Memo # 4: Interviews

“Operation Interviews” is underway! I haven’t yet met with the educators and students to discuss my topic, but the interviews are taking place this week. As mentioned in my previous blogpost, I will be interviewing my cooperating teacher and some of her students at Central Falls High School. Over the past week, I’ve developed a rapport with the students, and have decided which students I will be meeting with. These interviews will be held on Thursday. I am waiting to hear back from one other cooperating teacher, and plan to conduct an email interview within the next week. With that being said, I have expanded my interview search to include educators from my high school, The Met. I plan to interview two educators and their students this coming Friday. I am excited to add these educators to the list of interviewees because The Met is a charter school that doesn’t operate like most public schools. Learning how the art of writing is being taught and impacted as a result of technology in this alternative setting, will provide me with a well-rounded perspective to the topic. Adding to that well-rounded repitoire is the fact that all of the teachers that are being interviewed come from different school districts. Interviewing teachers from Central Falls, Coventry, and Providence will provide me with insight as to what is happening in classrooms around the state.

 

Although the interviews haven’t been conducted yet, I have observed two of the three educators that I will be interviewing, and I noticed a stark contrast between the two! While in Coventry, I learned that every student in the school has a laptop that was provided by the district. While some writing takes place in their notebooks, these laptops are key tools that are being implemented to help teach writing. During one of my observations, I learned of an innovative online tool called backchannel chat. The teacher sometimes conducted entire class discussions in this chatroom with her students, and I observed an increase in student participation during these lessons. With that being said, as I reviewed student (and teacher) responses in the forum, I noticed that punctuation and capitalization were often omitted from responses.  The teacher explained that this is a low-stakes activity, so she doesn’t require a formal writing style. This makes me wonder how this activity may be impacting student writing habits. As a result, are students omitting punctuation in their formal writing out of habit? I’ve decided to add this question to the list for further clarity, “What effects do you think technology has on low-stakes writing. How about high-stakes writing? Are you noticing a difference?” From what I’ve seen, activities like backchannel chat are great for getting every student involved, but at what cost?

            While I observed some digital writing in Coventry, the opposite could be said for the school in Central Falls. In fact, I haven’t observed much writing at all at this school. Most class sessions have consisted of group discussions, quizzes, or reading activities. This is not to say that writing does not occur in these classes, I just have not yet had an opportunity to observe a writing lesson from this teacher. I did observe a lesson in which groups of students were assigned to computers to locate information on the internet regarding a research topic. While some students did the research (because there are not enough computers for every student in this district), others copied that information into their notebooks. I’d be interested in reviewing their notes from that lesson with them to see how their notetaking skills may have been impacted by the use of digital information versus locating it in a book.

            Now that I’ve had the chance to observe multiple classrooms, I’m starting to see that digital writing (and the practice of writing in general) may be different from district to district. I’m interested in learning if funding has an impact on the success of teaching [digital] writing, and if so, what that impact is. After completing some observations in Central Falls last week, I’ve decided that while I should have a set list of interview questions that I will ask all teachers, I may want to create specific questions for individual educators as well. For example, when interviewing the educators at The Met, I will certainly want to cater some of the questions to the fact that it is an alternative charter school, and what that means for the teaching of [digital] writing to their student population. I’m excited to complete these interviews this week, as I feel that it will give me the first hand knowledge I need to move forward with this project! (Plus it’ll be nice to visit some of my high school teachers in the process!)