Okay, so It's Monday morning. I feel like being a protagonist.
   
  I just joined this discussion group. I've been a teacher for twenty years and a curriculum coordinator in Massachusetts. I'm retired now, but joined the group to learn more about current practices and concerns for a newspaper article I'm writing. I hope you won't mind if I respond. I'll be unsubscribing tomorrow as I have already finished my article. It's been great listening to every one. You're all heroes in my book. 
   
   
  PARENTS WHO WON'T PLAY An ACTIVE ROLE ARE FAILING THEIR OWN KIDS? 
   
  Dream on Mary Schultz...poverty is what causes most parents to be disengaged from schools. Parent conferences mean loss of time at work and are seldom held at night. Most poor parents really can't spend time and haven't received a good enough education themselves to be able to have a productive teacher-parent meeting. 
   
  Reading the kids a bedtime story or tasking them to a library when you can't read yourself is out of the question. The ideas put forth in the article are idealistic, but the reality is so much more complicated than a simple rebuke. Most parents of children with problems blame the school, then the school blames the parent, and so we all go round and round on the carousel that never ends. 
   
  In my experience lack of an ability to communicate with and help (through solid referrals) parents who are failing is the problem. 
   
  Many of my angry and hostile high school students were practically begging for one-on-one anger management courses. Were any available? No. I found parents sincere in their desire to help their kids, but totally incapable of doing anything because of loss of medical insurance or lack of time to go tromping back and forth to agencies who might help.    
   
  Almost every sentence in that article contained the word "must". Any psychologist or expert in empowerment knows that is a really obnoxious word. Also, Mary Schultz uses one example--herself--to prove parents can be great. Premises built upon one example tend be faulty. This article while emotionally appealing and with idealistic intentions, certainly doesn't offer any remedies. It just casts blame.
   
  MAKING WRITING INSTRUCTION A PRIORITY IN AMERICA’S MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOLS 
   
  I fiercely disagree about the teaching of the traditional rhetorical modes and using five paragraph essay models. This can be extremely effective with students who are totally convinced they could never organize a paper properly. It gets them over the fear hurdle. Later they can experiment with different styles. To me, the five paragraph essay is like learning to sing the scales before attempting an opera. Taken by itself this form of learning can be very dull and somewhat stiff, but once the writer learns to riff and swing, they have the tools to play exciting some very exciting music. The five paragraph model definitely does need to be combined with instruction on how to write creatively, and students who have a natural sense of organization and flow should be encouraged to write papers bypassing the elementary model, but for those who need it, the five paragraph essay structure can be a godsend. After all, some pretty terrific and advanced writing seen in literature
 today is really only a very skillful elaboration on the five paragraph approach. 
   
  When teachers were told to discard the five paragraph model, their students often just babbled on and on happily creating a long incoherent mess. It's also much more difficult for a teacher with no writing skills to begin with to remedy the problem. When students are left to meander around in their own thoughts, it can give you a headache trying to figure out where the heck they are going, and by the time you realize they are going nowhere you're already at the end of the paper. 
   
  Many teachers are not writers. They have been taught with textbooks that use convoluted, academic language labeled "bullshiteze" by people who do know how to write. So they are at a disadvantage anyway. Trying to make students write like a college textbook will cause far more dire consequences than having them learn simple language or a five paragraph essay form. 
   
  It always pains me when I encounter high school students who are expected to write 20 page, so called, "research" papers. All it does is teach them to either plagiarize or add gobs and gobs of cheap fill. It's better to ask students to write often and well, than to demand poorly written (but lengthily)papers. 
   
  I think writing should be included in just about everything a student does, and it should be across the curriculum. But first  students have to be taught to think and respond to material critically. Writing that is just regurgitating facts is so boring most students hate it, and most teachers drift into a hypnotic state when reading it.  
   
  Carole Borges


A society which muzzles its poets risks going to the dogs. (Carole Borges)
                                                    
  Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to 
make your soul grow." (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1923-2007)


       
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