Blog Entry #5
Letter to Dr. Jones
March 1, 2011
Dear Dr. Jones,
I wanted to take some time to tell you about my experience in your class. I am so happy that your class incorporates technology and addresses the need for teachers to know what new digital writing aides are available. This class is titled, Reading Improvement Through Written Expression, so I did not think when I registered that digital writing would be part of the curriculum, yet so far, the technology aspect of the course is most interesting.
I’ve always been nervous to teach writing because I am not a confident writer myself. I’m sure the writing process was taught to me in grade school, but as I got older and the demands of school became greater, I dismissed the process and just wrote. I’ve found that for certain types of writing, such as narrative prose, it’s much easier to “just write” rather than go through the process.
My understandings about writing and the writing process have been altered since the beginning of this class. Yancey encourages us not to think of students as merely writers, but instead as composers (Hicks, 2009, pg. 52). This thought resonates with me as a teacher and as a writer. I’ve never considered my students to be composers, but I also never considered my students to be writers. I give them writing assignments and they complete them because they are required to do so, but there is no passion for the actual composition piece. Throughout this course, we talk about one of the key motivators for students in writing being choice. Composers tend to write about topics and subjects they are interested in, not because a teacher told them to write about the topic or subject. Even though as teachers we talk about it, and there are many opportunities where we are able to sneak in some authentic authorship from our students, state and federal mandates demand that our students write on certain things. Things the students have no passion for and even worse, no background knowledge in. How is a student supposed to be engaged in writing authentic prose while under such constraints?
Is there a happy medium? I think there is. I think that teachers should teach students the process of composing, both on paper and digitally. Especially digitally, because that is the world we are sending our students to. But I think that the on demand writing should stop. I think that state and federal exams should include more student choice.
I, personally, engage in the process of writing on a daily basis. Between work and school, I am required every day to write something on demand for someone else. Very rarely do I get to write just to write. When I wasn’t burdened by adult responsibilities, I used to write all the time. I wrote stories, poems, journals, you name it, I wrote it. I’m metacognitive about my writing now, as I was back then. I think when I write. The thinking drives the thoughts from my brain to the paper.
Sincerely,
Sophia Amaxopoulos
