Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter Two

(Page 29) “What good is a curriculum that is a mile wide and an inch deep? What good is it if a student can point out the symbolism found in Lord of the Flies if this same student leaves my class unable to write well enough for college admission or to secure worthwhile employment?...don’t we have a responsibility that reaches far beyond simply covering our courses’ content? Shouldn’t we concern ourselves a little less with getting students to recite facts and figures and concern ourselves more with helping them develop these cornerstone skills they will need to lead literate lives?”

My apologies for pulling a long quote here, but it’s a key one from this chapter for me. Courses have so many standards to cover these days, it’s about impossible to teach them all well. Or should I just leave out the word “about” there? Is it more important to go over (and sometimes that all time allows) every single point to be able to say we went over it in class, or would it be more beneficial for students if we spent more time going in depth on fewer topics? I know, I know what everyone’s thinking: But we have the end of course tests! I saw Ellin Keene speak a few years ago (she wrote Mosaic of Thought), and she made the point that students who think well test well. I don’t know why that was such an epiphany for me—it seems like common sense. Who typically does well on standardized tests? Honors kids. And who do we always tend to worry about when EOC and HSAP roll around? Our special ed and lower level students. Perhaps we would better serve our students if we taught them how to think rather than just to spit information back to us. Which will be of more service to students ten years down the road?

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter One

(Page 9) “It’s one thing to assign writing to students; it’s another to teach them how to write.”

I think this is a huge problem with students. My theory is that often when teachers give students a writing assignment, the teacher has in his or her head what that assignment should like but never parlays it to the student. Sure, the assignment seems simple, but so does anything that you have straight in your mind. All writing is not created equal. The things you do for a persuasive essay are different from those you to for a lab report or reasearch paper on the Holocaust. When giving a writing assignment, we must explain to the students how to do it…we can’t expect them to learn all types of writing in the English classroom because the English teacher isn’t an expert in all types of writing! By scaffolding writing assignments, we can make students better writers. I think those of you who teach resource or and/or on a freshman team are at an advantage because you get to see your students all year long, so you can “grow” them over a longer period of time. That’s not to say progress can’t be made in a semester, but it is a little more challenging. But, hey, what’s teaching if it’s not a challenge?

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