Listen you guys have been reading my blog for a little so I fell like I can trust you all, so here’s a little secret, don’t go telling anyone. Sometimes I’m not always honest when I write. GASP. I know I know scandalous, but it’s not actually as bad as you think, let me explain. So first off let me just say this on this blog I’m always honest, I say what I think, and mean what I say. However in my academic writing I can be a bit… how do I say this… people pleasy? There have been a few times in a few classes where I have had professors that had views on topics we discussed that I don’t always agree with, which is weird cause if you looked at my papers that I wrote for them I seem to be agreeing with every word they say. Huh, strange right? All jokes aside, I’ve been thinking about grading and how I’ll grade as a teacher one day in the future, It’s a stressful thought. I want my students to do well, I want them to get a great education, and I certainly don’t want to brainwash them into thinking like I do. So what’s my plan? Well I was reading some blogs and two seemed to have an answer.

In “Grading Student Writing Objectively: A Myth and a Trap” the idea of grading objectively and subjectively is discussed. Now from what I said in the beginning of this post you’d probably think that I’m all in for Objective hard cold only the facts kinda grading, wrong. Sorry, I know it’s confusing but I’m trying to keep you on your toes. So get this Objective grading isn’t special in fact a computer can do it. Grading Subjectively though, now that a whole different ball park. When grading of course teachers should take in the facts, as a writing teacher I have to look at everything in the writing and then give feedback, opinions and judgments, based on what I’ve seen, and how I grade all comes down to what I have seen learned and done before. A computer can’t grade a paper, and give genuine feedback on certain things (Thank God it can’t or I’d be out of a job) only a person can.

I’d want to ask current teachers right now, how they do it. How do you grade a students paper, and while simultaneously removing your own bias use your past experiences to guide and help students reach their peak as learners. Without a doubt I’m sure it’s a complicated task.

You ever meet someone who’s had their entire life planned out? From what they are going to do tomorrow to what they are going to do ten years from now. Me? I’ve never been like that, in fact in some ways I’m kind of the exact opposite. Only within the past two years did I figure out what I really wanted to do and that was teach. Now if you knew me at the time I declared this you probably would have been scratching your head, see I was never one for school, I spent most of my time in high school dodging classes to grab an extra lunch period. So when I told my family I wanted to become a teacher I think they all thought I was a bit crazy. See that semester I had taken a few English classes two of them taught by the same professor. These Classes I found really interesting and the professor pushed me to ask questions and to be a better learner. To be honest this really stuck with me, up to that point I don’t really think I had ever had a teacher like that. All of the sudden I was trying much harder. I realized then that’s what I wanted to be like. I wanted to be a teacher who could inspire students to be the best they could be, I had always loved reading and decided to go into teaching literature to accomplish my goal.

My Philosophy on teaching has been carefully cultivated during my time as a student, I take those lessons with me and add to them with every class I take. I have learned from my classes that students respond to meaningful assignments. These are the assignments that they know matter, that help them grow and strengthen them to take on the world in the future. I’ve come to realize just how important writing is, not just any old writing though, writing that is meaningful and realistic to what they will face in the real world once they leave schools, authentic writing. So what kind of assignments would be good authentic writing assignments that will help inspire students? Well one that I really like comes from the pages of the book “Continuing the Journey 2” where there is an example of real students making a real difference in their school. In a William V. Wright Elementary young students wrote to their lunchroom supervisor asking to change up the menu since they were very tired of the same old green beans. They wrote these letters with the help of their teacher and because they took this approach the school was very willing to makes changes. I’ve spoken about this in other blogs that I’ve written such as “Strategies In Authentic Writing” and the reason I make note of it again is because I think its just so darn cool! These are young students who are experiencing for the first time that they can make a difference by just writing! I think they will always remember this moment that they made a difference in the world albeit a small one but hey its a great start!

