10 Myths About Teaching Writing

This ICTE blog post is cross-published from The Paste Eaters Blog by Adam Current. To see the full post, please visit Adam's blog here. ___________________________________________________________________________________

Preface and Overture

In November I’ll present my talk “Help! I don’t know how to teach writing!” at the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) national conference in Indianapolis. While last year I stood in awe of the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, this year I’m thankful to present in my own backyard. Without paying for a hotel.

Since my talk has an hour time slot this year, I’m rewriting it from the ground up, integrating posts such as “20 Tips for Teaching Writing Tomorrow“ and “Creative Writing Doesn’t Exist.” I will leave links to the other parts below. As I write, many areas demand their own posts. (As you read, please comment where you’d like to hear more!) I suppose these other posts will come in due time. And speaking of due time, with a newborn due any day now, my posts might become sporadic for a while.

These ten myths cover three major areas: myths about myself, writing, and my students. Each explanation follows a similar pattern: agreeing with concerns, questioning the concerns, and suggesting action steps. This should provide some predictability to reading.

Also, this talk focuses on the why’s before the how’s. Attitudes become actions just as methods become mindsets and expectations become experiences. Any framework requires first principles. And while we can follow actions back to attitudes, addressing these myths help clear the way for a stronger teaching foundation.

The Ten Myths

1. I’m not good at writing myself.

2. I don’t know enough to teach writing. I’m not trained.

3. I can’t teach writing, I have to teach other things.

4. Writing has too many parts.

5. I have to grade every mistake.

6. Grading and feedback take too much time.

7. My students have too many skill levels.

8. My students can’t write a complete sentence.

9. My students have low stamina, bad attitudes, and so on.

10. My students do not see their own mistakes. Myths 1-3. About Myself

Let’s address these myths head on: It’s hard to teach something you’re not good at. Whether you’re not good at writing, you’re not trained to write, or you feel overwhelmed, the results end the same. If Math operates in black and white, how do you navigate writing, which acts in shades of grey? (Or perhaps worlds of color?)

1. I’m not good at writing myself

Agree: For many, teaching writing is like coaching a sport you’ve never played. Without personal experience, even following steps feels hollow. Without personal experience, teachers need textbooks more than their students. Answer keys help with two-step equations, but not thirty sentence essays.

Questions: When will you be good enough (to teach writing)? What does that look like? And good compared to what—a best-selling author? A fifth grader? Let’s try this: When was the last time you sat down to write?

Action Steps: Apply this thinking elsewhere: Avoid exercise because you’re out of shape. Avoid learning things you don’t know. And so on. This myth has a simple solution: Inertia. Start somewhere. Gain experience. Writing isn’t this formal, unreachable thing. Just put your pen to paper and go. So where do you start?

First, find a blank notebook and fill it. Write before, alongside, and with your students. Build experience with your own tasks. How often do our explanations fail because we won’t attempt our own work? As you grade, grade with notebook in hand. Simply observe. Narrate student mistakes. Aim for twenty statements and twenty questions. Then reflect. You will learn more from your notebooks (at first) than dry, academic texts.

Second, read poetry. When my own creativity wavers, I find inspiration from beauty. I return to the Psalms, Whitman, Dickinson, and lately, James Whitcomb Riley. Poetry does for the ears what art does for the eyes. Lose yourself in something beautiful. Then things happen.

2. I don’t know enough. I’m not trained.

Agree: Despite coming from a program that emphasized writing, I had ideals without first steps. This meant years of needless trial and error and failure and frustration. Knowing about isn’t knowing from experience, just as memorizing sports statistics won’t give you a six pack. So what do you do when you start with less than that?

Questions: When will you know enough to teach writing? When does action require perfect knowledge? What if the problem stemmed from lack of experience rather than knowledge alone? What if this could be gained?

Action Steps: Until you manage to memorize an encyclopedia, learn through doing. Allow actions to build the right attitudes inductively. Allow trial and error to teach through experience. Just as there are no perfect people, there’s no perfect way to learn writing or teaching writing. If writing requires revision, the act itself requires constant reflection.

What do those first steps look like? I have so many books to suggest! Writing needn’t be complex or overly formal. What if students wrote an introduction letter that first week? What if they reflected in a paragraph before class discussions? What if they watched a movie clip and transcribed speech?

3. I can’t teach writing, I have to teach…

I hear this one often: “I can’t teach writing because I have to teach spelling. I can’t teach writing because I have to teach grammar. I can’t teach writing because I have to teach vocabulary.” And so on. Before long, all checkboxes have checks except for writing. However, let me ask:

Questions: When do you use proper spelling? When writing. When do you use proper grammar? When writing. When do you use proper vocabulary? When writing.

Action Steps: Let’s say you have thirty minutes to teach. What if you spent ten for spelling, ten for grammar, and ten for vocabulary? Whoops! No time to write. But what if you spent ten writing, ten discussing, and ten revising? What if your time addressed actual errors instead of hypothetical errors? As the Seven Habits say, start with the big rocks.

If writing feels like one more thing, your philosophy isolates rather than integrates. Covering parts without wholes always adds to zero. Spelling, grammar, and vocabulary only exist with writing. So write first. Start in application and move to revision. Move from wholes to parts. Did I also add it’s less stressful? For myths 4-10, check out Adam Current's original post on the Paste Eaters Blog!