As I was reading The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, I found myself constantly thinking of ways that I could apply Felicia Rose Chavez’s ideas to my high school ELA classes. There are some important differences that make it hard to apply everything, such as:
- The class is, of course, required. There is no recruitment, and students have to take the class whether or not they are committed to it.
- There is a set district curriculum that I am required to follow, and I have to include all of the texts we might read on the syllabus, so students cannot have as much voice in building the text list. In recent years, my district has been working on adding in more diverse voices, including those of more living writers, but I still can’t let students add much.
- Time is limited and class sizes are large. Daily check-ins and lengthy conferences would take too much of that limited time.
I still think there are a lot of changes that a high school teacher like me can make based on the ideas in this text, though. One area that I could start working on this year is learning objectives.
In Chapter 1, “Preparing for Change,” Chavez includes several lists of learning objectives that honor all students. Traditional objectives, she argues, “reinforce the myth of inferiority” (26). This sentiment is as true in high school as it is at the university level, and it’s something that I could easily work on in my own classroom. We typically use the Common Core ELA standards to set objectives in my district, and that’s required for our guaranteed and viable curriculum, but couldn’t we also add in some objectives that are more focused on process, growth, and routines?
I’m not sure what I’ll call these in my classroom yet, but these are some of the objectives I would like to adapt for my high school writers.
Students will be able to:
- “Write in order to achieve their best work” (Chavez 28)
- “Grow in confidence as writers” (28)
- “Engage in daily free-writing sessions” (33) (although these may be weekly due to time constraints)
- “Collectively define craft elements” (35) (although we often call them literary or rhetorical devices)
- “Assess the successes and challenges of each draft” (39)
- “Acknowledge that writing is an inherently imperfect, ongoing process” (39)
I propose that we also do the same for reading. We might hope that students will be able to analyze complex characters develop over the course of a text, or that students will cite strong and thorough text evidence to support analysis of what the text says, but that’s not all. We can also hope students will be able to:
- Select books or stories to read that are interesting to them as individuals
- Study multicultural texts that can serve as mirrors, windows, or sliding glass doors
- Engage in discussions about texts of their choice as they develop their personal tastes and interests
- Grow in confidence as readers
What other objectives would you add? How can we use our learning objectives to honor all students?