Classroom Caffeine
Classroom Caffeine
A Conversation with Sarah McCarthey
Dr. Sarah J. McCarthey is known for her work in the areas of writing and writing instruction within the context of education policy and global education. Sarah’s work has been funded by the National Writing Project, the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, the National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has won multiple awards for her teaching and research throughout her career, including the Career Teaching Award, Distinguished Senior Scholar, and the Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sarah has served as co-editor of Research in the Teaching of English alongside former Classroom Caffeine guest Mark Dressman. Dr. McCarthey is currently the Sheila M. Miller Professor and Department Head of Curriculum and Instruction at University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana.
To cite this episode: Persohn, L. (Host). (2022, Dec. 6). A conversation with Sarah McCarthey. (Season 3, No. 13) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/7DA4-4529-AB30-2445-16A5-6
Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Education research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom caffeine is here to help. In each episode, I talk with a top education researcher or an expert educator about what they have learned from years of research and experiences. In this episode, Dr. Sarah J. McCarthy talks to us about varied opportunities for writing, writing opportunities for emerging bilingual students and professional learning opportunities in the field of writing instruction for teachers. Dr. McCarthy is known for her work in the areas of writing and writing instruction within the context of education, policy and Global Education. She leads the University of Illinois writing project a site for the National Writing Project, Dr. McCarthy is a professor and the head of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. For more information about our guests, stay tuned to the end of this episode. So pour a cup of your favorite drink. And join me your host, Lindsay Persohn, for classroom caffeine research to energize your teaching practice. Sarah, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the show.
Sarah McCarthey:Thank you so much, Lindsay. It's a pleasure to be here.
Lindsay Persohn:So from your own experiences and education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now.
Sarah McCarthey:So in thinking about one of the moments that was most informative about my trajectory to study writing instruction, it was when I was a second year teacher in Salt Lake City School District. And I decided to take this creative writing class at the University of Utah one evening a week for fun. So kind of armed with my bachelor's degree in English from Tufts and my education degree, I thought, I can take this on no issue. And that was also my first experience with peer response. So in this particular context, everybody was to write a fictional story and share it with the class ahead of time. So then, when it was your night, you sat there quietly, listening to everybody critique your story. So what happened to me is, I can't remember any of the other comments, except for one of my peers, said that my characters were wooden. So I know that the instructor agreed with this, and that my first response to that was, what wooden characters? but I was quite devastated. So as an aspiring writer, I thought, wooden characters, but then as an educator, I knew there was something wrong with this process. I didn't know exactly what. But it was clear that, you know, the author was silenced in this process, and that I was undergoing what was a fairly brutal critique. So that coupled with my experience as an elementary teacher, where I was very interested in writing and gave my thought, pretty creative writing assignments to my students, I really had no idea about strategies to help them improve. I hadn't taken a writing pedagogy and my teacher preparation program at Tufts. But this really began for me my journey as a researcher into understanding the composing process, exploring students identities as writers, and supporting teachers through professional development. So that really was one of the key moments that sparked for me, my career as an educator who would investigate writing instruction.
Lindsay Persohn:You share a couple of really important experiences with us, you know, I think we all have that brutal critique of our work that sticks out in our minds, and you know, just first of all going, what, what did they mean by that? But then, you know, working to unpack that to say, Okay, well, well, how do I take that and make it into something useful? But I also think that you share a really common experience and this idea of real really not feeling terribly prepared as a teacher to teach writing. Unfortunately, I think that having a writing methods course is not a feature of most teacher prep programs, particularly not at this point. And we also know that a lot of teachers come to teaching through other backgrounds. So I'm really hoping that you will share with us some of your learning over the years of how you might be able to or how we as teachers might be able to support the development of writers in our own classrooms in response to my next question, Sarah, so what do you want listeners to know about your work?
