14 The Council Chronicle September 2009

by Kylene BeersNCTE President

COMMENTARYPresident’s

The Sound of Silence

ImagesMarcus is fourteen years old, in eighth grade, and lives with his mom and younger sister in a three-room apart-ment in a Houston-area project for low-income families. There’s a small kitchen—sink, stove, refrigerator—that sits at the edge of a main room that’s filled with second-hand furniture and the prized possession—a large-screen television. Beyond the kitchen is a bedroom that Marcus’s mom and sister share. Clothes are folded neatly and stacked on cardboard boxes that serve as a dresser. The bed—mattresses covered neatly by a white, chenille bedspread—sits directly on the floor. Beyond that bedroom is a small bath-room. Marcus sleeps on the couch.

Marcus and his sister are always in school. His mom makes sure they are out the door and to the bus stop on time, and homework is almost always done—neatly. His younger sister, in fourth grade, “loves” school and this year, 2008, thinks her teacher is “awe-some.” Marcus smiles as he talks about Jasmine, and it’s easy to see the pride he feels for this sister who all but skips her way to the bus stop. But when talk turns to Marcus, his face clouds and his words slow.

“Me? I’m not, not so good in school, you know? I don’t like it. [pause] My teacher, she’s real nice and everything. But, it’s just like nothing we do there is going to change anything here,” he says as he sweeps his hand out across

the landscape of his bus stop. I look around: graffiti everywhere; store windows covered by burglar bars; beer bottles, whiskey bottles, and crumpled brown sacks in street curbs; an old man with gray whiskers and tattered clothes sleeps on a bench, an old army jacket under his head for a pillow. “This is my world. How’s word-of-the-day and TAKS help with this?”

When Marcus comes home each day, he does his homework, shoots some hoops in the parking lot with some buddies, and then writes in his journal, a spiral notebook that is fat with writ-ing. I haven’t seen what he writes—“It’s kinda private, Miss, ok?”—but he carries that notebook with him in his backpack all the time. When I asked if he ever wrote in it at school, he shook his head no and explained, “This is the wrong kinda writing for school.”

“How’s that?” I asked.After a moment, he shrugged and

explained, “Like no topic sentences. This is just my thinking. Like at school, you need topic sentences.”

“So you must really like to write?” I asked, nodding toward that notebook.

“No, I don’t thinks so. [pause] I got a D in writing last year. I turned in this one paper that it was about the time my dad he come for a visit and the teacher says it was good but it had agreement errors and that was why it had to get a D. [pause] I thought it was better than a D. Like maybe a B.”

Marcus wouldn’t say any more about this moment in his life as a writer,

but it was evident that he had offered something important about himself to that teacher in that one paper, and her reaction that it was “good” was over-shadowed by the low grade at the top of the page.

“But you’re still writing in your jour-nal?” I asked.

“It’s not a journal. Just a notebook. Girls keep journals. [pause] Yeah, I writes in here, but nothin’ like to be graded, just things I’m thinkin’ about. Nothin’ like with topic sentences.”

“But you’re writing down things that are important to you,” I said. “That’s great.”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean this kinda writing [pointing to his notebook], I don’t know if that’s important. Not like the paragraphs we do at school, like to be doin’ topic sentence, that’s probably important. You know for like at work, when you get a job. You probably haf to be knowin’ how to do that.”

Images in FocusMarcus is part of the 93% of all teens who report doing some sort of writing outside of school and a part of the 33% who say they write “consistently and regularly” when out of school. He’s part of the 47% of black teens who write in a journal, part of the 49% of teens who say they enjoy the writing they do out-side of school, and one of the 98% of all teens who understand that writing “is at least somewhat important for their future success.” Here’s the tough one:

Sept09_CCpgs.indd 14 8/21/09 9:02:58 AM

national Council of Teachers of english September 2009 15

1 Lenhart, Amanda, Sousan Arafeh, Aaron Smith, and Alexandra Rankin Macgill. Writing,Technology and Teens. Pew Internet & American Life Project, April 24, 2008, http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/247/report_display.asp, accessed on June 3, 2009.

he’s part of the 83% of teens who do not enjoy school-time writing.1

When I went back to Marcus and asked him what his biggest gripe with school-time writing was, he took a moment before he answered and then finally said, “What I say don’t matter. It’s just all about is it on the rubric and is it agreement and is it correct. It’s not ever about what you really saying. Write stupid and get a good grade if it be correct.”

“Is that your plan? To just write things that don’t matter to you?”

“No. My plan is to just write noth-ing.”

