Re: More snapshots stuff-reply

Claudine Keenan (cgk4@PSU.EDU)
Sat, 20 Jan 1996 10:36:47 -0500


Ken-
You are absolutely correct to point out all the constraints secondary
teachers face, and I extend my apologies to any secondary teacher whom I
might have offended in my remarks. I made it a point to say, though, "some"
secondary teachers, never intending to blanket the entire field. Having
been a high school English teacher before earning my own degree, I felt the
same heavy volume frustrations, and I also sympathize with their plight, in
general. It is nearly impossible to provide helpful feedback to all of
their students, many of whom have not even reached a cognitive "readiness"
for writing, anyway.

Perhaps the weirdest aspect of all of this is that we expect students going
out of high school to have metamorphasized over the course of what is
usually the last summer of leisure in their _lives_, into "serious students"
who are ready to apply the skills they have learned to more rigorous tasks,
without much of a transition. For those of us who teach composition, who
daily emphasize the importance of transition in writing sentences and
paragraphs, it is ironic that we cannot provide our students with practice
in what we preach for transition within their own lives.

On Jan 19, Ken Wright wrote:
> I try to be sympathetic toward secondary school teachers who work at least
>as hard as we do without anything near our academic freedom.