writing

thursday a group of english teachers from mason took the day to look at how we teach writing at mason and what we could do to improve. we focused on preparing our students for the OGT and discussed how we could do that, not by teaching to the test but by helping our students become better writers. many good insights and suggestions came from the day, but most importantly, we came away with with a renewed passion for writing and igniting that passion in our students.

personally, i realized one of my major flaws as a writing teacher is i have never really struggled with writing. expressing myself with the written word has rarely been an issue, so i have a difficult time helping my students with some of their issues because i haven't dealt with them. when asked what i do to write well, i look and shake my head: i don't know, i just write. one of the discussions we had thursday was why more of our students weren't in the accelerated and advanced levels of the OGT. casey voiced my first thought: because they aren't. i do believe some students are more gifted verbally than others. we were chastised for selling our students short. that hurt, probably because it was true. i get weary of repeating myself over and over and seeing the same errors over and over and i begin to think i've taken them as far as they can go. i know i can teach them to be proficient - but how much will i be able to take them to the upper levels if they don't already have some innate skill?

i'm still working on that one, trying not to let my prejudices influence my teaching.

an unexpected side effect of our conversation was a suggestion we possibly drop one of our required texts so we could spend more time with writing. one of the problems with the trimester schedule is the time crunch of squeezing everything into 12 weeks. and i certainly would like to spend more time with writing. but jettisoning literature to help with writing seems counterintuitive. i believe one of the reasons students don't write well is because they don't read enough. you have to be familiar with great writing before you can write your own. i'm sure we could work smaller pieces into our writing instruction, but reading shorter texts requires a different set of skills than longer, complex works. but that's based on feelings, not facts.

i wonder if it would be possible to divide the sophomore year into two halves - focus on writing the first trimester and literature the second. ideally, you teach writing in the context of studying literature, but perhaps our unique schedule requires we try something else. it wouldn't be a complete divide, obviously, but maybe something to look into.

the workshop accomplished its purpose - it got us thinking about writing and it got me excited about teaching writing again. here's hoping my students catch the fire, too.
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Tunes: matthew sweet - i almost forgot