Cinnabar and Alabaster

passages:
20. (from comp teacher "kathy") "collaboration is not one way to improve writing. writing is, in its essence, a collaborative act....a collaborative writing class is the only way to teach writing with integrity"; "after working with a group in a collaborative classroom for a semester, [initially-reluctant student] lisa wrote, 'i have to credit my group for starting me off on that goal [to become a better writer]'--not her instructor, who was instrumental in establishing her group and enabling it to collaborate effectively, but her group! the instructor--dominant in the phrase 'find out what you want me to to do to get an A' at the beginning of the semester--has, by the end of the semester, become invisible"; part of the essay's task is to reveal the discovered "nature of teacher-invisibility that can productively enable and enhance student autonomy in writing classrooms" this is what becky just today credited me for doing/having (or at least creating the impression of)--how totally cool is that?!
21. "the approach i have found most productive has at its core a communally-evolved metalanguage to generate and maintain ongoing dialogue among students and between students and their teacher"; "by explaining this pedagogical approach to collaboration, i will try to show how lisa and her fellow students developed the confidence and competence to help each other generate, explore, craft, and critique their ideas for written text, how kathy came to see collaboration as an integral part of teaching/learning writing, and how i became invisible"; students new to doing collaborative work often "share a common problem: their lack of sufficient shared metadiscourse to help each other improve their writing"

what's involved in:
22. step 1. "working in small groups to determine qualities of 'good writing' and then as a class to shape them into a statement that would be meaningful and agreeable to everyone in the class" yielded a list of agreed-upon goals--
23. it's not only important that "setting goals and objectives is not the exclusive responsibility of the teacher or some prescribed curriculum" but also--maybe more important--is "students' clearly articulating to themselves, to each other, and to me what their goals and objectives are"; "[hillocks'] environmental mode of instruction can increase student autonomy and commitment when students determine their own goals, decide how they might go about achieving them, and reflect upon their success in having achieved them": step 2. doing this in writing = creating a "group history"
24. in the folder, group members list goals for the semester, for each project, for each collaborative meeting, at mid-semester & at the end evaluate how well those goals are met.
25. "students needed...guidance in building their repertoire of collaborative strategies, and their freedom to choose among them according to their specific needs"
26. "responses to written text as, as stanley fish...points out, so idiosyncratic that a call for consensus might easily silence a tentative, inquiring voice in the group while it enforces a more strident, dominant voice. or...requiring consensus might relieve students of the crucial responsibility they have to make important decisions about their own text" step 3. students "write journals after each collaborative session" w/entries that "react to the group discussion" in detail--works around the potential problem of consensus.
27. students also should "reflect upon how helpful they have been to others in the group and how their ways of helping have changed as the semester has progressed"; "the collaborative chain i try to forge in my writing classes has three interlocking links: whole class, small group, and student-teacher"; "when students direct my reading of their writing, they have a vested interest in reading my responses, and since they are the ones who have chosen the categories or areas of concern, they are less likely to misunderstand my comments" step 4. all drafts (final or not) turned in are "accompanied by a letter of transmittal that gives" goals for the specific paper, info about how the group helped or hindered, particular worries or happy-points, & directions for the "reader/teacher"
28. "for students to gain autonomy as true student collaborators rather than as teacher-directed peer groups, collaboration needs to be an integral part of learning and writing in every class period." lisa's resp. to "why she thought that her experiences with collaboration in freshman composition had been beneficial" said "we do it every day"; "to lisa, collaboration has become not an extra activity, to be done when there is time, or when her teacher thinks it might be a good technique for a change, but rather an essential part of her process of learning and writing. she sees herself as a qualified reader of her peers' papers, and recognizes the ability of her peers to help her respond to the needs--and sometimes idiosyncracies--of different readers"
29. "has lisa switched dependency on her teacher to dependency on her group? and, if so, where then lies her autonomy as a writer?... in her recognition that her peers have authority as readers of her work, just as she has authority as a reader of theirs. the authority lisa previously vested in her teacher begins to be shared with her group, a redistribution of the locus of power over making meaning and valuing written expression in the classoom. this redistribution of authority is aided by...the students' taking charge of authorial concerns in their writing"