Reflection: The Making of a Writing Teacher

Were I to walk into my student teaching assignment tomorrow, I would do so feeling like a growing teacher of writing.  Everything we have done this semester has taken me one step further towards feeling like a competent teacher with a repertoire of tools, ideas, and endless options for teaching writing to even the most resistant writers.  I have been fully convinced of the necessity (as well as the difficulties) of juggling my writing self and my teacher self. 

Coming into SED 445, I had a somewhat truncated idea of what it meant to teach writing.  Specifically, I was unsure of what digital literacy meant, and I couldn’t imagine what it had to do with me and my future classroom.  I had little experience with crafting digital texts, and little interest in doing so.  I have done my best to overcome these issues.  First, I am now aware of the necessity of considering digital media of all kinds in my teaching—digital literacy is a thing, and I don’t get to ignore it.  Second, I have come to the realization of the value of digital media in teaching writing.  At worst, giving students the option to create digital texts will enhance student interest.  At best, it will engage students in becoming conscious, competent users of technology they already use (maybe unconsciously or incompetently?).  I actually can’t wait to create a class blog! I have become a new and improved version of myself in this area. 

There were so many A-Ha! moments for me in SED 445.  It is difficult to choose only a few, but for the purposes of this reflection I have chosen the two most important to me.  The first is of enormous importance as I move forward into my future teaching career.  I had not explicitly considered writing teacher and writer as two separate but intertwined roles.  You can be a writer and not a teacher of writing (or an English major but not an English teacher).  You cannot, or should not, be a teacher of writing without also being a writer.  This concept awakened something in me—why should students do something they never see me doing?  Why should they feel confident in something they never see me doing confidently?  Why should they put their blood, sweat, and tears (never literally) into their writing if I never do? 

That last question leads me to my next A-Ha! moment.  Why should students work hard at something that they never see me working hard at?  That’s just the thing: they should see me working hard at something.  Modeling and mentor texts are imperative in teaching writing.  Most kids are unconfident writers, because they imagine “the writer” as something outside themselves.  Showing them that “writers” like me go through the process and work hard at it can help develop confident writers, and that’s where it all starts.  There is a myth in literature classrooms that  insists that writers are born and not made--I will make every effort to subvert that myth.   SED 445 taught me that! 

My I-Search (soon to be seen in this blog, by the way) is another area in which I experienced growth during this semester.  Connecting the teaching of writing to something as cool, interesting, and anti-lame as graphic novels and comics was thrilling for me.  It was during my I-Search process that I suddenly realized something: I can do this.  I can create with my students in ways that they have (maybe) never created before.  I can apply this stuff to my teaching in real life with real kids.  How often do we get that opportunity in school?  Not often enough. 

The most important Teaching Writing Golden Nugget that I take away from SED 445?  Do it! Write!  Do it all the time.  Do it formally.  Do it informally.  Do it with low stakes.  Do it with no expectations.  Do it in homemade journals!!  The more you write the more you feel like a writer.  The more you encourage your students to write (and write and draft and write and write and draft) the more they will feel like writers.  

I began this class with an image of “teaching writing” that was bogged down with the grammar worksheets and sentence structure exercises with which I was taught.  I leave with an entirely new conception of what teaching and learning writing at the secondary level can be.