When I think back to my days of teaching high school English, I realize that we spent an incredible amount of time teaching the literary essay and my kids spent most of their time writing variations of the literary essay YEAR after YEAR in their high school English careers. I think that as a content specialist in English and a lover of literature, this made much sense to me at the time. I think I thought that every student in my class would go on to study English literature in university and therefore needed that skill more than anything else, and it was just “what was done” in high school English classes.
After a few years away from the English classroom, I have the opportunity to reflect on my own practice and witness the landscape of reading and writing change dramatically, I realize how narrow my thinking really was. When we place too much emphasis on one genre or mode of writing, we limit students’ ability to “write for different purposes and audiences using several different literary, informational, and graphic forms” (Ontario Curriculum, ENG1D). How exciting to be able to provide sudents today with the opportunity discover their voices as writers and to write for real audiences, engaging a variety of modalities to add richness to their ideas and expression.
And yet, to what extent have the writing requirements and traditions changed? And to what extent do they need to?
I recently discovered some amazing examples of e-literature in my Digital Literacies course via Dr. Janette Hughes which definitely take literature and writing to a whole new level of creation and construction. Though I struggle with how to assess creative works of students, the amount of time and technical know-how it would take to create these, I know that we can’t just ignore the possibilities that technology affords us when it comes to reading and writing any longer.
We need to have courageous conversations about how we are defining reading, writing, and text around the table at English Subject Councils and in English workrooms. We need to take risks and not rely on the traditional approaches that were used when we were in school because that world no longer exists for our students. We need to look at the open-endedness of the of the Ontario Curriculum expectations as an opportunity to do things differently.
I created this Thing-link based my understanding of what e-literature is and why it is important. Even a Thing-link in and of itself is a tool that would ideal for students to “write” in a whole new way.
Here is a thoughtful post in response to mine by Denise Nielsen after we engaged in a conversation on Twitter about the topic.
I would love to hear your feedback and comments.