Writing for a lifetime, not for a grade.

Problems With Traditional Writing in School

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I was one of the few people in the class that had horrible experiences in academic writing and it resulted in me questioning if long form essays had any value at all. After the lessons we've had on writing, it became clear to me what the problem was. Most of my experiences with writing prompts were dull and unmotivated by any interesting context. I felt that I was asked to make dry objective analysis of texts and authors' intentions without having a chance to express how I felt about the text or my own views on it. In class we discussed writing as either being called a process or a product. In my experiences, I was always writing enough to hand in a product that almost never had any emotional attachment to it because I didn't really feel connected to the topic. In contrast, what we did in class this week really had me engaged because it broadened the definition of writing which has been trapped too long in this box of the traditional long form essay. When we include social media, emails, and blogs, it becomes clear that students are writing more than ever. In order to tap into this writing and improve students' ability to express their thoughts we need to focus on writing being a process rather than a product they hand in at the last moment. Students will be motivated by interesting ways to express their thinking, as opposed to the old formulaic prompts designed at trying to identify the author's intention. If the student is asked to interpret the information and provide their viewpoint, it allows for a more productive conversation on the page.

Writing for the Real World

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The text uses the phrase writing for the real world when describing the way curriculum's should treat writing. The students will not, in 10 years, benefit from having done a dissection of a poem and extracted the tone the author was trying to convey. Rather, if the student is given the tools needed to express their beliefs concisely and clearly, that will certainly be helpful in any career they choose. Framing the writing prompts in real world contexts such as emails, letters, resumes, and proposals will help the students create a lifelong skill of writing to communicate, rather than writing for a grade. At the end of the day, the role of the school is to prepare the students for life without the academic supports in those classrooms. In any career there are always specific forms of writing that dominate, and with each field there are certain skills that need to be mastered. Like Mr. Kushner pointed out, even though many of the fields have some commonalities, there are certainly unique skill-sets needed to be a proficient writer in a particular field. Students need to not only get familiar with modern modes of writing, but they also need to learn the proper etiquette for talking in certain situations or to certain audiences. An email to a friend and an email to a professor won't look the same. This idea of professionalism in social media is a very important lesson to pass onto the student. These are things that traditional writing prompts would never be able to do. In the end using this broadened definition of writing, we can mold writing to be a useful tool that the students will use in all areas of their life.

Discipline-Specific Writing Strategies

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One activity that really showed me the power of this new definition of what academic writing could be was RAFT, which was an acronym for Role, Audience, Format, Topic. This is where a student can be prompted by a teacher or a peer to think as if they were playing the role of an inanimate object or an important person. They will be told what type of audience they will be communicating with and which form of writing they will use (from letters, to songs, to poems, and more). Finally they will be given a topic to discuss. I really loved this activity because it took so many traits of a great communicator and put them into one fun lesson. Understanding the role of something in a process or someone in history is crucial, and by pretending to be that thing or person, the student will have had to understand the role that subject had in the lesson. They will need to flesh out what it means to be that thing or person. Knowing the audience is something adults take for granted and it rarely taught to students, it is one of the most important skills as a networking adult. Knowing how to talk to different people in different ways is something the students can start working on. The one subtle aspect of this exercise is that it can be applied all kinds of disciplines. In fact, some of the most interesting results came from combining unlike subjects, like writing a romantic love letter as an element to another. This really forces the students to flex their creativity and in the end it sneaks in content knowledge.

We have all some negative experiences with writing in our own education, our goal should be to never repeat the failing strategies. We must change our preconceived notions of what writing is and isn't; if we do, we can hope to engage and ultimately arm our students with invaluable communication skills for the rest of their lives.