Authentic writing is the act of doing writing for real audiences about real topics, not just doing writing for a teacher. Academic writing is an important form of writing, and is highly valued in academic circles, but it is not the end all be all when it comes to writing. In fact after schooling very few adults will ever preform academic writing ever again, so why are we teaching only that type of writing? In fact in the blog post “Writing in the Work World” we see that it’s very important that students be introduced to a variety of different forms of writing since there are so many different types, such as presentations, reporting problems in code, or even a police report. I’m not lying when I say that a lot of adults don’t know how to email their boss, or struggle to send a letter to a family member. This is because in schools we don’t teach the writing that we will be doing most in the future. As a teaching who plans on teaching writing I want to make it my goal to make sure that my students leave my class with the knowledge of how to write in the working world. Now this doesn’t mean that academic writing is useless, in fact it sometimes is what will help students get into colleges to be able to achieve higher level learning, so of course it’s not something that educators should ignore but instead focus on while teaching students other things that will help them further on down the line.

As teachers we want students to be authentic in all areas of their lives, and the best way to do that is to give them ways to be authentic in their everyday school assignments. I can’t tell you how many times I did a high school writing assignment not caring one bit about what I was writing, only that I would get a good grade. The article “Keeping it Real: Valuing Authenticity in the Writing Classroom” explains that in order to get students to be more authentic in the classroom we have to provide them with assignments that are authentic and interesting.

I think the best way to form authentic writing exercises is by thinking about the sort of situations students are going to come across in the future. For example not all students are going to be doing long in-depth analysis of novels down the line at their jobs but they are going to all have to create a resume and along with that a cover letter. Why not take a few classes to explain how to create compelling ones maybe even have an assignment where each student has to create a mock resume along with a cover letter to get into a fake job? I’m sure some students would be overjoyed to skip the hundredth reaction to The Great Gatsby (even though I adore this book) and work on something they are going to use in the future. As the National Council of English teachers says in their post “Professional Knowledge for the Teaching of Writing” “Writing is not just one practice or activity”, we have to create varied and meaningful assignments that students will look back on and know that they learned something, and they will want to take that knowledge on to help them in the future.

A lot people don’t realize this but we are all writers. It’s true, have you ever written a list, or a long winded twitter post? Then congrats your a writer! I want to help students realize that they are writers and that they are writers no matter the platform and manner of their writing, it’s all valid. I want students to realize this and take pride in their writing. In order to do this I think that teaching a very wide variety of genres of writing is crucial. At times I think blog writing and twitter posting is swept under the rug and considered writing that has no meaning, but I think that couldn’t be further from the truth. Teacher’s need to impart a love and respect of writing in all forms to their students, and show them that any writing that they do is important, and it makes them writers.

Being a teacher is tough, but being writing teacher can look to be downright impossible sometimes. Even so it’s such an important subject, we are teaching students that can their writing can change the world. Letters and documents in all forms have led to changes in many different places, these changes are so great that it has led to how we live now. That’s why teaching writing is so difficult, writing is full of passion and intricacies, but its all important, and in life sometimes the most difficult things we do are the most important.

Have you ever written a list of things you needed to do? Or write an essay for a class? Maybe you jot down ideas from stories every once in a while, or write long Twitter posts. Congrats your a writer, see every form of writer is valid and it all makes us writers, but a lot of the time people don’t feel like they are writers at all in fact sometimes they think its an unreachable goal. So how can we as teachers make our students feel more like writers? Here are five ways.

• Give Diverse and Fun Assignments

Writing as an incredibly diverse subject that encompasses every thing from list making to book writing. A lot of the times students only ever get to experience one way to write and that’s academic writing. In this case the student feels like they are not really writers, since they may only have a grasp on a small part of writing. Instead of just having students write an essay on a book, ask them to write an article about something that is important to them, or write to an official. Creating assignments that are diverse and meaningful can go a long way to helping students discover that they are writers.

• Explain What a Writer is

I think a lot of the time students only think of authors as people who write big books, and I agree sometimes it’s hard to give yourself the same title of writer as someone who has written masterpieces of books, but many students have this capability without even realizing it. We as teachers have to deconstruct what it means to be a writer for our students so that they can understand it’s not just authors of famous book but everyone who puts pen to paper.

• Creative Writing

I don’t know about you all but I daydream, a lot. So much so that I have entire worlds in my head about fantasy and whatnot. I’m willing to bet a lot of students are the exact same way, spending a lot of their boring classes thinking about stories in their head, so why not when they come into class offer them a way to get that onto paper! Perhaps every class give students a ten minute period to write creatively. This way they can see their ideas take form in a way, with that they will be much more excited to come to class and continue what they write.

