New Horizons for Learning: Teaching and Learning Strategies

How to Create Competent, Eager Writers
by Jean Azemove

Ideally, we want all or our students to be competent, eager writers. But for many, the path to that point can be treacherous. The road is littered with insecure students who are bored, humiliated, fearful, competitive, frustrated, terribly sad, and occasionally violent. The school atmosphere is so stressful that students vie with each other for the best grades and the teacher's approval, or display negative behaviors. Wounded egos abound, because students are made to feel that they are never quite skilled enough -- and even the gifted student is embarrassed to make a mistake. Students are labeled -- reluctant, learning disabled, at-risk, ADD, ESL; and the labels often stick for years. Students' blocks become more severe as time goes on. A maze of language arts activities that emphasize skills confuse students at every turn. Students lose their way, and sometimes they hit a dead end and become so numb or paralyzed that they give up altogether.
For twelve years students are bombarded with spelling lists, tests assignments, rewrites, worksheets, and homework. They have to suffer through long, boring, repetitious skill lessons. They fear tests, are hesitant about speaking up in class, and dread seeing their returned papers with mistakes highlighted in red. They have to rewrite a piece, and it is still not good enough. They don't trust their own ideas. They suffer battle fatigue from all the writing skills they are subjected to. One hurdle after the next -- another test, another worksheet, another writing assignment, another rewrite, more homework, another low grade -- and some students begin to slow down, and others drop out. Quite a large number get a new label -- illiterate.
The scene is almost Kafkaesque because for years students seem to be going somewhere, but they never get there -- through no fault of their own. It's amazing that even though the joy they felt when they started school slowly diminishes, they still keep showing up, waiting for things to change, hoping to succeed. The journey is difficult and the goal of being a competent writer is almost always out of reach. Writing skills are emphasized from first grade on, but many students never have a chance to experience writing frequently enough so that they can find out where the skills fit in. Instead, students continually hear the rationale for skill instruction: "This skill will improve your writing," or "You'll need this skill when you go to high school," or "Writing skills are essential in college."
Without a break in twelve years from mind-numbing and generally ineffective skill instruction, it's no wonder that so many students can't write. And, with all of the pitfalls along the way, even if they do finally acquire some skills and can put a few thoughts on paper, a large percentage of students hate to write. What a long, sad trip -- going nowhere.
We want students to pass writing assessment tests, a task that is virtually impossible if they have never learned to write. So we "teach to the test" all year and emphasize writing skills during much of the day. However, as test results show, even when students are spoon-fed the correct answers, the intense skill approach doesn't work.
Low writing test scores confirm the problems that result when districts focus on skills to teach students how to write, and when teacher use traditional methods and publishers' materials that have failed our students for decades. The way writing is taught prevents students from learning how to write.
Many youngsters freely and happily shoot baskets, hit a tennis ball back and forth across the net, or play soccer without training long before skills are brought into play. Aspiring artists want and need skill instruction only after they have experienced the feel of clay squishing between their fingers or experimented with paints over and over again. Yet, way before students know what writing is all about, they are inundated with skill instruction.
When traditional approaches did not work in my urban classroom, I created a new path to that fine place of writing proficiency. I could tell from the students' facial expressions and poor writing performance that they were bored and frustrated with spelling lists, skill sheets, rewrites, and so on. Their questions told me that they were not writing for themselves or enjoying the activity: "How many words do you want?"; "What should I write about?"; "Is this enough?" I found that the more I focused on skills, the less interested they were in writing.
So I dropped the traditional ideas that I had used and replaced them with positive strategies and easy, exciting writing activities, such as group journals, comic strips, found poetry, inventions, and photo essay books. Skill instruction, offered outside of the writing session, was kept at a minimum through five-minute, failure-free lessons and student-teacher conferences that focused on only one essential skill at a time. While students were learning how to write, papers were never corrected or graded. Students had the freedom to go on to something else when they had written all that they wanted to write on a subject. To keep interest high, I ended each short writing session when students were still deeply involved in writing. Students were delighted to try new writing activities and looked forward to sharing time. They easily gained skills. And, with the option to come up with their own ideas for individual and group projects, they became inner-directed learners. A majority of my students worked on writing activities of their choice for long periods of time and did unassigned projects at home. Ever mindful of emotional needs, I was generous with praise and displayed students' uncorrected work in our room to show that I accepted them exactly where they were in their development -- and they learned to respect others and their work. The light in their eyes returned. I could tell from their smiling faces that they were confident and took pride in their accomplishments. I knew that each day provided the reward for their efforts, because students repeatedly told me that they loved writing and begged for more writing time.
And the more I emphasized writing and downplayed skills, the more they wanted to write and the better they got at it. I discovered that students learned how to write by writing, not by endless hours of skill instruction. When they knew how to write, they asked about skills, understood where to use them, and naturally reinforced new skills in their work -- and, without any special coaching, they did well on assessment tests.
My students did not work to achieve success someday in the future. The goal was no longer an illusion, because it was achieved each day. I knew that all of my students were competent, eager writers every time that they wrote, and, more importantly, they knew it. For all of my students, the path to become a skilled, imaginative writer was a wide, bright, straight one, clear of stumbling blocks -- offering intrinsic rewards every step of the way.
I guided my students on a new road to writing competency, creativity, and joy. With a commitment for change, a slight shift in direction, and some humane strategies and activities, you, too, can bring your students to that special, beautiful place each day.

About the Author:
Jean Azemove has worked as a K-12 language arts/creative dramatics specialist, a high school art teacher, an educational consultant and a 1-6 elementary teacher. During her years in the urban elementary classroom, Jean developed an extremely successful writing program called Writing Time. Please see our review of this book in this issue of the online journal review_azemove.htm. You can reach Jean at WritngTime@aol.com.

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