In the midst of this interchange, Liz posed a question that I take as
central to this whole enterprise. In essence, she asked, “Whose meaning
matters? The writer’s or the reader’s?” During discussion of a piece called
“Beautiful Butterfly” in our third session, Cherylann had talked about the
writer’s voice and the reader’s voice. She named the issue but didn’t really
push the question. The problem was complicated for these teachers. If
the job of a writing teacher is to help children communicate clearly and
effectively what they mean to say, how might the teacher attend to both
the child’s intent and the meaning the teacher makes from the text? This
question is further complicated by recognizing the remarkable variety of
meanings that could be drawn from a single text.
In retrospect, it is no surprise that Liz raised this question when we
were talking about teaching moves. Just a bit later, Margaret picked up on
this issue of multiple meanings: “If you are to read it aloud and say there are
lots of ways of looking at this, it opens up for a writer a different way of look-
ing at their work. It would be interesting to see if the child saw other ways.”
Talking About the Conversation
The last steps in the protocol are to conclude the discussion of teach-
ing moves, thank the presenting teacher for sharing the work with the
group, and make sure everyone is prepared to move from talking about
the work in question to talking about the conversation about the work.
Julie felt it was time to move on. She checked with the group, and getting
consent, she moved into the reflection on the conference.
“All I can say is, whatever you are doing, you are doing a great job
because when she [Pam’s student, Jessica] left me at the end of last year,
she couldn’t do this. Bits of it, maybe, but not all of this. So I applaud
you,” said Alyce, starting off the reflection.
Pam took a turn to talk about her experience of the discussion. Frus-
tration was the first thing she expressed: “That was really hard not to talk,
and I felt a lot of time was wasted on ‘tulips.’ If I could have just said, ‘This
is how she meant it!’ The tulip conversation was OK that it went that way,
but at the time it seemed like wasted time. And I just wanted to say, ‘flow-
ers that are red and blue [pause] tulips!’ And get on to the next thing!”
Wonder ing to Be Done 245