Teaching Process

I teach writing. Don't I?
Do my students improve as writers after having my class? I'm not sure. How do you teach a person to be better at writing when all you have is 50 minutes at a time, three essays to write, and three days a week over the course of 16 weeks? And, to make matters seem more impossible, most of your subjects don't want to write.
I have been writing for years and I think I'm getting better, but it takes lots of writing and lots of reading to become good at writing. Did I learn this from a teacher? Kind of. I learned some strategies from teachers and I learned to question myself from teachers. My teachers, most of all, provided me with opportunity and direction, the experience I needed with writing--assignments. I learned to actually write from writing and from reading.
My students work for a few weeks on each essay. I feel good about that. In previous teaching experiences, I have assigned an essay, and the students go write it and turn it in when they come back. I could tell that most had written it in one sitting in a hurry at 2 in the morning. Additional drafts were a joke. I could tell that the students were done; the work was over for them. Additional work was just placation. I could see a look on most of their faces that said, "What? This isn't good enough for you?"
Now, when I try to teach the revision process, where I believe true writing is done and improvement in writing ability begins, the students bail out. I can see their eyes glazing over. They have checked out. It's like they did the dishes and now someone is pointing out water spots, remaining food, or criticizing their loading method. "The dishes are done. What do you want from me?"

I have tried different methods in the 7 years that I have been teaching.

I have tried peer review. I don't like it. The peer can be more misleading than anything. And the student tends to blindly follow the blind peer.

I have tried the "less is more" approach. I made a short list at the top of the page of issues that needed to be addressed and left it up to the student to re-assess his or her writing with those things in mind. I think the students saw this as a mystery they didn't have the experience or knowledge to solve. So, I started making the list as single word comments in the margins.  I still didn't see big improvements in student writing.

I have tried making anonymous copies of the students' work and putting it on the overhead for discussion. The students were more focussed on figuring out who wrote what and seemed to feel more pressure during the writing process. So, I started using students from other classes, or just telling them that I was. They seemed a little embarrased, like I was criticizing them: "Don't be like this person," and "Can't you be more like this person?"  I wasn't seeing the results I wanted and it was quite a bit of work with little pay-off.

I have also tried the guided writing approach. This is where the students are given prompts and a guided process to follow during planning stage of the writing process. There are some students who do very well with this. They like being led and told what to do step by step. It makes them feel nice and secure. It helps me instill the idea of a systematic process better than any other method I have tried. Some of the students seem to feel inhibited by this. They feel like they are being slowed down, forced to complete a pointless activity before actually begining. It's very difficult to convince a student of the importance of an actual writing process.

I remember feeling this way myself as a student. I just wanted to freely begin to write and be done, not be burdened by someone else's idea of how my mind should operate. I can even remember faking the process in my earliest memories of the writing "process." I made mistakes on purpose so I could make it appear that I was correcting myself or revisiting my work. I wasn't sure what the teacher meant by "revision."

"Re"-- again
"vision" sight

"Revision"--to see again. Look at it and reevaluate the decisions you made and the effect of those decisions on the reader.

What reader?
Your teacher? It occurs to them with horror: "Are you going to read these outloud?"

*sigh*

Teaching writing is a very difficult challenge. To my initial question: do I teach writing? I think so far I am, at best, teaching confidence and giving the students some experience. Maybe some day I will figure out how to get freshmen to actually see and appreciate writing for what it is, a process...of thinking, and re-thinking, giving tangible life to a thought you might not have known you had, yes, sharing, and most importantly, personal, intellectual growth.

sticks and stones

"preggo, preggers"
Why don't people say "pregnant" anymore? Is this cute? Im ready for the grown up word to come back in style.
"woot woot"
what is this supposed to mean? Where did it come from, woohoo? I have never heard anyone actually SAY this word, so why type it?
"bahaha"
 I'm embarrassed.
"Expecially"
There is no x.
"Supposebly"
You suppose. It could be supposed suppsedly.
"Excape"
I think this is a weird cross between exit and essscape.
"Roll"
I am sitting in the 3rd roll. She is wearing corn rolls. The corn is planted in rolls? A rock rolls. Do you roll your boat?
"Over-exaggerate"
Seems redundant.
"re-erase"
erasing it again? or maybe they are saying rerase, which is somehow worse.
"Them v. Those"
How do you like them apples?
Them are just fine, Billy Bob.
"Fermiliar"
Do I know you? Because you sure look fermiliar.