“When we write, our entire lives are like a stretch of mountains and we can choose where to dwell.”
-Barry Lane, After THE END
Reading the National Council of Teachers of English Position Statements this week was truly wonderful. I have never found such a clear, well-written philosophy or creed on the topic of writing. Writing- its definition and connotations- has been elusive and vague for teachers and students alike for years. How do you teach writing? What even is writing? “‘Writing’ refers to the act of creating composed knowledge” (NCTE, 2018). What a simple yet profound statement. Writing is communication, art, science – and generally hard for students to get on board with.
“Writing is social and rhetorical. When writers compose—texts to friends, Instagram posts, fan fiction, blogs, or any one of a myriad of sites where they can create identities—they are writing. However, writers increasingly do not recognize these acts as writing, seeing them as distinct from what they are asked to do in school (Lenhart et al). There, analyses have shown that when writing is taught, it is often linked to standards or expectations that writers perceive to be slightly removed or even quite distinct from their experiences, identities, and interests.” (NCTE, 2018)
Many students only see writing as sitting down however long a day in class, getting out their writing notebooks and responding to the prompt with the required number of sentences. It is done in isolation and it better be done in quiet with your eyes on your own work. Saying writing is social is revolutionary in the classroom, yet commonplace in the real world. How many people spend hours of their lives writing stories that they never share with other people? The Emily Dickinsons of the world are rare, yet that is exactly what current education encourages in our schools. There is a greater narrative at play here- writing is storytelling. Telling stories, and stories in general, rules and shapes our lives in every way; stories are usually thought of as fun yet can be dulled down and sanitized by the restrictions and requirements put on students and teachers alike. Teachers teach writing so that they can fulfill the standards, but what if we taught students to write well for themselves too? “Writers also bring their past writing and reading practices with them whenever they write or read” (NCTE, 2018). When this cycle of boring writing perpetuates through the grades, students quickly learn to dread “writing time” and to avoid it at all costs. Sadly, one wonderful year of writing instruction cannot combat years of journals, required sentence amounts, and random prompts. In order to make a change in the world of writing, teachers need to work together. Writers and readers can be scarred from their past classroom experiences, and we need to be sensitive and acknowledge that so we can move forward. “Becoming a better writer requires practice. The more writers write, the more familiar it becomes” (NCTE, 2018). The best way to encourage writing is to write more. This is the same with reading, and with almost any skill a person wants to strengthen. It makes perfect sense when saying it aloud yet seems to also be overlooked in its profoundness. Rarely do we teachers want to put in the hard work for our students when we can more easily fulfill our writing instruction quotas in the more traditional way.
To read the NCTE’s Position Statements, click here.
Mentor Texts’s chapter 4 is all about what to do once you have an idea. Many students, especially with disabilities, have a really hard time adding detail and making the story colorful rather than straight-forward. This is because they have used all their brainpower on communicating and documenting their idea(s)- any additional work seems insurmountable and exhausting. These students need direct instruction and a map of sorts to follow when composing a story. Through dialogue, using the senses, anecdotes, moments, and illustrations, students are able to firmly grasp the details of the story instead of just blindly trying to follow the teacher’s exhortations of “Tell me more”. They have solid ground on which to stand when they recreate a conversation or record what they saw, smelled, heard, tasted, and felt. During my student teaching placement in a middle school, I saw many students doodling during journal time as a form of escape. What if that was considered sufficient? Using students’ skills or a “fun” mentality to spur writing on can be immensely helpful. This is the stuff good writing instruction is made of: research, planning, and knowing your students.
Examples from my writer’s notebook this week:
Speaking of mentor texts, Shortcut is a wonderful example of a picture book slowing down time in writing, as it focuses on one event. Using dialogue and the sense of hearing among others, Donald Crews create a whole book out of one small event in time- a walk home on the train tracks. He adds details that add suspense and creates an overall thrilling story. This book can be used to show students how it is done.
To conclude, in the words of Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s Textbook, “Just look at us, all of us, quietly doing our thing and trying to matter. The earnestness is inspiring and heart-breaking at the same time” (Rosenthal, 2016, p. 121) As a person and teacher this quote hit me hard. I encourage all teachers to try to make their students matter, even if they themselves don’t get the recognition that can sometimes make it all worthwhile. Writing and reading and teaching is hard but caring about it all can make all the difference.
References:
Dorfman, L. R., & Cappelli, R. (2017). Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing through Children’s Literature, K-6 (2nd ed.). Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
Crews, D. (1992). Shortcut. New York, NY: Greenwillow Books.
National Council of Teachers of English. (2018). Understanding and Teaching Writing: Guiding Principles. Retrieved from http://www2.ncte.org/statement/teachingcomposition/.
Rosenthal, A. K. (2016). Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal: Not Exactly a Memoir. New York, NY: Dutton.
Horton Who? 
Emily,
I, too, found it interesting that we, as writers, increasingly fail to recognize many of our daily acts as modes of writing. Recently, my coworker was challenged to document “24 hours of writing” in her life, and she struggled. She said that she often failed to recognize instances where writing was a part of her every day life because they were such common occurrences in her day. Responding to a text message, replying to an e-mail, and leaving a note that the copier was broken are all “uncommon” ways in which she wrote throughout the day. I also resonated with your statement, “Saying writing is social is revolutionary.” While I had positive experiences with writing in school growing up, I would have never considered writing as a social endeavor, but it definitely is! In my own blog post this week, I reflected on NCTE’s priority that students become reflective of their own writing which I argued could best happen through engaging with their peers and the writing that they have created. By writing socially, I think that students will be better able to portray their ideas in ways that are meaningful and effective to readers. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
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Your ability to weave all four course readings AND your own WN is remarkable! This is a real challenge for any writer: How do I connect ideas rather than list ideas? I was particularly thankful for the special education lens that you brought to the readings. Your point that the advice of “adding more detail” isn’t exactly helpful to students, rings so true with my own experiences with writers of all ages. As teachers, we must learn how to teach concrete, specific strategies that support children of all abilities make their decisions about how to best communicate their ideas to a reader. Thanks for pushing my own thinking!
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I really appreciate you bringing up the fact that we can try our best with teaching reading and writing but if students have just one strong year it won’t make the difference we want it to. This is a conversation I had in my science class this week when we were talking about how to utilize science notebooks to make our students better at both writing and scientific thinking. We came to the same conclusion that you did, teachers need to work together to really change things for our students. If we are doing something that is working we should share it with other teachers and be willing to receive from other teachers.
I also really appreciated you bringing up your experience with students that would draw during writing time. I do think teachers need to step back and ask themselves if stopping them would be ignoring a valid skill of theirs. What if we allow them to draw their story? Or turn it into a cartoon/graphic novel format? If we take the time to truly learn our students strengths we can adjust our expectations to help them still meet writing standards and objectives in their own way.
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Emily,
I like how you start off with what writing is. It reminded me of another reading from a different class. I think students should be reminded of this often.
You addressed that we use writing in many aspects of our life. I think it is so important to stress to kids that writing doesn’t just happen in the classroom. In my current teaching position, I see that writing is not practiced as much as it should be because it is not tested on any of the end of grade tests. If it is not practiced and encouraged in the classroom, I worry what their writing skills will be like outside of school.
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