I found Harvey Daniels’s chapter on letter exchanges between teachers and students to be extremely and surprisingly thought-provoking. It’s really such a simple idea, yet as Daniels cautions, it requires a lot of time and dedication. Nevertheless, Daniels provides a number of examples and explanations that demonstrate just how powerful a strategy letter writing and correspondence could really be.
From what I gathered from Daniels’s argument, the benefits of letter exchange for both teachers and students is twofold.
This form of communication between student and teacher is important for several academic-related reasons. First, it has the potential to teach what strong writing should look like. While it’s important that teachers use less formal, and therefore less distant, language to effectively communicate to their students through their notes, their writing style will ultimately convey to the students what forms of writing are appropriate within an academic setting/correspondence. Second, letter exchanges provide a means by which students could discuss what they understand, don’t understand, like or dislike about the content they are learning. While this shouldn’t replace extra face-to-face help from the teacher, this strategy would certainly illuminate the problems that individual students–or perhaps a group of them–may have in the classroom, thus making it possible for teachers to take further measures to ensure that their students are fully grasping what they need to know.
I guess that in high school, some of my teachers presented me with opportunities for written communication with them via weekly journals. But the emphasis was based primarily on the week’s content and not so much on open-ended musings. Furthermore, the teachers would clearly read through my entries–as I could tell from their markings–but would not provide constructive or particularly valuable comments. I didn’t find this particularly noteworthy then, but I can now see how my teachers may have missed an opportunity to develop a more academically and personally fulfilling relationship with my peers and myself.
That being said, what I found to be Daniels’s most compelling argument for the note-exchanging process is the more personal implication of letter correspondence: the connection that is allowed to develop between a teacher and his/her students. This form of communication allows for personal attention that can enhance a student’s–particularly a shy student’s–level of comfort and confidence. This would be especially important for ELL students who find it difficult to find a voice in the classroom!
Of course, this whole process requires a ton of time and dedication on the part of the teacher. And reading and writing letters will be especially hard when you’re teaching up to five classes a day. Unless an efficient system could be worked out, letter-writing could become extremely taxing. But it is of the utmost importance for teachers to know who they are teaching, what strengths and weaknesses could be focused upon, and what personal issues may require further attention. Daniels concludes with a powerful thought: “Could any teaching act ever be more important” than connecting with a kid who’s in trouble?
I was really fascinated by Daniels’s chapter on letter writing too. I think Henry did a very good job of laying out the benefits of student-teacher letters. While I was reading the chapter, I kept thinking about how exciting it was for me in school to get comments on my papers from my teachers (and it still is exciting in college too!), but the comments often felt too short and unhelpful. Letter-writing seems like a fantastic way to enhance this dialogue and inspire the student. The way Daniels talked about it made it seem like it is a crucial part of his pedagogy- not just an extra bonus, but a central practice of his classroom. Even though it is time consuming, it is worth it because it contributes so much to the community of the classroom and adds trust to the student-teacher relationship. I was very inspired by this chapter because I have done a lot of programs with high schoolers in the past (tutoring, mentoring, etc.) and the best part of those programs was that I only worked with a few students and got to build great relationships with them. I want to become a teacher, but one of my biggest fears is that developing personal relationships with students will be impossible when I have 30 of them in a classroom. This chapter gave me hope that there are creative ways for me to maintain a close mentoring/tutoring relationship with dozens of students at a time.
The chapter also inspired me to think about ways to take the letter-writing idea further. One way would be to use the Internet. This blog that we use for this class is kind of like letter-writing because we each get the opportunity to show how we are engaging with the classroom materials. It could be great for high school classes to have blogs where the students respond to each others’ posts because they would be able to help each other and learn from each other. Blogs don’t have the same privacy level as the classroom journals that Daniels talks about, so maybe there would have to be a way for the students to send private messages or comments to the teacher too. Blogs and letter-writing are two great ways to expand learning and student-teacher communication outside of the classroom.
-Rachel