Editing, Drafts, and Failure

Upon completing the reading assignments for this week I couldn't help but think how more often than not my own teachers struggled to provide enough time for the revision process to take place. While I don't feel like I was cheated or short changed in terms of writing or producing drafts, it is important to realize that writing always came relatively easy for me. On most assignements I recall being given time to produce a rought draft, time to edit that rough draft, and then time to rework our drafts to produce a final copy. The whole process was fairly neat and organized, and I never felt that my rough drafts were all that different from my final copies. Even now as a college student, I find that time constraints and due dates afford me the opportunity to scan drafts for usage and punctuation mistakes along with changing a sentence here or there to clarify an idea that I am trying to present. Yet, there have been plenty of students that I known who find that this neat and tidy method of producing writing is not nearly enough. Either this method does not afford them the amount of time that they truely need to polish their work, or their concern with usage and punctuation inhibits the natural flow of their ideas to the point where no amount of revision can resesuitate their work. All of this caused me to question the best way of going about writing in a school setting. We have to be flexible enough in our grading to allow for the occassional failure of the students, yet we have devote enought time to writing in order to nuture the advancement of young writers.

Spandel's fifth right, "The Right to Write Badly" helped me to tackle some of these issues. At the beginning of the chapter she presents the metaphor of a writing teacher acting like a swimming coach, believing in his or her charges and encouraging small but noticable amounts of progress. After all, one can't learn to swim if one is not willing to get into the water (64). Similarly, writing is not a one shot deal, although it is often approached as such. As Spandel says, "identify the topic, think through the topic, write the piece" (65). Unfortunately, Spandel agrees that there is not nearly enough time for students to experience the true process of writing and revising their work in school, but she does suggest that through a substantial amount of practice, and through using short versions of revision consistently, kids can develop the tools necessary to producing good writing. She also adds that by encouraging your students to write in order to learn instead of for assessment you will be able to produce more competent writers.

Thus, my take away from this whole reading and writing experience with Spandel is that we need to be compassionate educators. Do not place students in fear of the read pen as this will only limit what they feel like they can truely say, or as Ballenger notes, "driving their voices into silence" (76). Prevent there from being hang ups on writing grades, and do this by nuturing kids through the process. I am reminded of how Aaron Doering coached us through our technology course. He taught flexibly and passionately. He encouraged us to spend time learning the programs and becoming familiar with each of them, and ultimately he was more concerned with what we learned and took away from this process than by our abilities to produce perfect work. Writing is much the same way, and I hope that I am able to find a way to emulate these practices in my own teaching.

At the website below you will find a message board for students who are 16 or older which encourages them to write about their English studies. This might be a helpful tool in getting kids to write as they might identify with some of the common problems other students are having. Also, it's a low risk form of writing that encourages them to simply thow out ideas without being too concerned about usage, punctuation, and all that other stuff associated with well polished writing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/websites/16/site/english.shtml