Reflection on Becoming your own expert-Teachers as writers
Reflection on
BECOMING YOUR OWN EXPERT-TEACHERS AS WRITERS
by
Tim Gillespie(1985)
According to Frank Smith, “teachers
should write with their students.” As teachers we are already writers! However,
in order to be the greatest writing teacher possible for our students, we must
write in order for our instruction to be anchored on knowledge gain
from reading.
In Tim Gillespie’s article, he tried to convince an administrator why it is important for teachers to attend writing project sessions and why it is important for teachers to write with their students. Some of his points includes: “When teachers write, we provide a positive model for our students.” As teachers, we should strive to model effective writing in order to inspire and assist our students in their writing development. We should write and make our writing valuable by sharing our ideas in order to encourage our students to practice good writing. Additionally, it allows students to reflect on our writing to help improve their own. When we serve as a model for our students, our love and struggles as writers will naturally follow. I think that the more our students fall in love with writing, the more they will do because, as we all know, practice makes perfect.
Additionally, Mr. Gillespie highlighted
“When teachers write, we learn empathy for our students.” While students scrape
away with their pencils brainstorming ideas, doing research, or drafting, we
must be ready to do the same. We must be willing to engage in writer's workshop
sessions with the students we teach. As a teacher, I am not embarrassed to admit
that I too struggle. I am unable to think of anything to say or even
repeat myself when writing. Sometimes I change my points halfway through a page, or
even two, and feel compelled to redo the whole writing assignment or even start
again with a different topic. Writing is not always easy! Thus, in order to
assist our students in becoming writers, we must write alongside with them.
Tim discovered in past sessions
that “writing makes us experts on teaching writing.” Teachers may develop into
experts when they actively read books and apply their acquired skills and
knowledge to their writing. Additionally, teachers develop expertise when they
evaluate their own writing weaknesses and deliberately fix them through regular
practice, which results in teachers testing their own writing assignments.
Mr. Gillespie emphasized a
variety of things he has discovered as a consequence of his writing to further
convince the administrator. One of which I can most readily connect to is
"Writing takes time." As a writer, I feel that writing should be done
over time, as it takes a great deal of thought. When I write, I spend the
majority of my time looking at a blank page, like I did before writing this
blog in response to Tim Gillespie's article. I read, write, edit, and then
reread and rewrite so imagine our students when given a writing assignment.
Writing demand lots of time so it is critical that a lot of practices should be
done to improve our writing.
Teachers of writing must be writers themselves in order to successfully assist students in sharpening their writing skills and developing into effective writers.
by Zoe Clarke
Zoe,
ReplyDeleteYour discussion is one that piqued my interest. As a classroom teacher, when I realized that my students are struggling to write, I often resort to writing with them and get better results. Involving them in a writers workshop also helps a lot. As the teacher writes along with students, brainstorming and other aspects of the writing process improves for them and develop them into better writers.
Another point is that, I find that as a teacher, we are not perfect and the students capitalize on the opportunity to proofread and edit very well on your writing.
Finally, getting your students to write like you the teacher is ideal, hence it is truly important that as teachers we must be good writers. If we are not, then we must attend classes to improve our writing skills.
Zoe, I completely agree with your take on the article. As teachers we are role models for our students and this should not only stop at the behavioural aspect but should also trickle into the academics as well. If we role good writing practices and techniques then it is our hope that our students will model these behaviours as well. It is important that we take our students through the writing process so that they understand what writing a piece entails and that they should not be discourages when the words don't flow or when they have to restart the entire piece over for a third time! Writing doesn't come easy for everyone and it is okay to admit that... and I'm sure, even the 'good writers' once struggled.
ReplyDeleteZoe, i definitely agree with your comments above, as you rightly said “being an effective writer makes you better at teaching it”. As primary teachers we have a huge responsibility and task when it comes to setting the foundation in teaching our students to write. However, in order to be an effective writing teacher we must model what we want our students to do as you would have already indicated.
ReplyDeleteZoe, I fully agree with this blog. How can you grade a student's writing assignment if you are not a writer? As you indicated, teachers should write alongside their students, making us excellent role models. Everyone struggles with writing. Writing successfully is nearly impossible. However, the beauty of writing is that the profound sense of difficulty we experience when we put pen to paper or fingertips to computer is not unique to teachers. Our students are also aware of it. The ability to have genuine conversations with students about the difficulties associated with writing promotes a more supportive writing culture in the classroom. However, every teacher is a writer, we compose emails, lesson plans and assignments, among other things.
ReplyDelete