Memo #5

          At this point in my research,  I am wondering if I want to focus more on the teacher survey responses or the governmental policies that teachers have to abide by.  I think both are extremely important and in many ways they go together, but I previously wanted to focus on the specific laws and cases.  I think this is evidence of my project reaching out and becoming more of an experience rather than a typical research paper.

          I am surprised with the turn out of my teacher surveys in two ways.  First,  I am a little upset that I only received four responses after sending 180 emails out to various teachers.  I did hope that I would gather more responses, but I am super impressed with the honesty and experience that I received in the four responses.  Of the four, there was only one account of an administrator or parent censoring the student's work, but I learned a number of strategies for helping students take risks in their writing.  I also noticed a number of "self-censorship" instances where teachers had students avoid certain topics so that the work would not be challenged.  

          I wish that I had more surveys from teachers, because it would offer more evidence of censorship in the classroom.  At the same time, perhaps censorship doesn't happen as often as I had imagined it did.  The evidence that I gathered from the teacher surveys was very helpful to me as a future English teacher and I'm glad that I was able to collect the data.  

          I wonder if I should keep or abandon the student's view of censorship.  I think it is great to offer both the teacher and student side, but I wonder if I will be able to focus on both in the same project.  If I had done student surveys, I could have offered more support to the article as there is not much information about censorship from the student's point of view.  I would also assume that the majority of students that I would talk to would have little or no experience with censorship in their educational career, especially based on the teacher responses. A teacher has 100's of students a year, but a student only have 10-20 teachers in high school.  

          The question that I am now wondering is whether or not teachers are holding their students back by giving them limitations on their papers.  Is there a way to have students focus on hot topics but still treat the situation carefully and maturely?  How will I encourage students to take risks in their writing, after reading ideas from other teachers? 
  

Memo #4

          Unfortunately, I have not held an interview yet so my post will be a little strange.  I did schedule a meeting with an English teacher for the end of this week so I will edit/update this post (or make a new post) to explain the process and address these questions better.

           I have, however, started sending out emails with my survey attached to random High School English teachers across the U.S.  So far, I have received three responses (two from Alaska and one from Florida).

          Here are the results from my survey:

How do you encourage students to take risks in your classroom?

-I used to require a 15-min journal entry a day, I also require students to write about half a page before any class discussion (as it greatly enhances the quality of discussion)

-I run writing workshops with 3-5 selected papers that are nameless (names are removed) the students all take the papers home, read them and write feedback to the writers.  Then we sit in a circle and read each paper and discuss how to improve them. Also we write 3 days a week, after testing we get to poetry which encourages more risk taking.  Students are required to submit a piece of writing for publication or to a writing contest once per semester.  

-Students write every day with different parameters, once a week they write in creative writing notebooks, three times a week they respond to prompts with opinions or analysis of a passage.

Have you ever put limitations on student's writing? (If yes, what?)

- If students need to swear to be authentic or realistic to the situation in which they are writing about, they can swear.  Depending on the assignment, I remind students to be aware of the audience and look at tone, word choice and style accordingly. Also word limits, either over 500 words, or under 500 words.  

-With research papers yes, I will blacklist certain topics that really can no longer provide solid balanced, researched arguments (ex. gun control, abortion - media sensitive topics).  Much less limitation with creative writing.  Remind students of what audience they are writing for.  I encourage students to write about "hard things" those topics that people are afraid to write about.  I get some very good writing from those topics, but it does take courage sometimes.

-I won't accept racism, sexism, or homophobia in student writing or speaking.  Certainly we can talk about these issues, but not in ways that insult or disparage others.

Has a parent/administrator had a problem with student work?  If yes, what happened?

-A student wrote about a teacher that had been fired and jailed for inappropriate behavior with students and how it impacted her.  She wanted to submit the essay to a writing contest so the principal read it and asked her to make it more anonymous and the paper was given to the legal department of the district. 

These answers were great and exactly what I wanted to know about.  I found the last story very important and I am glad that the student wasn't held back but rather legally bound to remove all names.  It would have been easy for the teacher and principal to say "no, this is not appropriate", but they all stood behind the student! 

Memo #3

          I would consider any high school teacher or administrator a primary source for my project.  I could use the many resources at my own high school, but I would also like to have a better range of views.  Censorship seems to occur more often in different parts of the country, so I would love to contact teachers from across the country.  I would like to try this by creating a Google Doc form that teachers could fill out and submit through email.  To "track" teachers and see if there are any trends I would ask what state they teach in, but I would not ask any other information that could be tracked back to them.  I want teachers to be as honest and helpful as possible, so I want to allow them to stay anonymous. 

These are some of the questions that I would like to ask:

• How do you encourage students to take risks in the classroom?
• Have you or a colleague ever put limitations on students writing?  For example, no swearing, or specific topics that students can't write about. 
• If yes, what were the limitations and were they restricted to a certain time/project/assignment.  (Ex. Students can only swear in writing notebooks)
• Has a parent or administrator ever had a problem with a student's choice of topic or words in a piece of writing?  
• If yes, what happened?  How was the issue brought up and how was it resolved?  What were the consequences if any?

