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.