom, although, as I have written before, I have no experience in how teachers handle the seating arrangements in elementary schools. I do know that when I worked with high school freshmen, I first let them pick their seats; they were ultimately too talkative, so I had to pick the seats for them. Ironically enough, I put the "less-skilled" ESL students right up in front so that I could better talk with them, and they would feel more at ease answering questions. I do now wonder if they felt more excluded from the group because I chose to do this. Still, their work improved with the move, so I suppose that I'm still torn on the issue.

And although this is a blog for English 344, I continually thought about the genre and process approaches to writing as a read this. I would still very much like to see some sort of unit plan showing the genre or a combination of the genre and process approaches, but I do see the dialogic approach as a good starting point when utilizing the genre approach or a combination. Within that community of learners, students would feel free to work together, to share their drafts, and to ultimately learn from each other. I would be curious to explore this topic further.