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