Roberta de Fátima Martins, holds a BA in Languages, Italian, an MA in literature, is a specialist in technology innovation for Education and a PhD student. She is also a volunteer teacher and educational designer. Here, she tells the story about how she helped a student unsure about her writing skills, by asking her to keep a diary.
My journey as a teacher has had different stages. I’ve taught Italian, literature, Special Education, and writing. I faced many challenges and obstacles, but I always envisioned education as an opportunity to change my life and other people’s lives. Therefore, I regard these teaching experiences with optimism. I see my interactions with students as a two-way invitation to help them overcome any possible difficulty: an invitation to learn and to teach. I received one such invitation from Maria.
This is one of the most significant stories that I have in the brief time I have had in the classroom. It is the story of a 17-year-old with established life plans, who considered her mother tongue, the one she’d used all her life, as perhaps her most unsurmountable obstacle. At that time, I had just started teaching a group of students hoping to pass the national university entrance exam (ENEM). So, we had the girl who wanted to be a ‘medical expert’ and the teacher who had barely taught.
Maria was very embarrassed to show her textual production, and had not written one single paragraph during class activities. She approached me for help one day, and initially I did not know what to do. But I was aware of the fact that she could not leave without feeling that her fears had been heard. I then remembered the movie “Freedom Writers” and my MA classes about writing a diary.
I suggested that she start writing about her daily activities, like a diary. This would offer emotional support since the task was about her and would help bring her closer to her mother tongue.
And so, checking her writing weekly, we agreed that progress would happen without a fixed deadline. After one goal had been achieved, we would move on to the next. After three weeks, I had formed a rough structure to the programme. Therefore, in phase two, I asked Maria to write about her day-to-day emotions, rather than her activities. The objective was to move towards more abstract topics while still writing about herself. I do not remember how long we spent looking at her texts and chatting about them, with specific corrections on vocabulary, still focusing on improving her self-esteem and her relationship with the language.
The next step was to ask her to defend her opinions. She now had to rationalize her emotions, say what she thought and justify her position. No longer writing about herself, she would now write an opinion for a reader: me. Here, our journey begins to resemble a narrative text, so the transition to a more organized text and the choice of certain linguistic resources for this purpose was, in a way, natural. After all, she had to convince me of what she had seen or experienced.
After this stage, the progression to dissertation texts was simple. She had overcome the “fear” of writing and we established a relationship of trust. We continued to produce essays, first with themes of her choice, then with themes chosen by me. On the last day of school, she came to class to deliver a text she had produced. It was emblematic: she had written a clear, objective, well-structured text with well-chosen arguments.
We knew it would not be top score, but our goals had been achieved.My student was eventually approved for a nursing course. The following year, she sent me a message saying that she had scored almost 900 (out of 1000) in the writing part of ENEM. We celebrated her accomplishment together.
The most important thing in this story is not the result. For the student the most significant aspect was to reestablish her connection with the mother tongue, and to realize that her difficulties were not related to ‘not knowing Portuguese’, but instead to not being familiar with certain tools or textual genres.
For me, in addition to helping her understand the mother tongue as part of herself, the most significant aspect was to realize that each student is unique, and strategies that work for one may not work for others. Therefore, it is essential to establish a relationship of complicity. We are social creatures, after all.
Another point I would like to make is that this invitation to learn has no validity date or specific recipient. I make it available to those who are on my side or in front of me. And as long as there is hope that at least one student accepts it, I will be here, not aiming for success, but aiming to attempt, commit and overcome both mine and their obstacles. Even if no one else accepts my invitation, it will have been worth it because Maria did.
Activity
Objective: To improve writing of a dissertation text and student’s relationship with their mother tongue.
First stage
Writing of texts describing daily activities, similar to a diary.
Frequency: Daily
Questions: What did you do? How did you do it? Who did you do it with?
Guidance: One paragraph for morning, afternoon and evening activities.
Duration: Approximately 3 weeks.
Second stage
Writing of texts describing daily emotions, similar to a diary.
Frequency: Daily
Questions: What did you feel?
Guidance: One paragraph for each emotion.
Duration: Approximately 3 weeks.
Third stage
Writing of texts defending a point of view.
Frequency: Two to three times a week.
Questions: What do you think about this? What is you opinion? Why?
Guidance: One paragraph describing the situation and two paragraphs to express opinion on the topic.
Duration: Approximately 6 weeks.
Read Dr Peter Watkins post for information about how you can use learner generated texts to teach reading skills. Stephanie Dimond-Bayir has also written an interesting post on how we can motivate students to embrace autonomy in learning.