💬 Tell your story: How did you learn to teach writing?
Let’s start a conversation: How did you learn to teach writing?
As a series, Teach Writing Tomorrow will address major myths and misconceptions about teaching writing. It will move from attitudes to actions and mindsets to methods, showing how any teacher, regardless of their own perceived ability or creativity, can teach writing tomorrow. Subscribe so you don't miss the next update!
When I present my teaching workshop "Help! I don't know how to teach writing!", I begin with the following question: Why is teaching writing difficult? After several workshops, a dozen strong answers emerged.
Why do teachers find teaching writing difficult? Major reasons include lack of training, lack of confidence, or perceived lack of ability. And let's not forget perceived lack of time. All valid reasons.
Why else do teachers find teaching writing difficult? A secondary list includes feeling overwhelmed, subjects not "requiring" writing, tests not requiring writing (so it's not important), and students so lacking in skills and motivation that any progress feels impossible. Also, many just don’t know where to start.
Some teachers just flat out don't want to teach writing. And that's fine. (Well, not really.) But we rationalize where we refuse, so dialogue proves fruitless.
However, other teachers do want to improve teaching writing but face self-limiting beliefs. Whether lack of confidence or ability, logic can't beat these roadblocks. In fact, I can't logically convince where emotions are roadblocks. Instead, I can address emotions as misconceptions.
Let's ask a different question: How did you learn to teach writing?
For most, the simple answer has two words: We didn't. If you never learned to write then never learned to teach it, writing becomes a foreign language. A dead language.
If your teaching program taught writing, all classes are writing classes and all teachers are writing teachers. You may have read, discussed, and wrote about teaching writing. But even this better-oriented philosophy has one major flaw, the same major flaw of all teacher's education programs:
Knowing is not being. Being a student of teaching is not being a teacher of students. Teaching teaches teachers to teach.
Studying writing is not practicing teaching writing. Writing about writing is not teaching writing. A ten page essay is not a lesson plan. After student teaching, many teachers start their careers clueless, inept, and ill-prepared. But hey! They know fancy things.
(As a side note, the teaching profession would be better served by residencies or long-term internships, but that’s quite outside the scope of this project.)
Let's change the tense: How do you learn to teach writing? And let's pretend you know nothing.
If I could time-travel, how-to checklists would have helped, but unless I knew why the activities worked, the checklists would have crumbled with anything unexpected. Teaching writing requires a solid foundation then framework where attitudes become actions and mindsets become methods.
In future posts we’ll work through both the what’s and the why’s of teaching writing.
How did I myself learn to teach writing? I find my story boring, so I'll save it for later. But as an appetizer, I really started learning when I worked past the fatal flaw of many teaching books. I’ll give a quick summary.
Chefs have recipes, musicians have sheet music, and architects have blueprints. But teachers? Our books are furniture catalogues with separated and randomized legs, seats, and fabric. And zero assembly instructions. None. Teaching books offer what's and how's without when's. Activities exist in relation to other activities. But I'll stop my critique before spoiling other posts.
Update: Check out my follow up post, a preview for my fall conference presentation:
Let's start a conversation:
✍️ How did you learn to teach writing? Did your teaching program teach it or did you have to learn on your own? What do you wish you could have learned? Please let me know in the comments section.
While you’re here, check out recent posts with tips and suggestions for teaching writing. While I’m launching Teach Writing Tomorrow as its own series, it will still incorporate past ideas.
As a first-year teacher, I was lucky to get the opportunity to attend writing workshops by Mark Overmeyer. https://markovermeyer.wordpress.com/books/
He taught me about the power of writers workshops and how to teach students to write using examples of high-quality writing from picture books and literature.