Sarah McCarthey:So I'd like them to know a few things that I found from a number of studies that I conducted. So the first big study I really did was in New York City, this was for my dissertation, and it was called author's texts and talk, which was later published in reading Research Quarterly. And then I wrote some articles from that, that I think are also very accessible to teachers around the writing process, and very much connected to that data. So what I found in that study was the teachers really responded to, to different students in various ways. And that was dependent on the student's backgrounds and their writing skills. And so in some cases, the teacher really connected with the children and was able to give quite useful feedback that students then incorporated in their writing. And in other cases, the teacher didn't necessarily understand where the student was coming from. And perhaps some of the advice was not taken up or actively resisted by the children. Another thing that I had done in that particular study, which I think was helpful for other researchers to think about, but also for teachers, and that was, the whole idea of the students in my study were fifth and sixth graders. And so what I did was have them work with or essentially do writing conferences with first graders. And so in that way, I really got a picture of what my fifth and sixth graders conceptions of writing were, and also writing conferences. And so that was a real window in to what those fifth and sixth graders thought about writing conferences. And so in some cases, the older students took this approach that was very much like the teachers, which was, you know, tell me more about your writing, what are you trying to achieve here. And then some of the older students focus much more on grammar and punctuation. So that was not surprising to to see how much schooling has an effect on children's conceptions of writing. So I think the implication for teachers is to think about, you know, how can we pair up those older students and younger students in some cases, because the older kids do have things to share about their writing? And they can, they can learn some things from the younger students. So that was a kind of research idea. But I think it could be taken into into practice.
Lindsay Persohn:Absolutely. I think there's a lot of portability in that idea. And some things that you said, Sarah, you know, I'm thinking that most often I think our our inclination is to pair our older students and younger students together for reading. I think that's a really popular idea in schools. I know I did it myself. But I think that pairing older students with younger students for writing, I could see so many connections, but I also as you were talking about your research, I could really see that window into fifth and sixth graders, writing strategies and skills as they are trying to explain those to younger students. What a wonderful way to uncover misconceptions and areas for growth as those older students are working to mentor younger students because yeah, you I'm sure you absolutely can hear what their teacher has said coming out of their their own mouths through translation and how then you could use that as a great starting point to continue to build skills for those older writers as well. So I really love that idea.
Sarah McCarthey:Kind of the next big study I did took place in Austin, Texas. And what was interesting about this site was that there were teachers who are doing team teaching, and this kind of interdisciplinary classrooms. So in that study, I did interviews with students, teachers and parents. And I added the parents to this, because that was something that I learned from my previous study in New York, that was really missing, you know, I have looked at the student's writing practices and actually talk to the kids about what things they did outside of school. But I hadn't asked the parents. So I added that to the study. And I was most interested in how teachers were connecting students out of school literacy practices to the classroom curriculum. And again, I was interested in issues around identity, and literacy. And one of the big takeaways from that study was that students were taking on different positionality is in various contexts. So I had the opportunity to follow students who are in whole group contexts than in smaller group contexts, and their interactions with peers. And one of my favorite findings and kind of children who emerged from that was a little girl named Rosa. So she was Latina. And her parents and the teachers described her as being a very shy child. So in the larger classroom context, and because this was team taught, at times, there were 60 kids together in the same classroom. Well, she didn't volunteer, to share her work. And she didn't raise her hand in that context. But in the small group context, she played quite different roles. So in one of the settings, where it was, quite frankly, dominated by some white male children in the class, and they kept kind of silencing her. And so she didn't have an opportunity to really share who she was or what her work was. But in a different small group context, she became the leader, and was really supporting another Latino boy in the class by kind of supporting him, telling the other group to listen while he spoke, and to help him articulate what he was trying to say, in his writing, and also in that group. So the big takeaway for me was, you know, kids are different in in different settings. And it's so important to provide those multiple opportunities for children to be in those settings. And, you know, especially with, let's say, in settings, where you've got several Spanish speakers, let them have an opportunity to be in a group together where they can speak Spanish, when they're in the whole group, you know, don't necessarily pick on them or call on them if you know that they're uncomfortable. And really pay attention to how the kids in your classroom are in these different settings.
Lindsay Persohn:In my mind, the other thing that I hear you sort of covertly saying here is that kids need multiple opportunities to write in a school day, right, really this interdisciplinary approach to writing because if we confine writing to a single writing block during the day, we are only getting one note. And we we may not be talking to Rosa during the period that she feels comfortable to write and to share what she's writing. So I think that's a really important message and what you're saying, Sarah, that we do need to give kids multiple touch points with writing and multiple opportunities to think about and talk about their writing. And it also really reminds me that writing is a process. I think we approach so many things as one done in schools these days that it is so important for us to return to ideas, build on ideas, share with each other, listen to what others are writing about in order to really become not only fluent writers, I think, but also to really understand the power of writing.
