History of IRW at SFSU

In what ways does the article "speak to" your prior two blog postings?  (In what ways did it change, expand, support, contradict or add complexity to your prior ideas?)  What questions do you have about the articles or the issues raised in the articles? 

I monopolized the dinner conversation last night with explaining the two Goen articles. In “Integrating Reading and Writing: A Response to the Basic Writing ‘Crisis’” and “Critiquing the Need to Eliminate Remediation: from San Francisco State” Sugie Goen Salter (and Helen Gillotte-Tripp in the former) explain the history of SFSU’s IRW stretch class, including the fascinating fact that the administration only agreed to a trial of integrating the two fields after monetary pressure was placed on the university by budget cuts and mandates to all but eliminate remediation for incoming students. 

The year-long IRW course that the English department designed eventually replaced two semesters of English Writing and English Reading (taught separately) followed by a traditional FYC class in the second year. By integrating reading and writing instruction, instructors were able to demonstrate for students the overlap and connection between the two skills, which enabled students to learn faster. Students in the IRW course were able to get up to a Freshman-level competency in reading and writing after just the one year rather than needing to take an additional composition class, and the IRW students had a higher pass rate in their sophomore level comp classes as well.

When I explained all this to my husband, he said, “duh.” And, yeah, duh. It just makes so much sense that students who are practicing reading to write and writing to read and hearing about thesis, main ideas and topic sentences in the context of both input and output would grow faster.

What surprised me in the article, however, was the assertion that maybe colleges need to drop the pressure to eliminate remediation and come to acknowledge that 40 to 45 percent of 18 and 19 year old students coming out of high school will initially lack the critical thinking skills and practice necessary to interpret, respond to and produce work for the academy. In other words, there is no Basic Skills crisis. I took this to mean that perhaps there is no such thing as “basic skills” so much as not-yet-developed proficiency. 

Unfortunately, teaching at the community college level, my department completely segregates reading and writing. We don’t even hold faculty meetings together. So while the skills I’m teaching my students are important and are getting them to the next level in their writing (I believe), I don't have the time or the support from administration to link the student’s writing to the reading process. I do spend a lot of time early in the semester introducing annotation and encouraging students to take notes as they read and use those notes to inform their writing, but I can’t give that equal rate, and there’s no time to dive into lengthier, weightier readings.

Or maybe there could be time. I’ve already thrown “this is writing only” out the window. I wonder if there’s a way to weave even more reading curriculum into the SLOs I’m trying to meet? It certainly seems a disservice to my students not to weight both equally. I wonder when or if IRW will trickle down to the community college level in the Bay Area? I’ve been told that the topic is a non-starter because the reading faculty don’t want to lose their jobs (and vice versa). That seems like a crap reason not to teach our students well.

Final question: I’m not entirely clear on how KWL+ works. I think I understand how it could be used in a peer review session, but I’m unclear what the application is for reading.