Teaching the writer, not the writing
Writing is hard.
That’s exactly what I tell my high school seniors when I roll out the first writing assignment of the year. They usually chuckle or smile wryly and say something like, yeah, tell us something we don’t know. Or they mumble something self-deprecating—I’ve just never been a good writer, or I’ve always struggled with writing. The thing is, I say to them, writing is hard for almost everyone—even people who are good at it. Although they seem a little dubious about this last statement, I try to make it real for them by bringing up other examples, often rooted in things they are now good at, but seemed hard at first—dribbling a basketball with their left hand, long division, parallel parking—to name a few. I ask them how they got good at these things and if it was easy and they almost always respond with stories about how hard it was at first and how much time and effort they had to put in to get good at it.
Then it’s time to convince them that becoming a better writer is worth that same kind of time and effort. I usually begin with some totally incendiary statement, something like: Despite how (insert name of popular math teacher in our school) has convinced you that English and math are equally important, it is not true; English is infinitely more important than math. Yep, I say this aloud and then I ask my students, why do you think this is? Once we start talking about it and they really start thinking about it, they realize that I’m not kidding. They begin to understand that there will not be any classes in college where they don’t have to read and understand text or write a paper, regardless of what they’re studying. In short, they began to understand just how much their own success—in just about any forum—is conflated with literacy. In school and in life, the ability to communicate effectively through writing is paramount.
Luckily, there is an increasing body of research to support these assertions. Simply put, the capacity to write well plays a critical role in college and career readiness (Conley, 2003; National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2018) and not only that, but there is also strong evidence to suggest that emphasizing literacy (ie, reading and writing skills) when teaching non-ELA subjects, actually helps deepen student engagement with those subjects (Graham & Hebert, 2010; Graham, Kiuhara, & MacKay, 2020).
What this means, in essence, is that not only do students learn about writing from writing instruction, but they also learn more effectively about other subjects when they learn to write about them. This is true because, as any English teacher will tell you, writing is thinking and teaching students to become better writers is, in fact, teaching them to become better thinkers.
With all of this in mind, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about own philosophy of writing instruction. What are the fundamental ideas that guide my pedagogy and practice? How can I make sure these ideas are rooted not only in my intention to improve student writing, but also in the latest research, my empathy for my students and my own best practices, as they continue to evolve. In thinking about these things, a couple of fundamental ideas emerge:
1. Create a class culture that inspires students to want to become better writers.
As I alluded to in the preceding paragraphs, writing instruction in my class begins with a shared understanding between my students and me that being a good writer is hard work, but that it is worthwhile hard work. As the facilitator in the room, my job is to create and foster a culture of growth, support and enthusiasm around writing—and an environment in which my students not only have room to grow, but also a clear idea of why it is critically important to do so.
Additionally, I try to help my students to conceptualize writing as an instrument for thinking, reflecting and learning, as well as a form of self expression and communication. Often they come to high school believing that writing is simply a tool used to express themselves or a product to evaluate their knowledge and understanding, rather than a practice and process by which they actually accrue knowledge and understanding. This shift from product to process requires writing instruction to be focused on the writer, rather than on the writing. When this shift happens, students are more likely to understand that their writer-ness resides in them and that they can apply these same skills in other contexts. This agency becomes a cornerstone in the metacognitive framework which enables them to to actively cultivate their own engagement and confidence when writing in all kinds of contexts.
2. Model how good writers work on writing.
Yesterday, as I introduced a new writing assignment to my 12th grade students, I began by writing a sample paragraph on the whiteboard. As I wrote each sentence, I explained my purpose and thinking about the sentence and asked for suggestions to write the next sentence. Although to my students, it probably felt like a collaborative effort, the paragraph was very intentional in its structure and organization and in sharing it with my students, as I talked about my thinking at each step, I hoped to show them not only what good writing looks like, but also how good writers work on writing.
Like many best practices in high school classrooms, this one works best when the relationship between teachers and students has a strong foundation of trust, respect and empathy. Teachers model how to do a writing task, narrating their thinking at every step, and students repeat the process, explaining their actions as they go. This period of guided practice can be followed by a period of thoughtful reflection, in which students consider their own process and identify consistent strategies to mitigate the challenges they encounter. Research suggests that this model can be a highly effective way for K-12 educators to help students improve their writing, as they are basically treating their students as apprentices in the craft of advanced literacy (Benjamin, Wagner 2021). Of course, apprenticeships have been widely implemented in various career paths and this concept of “cognitive apprenticeships” has long circulated among experts in reading and mathematics instruction. Nonetheless, this idea often remains an occasional practice among English teachers, rather than a consistent strategy formally incorporated into their pedagogy and practice.
3. When responding to student writing, meet students where they are.
Despite all the new thinking and research about how to teach writing effectively, so many high school teachers still respond to student writing in the same way their high school teachers responded to theirs. Cryptic marginalia pointing out fragments and awkward sentence structure, illegible notes about adding more detail, and scribbled circles around spelling and other surface errors are frequently what students see first when they have an essay returned to them. What this signals to students is that these are the most important elements of their writing and that there is a way to “edit” or “fix” their writing, once and for all.
Instead, I try to use “our meeting on the page” as a place to acknowledge where they are as writers and to help move them forward. This often begins with me noting something they already do well (maybe, “I like the way you your introduced your thesis here!” or “I really like this idea, but I need a little more information to understand it better…”) and then maybe asking a question to try and help them to stretch, as writers, to think a little more deeply about what they’re writing about (“Why is that important to the conversation?” Or, “Can you add an example here that would really drive your point home?”) Sometimes, a simple invitation to keep going with their train of thought is all a student needs (“go on…” or “love this, keep going…”) In short, I try to use my comments on the page to signal my values about writing and to help my students adopt meaningful practices in which they are constantly—and confidently—working to grow as writers.
Finally, my favorite part of this enterprise—and probably the most effective site to really impact student writing—is the one-on-one writing conference. For me, these usually happen by appointment, early in the morning before classes begin. As a senior teacher, I spend lots of hours reading personal essays for college and these conferences are an opportunity for me to get to know my students and also to identify specific ways to help them become stronger writers. Again, I avoid focusing on the surface errors (spelling, punctuation, grammar) and always preface our conversation with an acknowledgement that although there may be a few errors here and there, they can easily fixed during the final edit. Instead, I read with care and try to cultivate every bit of mindfulness I can to really be present with my student and their writing. I ask questions. I admire the things they do well. I tell them the parts that didn’t come together for me. What I needed as a reader to understand more fully. I urge them to sit with my comments before they start re-writing and to reject the comments they didn’t find useful. My goal is for each student to leave the conference feeling confident and inspired to work on that piece of writing. And, although some teachers feel annoyed getting that late-night email from a student asking you to take one more look at the changes they made, I always feel a little proud that they are working hard to be better writers and that they trust me to help them do it.