Sarah McCarthey:And absolutely, I completely agree with you. And so when I'm working with pre service teachers, I try to focus on both of those things, which is, you know, we do need some dedicated time during the day, where children have opportunities to write in different genres, get feedback from the teacher and peers, and revise their writing. But not every single piece of writing needs to be revised and published. And that kind of leads to the other aspect, which is the importance of writing across the curriculum, writing in different contexts throughout the school day. And, you know, sometimes that can be with the use of technology or, you know, using some of the kinds of social media aspects that children do have access to. So the importance, I think, different genres, and writing at different points through the day and the week.
Lindsay Persohn:Yeah, that's such an important point to bring to light also is that, you know, writing these days doesn't always look like a pencil and a piece of paper, right, we've got lots of other ways to share ideas. And I know, even recently, I've heard some teachers and writing instructors in schools say that when a student is having trouble writing about their ideas, first have them talk about it, is that a practice that you have found beneficial in your research?
Sarah McCarthey:I do is, especially for certain students, they just want to practice and they they want to be heard. So it's, it's certainly effective for some kids, especially younger children.
Lindsay Persohn:Right, right. Because I think sometimes writing it can be intimidating, right? Particularly, I think, for students who are challenged by reading or sometimes even motor skills can get in the way, right of our writing processes. So yeah, having them talk out their ideas. I think, at minimum, it gives us a starting point, we used to say looking at a blinking cursor. I don't know if that actually happens anymore on the technology we use, but still that same kind of intimidation factor of what you think you got something to say, you know, and it just sort of staring back at you waiting, waiting for your ideas. So yeah, that's, that's really helpful. So Sarah, what else do you want listeners to know about your work?
Sarah McCarthey:I guess I want people to know about some of the work that I did with English language learners, or emergent bilinguals, as well. So this was some of the work that I did with Georgia Garcia, when I came to the University of Illinois. And we have the opportunity to follow children in their kind of regular classroom setting, in their ESL settings. And also, for these particular children, they had an opportunity to be in a native language setting, so either Chinese or Spanish. So again, we had the opportunity to interview teachers, parents, and the students in their preferred language. And, again, what we found there were that these classrooms really offered varied writing opportunities. And that really mattered in terms of the students uptake, that they were very much influenced by both their home backgrounds and home languages, and those school contexts. In terms of the parents, and the home background, we found that the parents plans for staying the kinds of support that they provided in writing at home, and cultural influences all played a role. So, for instance, some parents and children were in the school and the US for a transitory period of time. Other children were there with the intentions of staying. And we really saw these kinds of practices that I think are even more amplified in this day and age, which were that the parents wanted the children to be able to speak with, and communicate with their grandparents or relatives in other countries. So we were able to identify some of those practices. This was before, you know, social media was so available. So I know that from my colleagues work here at the University of Illinois, for instance, my colleague, Italia Nunez, has looked at trans literacies and translanguaging practices with families in these kinds of border crossings. And what she's seeing is the importance of using media. And you know, WhatsApp, for instance, is very popular for these Spanish speakers to be able to keep in touch with relatives in Mexico or around the country. So I think that Joey Garcia and my work, kind of started looking at those kinds of things. And now we've seen the acceleration of that in other studies, and opportunities to study that in more depth and and how it's affecting children's language and literacy development, especially to have those ties with relatives and and a home cultures.
Lindsay Persohn:So in light of that, Sarah, do you have any tips for teachers who might be working with emerging bilinguals in their own classrooms, and how we might offer them a variety of meaningful writing experiences?
Sarah McCarthey:I think that asking children about the kinds of practices that they engage in at home, you know, what are some of the things that you do with your parents? What are some of the kinds of things that you do with siblings do have opportunities, and providing a safe space for children to be able to talk about the practices that they use at home, and then for teachers to continue to encourage that, when they do have opportunities to meet with parents, again, eliciting from parents, what are some of the kinds of things that you do to keep your child communicating with relatives or with their bilingual practices, and to value that, and again, from the study and from work, you know, since our studies is to provide opportunities for children to write about their own experiences, both as in the US or in the country of origin, and to encourage children to use translanguaging, as well, that we were just starting to see some of that in the work that our children were writing, both in Mandarin, and in Spanish, where they were using both languages. And I think that there has been continued embracing of children being able to use both or multi languages in their classroom settings. So that's one of the things that I work with our pre service teachers on, as well as some of the professional development work I've done is, you know, encourage that space, and provide those opportunities for children to write in several languages.
