Reflections on Writing

Reading and writing are cross-curricular skills that are necessary for success throughout one’s entire educational career and subsequent stages of life. The acquisition of knowledge concerning writing, and the development of writing skills, affords students opportunities in life that might not have otherwise been available to them. Thaiss and Porter argue that writing is something that all teachers must do. As an English teacher however, there is perhaps more focus attributed to reading and writing within the classroom. As an English teacher then, it is my responsibility to help students tone and strengthen their reading and writing skills. One way of sparking students’ interest in the material, and getting them to work on both their reading and writing skills, would be by including opportunities for Discovery Writing: journal prompts, independent study units, responses to poetry, interpretations of various monologues or soliloquies, the list goes on! Through these kinds of assignments or classroom exercises, combined with teacher led instruction and basic structure, students have the freedom to choose the format, topic, and/or purpose of writing. Simply providing students with options, with alternative ways of demonstrating their knowledge and understanding of the material, is another way of allowing students to incorporate their own interests into their learning. This kind of creative freedom provides occasion for the material to become more meaningful and relatable to the students. Teachers must be able to motivate students to learn and become engaged with the content that is being explored throughout their lessons. Relatability is perhaps the most powerful tool that teachers have at their disposal in their attempt to engage students in their learning: students’ “understanding and skills will grow as they explore their world and engage in activities, for their own purposes, that involve reading [and] writing.” (“The Ontario Curriculum Grades 9 and 10 English.” 2007, p.5.) By making the classroom content they are learning relatable to them, students then become personally invested in the course and their learning. In literature courses for example, students are often taught to engage with themes that are presented throughout a novel study unit. Many of these themes are universal concepts which exist beyond the fictional realm of the novel being studied. When I taught “To Kill a Mockingbird” for example, and explored the ideologies surrounding the Ku Klux Klan and its 1915 Revival, I asked students: “Does any of this sound familiar? Does it make you think of anything that is happening now?” With these two simple questions I, or rather my students, were able to compare some of the bigoted comments emitted from particular characters of Harper Lee’s book, and the racist understandings of that period to some of the platform promises raised during the recent United States election. As a teacher, I hope to grasp on to as many of these kinds of opportunities as possible in order to relate the novel, and its study, to my students’ modern world.

As an educator it is also important to understand that students do not enter the classroom with equal knowledge and skill. As a teacher then, I am accountable for finding the means of making my courses, including the material that is being explored, the assignments that are presented, and the feedback that is provided, informative as well as important to each individual student. While students are divided according to different course levels (applied versus academic or open versus mixed courses), it is also important to realize that there will be a difference between students’ knowledge and skills within the same course level. The curriculum document can be a helpful resource that teachers can pull ideas from that will assist them in helping their students. Consider for moment the differences between the curriculum description for the grade ten academic English course (ENG2D) and the grade ten open English course (ELS2O). ENG2D is a course designed to “extend the range” of reading and writing, and “an important focus will be on the selective use of strategies that contribute to effective communication.” (“The Ontario Curriculum Grades 9 and 10 English.” 2007, p.69.) ELS2D on the other hand, “is designed to help students strengthen essential reading and writing skills.” (“The Ontario Curriculum Grades 9 and 10 English.” 2007, p.101.) In an English course, particularly when a class focusses on rhetoric, teachers must be able to properly choose and edit what feedback is the most useful and effective for each individual student. One of the courses I was responsible for teaching throughout my first practicum experience was a grade ten academic English course. In this one class, there were students whose writing skills were very strong while other students’ skills were not where they should have been. I remember one student in particular that I worked with, I will call her Julia, would shift and fidget in her seat with nervous intimidation at the mention of any written task. Though she tried in earnest to clearly write out her thoughts, it was often difficult to interpret what Julia was trying to discuss through her writing. Due to her participation in class discussions and other communicative activities I knew that she understood the material. On reading her first written assignment however, I thought that one of us had gone awry in our execution of the content. By speaking with her in regards to this particular written assignment, I was able to more clearly understand her thought process and found that she maintained a comprehensive understanding of the concept she had been exploring. The issue was that she lacked the ability to properly transcribe her ideas. While orally communicating students are able to correct themselves, they can reexplain or edit their thought process immediately. But students are not always granted an opportunity to explain their work. Nor should they be. Proper written communication is an important skill that needs to be properly toned. In their future work environments, even if it is merely through email, students must be able to properly and clearly communicate. Writing is more complex and intricate than speech, it is “more reliant on standardized conventions (such as punctuation and other elements of grammar) that usually are not considered very important in spoken communication.” (Fleming, Douglas. “What is Writing? What is Discourse? What is Grammar? (Lecture Slides, February 16th, 2017)) While teaching students when to properly use semicolons is important, it is a lesson that a very strong student can better use to improve their already strong writing skills. Teaching a weak writer, such as Julia, how to more clearly and concisely organize their ideas on paper is far more beneficial to those students’ higher achievement than teaching that same student when to properly use a semicolon. As a teacher, I hope that by being able to tailor feedback to individual students, I might be able to provide students with a more valuable learning experience and help them to continue developing, or refining, their overall skill sets regarding reading and writing.