...come to those who wait...and pray...and push...and finagle. This year was a challenge, as I've said before and I am so glad I can see real results! Not only did I get good results with testing (although I HATE standardized testing), I've also seen kids become readers who hated books, have grown some future awesome writers and have seen my kids be able to reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses.
How many of us can truly say our kids are reflective about their own work - and I'm not talking the kind they throw together at the end of the day. As a part of my high school English finals this year I asked my kids to read all of their writing from the year and analyze it. Some had more pieces than others, as is always the case, but for most high school kids it is a daunting task to actually look back and read EVERYTHING they've written over the year.
I was rewarded with some great self-analyses/reflections and my kids seem to have seen what I've seen (things they saw without me telling them to look). The day the kids pulled out the folders from their files in my room and started pulling stuff from their binders I had one immediately say, "This just needs to be burned!" He wasn't referring to the idea that it needed to be burned so he "couldn't" do the assignment. He wanted to burn his work because he thought it was terrible. That is how much he felt he'd grown as a writer!
Here are a couple of gems from some of the analyses I got today, I'm pretty proud!
"As a writer, I think I have improved drastically. My writing is not as sloppy as it used to be. I feel that it has more of a purpose now. My purpose now is to create a vivid mental picture that will keep the reader drawn into the story. In the past, I only tried to write something down to fill space. After discovering that I actually liked writing fictional stories, it felt easier to just draw a picture with my words."
"Even though I have become a better writer, I still feel weaknesses. When I write, I sometimes have a hard time beginning my writing and focusing. It's still difficult for me to start off my stories and papers because I can't focus. I usually spend a long time, at times hours, trying to come up with a beginning. I wonder sometimes if there's a way to help me think better so I can find good ways to start my papers."
