Inside Out Chapter 1

All young people have unique thoughts, and all of them have the ability to bring those thoughts to the page. For some it is more work (for the student and the teacher) than for others. To make this happen, teachers need to be effective writing coaches. The teaching of writing is filled with obstacles - too many students, too many papers to grade, curriculums that don't allow enough time for writing, and the constant interruptions in a school day. The answer is to turn your class into a community of writers, to give your students strategies to write and revise and to hone your own skills as a writing coach. It is important that the teacher see the development of writing as a journey that never ends, and not a destination. This chapter cites the 1981 edition of the book, where Dan and Tom felt that writing instruction was insensitive to students. I found this interesting, because this was a time between my high school graduation and my teacher training. They mention that writing assignments were teacher-owned and focused on correctness. That was certainly true at my high school. I don't think anyone ever really taught us to write. You either could or you couldn't, and God help those that couldn't ! I was surprised in my education classes when they told us to put away our red pens and be sensitive to the students so that they could express themselves. So the red-inked bloodbath was over ! In high school, I remember writing as such a solitary enterprise. It was pretty much between student and teacher. If your paper was good it would be posted on the wall. Sometimes it was embarrassing. How different it is to create a community of writers who collaborate, share, critique, and cheer each other on ! I do not agree at all with the teachers in the article who say that collaborative writing leads to crowd control problems. I have had the opposite experience. I believe that working together is a natural state for students. If the assignment is interesting and they are given adequate guidelines, the product and the behavior are usually quite good. I love the idea of developing fluency first, and for so many years that was how we were encouraged
to teach our ESL students. We exposed them to language in a print-rich environment, with silent reading, read-aloud, journaling, language experience, and poetry. They responded so well. The affective filter was low. They acquired language and later we cleaned it up with revision
and a little more structure. They grabbed onto the joy of language first, and were ready to run with it. ESL students are not the only ones who struggle with language, and I think building fluency first is a wonderful, interesting, and non-threatening way to get them on board. I love the idea of not limiting students to a particular genre, but focus on self-expression as so many of our best modern authors are doing.