reflection

The first day of SED 445 I showed up to class and saw many familiar faces and began to wonder what type of things were going to take place in this class this semester. The concept of teaching writing is a little bit of a scary one, because as we all know, writing is never finished, it is just abandoned. How can we possibly teach this idea to students? Isn’t the point of starting something to finish it? I don’t think I was the only one to be thinking this. When I began looking at the list of books my eyes narrowed on the text about digital writing, and of course my heart jumped to my throat, “UGH technology, WHY”?

I have not had many good experiences with technology and I was terrified that I would have to spend all of my time trying to figure out how to produce digitally and not enough time actually producing. But the activities I was fearful of were actually simple and a little enjoyable. I like to think that I have changed from that first day in at least one way, because I am more open to explore different types of technology. I even created an awesome blog for this class, and it gave me courage to fix up my tumblr page, where I post some of my personal writing.

Digital writing is not the only part of this class that I took away and plan to carry with me. I also was deeply inspired by Ralph Fletcher and his ideas on keeping a writer’s notebook so we can just keep writing. I actually plan on forcing myself to write something every day over break. I’m going to take that plunge of making myself produce even when I’m not inspired, and while it seems a little scary, I’m just going to breathe in and breathe out, and write.

I have to also mention the impact that some of Kelly Gallagher’s work has done. Gallagher does a great job of demystifying the teaching of writing. He has many ideas on scaffolding the development of students’ ideas into great writing and I can see myself referring to his book and photocopying many pages in my teaching career. Gallagher also exemplifies the benefits of using mentor texts and modelling, not just through showing students an example, but explaining how he, a published author, writes and the struggles he has while perfecting a piece. This type of humble attitude is something I plan to bring with me to class every day.

Very related to Gallagher is the article by Donald Murray titled “Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product”. This article amplifies what I previously mentioned about Gallagher, and that is that the final product is not writing, but rather the process itself. I know I will never forget this and because of it I will make my students draft before creating a final product. Drafting is one of the most valuable things that I have taken away this semester and it seems to be fixed in everything that we have touched upon.

With the semester coming to a close I think I now can say I am starting to develop a solid philosophy on teaching writing that I can build on throughout my future. I now understand the idea that writing is never finished and it is because writing is a process, and writing can be added on to or edited forever. What we hand in as assignments, and what our students hand into us are just what they finished so far. With this in mind I plan on structuring my classes around the idea that when I say let’s write, the students can’t visualize the finish line until we are there and can only see what they need to do to make it better, or more clear. And of course I will be their guide on the writing journey, the Sacajawea to their Lewis and Clark. I also believe that writing teachers should take as many risks when teaching writing as they are asking to students. How can we expect students to experiment if we don’t?

But, I may still have some questions lingering about how to teach writing. The big one is which lessons and techniques that I have learned will work best to help my students produce work and learn how to organize their thoughts? This is something I will not truly be able to answer until I start teaching my own class and start experimenting with writing lessons. But, as I said previously, if I want my students to take risks, I need to take my own risks in the classroom by trying out new techniques of teaching writing.