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| Author: Karen Creel West Marion High School |
It was the summer of 2019, and I had just made the decision to change school districts. In fact, I decided to change entire states, from Louisiana to Mississippi, in the waning summer weeks before school was set to begin. After agreeing to a job at West Marion High School, my new principal said, largely in passing, “Oh, I almost forget! You have a C3WP workshop next week.” I had no idea what C3WP was; my previous state of certification had used many programs and vendors, but C3WP just did not ring a bell. But as a long-time teacher, I was very used to a lengthy list of acronyms, and I guessed that maybe C3WP was the abbreviation for some “Mississippi” teaching jargon. I was not really worried, until I walked into the door of the summer professional development and realized that C3WP was a writing program that I would have to implement into my English II classroom.
I remember very clearly my chagrin at hearing that I had to incorporate yet another writing program that guaranteed “success” in my English II classroom. After twenty-five years of teaching, I had seen more than my share of “magic fixes” for what seemed to consistently ail my students’ writing: irrelevant text evidence, lack of style and voice, and robotic writing. I pessimistically assumed and grumbled to myself that C3WP would be like all of the other programs I had reluctantly encountered and employed: it would require my full participation and buy-in (faked!) and take up precious class time that I felt was better spent doing what I believed my students needed and had beat my head against the figurative wall to accomplish over the years. Was I ever wrong! Now my only regret is that I wasted twenty-five years trying to teach my students to write without C3WP!
First, if you are new to C3WP , South Mississippi Writing Project, or the National Writing Project, let me reassure you that the summer professional development and the built-in PDs within the school year will more than equip you to implement C3WP into your ELA classroom. The professional developments were spot-on for creating a deep knowledge of C3WP resources…and we had fun! I left each professional development not only informed and confident, but excited to go back to my classroom to implement what turns out to be very common sense strategies and lessons designed to legitimately help my students become college, career, and community writers. Furthermore, the “thinking partners” assigned to me through the South Mississippi Writing Project, Mrs. Sherry Kinkopf and Catherine Williams, were always available, and when I say always, I mean ALWAYS. No matter whether my question or concern was big or small or if I texted or called WHILE in my class struggling with a problem, my thinking partners answered and left no stone unturned in coming up with solutions, modifications, lesson plans, strategies, and more. In fact, my thinking partners served as pseudo-substitutes from time to time, coming in to teach my class (and me) from a particularly helpful resource that was fine-tuned to my specific students based on the UST data from my students’ previous writing cycle. I can honestly say that I have never had more helpful guidance through a resource or program than is provided by the C3WP and the South Mississippi Writing Project.
My students have thrived under all of the C3WP resources, so it is difficult to decide which one has had the most direct effect on the quality of my student writing. But if I had to choose one thing that totally changed my students’ writing habits and best addressed those pesky problems listed above, it would be Making Moves with Evidence. Having had C3WP for a year already with their previous teacher, my students came to me pleasantly prepared to write nuanced claims and even find valid, logical, and valuable text evidence. So maybe that’s why I was so impressed with the Making Moves with Evidence resource. But I can honestly say that the quality of my students’ writing improved immensely once they were taught to use the Harris moves that are incorporated seamlessly into the Making Moves with Evidence resource. Again, my students knew how to write a nuanced claim better than any class I had ever seen, being only one-year veterans of the C3WP program. They were so adept at finding relevant text evidence to back up that nuanced claim that I felt that I had died and gone to English teacher heaven. Beyond that, however, my students were unable to put that awesome evidence into anything other than a rote format. They were literally bound at the pencil with the traditional five-paragraph, claim-evidence-reasoning essay.
Furthermore, their reasoning was simply a paraphrase or summary of the text evidence. I saw none of what I called my students’ individual writing “fingerprints” within these otherwise excellent argumentative essays. Frankly, my students (and I) hated essay writing because they felt almost robotic in the writing process. Just like the majority of students to whom I had taught writing over a quarter of a century, my students’ writing simply lacked style and voice.
