All writers and good teachers know that the desire to write grows with writing.
[This piece originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Thursday, September 6th, 2007.]
As the yellow school bus starts coming around again this fall, it’s time for parents and students to start thinking earnestly of school. For a lot of young people, especially teens, the first few days of school are exciting, a time to compare summer adventures, scope out the new fashions, and reconnect with peers.
I wonder how many of them will share summer experiences that had something—anything—to do with writing. Not many, I bet. Students are too busy being weaned on high-stakes tests and fill-in-the-blank pedagogy that permeate many of our schools. So it should be no surprise that most young people think that writers fall out of the sky, like summer hail.
Teachers need to explode this myth by asking students to do more of what real writers do—write.
Imagine entire schools filled with teachers who assign intrinsically valuable projects that involve writing around the curriculum on issues that students actually care about? This vision is not a chimera. During back-to-school night, parents should snoop around the classrooms and hallways, check out the samples of student work on the bulletin boards, and ask pointed questions of teachers and administrators: “What kinds of writing projects are you asking my child to do?”
Be wary of anything that sounds or looks like a worksheet. When was the last time anyone had fun—or learned anything worthwhile—filling out a form?
Writing is easy, it is writing well that takes lots of practice. My advice to students: Stay alert. You never know when good advice or a great mentor will appear. For instance, I’ve learned more about the craft of writing from newspaper editors over the last several years than from all my English teachers put together. With each sentence, I am still learning. When I share this observation with students, they seem surprised.
On the first day of school every year I tell all my students that writing is a lot like driving a car. Anyone can drive a car. Start the car, press the gas pedal, and steer. The writing that results from this kind of “reckless driving” isn’t that sophisticated, but it isn’t any less coherent than the instant-text messages on any child’s mobile phone.
As long as my students know the definitions for the different parts of speech, they get to keep the keys to the car. I steer clear of all technical grammatical terms. Most students, including most adults, wouldn’t remember the difference between a gerund and a germ six months from now, even if it were carefully explained to them today, and they were tested on it tomorrow.
I don’t teach from a grammar book. If my boss wants me to teach grammar, I ask my students to “write” a grammar book from scratch, and we focus almost entirely on the rules for punctuation. Punctuation marks, like street signs, tell alert drivers (good readers and good writers) what to do. They tell us when to brake, when to look the other way—over here—when to look in the glove compartment (in here), when to accelerate ahead . . . and when to come to a complete stop.
With lots of practice, students will eventually learn driving etiquette, which is really writing with manners and with lots of style, a skill no one class or one teacher can teach alone.
Teaching would be a pitiful bore if it weren’t a group project.
Sometimes the best advice for young writers is no advice, or an acknowledgment that you just don’t have the answer. When writer F. Scott Fitzgerald says, “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath,” I have no idea what he is talking about.
When my students ask questions, I make a habit of not answering (or offering my opinion) at least half of the time. Parents could do worse than to heed this advice on the home front: Try not to correct a spelling error on your child’s homework—unless you offer options or ask open-ended questions.
“Which sounds better? ‘C-a-l-a-n-d-e r’ or ‘C-a-l-e-n-d-a-r’?”
You’d be surprised how often your child picks the correct answer, and feels empowered in the process. An even better idea is to put spelling aside and encourage your child to design his or her own calendar, complete with quotations and drawings and images to herald each month.
If schools spent less time inventing high-stakes tests and more time leading young people to invent their own stories, maybe more children would put down the video-game controller and pick up a pencil. It’s not that simple, of course, but all writers and good teachers know that the desire to write grows with writing.
Mark Franek is the outgoing dean of students and English teacher at the William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia. He is currently a writing instructor at Philadelphia University.
