Strong Response Blog #2

A common belief today regarding students involved in writing is that because of the relationship with their teacher and the way they teach causes them to be less skilled . In Peg Tyre’s article “The Writing Revolution”, published in the Atlantic on October 2012, Tyre explores the causes of low reading and writing skills in New Dorp, and evaluates possible solutions through a narrative-like style and data driven style of writing.

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Tyre examines the possible roots to the problems in New Dorp and explains how students nowadays are unable to convey complex thoughts in writing. One solution that seemed promising which Tyre focuses on is the Common Core program. New Dorp administrators were inspired by Wynward School, a small highly acclaimed private school, to incorporate writing in almost every subject except for math. Tyre points out that students were not able to elaborate on topics and transition between ideas. The Common Core curriculum, made popular by New Dorp, is now expanding nationwide to help struggling students in every state achieve what New Dorps have achieved. Tyre claims “The students who had begun receiving the writing instruction as freshmen were already scoring higher on exams than any previous New Dorp class,” highlighting how a public school once known for their dropout rates and failing scores is now known for their high passing percentages and elite test scores even through the hardships of poverty and crime.

Tyre claims that [kids]ids who come from poverty, who had weak early instruction, or who have learning difficulties, he explains, “can’t catch anywhere near what they need”. By exposing this, it acts as another reason as to why students cannot do as well as expected because of family situations. This idea is implemented to show an emotional appeal to the audience that expects these kids to do good no matter, the author is saying that even though kids cannot perform well in a malfunctioning teaching environment, if they have a bad environment at home as well, it can be also a huge problem when trying to express themselves.

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Tyre shares similar ideas as writer Linda Christensen, which wrote “Teaching Standard English, Whose Standard?”. They both pose a claim that the English language and writing system should be changed in order for students to perform well, and even though they have different ideas, they do believe that kids’ problems such as family situations and poverty may should be highlighted when taking into consideration how a student is doing in their writing process and assignments. They both also share the way they introduce students and their writings processes in their writings as a way to demonstrate these students’ abilities before and after programs or new ideas had been implemented. Tyre uses more examples than Christensen , however, because Christensen likes to ad commentary as to why she is doing to approach these students and why as shown by bolded texts, while Tyre prefers to support her arguments and ideas through data, which is more helpful when appealing to the public audience since people believe a theory or idea to be a fact when data is involved, her work also tends to focus more on single students rather a class as a whole, which is better because it helps to know that the program works for at least one person through observations and facts learned through time.

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Tyre’s work relies on data throughout the text. Works that rely on data are difficult to refuse and find arguments against it because it is not just opinion anymore, ideas are easier to support and it shows the audience why your idea makes sense. One of the examples used is how in 2009, a student named Monica believed her academic future was cloudy but after New Dorp, she had “complex and details ideas”(Tyre) and she had a “newfound ability to write solid, logically ordered paragraphs about what’s she learned”( Tyre). Giving this example at the beginning and last part of the article shows the concept of progress through time and that this student benefited from it, which is a strong argument. Her work being data driven is extremely more helpful than just saying what she believes.

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Tyre tries to open our eyes regarding these issues with students and shows us a solution as well, I liked that she showed all these examples and the progress these students had, I agreed with her that schools should take into account these when analyzing students’ performance because when taking into account one can understand through a psychological point of view and understand behavior. Tyre also provides plenty of data to support her claims which builds a strong argument I also agree we need more programs like Common Core because it will help tremendously our students.

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Tyre, Peg. “The Writing Revolution.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 19 Feb. 2014, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-writing-revolution/309090/.

Christensen, Linda M. “Teaching Standard English: Whose Standard?” The English Journal, vol. 79, no. 2, 1990, pp. 36-40.