A Cross Road with Writing Needs and Writing Assistance Tools
There is a famous poem by Robert Frost about “two roads that diverge in a yellow wood” that is probably in every English poetry anthology at some point. I feel that is where I am.
I’ve started school for the 2020/2021 school year back on August 26th with my students. We are a mix of face to face and fully virtual. The teachers at my school (at least at the secondary level) are teaching both options at the same time. Face to face kids meet four days a week. All kids are virtual one day, but we meet on Zoom with our full-time virtual kids. The schedule has been crazy, and we were told by our district not to start any content and just do social and emotional learning (SEL), technology, and PBIS lessons until the middle of the second week. As a PBIS fan, SEL fan, and technology fan, I saw no issues with this.
With content only really starting the end of last week, I was able to do a few writing assignments with my kids. All of them have been informal pre-assessments, and I just wanted to see what they can do. As I’ve told the kids, I’m not “grading” them, but I will respond to them, give them feedback, and give them points for their efforts. Create a safety net where they aren't afraid of failure or being right. Over the years I’ve found these are a fantastic opportunity for me to do SEL work, build community, and build relationships with my students by learning more about them. It has been amazing to do these activities with kids and seeing their eagerness to get back to school this year. There isn’t the same third week burn out and the honeymoon of everything seems to be longer this year.
Thinking about what my students need based on what I’ve seen so far going through these works and what these writing assistance tools can do (or at least what I see and understand that they can do at this point) I created a Venn Diagram to help make sense of it all.
My kids need a lot of help (and I’m not seeing or saying that to be the negative and whining teacher). Most of them don’t see themselves as writers. Most of them do want to be writers. Most of them don’t see a value in writing. I teach in a rural area and they see writing not as something of value beyond communication. So they don’t want it to be flowery or flowy. They want it to have a point and they write to meet that point. No more no less.
They are scared to start prompts. I can’t tell you how many of them would ask me to help them start these pre-assessment writings about themselves. They would ask for a sentence starter. I can appreciate their wanting to do it “the right way” and wanting to meet my expectations, but I’m alarmed by their lack of confidence in their own abilities and lack of understanding of their own writing identities. Or if they did start the writing on their own, it was sometimes so robotic and without any voice or personality (it was almost too technical and scientific) and that is concerning.
Maybe its the pandemic? A lot of our kids are unsure about everything and frequently afraid of another impending “shut down” and having to be virtual again. They also have home lives that are so difficult and complicated that they have homes that are nurturing or structures or safe. School was their one safe place and constant and now that is not true. So they are insecure about their futures or constancy they have. Are these insecurities of the future manifesting itself in insecurity in everything?
So I want to give them tools and skills. I want to work with them to understand prompts, have good transition sentences, reliable resources to help them, strategies on how to start writing, an idea how to structure an essay and loosen that structure on their own whims, and wide experience their with many prompts (especially authentic ones where they can see the value beyond just writing to get a grade in the grade book). I also want them to read. Read mentor texts. Read books. Read each other’s writing. I want them to read texts and really look at what the author is doing as well. Stephen King said something to the effect of, “if you want to be a great writer, you have to be a great reader.” But I want them to read beyond just “expert” mentor texts, I want them to have peer mentor texts as well and do some more peer-reviewing.
These writing assistance tools, as I understand them now, can give them practice, can give them focused guiding points, help them with their grammar and spelling, and give them the chance to do peer review that's anonymous and give them additional mentor texts. Writeable is something I’m using this year with my students' thanks to my work with the Chippewa River Writing Project. It will hopefully help them understand the structure of an essay and will help build their confidence and writing identity.
So, I stand (well sit at my desk) and wonder what direction I want to start with. What crossroads do I want to take? Both of them lead to the body of water I compared writing assistance technologies to in my last blog post. But what path I chose to focus on right now, could lead to different outcomes. What is the best path for my students?
It’s a lot of pressure and a big decision. But I know they need more reading and writing as a whole. So I’ll start there. Start small and build from there. Because to build confidence and identify in anything you have to do more of it.
