Chapter 12: Enabling Writing

“It’s the head-to-page trip that is so frightening and difficult for writers. Acting as coaches of writing, teachers can assist students by helping them understand the strategies they are using and suggesting others they might use, by raising questions and more questions as the text emerges, and by encouraging and supporting student decision-making throughout the growth of the piece” (295). This quote included in the beginning of chapter 12 really resonated with me because I immediately connected it to my Teaching Adolescent Readers course and Jeffrey Wilhelm. It is our job as teachers to enable our students to write in a way that allows them to accurately express the thoughts and feelings they decide they want to communicate to others. The question, of course, is how can we do that in an individualized way when we have 30+ students in each class who may have different needs?
I love that the chapter is a practical guide to teaching all types of students at varying levels in their abilities to write effectively. The first activity that struck me is called “Coauthoring Activities” and describes several different ways to engage students in task-driven writing. I can see how this may interest un-motivated or struggling writers because there are many options for some activities that could be really fun. I would have no problem giving my students a list of 3 or 4 options on this list and having them choose which one appeals to them most. I think this would provide students the amount of creative freedom they would need to really get into an assignment. I know I always liked it when I had a choice, because I didn’t get many at that age.
I actually did an activity that would count as an example of this coauthoring at a practicum I completed for another class. I had two groups of students, both 12th grade; one class was comprehensive level, the other honors. I gave them both the same assignment, which was to satirize a social issue that they thought was important and share it with the whole class. The students were divided into groups of 3 or 4 and they had about 20 minutes to use newspapers, or their own thoughts, to come up with a short satire of issues like rising gas prices, teen pregnancy, etc. It turned out really well for most every group, and every group presented to the class. I have this student work in my files and I will always remember it as a great experience. This activity would act as a support for reading Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal in my classroom, and would help them all to understand the convention of writing satire, which is a part of KY Core Content, and often on ACT/SAT exams as well.
I also love the section of this chapter that deals with journal writing because I think it is an essential part of a successful English classroom. In every English course that I ever loved we had to keep journals. I have kept those journals, and I hope to use them with my own students. The students can have purposeful writing that is geared toward the objectives for the day, as in a sponge activity or a reflection at the end of a lesson, or they can also use the journal for personal questions they have, reflection on what is going on in their life, etc. This gives the teacher a way to grade the students on participation and also to gain insight into their personal lives they may not choose to share in any other way. I like, too, that the chapter suggests confidentiality as a very important part of journal writing. If you don’t build that trust in students that you won’t share their writing with anyone else, they won’t be as free with their writing. As the chapter suggests: “If students know that we guarantee their right to privacy, they may feel an even greater sense of freedom and may risk writing about private thoughts and feelings. We are not trying to become confessors or counselors, but as educators, we might agree with Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth living and that self-knowledge is both curative and painful” (306).
Another strategy for enabling writing that I like is the idea of whole-class discussion. This isn’t always something that can be done at the beginning of the school year, necessarily, but after the building of community among the students and the modeling of the art of communication, students can often gain support, new ideas, and also constructive criticism from a whole-group discussion. I think it is a mark of maturity for students to be able to do this effectively, as well. I can easily assess how the students are making connections or not within their reading/writing if we discuss the writing, and also know where I need to make change in my instructional methods to help those students that don’t engage as easily.