Moving from Performing as a Student to Performing as a Scholar: More on Writing and Citation – radical eyes for equity

Moving from Performing as a Student to Performing as a Scholar: More on Writing and Citation – radical eyes for equity

Moving from Performing as a Student to Performing as a Scholar: More on Writing and Citation

The first time I recall being viewed as “good at writing” was in high school when I submitted a parody of my friends and teachers for a short story assignment; this was probably my junior year of high school during Mr. Harrill’s American literature class, and I am quite certain that I would be mortified by the story if I could read it now.

A couple years later, however, my “writer epiphany” came the spring of my first year of college. I very clearly mark the beginning of my life as a writer with a poem I wrote from my dorm room, inspired by being introduced to e.e. cummings in my speech course with Mr. Brannon.

To be blunt, I likely didn’t really write anything of consequence until my mid-30s—specifically my doctoral dissertation. And then, my life as a published academic really didn’t occur until I was in my early 40s (my 20s and 30s had a smattering of published poems, stories, and scholarship).

These realizations about writing quality over decades of formal schooling and so-called serious writing help inform my work as a teacher of writing. My undergraduates are unlikely to write anything of real consequence while in college so I see my job as helping them develop behaviors the support the possibility of CONTINUE READING: Moving from Performing as a Student to Performing as a Scholar: More on Writing and Citation – radical eyes for equity

Education Scholars and Leaders Push Back Against High-Stakes Standardized Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog

Education Scholars and Leaders Push Back Against High-Stakes Standardized Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog

Education Scholars and Leaders Push Back Against High-Stakes Standardized Testing

Kevin Kumashiro writes:

Dear Friends–I hope you’re well.  I wanted to be sure that you’re aware of three initiatives in which hundreds of educational scholars and leaders are pushing back on high-stakes standardized testing of students and teachers:

1)  Last week, the California Alliance of Researchers for Equity in Education (CARE-ED) sent a letter, endorsed by over 200 educational scholars in CA, and provided oral testimony to the CA Commission on Teacher Credentialing (at its 2/11 meeting) calling for an end — not merely a continuance of last year’s temporary suspension — of high-stakes standardized testing in teacher education.  Attached and available here: https://www.care-ed.org/

2)  This week, the national network, Education Deans for Justice and Equity (EDJE) sent a letter (dated 2/15), endorsed by over 200 deans and leaders across the CONTINUE READING: Education Scholars and Leaders Push Back Against High-Stakes Standardized Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog

Writing as an Academic and Scholar – radical eyes for equity

Writing as an Academic and Scholar – radical eyes for equity

Writing as an Academic and Scholar

My transition to being an academic and scholar occurred in the mid-1990s after I had been a public school English teacher for more than a decade and a writer for almost two decades.

Looking back, one of the most pivotal moments of that transition was when Craig Kridel, a leading scholar of educational biography who would become the anchor on my doctoral committee, stood at the first organizing meeting of new doctoral students and announced the importance of being able to write well. He introduced me to Joseph Williams’s Style and forever changed me as a writer and a teacher.

I was in my mid- to late 30s when I completed that doctoral program, and I chose the degree primarily because I had the opportunity to write an educational biography (a non-traditional dissertation form and an under-appreciated research type, qualitative) and work with Kridel. You see, I wanted to write a real book and not a formulaic doctoral dissertation.

Of course, entering the doctoral program, I had yet to experience or fully understand just what writing a dissertation entailed—or what it would mean to CONTINUE READING: Writing as an Academic and Scholar – radical eyes for equity