          In regards to secondary sources, I have found a lot of articles online.  I am hoping to find more sources that deal with specific cases of censorship of writing in the classroom and to see how the problem was addressed and resolved.  I want to have an idea of what a teacher's limitations are, and how to deal with disapproval of a student's work.


          Please let me know how these questions sound, and if any of them need to be reworded.   I have tried to dance around the word censorship because of its negative connotation and I think teachers would fail to answer questions that were too directly focused on censorship.   

Memo #2

          When I started looking through the library databases for research I realized that many of the sources that deal with censorship focus on books.  There were even some titles that I thought sounded great, but upon reading and reviewing them I realized that again the focus was on censoring books rather than student writing.  This is just a small set back, however, because I have been able to find a few sources on censorship in the classroom as well as censorship of student work.

          One of the first articles that I read brought up censorship of student blogs used for classroom purposes.  Of course we have blogs in this class (and I have had blogs in many classes throughout my college experience) but I never thought about that in relationship to my project.  Blogs are certainly student writing, and we still need to think about whether or not students should be limited, but it opens another can of worms.  This brings up the topic of digital citizenship and that students need to take responsibility for their words online.  While this is relevant to in class writing, I wonder if there is a place for it in my paper.  

          Another great resource that I found is from a college student's point of view.  Through the Ohio State University student blog/website one student shares his experience of censorship gone wrong.  A classmate looked at his blog and decided that his writing was "dangerous" and the student had to go to court to defend his blog.  He explains the challenges with the legalities of censorship, and explains that it is easy to accuse someone of needing to be censored.  He argues that people who inaccurately accuse should be punished more than the person accused.  This article offers one student's encounters with censorship.

          I also found an article where an Art teacher explains her relationship with censorship in the classroom.  While this isn't directly related to writing, this article offered a lot of information from a teacher's point of view.  I was able to find a great quote from the article about topic choices, "There needs to be an understanding that if students are confronting these issues outside our classrooms, we need to be able to support them in the classroom rather than avoiding confrontation with contemporary social issues" (Stanhope, 395)  This article also questions, How much autonomy should the student have? and "Are we as educators also there are censors?". 

         Overall, the articles that I have read so far have given me a lot to think about regarding the legalities of speech.  I really want to find sources (maybe this will be my primary research) from teachers who have dealt with a challenge about student writing, know someone who has dealt with it, or who have policies in their classroom to avoid censorship challenges in the classroom.

Memo #1

     My research question is "how can a teacher promote freedom in the classroom, while also keeping the topics 'school appropriate'?".  I didn't notice how important censorship was until I took Adolescent Literature and our teacher talked A LOT about banned book and censorship.  The reality is that teachers are constantly being watched and monitored by faculty, parents, students and community members.  A censorship challenge can potentially ruin a teacher's career and it is important to be aware of the legal restrictions and limits that are put on teachers and students in the classroom.

     I took the idea of censorship a little further and applied it to writing in the classroom.  Is it okay for students to swear in their writers notebooks?  What topics are "off limits" in your classroom?  In the school setting?  These are all important decisions that we will have to make as teachers and it is EXTREMELY important to know if there are legalities.  

     The only knowledge that I have about censorship is from when I was in high school.  There were many projects and writing assignments that had strict guidelines to prevent students from talking about "off-limits" topics.  It didn't feel like I was being censored, it was just a specifically guided topic or assignment.  In my high school creative writing class, my teacher introduced writer's notebooks and we flooded her with questions.  We asked about swearing and she explained that it was okay as long as it was not excessive.  For me, it was always known but never taught that violence and guns were not something that you wrote about in class.  At the same time, I am positive that powerful pieces could come from even the worst topics.  Unfortunatley, there are parents and faculty that would most likely disagree.

     Have you ever felt censored?  
     Did your teachers ever explicitly censor your projects or writing?    

My I-Search Project

     This blog was created to track my research process through my I-Search research project. 

      I am interested in studying censorship as a aspect of writing in school.  How can a teacher promote freedom in the classroom, while also keeping the topics "school appropriate"? 

     Learning about censorship in the classroom is important for all teachers as well as students who are engaging  in writing in the classroom.  Regardless of the classroom, teachers and students need to know their legal rights and limits when producing work.  I hope that my research will help teachers to understand their legal boundaries and recognize when a student's work is not appropriate.  

     In order to gain further information on this topic, I plan to study court cases where students' freedom of speech has been challenged.  This will allow me to set certain boundaries that are universal for students.  I would also like to interview teachers and students to see how they react to the restrictions set for them because of censorship.  Have students felt like they could not share what they wanted to say through their writing?  Do teachers feel like they are restricting the freedom of their students when they place restrictions on certain topics?  

     Please let me know if you have any input about my project, or any helpful ideas on how I can tackle this huge topic!   

Video Introduction

Here is a video introduction to my ISearch topic which is censorship in the writing classroom.


Classroom Censorship