Memo 4: continuing my path

As I have already explained, I have learned that the five paragraph essay is not necessarily a bad thing, but has become to be used in a way that is detrimental to writing and creating a passion for writing. It has become a tool of assessment and no longer a tool for practice and organization. This takes away the creativity and experience of developing thoughts through writing. My I search has basically become how to use the five paragraph essay appropriately to boost writing confidence and passion.

Remembering an article we had read earlier this semester, I went digging through my papers and came upon and article written by Donald M. Murray titled “Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product”. BOOM. That is it. When I read this article originally I thought to myself that it was common sense that writing should be a process and not a product, but now that I have been researching the essay, I see how educators have fallen into the cycle of student writing being a product.

Now I’m brainstorming approaches to writing that can undo the damage that educators have done to make the word write make students shake, and the first thing is low stakes writing. While this is something, I hear being suggested to beginning teachers of writing, I have never had it connected to essay writing, but rather seen it as a separate entity. Now I’m looking at it as a part of essay writing. Crazy right? Combining free writes and essays, I hope this makes English teachers nervous. I can see myself starting a lesson on argument writing with students journaling about something they feel strong about, writing any way they want, poetry, lists, paragraph. Then having them take this stuff and create a position. Spending a whole week working on a single point a day. Then putting it together in a five paragraph essay. A week to create five paragraphs. I can see this relieving some of the pressure when it comes to writing, and students can be involved in something they are actually interested in.

The more I look into writing the more I see that it is most beneficial as a tool for exploration, and after writing is taught this way and learned this way, then it can be used as a tool of assessment. The biggest thing that I am saying here is that writing should be learned and practiced before it is graded, it is not something that can happen in tandem. Word choice is the smallest element of writing, and this is something that needs to be experimented with when writing, and if we are grading student writing immediately, they will have no room to take risks, and we all know that learning cannot take place without risk taking and failure among our earliest attempts. This is why multiple low stakes drafts seem to be a necessity. And in my own writing education, I do not think I ever handed in drafts. Maybe this is why I always play it safe with writing assignments, and why most students find comfort in the boring five paragraph essay.