Blog Post #1

Joe Vitello

Blog Post 1

I am writing this blog post in relation to the reading on “Real World Writing” by Wiggins, and give a personal background of myself. The article from Grant Wiggins was full of useful information about writing and more importantly how to invoke great writing from students. I found that learning how to conjure up great writing from students takes more than just general instructions. To help our students become great writers we must take an approach that I would never have imagined; a backwards approach. The main purpose to this idea is to make students realize whom they’re writing for and try to impact the target audience. He gives an example of one class he observed where the teacher assigned presentations and gave two grades either an “A” or an “F”, in which he saw some of the best work he’s seen at any grade level. As educators we must look to inspire our students beyond the impetus of a good grade, although sometimes that route is most effective, we must be the innovators to spark great work. Wiggins also says that under the current system most rubrics at the high school level are very “safe,” meaning that they aim for work that is compliant and mostly falls in line with the teacher’s rubric. Wiggins discourages this because it leads mostly to perfunctory work where the only goal is to satisfy the guidelines. This sacrifices any creativity and is very boring. I can agree with this scenario because not too long ago when I was in high school I was expected to write the same way. I loved this article because it takes away the mathematical; boring approach mostly associated with writing papers and gives a fresh look on how to inspire students. After reading this article I decided to look up material similar to it and I chose to share a few quotes with you. I like quotes because generally they are concise but require deep thought to fully understand and apply, so I hope you take a peek and enjoy! (http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-quotes)Now I would like to give a more detailed background on myself so everyone can get to know me a little better. My name is Joe Vitello I have lived in southeast Michigan my entire life and I am 100% Italian (no I wasn’t born it Italy I get that a lot). I made my decision to become a teacher in high school. You might ask why I chose to become a teacher and take this journey? I chose to become a teacher after my school’s English class went to inner city Detroit to help a young group of children with their English assignment. It was in a ran-down Detroit middle school that I made my decision; I wanted to become a teacher. It was very rewarding to see the positive effect I could have on the students there and needless to say the idea was born that took me here to WMU’s ED program. Thank you and I hope you enjoyed my first post!-Joe Vitello