Letter to Dr. Thomas Newkirk

Dear Dr. Newkirk,

                Before attending The Rhode Island Writing Project Conference, I wanted to familiarize myself with some of your earlier work. Perusing JSTOR.com, I found an interesting article titled “The Dogma of Transformation,” that you wrote back in 2004. First, let me say that it was a really interesting article, and I am wondering how you stumbled upon such fascinating writing! I hope that one day I can get my students to write such great narrative pieces like the writers you displayed in the essay. I think the concept of the “innocent bystander” that writes whatever he or she observes does help future writers grasp the basic concepts of analyzing literature before connecting it to them. This essay got me thinking about the importance of narration in all forms of writing, but it wasn’t until your speech that it really hit home.

                When I read through the common core, it didn’t seem so bad. Higher emphasis on connecting to literature and finding evidence in the text to support claims and answers seems like a good thing. I am curious Dr. Newkirk, if you know the reasons behind the common core state standards divergence from fiction and narrative writing and towards more non-fiction and informative texts. I listened to a few speeches by the man himself, Mr. David Coleman, and it just seems that by graduation, they really just want students to be able to read an abundance of really complicated college level texts, with less emphasis on being able to write those narrative pieces text that you seem you still feel is so important to maintain in high school, and that they have been writing since elementary school. As a current college student and having just recently finished my Seminar in English Language Arts, I can attest that I was reading some extremely difficult analytical essays that I spent days trying to comprehend, and wish I had seen some of those earlier in my educational career.

                I am close, but have yet to see a first-person perspective of how the common core affects classrooms, and more importantly, how much it affects writing. I want my kids to be engaged in narrative writing, but I just feel that they have been doing it since 5^th grade, and can now move on to more non-fiction and informative texts and writing about them. Is that wrong? Again, I do agree that narrative writing is everywhere, and I will make sure they have a very firm grasp of the concepts at the beginning of the year, but am I wrong for thinking that they already have those concepts down pat when they enter 9^th grade?

Sincerely,

Ryan Marsland