Realistic Teacher Writing

I appreciated the pairing of the articles for this weekend, as I think Fredrick's article confirmed the idea that practitioner research and publication can be really useful for the teacher-researcher and readers alike. It seems like Fredrick's decision to turn his difficulty with creating affective approaches to student portfolios into a kind of research question helped improve the reflective culture in his classroom, and I (a prospective teacher and reader of his article) believe I will use the notes I took on his work when planning portfolio assessments in the future.

When putting my experience reading Fredrick's article into the context of our class - thinking about it as part of an educational research and writing community - I have to acknowledge Fredrick's tone and approach to the story of his experience with portfolio reflections. On Thursday, we talked briefly about how a lot of practitioner writing sounds like teachers working miracles. While they make their work sound inspiring, they also tend to make it sound impossible, particularly for new teachers. Fredrick shows his struggles and slow progress, but provides teacher-readers with practical tools to slowly implement change the way that he has in his classroom. I think this makes for a really good example of a teacher-written and teacher-oriented article-- one that could help influence other research on assessment tools and reflective practices in the classroom, as Whitney suggests that teachers' writing has the power to do.