Lindsay Persohn:I love that idea. And I think it it also can help anybody who may feel a bit boxed in by deficit thinking, I think that's a great first step is to say, Well, if you're not sure what the word is in English, write it in Spanish, write it in Mandarin, right? Use what you know, and looking at that as the real assets that they are that kids bring to our classrooms that I think for so long have been treated as deficits. And so I love the way you shed light on that for us. And the other thing you said, Sarah, that I just wanted to highlight is this idea of asking kids talking to their families, right? You know, these these shouldn't be groundbreaking ideas, but I'm afraid that in so many places they are you know, kids really have so much information to give us if we if we just ask them and certainly bringing their parents to the table as well to find out how they communicate with with family members with each other with you know, distance relatives. What an important thing for us to consider. As we design a variety of writing experiences for kids in classrooms, important stuff, very important stuff, is there anything else you want to share about your work, Sarah,
Sarah McCarthey:Maybe in just thinking about professional development opportunities, and that relates to some of the work that I've done connected to the University of Illinois writing project, which really spurred my work to look at professional development more widely. So in 2008, we started the University of Illinois writing project site, here. And I learned so much from my colleagues, and so much from the teachers who are engaged in the summer Institute's and the prevailing theme is about teachers teaching teachers. And that was such an important lesson for all of us to move away from this idea of, you know, people at the university have all the ideas and let's just disseminate it and see how teachers take that up the writing project, and as you may know, and a lot of people know, started in the early 70s in the Bay Area, and spread towards more than 200 sites around that theme of teachers teaching teachers from that big idea. I also looked at a number of other kinds of professional development activities, and we had several of those in Illinois. And some of the big findings from those studies were how the urban teachers or people lived in smaller urban communities, or were connected to universities had many more opportunities to receive professional development than teachers in rural districts. For instance, we also found that teachers experiences teaching writing, and their own attitude, attitudes, and opportunities from their own writing backgrounds, really influenced how they thought about writing. So you know, some important takeaways from this, were the importance of providing professional development in multiple ways and trying to bring those rural teachers more into the fold. And that's one thing that I think we have learned for the pandemic, is that professional development via zoom or online kinds of opportunities, the kinds of things that NCTE provides in terms of their webinars IRI, in their webinars, that these can be effective means of professional development. Now, I don't think there's anything that can ever take the place of bringing people together on campus, with teachers doing demonstrations of their own teaching, and essentially spreading the word. Another important part of the writing project is that opportunity for teachers to do their own writing and get feedback from peers. And I've, again, brought this into my work with pre service teachers with that teachers writer project, which is, you really need to know what it's like to go through the processes. As a writer, you know, you need to get feedback from other people, you need to know what it's like to revise a piece based on feedback in order to be a good writing teacher. So I think that's a big lesson from the writing project. And one that I've incorporated in my teaching of pre service teachers, go through that process, and then think about how that relates to working with children in the writing process.
Lindsay Persohn:know, when we think about ourselves as communities of learners when we think about what's worked for us and what hasn't and our own experiences As learners, as you mentioned, teachers as writers, there's so much power in that there's so much power and understanding what we're trying to do, and therefore becoming better at sharing that with our own students. So I appreciate you sharing those opportunities and helping us to really think about how we can tap into that kind of professional development. Because we know there, there could be particularly for our listeners in the United States, there just might be a writing project going on somewhere near you. And typically during the summer, I believe is when that most often happens. But as you mentioned, there are also online opportunities to to continue writing. And I think, especially if, if we ourselves have always thought of writing as a very school based kind of task. I think these these sorts of professional learning opportunities can really help us to think differently about what writing is, and again, the power of writing. I emphasize that because I think myself as a student, growing up, I did not realize the power of writing, right. And I think that when we think of it as writing is thinking, right, not just as publishable pieces, but also our voice in the world, and how we share our ideas. If we can encourage our own students to think that way about their ideas and about their writing, it really does help them to develop their identity as literate beings in this world, and those who have valuable experiences and ideas to share with others. So those are such important points that you shared with us, Sarah,
