Yesterday, I attended the Spilman Symposium on Issues in Teaching Writing at Virginia Military Institute. This year there were three keynote speakers: Leila Christenbury, Edward White, and John Schilb. I'll summarize their talks one a week.

The first speaker was Leila Christenbury, Professor of English Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her topic was "Conflict and contradictions: the perspective of high school teachers on college level writing."

She said that although elementary and middle schools had changed in the U.S., high school "remains one of the most unchanged structures and institutions in American society" with unchanged curricula. The canon of literature remains stable: Romeo and Juliet, Huckleberry Finn, The Most Dangerous Game, a strong resistance to digital literacy ... The content of the high school literature curriculum is very traditional.

Although attempts at change have been made, most of them "have foundered or never achieved a foothold."

Despite these failures, high schools are moving more to a college model (with debate on this move) through three different ways:

• AP courses
• Dual enrollment, in which high school courses are receiving college credit at the same time.
• Shortening the four traditional high school years into three, eliminating the 12th grade.

Interestingly, NCTE was founded by teachers in 1911 due to the unfair influence of colleges, especially Harvard, on high school curricula.

Compared to the teaching of literature, writing has been an exception. The notion of writing as a process, as opposed to only product, has entered the classroom due to the influence of the National Writing Project. In summer institutes, teachers write, learning that there is a disconnect between what they do as writers and what they tell their students. Christenbury added, however, that one problem with the writing process in high school is that it has become fossilized into a lockstep, hierarchical, immutable process instead of being recursive and fluid.

In her own work, she has found that high school teachers believe incorrectly that college writing

1. centers on the research paper
2. doesn't allow personal pronouns
3. concentrates on usage errors (a handful of usage errors will fail a paper)

On #1, at Kean, there is a second year course that focuses on the research paper, and a senior captstone course that I believe includes the research paper. It's not likely that other courses focus on a research paper, although they may include one.

On #2, I haven't surveyed the professors here, but it's been my impression that allowing personal pronouns is more of an English Department phenomenon, perhaps crossing over to similar disciplines like communications, but it would be unusual for the sciences and business to allow personal pronouns. Not that it doesn't happen. Consider Watson and Crick's seminal paper (pdf) on the structure of DNA.

Christenbury added that writing today, however, is more difficult for high school teachers because of

1. prompt driven writing samples (for 8th and 11 graders in VA)
2. The 2003 College Board report, which called writing at the high school level the neglected 'r. The amount of time for writing should double and teachers should step up their game. It also called for assessment of writing with an SAT 25-minute writing sample.

Such writing tests are high stakes, single prompt, and short time framed, making it difficult to use a full writing process. So high school teachers face contradictions: preparing students for college-level writing and also for these standardized tests.

She also conduced research with 23 high school English teachers in the Richmond, Virginia area. These teachers were almost all honors English teachers, 12 had 15 or more years of teaching experience, 4 had 7-10 years, 17 had master's degrees, one a JD degree, 1/4 were members of NCTE or other professional groups, 1/2 had finished nwp summer institutes, and 1 was Board-certified.

Here are some of their thoughts on college-level writing: It

• involves more technical writing
• should move students to think more about their writing and work their way out of the box
• is more intentional and exhibits clear prose
• shows insight and synthesis
• has no chance for revision
• has more chances for help and services
develops ideas and elaboration
• etc.

As Christenbury noted, high school teachers have an inaccurate perception of college writing, somewhat inflating what is actually done at the university level and somewhat being incorrect (e.g., not allowing revision).

With respect to high school writing, they listed the following characteristics:

• correctness
• used for end of course tests
• retelling facts
• summarizes
• shows organization
• exhibiting survace level correctness
• based on personal experience, not fact

Obviously, as Christenbury stated, what high school teachers can do is negatively affected by timed graded essays. (George Hillocks' book, The Testing Trap, is thorough in showing how standardized essay tests have deteriorated writing instruction in U.S. public schools.) It's also eroded by the number of students they have. In the discussion that followed her talk, one high school teacher said he had 100 students and another former high school teacher said she had 147 at one time. It's easy to imagine that the combination of (1) many students, (2) teaching literature in addition to writing, and (3) needing to focus on state and national timed essays doesn't allow much time for providing feedback to students to help them develop their writing.

This is a problem that won't fade away. Technology via connecting students online can help, but it's not a panacea. That is, having students write online and interact with classmates and others online can provide the feedback and critiquing that leads to better writing. However, students also have a problem of time: Developing writing takes time, and writing is not the only item they must focus on. For writing to develop, it should be part and parcel of the majority of their courses--not only in high school but also in college. Easier wished for than done.