On the teaching of writing

.

A former student just asked to interview me and I said yes. Since I spent thirty minutes on this, I figured, why not share with another audience?

. 

1. What is your approach to teaching writing? What skills do you try to emphasize?
2. Much of my teaching (including teacher writing) is based on the theory that if I honestly like what we're doing, it'll be easier for me to sell that to students. So I try to shape my curricula around things I think are fun and interesting and worth my time. I don't believe in lying to students and telling something is fun or interesting or important when it isn't. But it's my job to make that true.
3. With that in mind, I don't get hung up on easily defined "skills" like many of my colleagues. English teachers have all the acronyms and jargon for how to create a thesis or order claim and evidence. That stuff matters of course, but if kids will read and write they'll get better. So the most important thing is to get them doing it.
4. All that really matters to be is clarity. Clarity comes first. When you're motivated to be clear, you'll discover the importance of a thesis and the relationship between claim and evidence.
5. Constant writing gives students the chance to apply their discoveries and to keep moving forward.
6. The two most important means I have to teach writing are
7. 1) Grading on the projector, letting everyone see me modeling reading and understanding (and failing to understand) alongside realtime suggestions on how to make the next draft more clear
8. 2) When students come see me at lunch for one-on-one discussions of their writings. Wish I could require this.
9. Have you taught classes other than AP Lit? How do they differ from AP Lit?

10. thmazing — 4:06 PM

    Yes. I've taught ninth graders (both advanced, not advanced, and combined), tenth graders (all three again), eleventh grade not-advanced, twelfth grade not-advanced, AP Lang, and a remedial course called Read 180. Also, I've twice taught PE. Not credentialed to teach PE.
11. The primary difference between AP Lit and the others is that AP Lit usually has a higher percentage of students ready for my predilections: making students read more and write more while simultaneously making them ask their own questions. Also, in terms of classtime, I prefer students to do most of the talking. That's easier to pull off when students have self-selected for a collegiate experience.
12. Does the formal and standardized structure from CollegeBoard help with teaching? Hurt?
13. I pay very little attention to what CollegeBoard says and does. I do think the test is motivating for many students and it never hurts to have one more motivation, but otherwise I don't care that much what they say.
14. Their trainings are, on average, the best trainings I've been to. But that's because it's actual AP Lit teachers teaching them. Learning from them is what's useful. The worst parts are all the worried questions new AP teachers ask about making CollegeBoard happy. That's not a great use of our time.
15. In class, we had freewrite “Essais”. What made you do these, and how do you think they contribute to student writing learning?
16. Part of my inspiration was John Warner who writes unusually good stuff on teaching writing.

    The tyranny of getting stuff in the right order

    . First, I screwed up and left off a book. So I'm putting it in where it should have gone, then getting back on track and ending with, wai...

    
17. I used to have college freshmen come back and say thanks, AP Lit prepared me for college, etc etc. But themn they would add that the one thing they hadn't been prepared for was how much writing they would have to do. I'd told them but it still came as a shock.

18. thmazing — 4:14 PM

    So I decided to add more writing. At first, I was adding more AP tests. I figured I'd add a few more each semester until my students broke.
19. But—
20. I broke first. It was too much grading!
21. Then I moved to doing one or two AP-style essays every week but only grading a few, selected at random.
22. This was great in many ways. Most students got amazing at writing AP essays.
23. But ten to twenty percent did not. Instead, they got trapped in a loop writing the same crap over and over.
24. "Practice doesn't make perfect; it makes permanent."
25. And getting their bad essays cemented into the only way they could write was a disservice.
26. I had to reimagine things.
27. Which is how I ended up with essais.
28. This way, we write every week still, but it's not always AP stuff.
29. Other times it's this charming random stuff.
30. And here's what I discovered:
31. EVERYONE gets better now.
32. "Essay" comes for the French word for try and when everyone gets full points just for writing for forty minutes, the stress of "doing it right" floats away. And that freedom to try a whole bunch of random stuff without the stress of some punitive rubric hanging over you allows everyone to just try random stuff. And all that random stuff provides lots of new tools and means to solve problems with writing. The essais might feel like silly fun (because they are) but they make students much better writers.
33. If you think back to being two, ALL learning was play.
34. Keeping learning play is one of the best things any human can do for themselves.
35. But school isn't very friendly to that attitude.
36. If I can get people to play with words, then they'll be better writers, even when they have to writer Very Serious Garbage for some annoying required course.
37. IIs there value in the in-class timed essays outside of AP test prep?
38. I think so. Being able to execute any task with skill in a limited amount of time is better than only being able to execute a task with skill when you have endless time.

39. thmazing — 4:22 PM

    Someday, every one of my students will have half an hour max to write a do-or-die email to their boss explaining something or asking for something or to mitigate something. Being able to crank out a reasonable, understandable, elegant argument in that timeframe may be thanks to AP Lit, whether they realize it or not.
40. Ta da!