Implications for future inquiry
Our job is not simply to help students read and write; our job is to help them use the skills of writing and reading to understand the world around them.
-Deborah Appleman
The question of whether to teach writing with a template says a lot about how the teacher views the function of the English classroom. Using the writing template means accepting a delayed payoff. These templates ask students to write something now; the more students use the template, the more internalized it is supposed to become until one day they (hopefully) blossom as strong, independent writers who can adapt to the demands of college with ease. Teachers of the template, in my opinion, can't be precious about voice, style, or je ne sais quoi, and the focus is decidedly on college prep rather than writing for other purposes. This is not because the teachers of the template don't care about these elements of writing; rather, commitment to the template seems to be a rational response to experiences in large classrooms of students with far-ranging literacy levels and preparation.
As a writing teacher in a university classroom that was tasked with preparing struggling students to write at the college level, I was also driven in my teaching by a similar purpose. However, in a broader sense, I knew that I would never inspire *good* writing in my students if I did not find a way to capture their imagination and tap into their deeper need for self-expression. I think that students will only be able to develop strong writing habits if they understand the framework for their writing. This understanding comes from grappling with issues of audience and purpose as we write, an experience we are likely denying students by handing them a ready-made frame to construct writing within. |
Steve Powers, Love Letter Murals, 2010
Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.
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On the other hand, I also see potential for using the template in a way that pushes students towards self-awareness, where the template is used as a tool to achieve authentic goals developed prior to using the template. And helping students identify authentic writing situations and developing a process to achieve their purpose is the ultimate goal of my teaching of writing.
Though he is discussing models of language arts education more broadly than these writing templates, Richard Andrews' description of models articulates a potentially useful explanation of the writing template:
Though he is discussing models of language arts education more broadly than these writing templates, Richard Andrews' description of models articulates a potentially useful explanation of the writing template:
Models derive from and/or generate the need for theories. They usually take visual, diagrammatic, two-dimensional form. They are a schematic distillation of a complex set of ideas that may constitute a theory (which mostly takes verbal form); their virtue is that they are easily remembered. They can be applied more easily than theories, and can serve as an aide-memoirs for discussions about a practice. (Andrews, 2011, p. 140)
Joanna Inman, You can search me, 2009
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Here Andrews articulates what is so appealing about the distillation of writing theory into a template, the idea behind the English Department's vote to adopt a consistent writing vocabulary and formula for essay writing at my placement school. As Ms. Ricci wrote, "It is SO important for kids to recognize what to do with writing across grade levels. This makes learning continuous" (Artifact #17).
Though she does not teach writing in this form, Penny Kittle articulates a deeply held conviction similar to Ms. Ricci's that, without organization, “you’ll lose kids who need all of the scaffolding that brings the power or writing well within their reach… the instruction has to come during the process of creating the piece, not in polishing the product, or nothing changes” (Kittle, p. 8). |
Overall, my experiences in my mentors' English classrooms over the last year have helped me adapt my earlier approach to teaching to this new, high school environment. I've learned a lot about how to structure students' writing and reading experiences, and now I hope to take what I've learned and refine it even further to best serve my students' seemingly conflicting but very real needs for both scaffolding and freedom. Though the final essays analyzed from my twelfth grade students in the previous sections might appear grammatically and stylistically problematic when taken out of context, in the context of the students' writing throughout the year, many interesting and sophisticated elements emerge in structure and content. Comparing many of the tenth grader's rote nonfiction essays to their insightful poetry essays gives me a similar hope for their continuing development as writers. I also see many things in their writing that I wish I could still work on with both groups of students, and it was hard to leave them midstream. I hope to continue to retain and refine what worked for these students in the ways I helped them to write over the past year. Looking back, I think what worked best was when the class, together, sustained engagement with the material first, and then used a structured process to develop their ideas into words.
I am deeply inspired by Kittle's journey as an English teacher as I reflect on my own experiences and plot for the future. I see Kittle's approach as a model of authentic teaching that highlights rather than sacrificing structured learning experiences. Authentic, in this sense, does not mean sending students forth into the world, rudderless. In moving from the middle to secondary grades, Kittle (2008) sought out the opinions of college professors to determine “what do students need in writing?” (p. 152). She used these findings to redesign her class curriculum to better meet the practical needs of her students. She summarized their recommendations as follows: “to pursue a line of thought, to provide credible evidence to support an idea, to be flexible with thinking as well as sentences, and to write with power, grace, and style” (p. 152).
Kittle's ultimate goal in teaching writing is “that students will understand enough about form and the possibilities of products to imagine shaping any idea into a product that will best express their thinking” (p. 16). I love how this is expressed because it beautifully voices my own motivation as a teacher. I don't need students to mimic the way I write, though I do believe in writing with students and modeling my process for them. I don't have an archetype in mind as the ideal form writing should take, either. My hope is to find ways to push students out of their comfort zone and expose them to all of the possible forms their expression might take as they fumble towards finding their voice. I'd like to continue to investigate fairy tales and folklore as a possible avenue for this growth, and I will keep experimenting and honing my instruction in response to continuing observations of my students' writing and other evidence of their learning.
I am deeply inspired by Kittle's journey as an English teacher as I reflect on my own experiences and plot for the future. I see Kittle's approach as a model of authentic teaching that highlights rather than sacrificing structured learning experiences. Authentic, in this sense, does not mean sending students forth into the world, rudderless. In moving from the middle to secondary grades, Kittle (2008) sought out the opinions of college professors to determine “what do students need in writing?” (p. 152). She used these findings to redesign her class curriculum to better meet the practical needs of her students. She summarized their recommendations as follows: “to pursue a line of thought, to provide credible evidence to support an idea, to be flexible with thinking as well as sentences, and to write with power, grace, and style” (p. 152).
Kittle's ultimate goal in teaching writing is “that students will understand enough about form and the possibilities of products to imagine shaping any idea into a product that will best express their thinking” (p. 16). I love how this is expressed because it beautifully voices my own motivation as a teacher. I don't need students to mimic the way I write, though I do believe in writing with students and modeling my process for them. I don't have an archetype in mind as the ideal form writing should take, either. My hope is to find ways to push students out of their comfort zone and expose them to all of the possible forms their expression might take as they fumble towards finding their voice. I'd like to continue to investigate fairy tales and folklore as a possible avenue for this growth, and I will keep experimenting and honing my instruction in response to continuing observations of my students' writing and other evidence of their learning.