Here are two of my daughter Rachael’s grades from the infamously difficult UCLA English department. Of course, I am a proud mother and am pleased to “crow” about them to you all, but I have a bigger point. These grades illustrate something I’ve learned over these past 13 years of working with writing students – work line by line with students on their writing and they will eventually make that leap to become fine writers. In other words, these grades show that my hands-on writing method actually works.
My teaching process in reference to writing goes like this. My student arrives with an essay assigned on topic X. We research the topic, whether the research is within the text or from outside sources, then we come up with a thesis statement based on the research. From there, my student and I work line by line together constructing the essay.
No, I do not have my student write the essay and then I edit it. I do this with more advanced students, but not my beginning ones. Those sit next to me and we write the essay together, one sentence at a time. We discuss while we write why this sentence needs to go here and what the next sentence needs to be to follow what we’ve just written. We pick out quotes that support our thesis and we analyze those quotes so that we can show through the text that our thesis makes sense. One line after the other; one thought after the other.
This process takes patience from both the student and from me. It does not go at a fast pace or with me simply writing in paragraphs and having the student read them. Instead, we collaborate on the piece so that I can model what actually needs to be there.
Many would argue that this is spoon-feeding the writing process to my students, or, worse yet, that it is a thinly veiled method of simply doing the work for them. But I am here to say that in 13 years of working in this way, I’ve had countless students go from clueless about the writing process to adept at making compelling arguments on the page. And they produce the same kind of grades that Rachael is getting at UCLA in one of the toughest English departments in the nation.
Writing is like painting, perhaps, where imitation and repetition are critical elements in the learning process. Forgetting perfection and moving towards approximation is also important. Getting it on the page, then fixing it once it’s there. Or as Ray Bradbury so famously said, “Throw up on the page. You can always clean it up afterwards.”
So, yes, I am proud of daughter Rachael and her success with her writing. And, yes, I am proud of myself for helping to foster that kind of success. However, my main goal here is to note that people are not capable of coming up with an excellent product if you simply toss them the ingredients and shout, “Put them together in a way that will please me.” Not that teachers do this, but so often there just isn’t enough time to adequately foster the skills needed to consistently produce a strong piece of writing. This is not the teachers’ fault, of course. They are dealing with too many students in a time-pressed atmosphere. But when people point out that Americans are losing the ability to express themselves though writing, I believe that a pressure-filled learning environment has a lot to do with that loss.
Step by step, hand in hand, this is a process that I know works.
If in question, then look at those grades of Rachael’s. They prove my point perfectly.
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