Ms., What’s a Bibliography?

Today my cooperating teacher introduced a research project to her senior English class.  Although the students initially bemoaned the idea of writing a research paper, they were nevertheless intrigued by the topic: themselves.  They are to interview family members about the day and year of their birth as well as conduct internet research pertaining to the year they were born.  I will not teach until next week, and at that time I will help them learn how to make bibliography cards; nevertheless I am really anxious to help the students embark on the process. 

 I saw several opportunities for Ms. L to model exactly what she wanted from her students.  I also thought that a short warm-up writing exercise would have been beneficial to the students.  They seemed to need help conceptualizing what the finished product would or could look like.  They needed explicit instruction.  I could tell that this was the case by their questions, and by the time spent doing preliminary research in the computer lab later.  Students were uninterested in my help for the most part once they were on the computers, but I attributed that to the fact that they were allowed to “surf the web” virtually at will.  They were content to explore on their own without interference from me.  (If only we could reign-in that natural curiosity to explore and apply it to pertinent research for their assignment.)

I feel like I have an advantage over my cooperating teacher in the sense that I am a student still and can empathize with their anxieties and uncertainties regarding writing and research.  Last semester I was enrolled in a course that required a research project based primarily on interviews.  I wanted to share with the students that the interview process should happen over time, I wanted them to appreciate that as they begin writing and thinking about their topic, they may find that they will want or need to conduct another interview.  I wanted to get them motivated through thinking and writing, but instead I will illustrate an out-dated and distracting convention that I have never used as a writer of research papers in the college setting.  But that’s okay, ’cause I’m flexible, and I am at least finding a motivation and a really strong desire to do things differently for my students. 

“Focus on the writer not the writing.”

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