Sarah McCarthey:I want to add one element to that, which is around multimodal writing. So this is something that has definitely been embraced. And there's a lot of research and talk about this. However, I had not done much of that in my own teaching practice, or really even in my own research. So during the height of the pandemic, I taught two different courses, to Master's Degree students, lots of practicing teachers. And the big assignment that I had for them was to do some research around writing and present it in a multimodal manner. Now, I didn't know exactly what I meant by that, I kind of threw out some ideas. And these teachers just produced the most amazing work. I mean, there were podcasts, there were wonderful multimodal posters, there were teachers who designed like games with animated figures, to share with others what they'd learned about research in writing. And, you know, this was an opportunity for me to really learn as an instructor, what teachers are capable of when you just give them this very open ended task. And my hope was that they would provide that opportunity for their children. Because I know that those teachers learned a lot about their own practices, and about putting something together in a multimodal format, that would certainly be able to be carried out in the classroom,
Lindsay Persohn:which really just picks right back up on that thread of teachers as learners, right and trying it out themselves. And, you know, I was also thinking about something you said earlier, Sarah, about how teachers often teach writing, the way they learned to write, right. And so I think there are a lot of teachers out there who don't have many multimodal writing experiences in their background. So exploring that and maybe doing what you did, where you put that out there to your students to say we're going to try some multimodal writing, not quite knowing exactly what it is that you're expecting or what you might get out of that. But I do think that there are so many of those wonderful surprises. Whenever we just start opening up possibilities, we may find that I think we may find, first of all, that we know more about these things, and we think we do yes, right, because they're still rooted in some of the same strategies and processes of you know, your your more traditional pencil Paper kind of writing. But I also think that that I know when I've done anything like that, I've also been surprised at how wonderful those final products are. Whenever we do have a bit of flexibility and freedom to think about how we write differently. When we don't have to fully iron it out into this linear words based platform. We can instead bring in and sound and movement and all of the the wonderful affordances of multimodal tools. And as you said, we may not know exactly what we're after. But I think we can often be surprised by how wonderful the results are. So Sarah, given the challenges of today's educational climate, what message do you want teachers to hear?
Sarah McCarthey:Oh, I would like teachers to hear that, it's still worth it, teaching is still worth it. And especially in thinking about writing, given an opportunity, children have the most amazing ideas that they are willing to share. And that we just have to keep creating those opportunities. Even as more policies, more standards, more challenges arise every day. It's still worth it. And I think that it teachers at heart to go into teaching because they believe they can make a difference with children. And I think, for them just to hear that message. And to be able to continually connect with children and hear their voices is going to keep them engaged in the profession.
Lindsay Persohn:When we give children an opportunity to share their their thinking and their voice, through multiple types of writing. I think it is a wonderful reminder of why this profession is a wonderful place to be at the end of the day, even at the end of a hard day, I think we can still reflect and see the kind of impact that we could have on children, and especially in helping them to shape who they are becoming through their literacy and in this conversation, specifically their writing practices. So thanks so much for that message. Sarah. I also want to thank you so much for your time today and for your contributions to the field of education.
Sarah McCarthey:It's been a pleasure, it really has thanks for your questions, and the opportunity to speak to teachers and to share a little bit about my own career and where I've come from being silenced in a writing group, to being able to provide voice to my ideas through my writing, and also with you today.
Lindsay Persohn:Thanks so much, Sarah. Dr. Sarah J. McCarthy is known for her work in the areas of writing and writing instruction within the context of education, policy and Global Education. Sarah's work has been funded by the National Writing Project, the US Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, the National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation, and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Her work has appeared in literacy, written communication, Journal of writing research, Computers and Composition, middle grades review, literacy, teaching and learning research in the teaching of English reading Research Quarterly Journal of literacy research pedagogies, an international journal, Journal of literacy and technology, an international online academic journal, early childhood development and care, international advances and writing research cultures, places, measures, and journal of second language writing. She has won multiple awards for her teaching and research throughout her career, including the career teaching award, distinguished senior scholar and the graduate teaching and mentoring award from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Sarah has served as CO editor of research in the teaching of English alongside former classroom caffeine guest, Mark Dressman. Dr. McCarthy is currently the Sheila M. Miller professor and department head of Curriculum and Instruction at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. For the good of all students classroom caffeine aims to energize education research and practice. If this show provides you with things to think about, don't keep it a secret. Subscribe, like and review this podcast through your preferred podcast provider. I also invite you to connect with the show through our website at WWW dot classroom caffeine.com where you can learn more about each guest. Find transcripts for many episodes, explore episode topics using our tagging feature, support podcast, research through our survey, request an episode topic or a potential guest or share your own questions that we might respond to through the show. You could also leave us voice message or a text message at 1-941-212-0949 We would love to hear from you. As always, I raised my mug to you, teachers. Thanks for joining me