If you read my last post, you know I’m a writer. I am also a teacher of writing: I have created published lessons to teach kids how to write. I have taught composition to foreign students. And I have taught my own children.
In that order.
The last was one of my riskiest undertakings as a parent — fraught with pitfalls large and small, as you can imagine. It was enormously time consuming and scary. I persevered, however, for two reasons.
Reason 1: From my own life experiences, I learned that being able to communicate clearly and concisely has major advantages (way beyond landing the next freelance job).
Reason 2: From my (brief) time as a writing instructor, I realized that teaching writing is so time and labor intensive that a classroom teacher with a full schedule — no matter how dedicated and skilled — can’t do what’s needed. It’s just not possible.
I learned about Reason 2 from my students at CUNY Brooklyn.
Twenty-three CUNY students from all parts of the world had tested into my high-beginning composition class. My job was to help them gain writing skills needed to enroll in degree-credited courses. We had a lot of work to do.
As the semester began, I embraced two principles about teaching writing:
Students must write often.
Students must receive meaningful feedback about their writing.
I met with my students twice a week for 50 minutes. Each week, they spent time writing in class. They also wrote a weekly essay as homework.
By the numbers, I had 46 writing assignments to read and comment on each week. The reading was no problem. The commenting took time. In my view, it was not enough to correct grammatical errors and write comments like “vague,” “need more detail,” and “good ending.”
If my students were to develop as writers, they needed guidance that was both specific to a particular piece of writing and general enough for them to apply it to their next assignment.
While my students and I spent 100 minutes together each week, I spent at least three-and-a-half days reading and commenting on their work.
It was unsustainable.
The results, however, were amazing. Every student passed a departmental exam and placed into the next higher-level class.
Of course, it’s possible that the results had little or nothing to do with my efforts. But when it came to my kids becoming good writers I wasn’t taking any chances.
Work with my kids began after they moved past the stage when everything was “wonderful honey.” Full of middle-school self-confidence, they set about writing essays, themes, and papers.
Here’s what I saw: Very intelligent kids (assessed as only a mother can) who kept 80% of their ideas in their head and put 20% on “paper.”
We had a lot of work to do.
So we went at it: My kid at the computer. Me, the uninformed audience, sitting out of eye-shot of the screen. My kid read aloud to me. When something wasn’t clear, or I didn’t get it, I asked a question.
Who’s that character? Add a sentence. Tell your reader.
What exactly do you mean by that? Add a sentence. Add two. Explain it to your reader.
What happened between [this event] and [that event]? It’s not obvious. Your reader needs to know. Don’t keep it in your head. Write it down.
How are these ideas connected? Tell your reader. Make the link clear, step-by-step. Don’t leave it guesswork.
What is this paragraph about? Say it in the paragraph’s first sentence. Get rid of sentences that aren’t about that.
Make no mistake. This was careful, sentence-by-sentence work, built on mutual trust and love. But it is work any parent can do. You don’t have to be a great writer, or even a good one. And you certainly never had to have taught writing!
All you need is the ability to listen and ask the obvious questions. You know what’s clear and not clear; you know what you understand and what you don’t. It’s a matter of just saying so out loud.
If you take the time to do that, you can do for your child what is not humanly possible for a teacher to do within the confines of a class — even a small class.
Would my kids have learned to become effective writers without my help? Perhaps. But like I said, I wasn’t taking any chances. You don’t have to either.
