Writing about writing—by the Write Source staff

Q. True or false: The primary theme of The Great Gatsby is the disintegration of the American Dream during the very height of material prosperity in the 1920’s.

A. In the very act of asking that question, I have imposed two assumptions upon you.
    1. You ought to have read The Great Gatsby.
    2. The American Dream is related to an empty and unsatisfying material prosperity.

Maybe you agree with both of those assumptions. That is not the point. I could as easily have asked the following.

Q. True or false: The primary theme of Atlas Shrugged is the hampering of individual excellence by collectivist mediocrity.

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“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”
—Malcolm S. Forbes

I’m big on student-centered learning. That’s why I’m such a strong proponent of using the workshop approach to help students develop their writing skills. (See my blog entry “Writing Workshops: The Only Way to Go.”) This past week I read an encouraging post, “Teaching Without a Script,” on the New York Times‘ Lesson Plans blog. In that essay, Matthew Kay describes his teaching experience at the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) in downtown Philadelphia, and, as he puts it, things are so good that teachers and students are reluctant to leave at the end of the school day:

Even as I write this, student laughter is floating up from our café—late on a Friday afternoon. Some have stepped out to get Chinese, and now they are back—to hang out with teachers in the principal’s office.

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“Don’t say the old lady screamed—bring her on and let her scream.”
—Mark Twain

Be more specific. Give me an example. Show, don’t tell. How often does a writing teacher write or state these words during the school year? Too many times to count, right? We’ve heard of teachers who have had special stamps made because they’ve become so tired of writing “Give me an example” on student papers. The problem is, of course, that students too often state general idea after general idea in their writing without incorporating specific examples to support their generalizations.

So how should this problem be approached? It’s obvious that simply telling students to add more examples isn’t effective. Even showing them how professional writers develop their ideas isn’t enough (although this does help). Students learn to add substance and depth to their writing through regular practice.

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The National Writing Project (NWP) has caught my attention again. In my last blog entry, “Writing to Learn Revisited…Again,” I expressed my concern (alarm?) about an Education Week article discussing a writing-to-learn workshop for teachers in Oakland, California. As I stated, writing to learn has been around forever, and I thought it was pretty much a standard teaching strategy known about and used by most teachers. I also called NWP’s effectiveness into question since they are still spreading the word about writing to learn, some 20 or 30 years after it was first introduced.

This week I got my NWP fix in an interview, “The Written Word,” that appeared on the Teacher Magazine Web site (September 18). In this interview, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, NWP Director of National Programs, was asked about differentiation and writing instruction. She noted that the NWP programs “invest in the teachers, making sure that they understand writing inside out.” (I wonder if that includes writing to learn.)

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Here’s an intriguing approach to marking papers, and for convincing students to pay attention to those marks.

—Les

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Every generation has a tendency to deride the next as frivolous and lazy. Over the past decade, for example, the phrase “short attention span” has become almost cliché in reference to young people. Those of us who grew up before the Internet and cell phones remember a time when people actually read books and wrote letters to one another; now, it seems, they read only blog entries and send 140-character text messages or Twitter posts. What, oh what, is this world coming to?

But wait a minute. Let’s consider a different example. In the writers group my friend and colleague Rob King founded a little over ten years ago, I am the token poet among fiction authors—most of them novelists. That makes me the seeming “short attention span” member of the group (especially given my preference for tiny things like lunes and senryu…sonnets at the longest). Novelists sprawl their writing across several hundred pages, slowly but inexorably nurturing within the reader an extended experience, like a farmer tending a crop. Poets, on the other hand, focus their language, hoping to hook and land a reader like a fish almost before that reader recognizes what has happened.

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Education Week published an online article called “Writing to Learn” on August 27. Since I write about writing, and believe strongly in writing as a learning tool, I was interested in what the article had to say. My guess was that it would explain that writing to learn is a common strategy used in today’s classrooms—and that it is proving to be an effective learning tool for students.

After all, “writing to learn” has been around a long time—at least 30 years. I came across the concept more than 20 years ago in a local workshop, and I still have my well-worn copy of Roots in the Sawdust: Writing to Learn Across the Disciplines (copyright 1985). We’ve included writing-to-learn strategies in our writing handbooks, starting with Writers INC, ever since the late 80s.

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What makes human beings different from other great apes? Here are some human capacities that have been suggested:

• Tool use: Sorry. Chimps on Madagascar make and use stone tools.
• Language: Nope. In addition to their native hoots and howls, great apes have learned to use—and create—hundreds of hand signs.
• Self-awareness: Wrong again. Though monkeys don’t recognize themselves in mirrors, great apes do.
• Empathy: Tell that to Koko the gorilla, who spent weeks mourning the death of her kitten, All Ball (which, by the way, she named).
• Learning: Um, have you ever heard of “monkey see, monkey do?”

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September 11th 2008 Posted to Rob King

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Writing is essentially a solitary act wherein writers put their fingers to the keyboard or pen to paper to create something that is truly their own. But writing should also be a communal or shared activity. Most writers, in fact, do their best work when they have the support of their peers. As educators Dan Kirby and Tom Liner state in their book Inside Out, “…learners and writers need to construct personal versions of the world around them, but then they also need to submit those unique versions to peers for response, negotiation, and confirmation.”

Peer support can manifest itself in a number of ways. For example, before some writers even get started, they find it helpful to talk with their peers about a potential writing idea. Other writers appreciate specific feedback during the development of their work. Still others find their fellow writers most helpful at the end of the process when they evaluate the finished piece. In truth, a supportive writing community does all of this, and much more.

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As promised in my last post, I’ve provided here a few practical strategies for connecting your writing and reading programs:

1. Use the same terminology for writing and reading.
   When writing fiction, students should use the words of literary analysis: character, setting, plot, theme, and so forth. So, too, when reading nonfiction, students should use the traits of writing: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. By using a common vocabulary throughout the language arts curriculum, you not only avoid confusion but also help students see themselves as writer-readers and reader-writers.
2. Use the same graphic organizers for writing and reading.
   The graphic organizers that help students gather details during prewriting can also help them analyze details after reading. For example, if students use a Venn diagram to prepare to write a comparison-contrast essay, have them also use a Venn diagram to analyze a comparison-contrast essay. Graphic organizers, after all, are mind maps—ways of making thinking concrete. Using the same strategy to synthesize ideas as to analyze ideas helps students understand that reading and writing are opposite vectors of the same process.

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September 05th 2008 Posted to Rob King

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