A quick look at his school-time writ-ing reveals a myriad of problems with spelling, formal usage and grammar, and punctuation. But his voice is clear: “My Dad’s ball swishes throgh the net like he swishes throgh my life. Barly touching anything. But counting all the same.”

Be Heard On October 20, 2009, the National Council of Teachers of English will open to the public the National Gallery of Writing that celebrates the National Day on Writing. As President of NCTE, I approach this day with more than ex-citement and pride. I approach it with the vision of what this day can show us all—youngsters and teens, parents and teachers, policy makers and politi-cians, principals, superintendents, bus drivers, lawyers, hairdressers, computer technicians, waitresses, orthodontists, journalists, and factory workers—that each of us in every walk of life writes. . . or could write . . . each day in a variety of modes and for a variety of reasons.

We write reports and editorials, poems and songs, stories and novels, get-well cards and thank-you notes. We write love letters and to-do lists; birth announcements and party invitations; book reviews and postcards, and some-

times, with tears in our eyes, we write the memorials of those we have loved. We write diaries and reminders and instructions; emails and text messages, Twitter posts and Facebook updates. And we write about dads who, absent or close, always seem to matter.

We write to remember, to explain, to persuade, to tell, to encourage. We write to discover what we know and to figure out what we don’t; we write to entertain and explore, to wonder or ca-jole, and sometimes we write in anger, sometimes even to hurt. But under-neath it all, we write so we can be heard.

Being heard—we rarely mention that reason for writing to students, perhaps only occasionally admit it to ourselves. We offer purposes for writing—per-suading, informing, entertaining, etc.—

but underneath any of those purposes sits the most basic: to be heard. At times, we want only one person to hear our thoughts—ourselves. But whether the audience is one or many, close or distant, familiar or global, we need to be heard. We need someone to listen to what we say. It is in being heard that we come to feel part of a community, bound to one another.

The Consequences of SilenceMuch is being written right now about the voluntary national standards that have been created by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in collaboration with College Board, National Governors Association, and Achieve. As of this writing, these stan-dards are not yet released, but already

they have received a great amount of attention.

The Chiefs chose not to involve professional educators’ associations—NCTE, NCTM, and IRA—in the initial drafting of the standards. This deci-sion makes some observers skepti-cal about both the process and the product, a skepticism that has shown up in emails I’ve already received de-manding that NCTE come out against these standards. They are frustrated at not being a part of the initial process and fearful that whatever we say in response to the standards will not be heard.

I understand that concern. Recently, when the Texas Board of Education revised our state ELA standards, I wrote a letter to the board members

suggesting that the direction they were heading with some standards needed rethinking and providing the research to support my state-ments. I was told that one board member tossed the letter in the trash without even reading it, dismissing me, my credentials, and

this national organization with a telling remark: “I don’t need some teacher telling me what needs to happen in a school. I went to school and I got good grades because my teachers demanded I learn how to diagram sentences. Now, teachers don’t even care if stu-dents learn to spell.”

The Texas ELA standards document passed with minor attention to some of the issues I addressed, but certainly not all the revisions I had hoped for. I knew before I wrote the letter that some board members wouldn’t read it, would not hear what I had to say. But I also knew that if I did not write the letter, if I stayed silent, I would not be heard at all . . . by anyone. I knew that I would have a better chance of continu-ing a conversation with some of these

The ways we read, write, and retrieve information—and then make sense of the world—are in the midst of

transformative change.

Continued on page 16

Sept09_CCpgs.indd 15 8/21/09 9:02:59 AM

16 The Council Chronicle September 2009

board members if I at least began it. And I knew that some board members would be open-minded enough to hear our position and the research to support it. For those reasons, I participated in the process.

By the time you read this, NCTE will be in deep conversations about the National Standards. Though they did not ask NCTE to help create these standards, the Chiefs have already (at this writing) asked NCTE to provide names of people who can serve as validators of the document and have asked that we help in the process of providing grade-level benchmarks. The National Council of Teachers of English looks forward to providing infor-mation on standards and benchmarks that we believe best come from a professional organization; we are committed to the idea that the implementation of standards is best left in the hands of teachers and local offi cials.

I remain dedicated to being a part of a professional organi-zation that offers its voice, expertise, input, and suggestions to both teachers and policy makers. We will work to be heard, because choosing not to participate, not to give our beliefs voice, would be to follow Marcus in silencing his own voice in his class-room. That sound of silence serves none.

Kylene Beers is NCTE President (2008-2009) and is Senior Reading Ad-visor to Secondary Schools for Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, Columbia University.

COMMENTARYPresident’s Continued from page 15

Sept09_CCpgs.indd 16 8/21/09 9:03:31 AM