"Where I Come From..."

Introduction

by

Professor Joan Oldford
Faculty of Education

 In our first week of classes during Fall Semester in Education 3312, a course for pre-service teachers of language arts, we engaged in writing poems and publishing them through a literacy practice of 'author's chair'. The poems were entitled, "Where I Come From..." and were written by three cohorts of students in their professional year of study.

One of the objectives accomplished by this activity was an exploration of the personal and imaginative purposes of language in primary/elementary classrooms. Although young children engage in using personal and imaginative language significantly in their everyday life outside of school, the classroom itself has offered little support for their language uses. A study by Pennell (1977) found only 5.5 percent of utterances in classrooms were of a personal or imaginative purpose. As children interact with teachers and peers their self-concept and attitudes toward expressing feelings develop. Kash and Borich (1978) observed that "each event in the educational experience has potential for self-concept change". Consequently, the classroom need to provide a context where children "can be open, accepting, autonomous and explorative" so that they develop positive self-concepts.

Teachers seeking to teach writing must be concerned with students' feelings about themselves, school and writing. They need to communicate their genuine enthusiasm by inviting students to share their "voices". According to D. Graves (1997), "Kids don't write with good voices unless the teacher has one". Writing the poems, "Where I Come From"... was an opportunity for pre-service teachers to express their "voices" to one another in a classroom setting.

A second objective for writing the poem was the hope that sharing our poems would help establish community in our classroom. In using 'author's chair' we celebrated our creative accomplishments, while giving and receiving helpful feedback and response to our poems with out colleagues. Whenever the classroom can be perceived as such a community of writers/learners, students are more likely to persist in taking risks and, will thereby, achieve continuously.

In this class our pre-service teachers, as authors, were invited to visualize the places of their childhood and persons who had influenced them (significant others) to create a poem for sharing with the other students during 'author's chair'. A description of the process we followed in composing and publishing our poems is found in an excellent book, Reading, Writing and Rising Up: Teaching about Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word by Linda Christiansen (2000) and is also published in a teachers' newspaper, Rethinking Schools (2000). The poems written using the above framework, reflect both the rich diversity and common experiences of students entering professional year in the study of Primary/Elementary education in our Faculty.

We have transformed the collection of poems into a book, with a cover illustrated by Christa Maher, a student from Section 4 of Education 3312, Language Arts in the Primary/Elementary Grades. The cover was selected for the book of poems, "Where I Come From. . ." by the participation of all students in the three sections of Education 3312 who participated in composing the poems. The poems from this collection are now being published in The Morning Watch by permission from our 'teacher authors'.
Many positive responses were given to the poetry readings in our classes and we invite our readers to enjoy the collection. You can respond to our anthology or particular poems by contacting us at.

Joan Oldford
Professor
Faculty of Education

REFERENCES

Ada, A.F. and Campoy, F. Isabel (2004). Authors in the Classroom: A Transformative Education Process. Boston, Pearson Education, Inc.

Christiansen, L. (2000). Reading, Writing and Rising up: Teaching about Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.

Graves, Donald H. (1997). "A Critical Look at the Relationship Between Reading and Writing." Whole Language Umbrella Conference, July, Bellevue, Washington.

Kash, M. and Borich, G. (1978). Teacher Behaviour and Pupil Self-Concept. Read, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 11.

Pennell, Gay Su (1977). "Language Functions of First Grade Students Observed in Informal Classroom Environment," cited in Donald H. Graves, "Research Update," Language Arts 54, 455.