Students as Initiators of Writing

            An idea that has really stood out to me lately is developing students into initiators of writing.  Previously I’ve never thought of this a goal for teaching writing, but after reading Carl Anderson’s book “Assessing Writers” I really believe that this is a really important goal and purpose when teaching writing to students.  As we talked about in class some teachers use the writer’s workshop format for teaching writing and some do not.  I’ve been struggling with how you can develop students into initiators of writing without using the writing workshop format.  In my practicum classroom the students are introduced to a skill or genre on Monday and work on a writing assignment involving the topic for the rest of the week.  Although my cooperating teacher tries to provide the students with as much freedom and choice as she can, the curriculum and restrictions from her principal don’t seem to allow students to initiate writing.  Anderson emphasizes the importance of the characteristics of a lifelong writer saying, “A writer who initiates writing is someone who understands that the written word has the power to do things in the world, that writing is a way to achieve many important purposes” (16).  I can’t wrap my head around how students learn that writing can do something when they are always writing hypothetical writing assignments that have a sole purpose of meeting the requirements for the assignment.  

     For instance, I just watched students complete an assignment on writing dialogue.  The assignment was short and the students could write about anything they wanted.  I think that the lesson lacked any real purpose other than showing they could use the skill of writing with dialogue.  Therefore in the future, I don’t feel that the students would initiate writing with dialogue because they didn’t really learn how can writing with dialogue can help them accomplish something.  I think that it would have been more beneficial to present dialogue within a context that showed the impact it can have in writing.  I think that one way to help students become initiators of writing is to anchor as much writing into real world experiences as possible.  This will show students how they can have a voice and how they can use it.  I think that this takes a lot of creativity and hard work in order to align activities with writing standards, but it will benefit student learning and motivation.  I have never really thought about teaching students to initiate writing, but now I think it might be the most important goal as a teacher of writing.  If you teach students to become initiators of writing I feel that all of the other essential skills and strategies will develop naturally as necessary tools to accomplish their goal.

     I think that this is something that will take a lot more thought and experience in order to determine the true benefits and path for developing students into genuine initiators of writing.  It seems difficult to teach because it is more implicit, and would have to be laying underneath.  I want to keep researching this and think about it more!

Let me know what you think! Thanks!

Kate