
At some time during my very first year of teaching English to high school students, I realized I did not have a clue how to teach writing. While most preservice future teachers of English at my very fine liberal arts college had been required to take a course in the teaching of grammar, I was able to avoid this horror because my writing sample was deemed excellent. That grammar course was the only one that even attempted to provide a pedagogical lifeline back then to those who would on Day One be handed Warriner’s green grammar book and told to equip these future leaders of the free world with the skills necessary to narrate, explain and persuade. And all in a five paragraph essay. ( yes, I know this is a sentence fragment that starts with a conjunction “And” — a no no!) About this time the National Writing Project in California produced some offspring and I quickly joined what would be the very first group of teachers in The Illinois Writing Project or IWP. Guided eventually by Steve Zemelman and Harvey (“Smokey”) Daniels, thirty of us spent three intensive weeks together one summer. The first week we were asked to become writers ourselves, struggling as do our students, to put pen to paper in a first draft, then receive feedback and revise and fine tune, and finally share or publish a final rendition. (yes, this was before the advent of wordprocessing and computers). The second week we stepped back and read research about the writing process and pedagogical approaches. The third week we began to make changes in our pedagogical preparations and lesson design for the coming year. For me, this was transformational. I became a trainer for IWP and worked with and for them, for a decade, always asking teachers to first remember what it was like to write by becoming a writer.
Fast forward to last week. I am a new administrator lucky to be working in an unbelievable district in Northern California. We have great kids and families, excellent teachers, plenty of resources and beautiful facilities and all of the superior test scores one might expect in such a locale. Last week, I visited some ongoing late summer professional development for K-5 teachers, begun the year before in what they are calling the “writing workshop” approach. When asked to address the group last week, I decided to ask what I thought was a natural question. “How many of you are writers yourselves….of fiction or nonfiction?” Maybe one or two hands raised but it was largely “crickets.” I hope I didn’t come across as a rude newcomer, but I did briefly make the case for teachers having some personal recent experiences with writing as writers themselves to inform the classroom pedagogy they would employ.
I haven’t forgotten this episode from last week, and it continues to bother me for reasons beyond these teachers and that workshop. I suspect that this disconnect between doing and telling, between talking about and performing in real time, is one large reason why schools are struggling to engage students.
Why would I listen to or want to learn from someone who has never done the thing they are telling me how to do? Would I rather have a female doctor who has had children tell me what it will be like to give birth or listen to a male doctor explain the textbook version of the process? I am afraid that most of us lack authenticity and the system of training teachers is largely to blame. Sure, we get to put in observation hours and do a student teaching stint but why is the majority of the training divorced from the actual context of teaching? Across the board, I believe we need an overhaul to create more apprenticeships and relevant career experiences not only for these preservice teachers I have mentioned, but for each one of our students. Do I want to learn how to paint from someone who is a painter or from someone whose lesson plan is found in the teacher’s guidebook for art teachers?
I want teachers who teach writing to be writers themselves. I want teachers of reading to be voracious readers. I want science teachers to be scientists doing real experiments. It is not just students who should be asked to “Think Like an Historian”; so should the history teachers.
Back to the issue of writing. Because writing is so linked to thinking and communicating ideas, I think we should expect those of us in the teaching profession to become writers, however amateur. We should share our stories, our teaching struggles with others. We should write articles, opinion pieces, how-to pieces to help others in our field. And the other real benefit is for our student writers who will see us engaged in the same struggle with words and language and yes, whatever is left today of Warriners’ do’s and don’ts. I am fearful that if we do not take up the pen, we will find it easier and easier to acquiesce to the empty, uninspiring and misleading twitter entries that a certain world leader wields to gain attention. We are living in scary times where language is threatened and devalued. The authentic teaching of writing is one of our best hopes for preserving our freedoms. But we must experience freedom of thought and expression to know its value and urge for its preservation. And so, I ask, “Are you a writer?”
