Wrangling Reluctant Writers

               

               My 8^th grade students are in the midst of writing their first five paragraph essay of the school year.  In continuing with the theme with these students this year, writing is like pulling teeth from a chicken or herding cats – in other words – HARD.  I realize that with middle school aged students the push back on writing is not unheard of or even uncommon, but this group of young people is especially reticent and chatty (in other words largely unfocused). 

                This is when I am thankful for my methods class, time to talk with my Mentor Teacher (MT), and the bevy of texts and journals at my disposal to fine tune how I can better approach this negative attitude about writing as an exercise and try to combat it in my own teaching – both next semester and in my future classroom.  I sort of relish this time as a pre-service student teacher to take a bit of a backseat and learn from my MT as we struggle with this class and their attitude toward writing.  It really forces me to consider what I might try to do to have a different outcome in my own classroom as well as watching my MT differentiate and change instruction as needed to try and coax these students to be more engaged in the writing process.

                One thing I think is truly missing for my students is the exercise of writing.  By that I mean seeing writing as a sort of muscle that you need to work out and build-up. Something that requires daily attention to keep it sharp and always available. For these students they are only writing a couple days a week and never really for themselves – other than text messages and Twitter - and I wonder how much different things could be if writing were a daily exercise.

                Randy Bomer is probably one of my favorite authors on the subject of adolescents and writing and he firmly espouses the belief that “it’s not enough just to write in response to other authors’ texts” (Bomer 167).  He is a staunch and continued believer in students having writer’s notebooks where they can get their own thoughts on paper and hone and develop them.  Through this they learn to value their inner voice and explore their own thought processes.  I wonder how differently my current 8^th graders would feel about writing an essay had they been writing each day of the school year in a writing notebook?  Perhaps a better way to start their morning (this is a first hour class) is to give them those 10 minutes of bellwork  as distraction free to write for themselves and get comfortable with the physical and mental act of writing so it doesn’t seem to daunting. 

                Another idea that really sticks out in my mind as a way to motivate students through the hardest part of writing is one that Kelly Gallagher discusses  frequently- the idea that “when it comes to writing, the best way to know how is by seeing the writing process consistently modeled by the best writer in the classroom – the teacher” (Gallagher 48).  

                Watching the teacher write – this makes so much sense to me. If students can watch someone else writing and see for themselves that writing, even for the supposed “expert” in the room,  is not an easy task.  We have fits and starts, we constantly revise and edit, tweak a word here or there and move around sentences.  Writing – for us mortals – is a messy process whether you are the students or the teacher. I do think Gallagher perhaps overstates our position as the “best” writer in the classroom and I prefer to think of myself as having more experience at writing than my students.  I truly believe there are great results to be had if we can share our writing process live with our students.  Yes, mess and all.

               I actually did this on a small scale with my students for a unit I taught when we were discussing fear.  As soon as I got up the whiteboard to start brainstorming and creating my sentence to define fear I had students offering encouragement, more adjectives, and eventually spurring me to finish so they could see my final sentence.  Seeing me up there working through the process, adding words, relating ideas and not dashing off a sentence immediately seemed to encourage their own creative process.  Yes, it was only one sentence per student, but it was authentic work that bore the hallmark of the individuals in that class (for the most part – there were of course a few who did not want to go through the process).  I want more of that effort and that ability to reinforce each other’s writing in my own classroom.

                A third idea that I find compelling and in know that my daughter's 8th grade teacher urged her students to do it as well as knowing a fellow teacher who did it with great success with her 7th graders  last year - is participating in Nanowrimo for Young Writers (http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/how-does-nanowrimo-work-for-young-writers). Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month and it takes place each November. They offer a free (my favorite price) workbook for elementary, middle and high school students that includes all the materials they need to work toward a specific word goal for the month and to develop and work on a novel. The program offers tools that encourage students to consider character and plot development and walks them through the process to help them grow the tool set they need to write daily for the month of November. 

           Used in tandem with writer's notebooks and even with me modeling my own work for my students I think this would make for a powerful community building exercise. We could workshop together as a class on ideas or helping peers get un-stuck if they have writer's block.  We could share passages of our own work that we particularly enjoyed writing or write for a few quiet companionable minutes together - teacher and students - as a community of writers.  What a gift to be able to give them!

                As always, I’m looking at where I am and what my students are doing and trying to find ways that I could broaden or enrich their experience when I am the lead teacher.  I enjoy seeing how my MT tackles these tough issues and also enjoy finding experts like Bomer and Gallagher who oftentimes align with what I would like to see my students doing.  Of course, there are the details of how to implement writers’s notebooks and modeling my own writing, but I have high hopes that through next semester and before I have my own classroom I will continue to explore, plan and solidify my ideas for my first year of teaching and take that experience and continue exploring, planning and solidifying each subsequent year for the benefit of my students.

Works Cited

Bomer, Randy. Time for Meaning: Crafting Literate Lives in Middle and High School. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995. Print.

Bomer, Randy. Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classrooms. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2011. Print.

Gallagher, Kelly. Teaching Adolescent Writers. Portland, Me: Stenhouse, 2006. Print.