Since I enrolled in my first semester in college during the Fall 2016 semester, I have written countless amounts of papers. Papers on books, characters, on important issues, and even on concepts, I’m certainly no stranger when it comes to the idea of sitting down and banging out a paper. So with all of that practice I thought I knew all I needed to know about writing and that teaching it would be as simple as giving students a prompt and sending them on their way. Easy right? Wrong. Taking my current class Mentoring Writers I’ve been confronted with an eerie reality about not only teaching writing but learning it as well, that I don’t know nearly as much as I thought I did.
In class we have had many conversations about different types of writing, from Twitter posts to scholarly articles and everything in-between. These are all valid forms of writing. But then I took a step back and looked at my own writing examples, that’s when I realized, I had only ever really written essays. I never have really diversified my writing portfolio, and because of that I think I was stuck in a sort of comfortable groove that was mainly aimed at writing long winded essays addressed mainly to my professors. Even now as I type away on my laptop I’m struggling to make this sound like a blog and not another essay. That’s a problem, how am I going to convince a student who doesn’t want to go down the same path of an English major like me that writing is a valuable asset to any profession if I only show them how to do it for a teacher? That’s where this class has come in handy, I’m no longer looking at writing as an essay to a professor or colleague but now a form of expression that is used in countless different professions. One look at the article “Writing in the work Place” will show how diverse the craft of writing really is. That’s why its so important that as teachers of the next generation of bright minds we arm them with the knowledge to be able to tackle writing in many different forms, not just one.
Saying we have to teach all different types of writing and actually finding ways to do it are two very different things. How do we find ways to put what we preach into practice? How can we bring real world authentic writing into the classroom? In “Continuing the Journey 2” By Ken Lindblom, and Leila Christenbury, I found an amazing example of teachers helping their students develop authentic writing to make a positive change. Within the book we see an example, elementary students coming together to write to their lunchroom manager asking to change up their gross lunchroom meal. With help from their teachers on how to effectively write a polite and engaging letter asking to change up the stale menu. With this letter the school began to implement different types of food into the menu. This is a fantastic example of authentic writing can can without a doubt inspire students not only that writing can be important to the outside world, but that they can use their writing to change the world around them.
Cheese Bistro 