Enter C3WP’s Making Moves with Evidence and the Harris moves! Suddenly, I saw a quickening in my students’ pencils as they began to understand the concept of having a “conversation” with the text and incorporating that conversation into their essays. By teaching them that rather than just rewording text evidence, they should have a conversation with the evidence, I saw my students suddenly begin to gain an interest in whatever topic was involved: plastic straws, police use of force, dollar stores…whatever! You see, they had each done enough research on a topic, albeit reluctantly in most cases, that they necessarily had a personal opinion about the topic, no matter how disinterested they were when we first got started. The Making Moves with Evidence taught them how to incorporate their own opinions into their writing by doing more than just restating expert evidence found within the text set. As they illustrated, authorized, countered, and extended, I began to see their own personal style emerge. This was something that I had struggled to teach over the two-plus decades I had spent in the English classroom.
As my students began to inject voice and style into their writing, I saw another wonderful transformation take place: instead of groaning as I announced the beginning of another essay process, they actually began to enjoy the whole process. As they worked through gathering evidence and writing and revising their claims, I saw their wheels of academic and creative thought turning. Instead of just gathering and dumping text evidence into their essays, they saw each piece of text evidence as an opportunity to voice their own opinions on whatever topic we were exploring. We all know how much teenagers love to give their opinions! The Making Moves with Evidence resource allowed my students to voice their opinions, incorporate style and voice, and do all of this while maintaining an appropriate level of academic writing. It totally revolutionized my students’ thinking and writing.
I love to see my students finding good text evidence and deeply analyzing which Harris move would be the best use of that evidence. They view each text within a set as an opportunity to provide personal support or firm rebuttal. They love to find evidence that they can either defend or destroy! They now become involved in a true and confident conversation with the “experts” who have written the texts. The Making Moves with Evidence has validated my students’ own opinions in ways that has created writing confidence in even my weakest writer.
I also love to read my students’ essays now, because finally I see the individual student in his or her writing. Not only are my students investing more in their writing as they make those moves with text evidence, but grading those student essays has become much more of a delight than a chore.
Perhaps the best advantage of the writing grant material made available through C3WP is that it changed my own thinking, planning, and expectations as an English educator. I used to believe that I was climbing an insurmountable writing mountain - the Mt. Everest of instructional mountains, in fact – and that I was destined to never have students who could write the way I dreamed they could write: full of voice, style, and passion while maintaining an academic tone. The C3WP resources, especially when used in conjunction with the UST, creates an inspiring and optimistic instructional situation that is an individualized step-by-step climb up that mountain. In other words, my students and I are now able to clearly see what they each do well, and then build up that ability by adding the components of the C3WP that each individual student needs. Neither my students nor myself are overwhelmed by the task of researching and writing an essay!
Even though my district will not be an official part of the writing grant next year, my students will remain a part of C3WP by default because the resources are just what they need to make them informed, capable, and confident community and college writers. As a teacher, I am so excited to continue to use the C3WP resources to create a steady stream from my classroom of capable and compelling community, college, and career writers.
Karen Creel has been a certified secondary English teacher for over twenty-five years. Her grade level experience covers grades six through twelve, with most of her years focused on grades ten through twelve. She has taught Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition for the past five years. She has also taught Dual Enrollment English 101 and 102 for the same number of years. She taught both remedial classes and advanced classes of between twenty and thirty students, so I have experience with all learning levels and styles.
She is certified by the state of Louisiana as a Louisiana State Standard Content Leader, which allows her to help prepare state testing material and tutor students in the specific needs and requirements of Common Core and Louisiana State Standards in English. Last year, she received numerous trainings in the South Mississippi Writing Project’s College, Career, and Community Writers Program, and she was invited to attend the National Writing Project National Conference over this past summer to receive additional training in college, career, and community writing skills.
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