The Writing Models Dilemma: On Authentic Writing and Avoiding the Tyranny of Rubrics
While my journey to the fields of English and teaching started with science fiction and comic books, a love of reading that was steered to so-called “literature” by my high school English teacher, Lynn Harrill, I walked into my first high school classroom as a teacher of English primarily committed to teaching young people to write.
My goal was not simply to have my students write well, but to write authentically, to write in ways that existed outside traditional classroom essay writing.
Teacher preparation for teaching high school English was for me (and remains mostly so) grounded significantly in teaching literature. As a result, I spent the first 5-10 years as a teacher teaching myself how to be a writing instructor.
Far too many of my practices were quite bad, even harmful. However, one thing kept my writing curriculum afloat—volume. I somehow recognized very early that people learn to write by writing (see LaBrant, 1953).
But I also began my career as a teacher of writing by embracing two contradictory commitments: (1) I was always anti-five-paragraph essay; however, (2) I tended to remain grounded in a (ridiculous) commitment to using an authentic-template approach.
It took me several years to recognize that teaching writing wasn’t about CONTINUE READING: The Writing Models Dilemma: On Authentic Writing and Avoiding the Tyranny of Rubrics – radical eyes for equity