Its Not WHAT They Write, Its THAT They Write

Teens don’t care much about anything else except themselves, which is why most of the journal prompts I give are centered on themselves and what they think. The point is not about what they write, but that they right. The article, “It’s the THAT Teacher” by Ted Hipple, talks about why teachers should be more preoccupied with the fact that students are reading and not what they are reading. Hipple states that because we force students to read the books that we need them to read, they will try their hardest to avoid literature because “the longer the kid stays in school, for many youngsters, the worse it gets, with greater and greater pressures to read and understand. The joy of reading is gone (pg 3).” The pressure we put on kiddos to read our books and understand a book our way is sucking the life out of fun reading, and many students will read no longer. So, if we tell students what to read and what to write about, our students will dread English Language Arts for the rest of their lives.

            We must allow students to pick what they want to read and what to write about. When we decide that students are going to write about communism, and its effects on human behavior, we have just lost them forever. First they cannot connect to communism because they haven’t ever experienced it, and second they will just repeat all of the examples you give them to write about because they have no real thoughts about communism other than what information you have provided them with. This isn’t the case for all writing about communism, though. I could assign a paper on communism and its effects in Cambodia, and the kids will be more drawn to that, because of the book we are reading now. I would read about five of these papers and be bored out of my mind. I could instead have them write Arn Charn-Pond a story they most remember about their childhood or when they were Arn’s age. These would be full of life and emotion. They would be full of descriptive words and metaphors. They would touch the reader more than a research paper about communism. I understand however that research papers are needed, and thus cannot be avoided, but man, how awesome would it be if students came to class eager to write and share their writing with the class each and every day? I know I would have loved it.

genunine responses

            “Writing in isolation without lively response is like other solitary activities…They do not get much better” –Dan Kirby

             I never thought about why people respond to actions or products that others make, but it is built in us to provide some sort of response. The thing about grading writing in the classroom is that most teachers respond with corrections rather than responses, which doesn’t help the writer get any better. This just keeps them right where they are because they know their grade, but do not know how to make it better.

            I say most teachers and I do not include myself because I have a tendency to ignore grammar and spelling. If the paper is a good paper, the writer gets a good grade. I think it’s because I was scared as a student in grade school when all of my papers came back bleeding because of all my grammar errors and my grade only made it worse. I often wondered what my teachers thought of it and if they liked it even if it was an awful paper. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I had an awesome teacher who told us from the get go, “when you get your papers back, you will see plenty of red, but find your grade to be higher than you expect.” He made sure we noticed all of our errors so we could fix them, but he actually read what we had written. He and I would also talk about my papers and he would talk about other kids’ papers in class. He actually read our work! That changed my outlook on grading papers forever. And curiously enough, most of my teachers after that have given me great feedback on the things I write.

            I make it an effort to respond with genuine responses to my students writing, but what if there is no time to respond genuinely to everyone’s writing? What are some things you do to respond genuinely to student writing and still have enough time to sleep and other necessities?