• Skip the Grammar Lesson (For now)

Writing can be very complicated when it comes to grammar and rules on how to write. So much so that many students may get overwhelmed and think that this is something that is just out of their grasp. Perhaps we should ease up a bit on the rules to instead focus more on the joy of writing. That’s not to say ignore grammar all together but the days of spending whole class days on long winded lectures about how and when to use commas are not helping a student feel like a writer.

• Address Your Students as writers

Lastly in order to make our students feel more like writers I have a bit of a silly piece of advice. Perhaps we should call our students writers. I know it’s a bit obvious but I think that it could go a very long way. If everyday a student comes into a class room and is addressed as a writer, they might start to believe it. In one of my classes this semester, Mentoring Young Writers, one of my professors calls the class his teaching colleagues, and to be honest I like hearing that a lot since it makes me feel more like a teacher. If students hear someone calling them a writer they may feel better about writing in general.

So here’s the thing, writing is not easy. There are just about a million things you have to remember to make it grammatically correct, and on top of that there’s the part about actually creating good writing that people wanna read! I know I make it look easy but the truth is most times I have no idea what I’m doing, I just write and hope for the best. So if writing can be tricky, well I can only imagine how interesting teaching to write is gonna be. So I’m an English major right? So I do enjoy writing, even if it is difficult and time consuming I get a sort of satisfaction from seeing my words take shape on a page, but here’s the kicker, even if I love writing it doesn’t mean my students will. In fact many of them might just feel the exact opposite about it. That’s why right now in my classes I’m putting everything into trying to ready myself to become a great writing mentor for my future students, and that mean learning from great teachers. Recently I’ve been reading Jim Burke’s The Six Academic Writing Assignments: Designing the Users Journey, and its chock full of great ideas and strategies for helping to guide ones students onto the path of becoming an individual who loves writing. So here are three of those ideas that I’m planning to bring along with me into the classroom, hope you can get something out of them too!

In Jim Burke’s first chapter he introduces us to his idea of Writing to Learn or WOL, and how to instill in out students a desire to learn through their writing. These assignments of WOL would include self-evaluation, structured note taking, or even collaborating with other students. These type of assignments help to grow the student as a writer and help them improve and grow.

I never really liked annotating when I was in school, I always felt like it took away the magic of reading. I was being ripped out of my exciting book for of mystery and magic, to underline a comment about personification… how lame is that? Jim Burke talks about annotating and how it can both help and hurt. Annotation is no doubt a very critical strategy, one that can help a students remember and understand a book better. However on the other side of the argument it is not the end all be all when it comes to studying a book and we have to be able to communicate this to our students and understand that sometimes annotating takes the magic out of reading.

One thing I think we all hated when we were in school was timed writing exercises. I like to plan out my writing, if even juts a little so having to do on the spot writing is not something I’m fond of. It always stressed me out having such little time to prepare and then write god knows how much. In fact Jim Burke says that in his survey of one hundred college English students almost all of them ranked it as the most difficult type of writing assignment. (The Six Academic Writing Assignments: Designing the Users Journey). Jim Burke Tackles this issue in chapter three of his book, he calls it Writing on Demand, or WOD. He talks about the issues with WOD often stem from the question asked to students, and we as teachers sometimes have the opportunity to tweak the question to make it more approachable to students. As English teachers we have to be aware of the language used in questions, and help out students be aware of it as well.

These are just three of the lessons that I have been learning on my journey with Burke’s book, and I hope to learn many more as I continue on, but I thought that these three would be particularly helpful to anyone who like me is still worried about going into a classroom for the first time as a teacher. With these lessons we can take steps to being the best teachers that we can be.

Lets face it, writing can be hard, it’s full of rules and it takes up so much time, but authentic writing? Well that’s another beast in of its self entirely. Any Joe schmoe can sit at a computer and type away till his fingers bleed, even if he’s not interested. However, writing authentically takes creativity and passion. You’re not just writing cause some schmuck told you to. You’re doing it because you’re interested in the topic and have something to say. I like to consider myself something of a writer, and even I have trouble being authentic all the time. So, as a fledgling teacher, I’ve been thinking (and worrying) about how to best impart knowledge unto my future students that will not only help them grow as writers, but as authentic writers! While reading Keeping it Real: Valuing Authenticity in the Writing Classroom, I was struck by all the methods that could be used to help students improve their abilities as authentic writers. Here are three ways that we as teachers can help encourage students to become lifelong authentic writers, that I thought were amazing!

Firstly, diversity in what we write about. No one wants to write the same old stuff every single assignment, we don’t learn and grow from that at all instead we should be doing a wide array of different types of writing, in Keeping it Real: Valuing Authenticity in the Writing Classroom Classroom there is an answer, “They should be writing travel essays, book reviews, advice columns. Study the layout of bookstores, magazines, and websites to see the nuances of genre”. Student should also feel like their writing is meaningful and not just a waste of time for them, we need to show them that all of these examples of writing are valid forms and can be used in everyday life.

Teaching authenticity in the writing classroom is a two way street. My students are not gonna be inspired to go out and write something that changes the world if I don’t give them genuine authentic writing exercises and help them feel their way around this new frontier, and what better way to do that then to write with them. Sitting down with students to show them that you write too is a great way to inspire them. A teacher could even pull up a word document and write there in front of students, walking them through the process and showing them different methods of writing. “Write along with your class—and when you do, sometimes do it on your word processing screen in front of students”. Writing and taking out portions of your writing, and changing things around, will show your students that no one is perfect, and that brings me to my next point.

No one in the world is perfect, and no one writes perfectly. Many people see the writing of others and grow discouraged, thinking, “I could never write something that good” and “My writing has so many mistakes.” Heck, even I get discouraged sometimes when I look at my best writing compared to others. Here’s the thing though, authentic writing is a process, a long process, where a person will make a lot of mistakes, and that’s okay, but that’s part of what authentic writing is all about. Writing, making mistakes, and working on fixing those mistakes. If the writing wasn’t authentic we wouldn’t care if there were any mistakes at all – we’d just move on without a second thought. But with authentic writing, we have to have strive to be better with every single sentence. A quote that really stuck out to me while reading Keeping it Real: Valuing Authenticity in the Writing Classroom was the one made by Brené Brown as she says that authenticity is “cultivating the courage to be imperfect”. So while we mentor the future writers of the world, it’s important that we show them that being perfect isn’t what makes a good writer, but instead it’s the effort they put into their works that will help them grow.

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.

Often times when I talk to students whether it be a high school student or even a fellow college student, I often hear “I hate writing” when I bring up that I’m an English major and writing is one of the main ways I am graded, or even “In the field, I’m going into I won’t have to do any writing anyway” For many of these students they don’t realize that it would be difficult to find a job that didn’t incorporate writing in some way, In the article “Writing in the Work World” we get a tiny glimpse at the different types of jobs that have to use writing on a daily basis. From presentations and emails to even reports, writing is something that used every single day.

So we can see that writing is a critical skill that is needed to succeed in the workplace, but how do we as teachers prepare students for the diverse amounts of different types of writing they may have to do in the world? In high school, many students only ever learn how to write during testing, the tried and true format of five paragraphs haunts many students all over the world. Because students are put into a box and told not to stray from these rules, they often feel trapped but the truly amazing craft that is writing. With this in mind perhaps teachers need to begin to vary the types of writing that they teach students, not only this but also explain to them why this type of writing could help them in the future. Perhaps if teachers can arm students with not only the proper tools to excel in all types of writing but also with the motivation to learn and continue learning about writing, we could see a whole new generation of lovers of writing regardless of the fields that they go into.

For many students starting their first semester of college there is a sort of disconnect when it comes to writing that first paper. Even the best writer in their twelfth grade class will most likely be a touch stumped when they sit down to write this first paper. When reading the article “Bridging the Gap: Centering Student Voices in High School and College Writing” We see a few of the common “Gaps” that many new college writers get stuck on. Some of these gaps I will even admit to have fallen into and am just now learning to break out of.

The gap that I found to be the most relatable was the one of the well known 5-paragraph essay. You know the one, introduction, 3 body paragraphs and a conclusion. Every student in my high school English class had this lesson crammed don their throat so much so that even know I sometimes fall back into that pit fall.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.