Good writing is good thinking.

Well written is well thought out–which is to say that it’s well planned, well organized, speaks to an audience, has a clear and unique voice and just the right words strung together in just the right way to have just the desired effect.

One of the challenges in teaching writing is helping students to internalize what all that actually looks like.  Change one variable–your audience, your purpose, the topic, even the media–and your target shifts.  Writing is a complex task requiring the management of multiple variables, strategies, and processes.

A blank page means anything is possible.  As writing teachers, we need to narrow that down a bit–quite a bit.

Teaching Writing on the Ground

The bottom line, of course, is that we want our students to become better writers.  As we get closer to the actual meat and potatoes of the process (instruction and assessment), the choices we need to make, though many, become clearer:

• What type of writing are we going to focus on (this time)?
• What media will we be using?
• Who is our intended audience?
• What is the prompt?
• Is this something that involves research?
• What are the elements we want to see in the piece?
• How often will students “produce.”
• How will I provide timely and meaningful feedback?

These are just a sampling of the “instructional design” choices a teacher has to make.  And they’re vitally important, because you always want to get the most bang for your buck.  You always want to design the most effective instructional plan.  And then, when it’s all said and done, somehow, you always want to cement new learning with some type of reinforcement–so that it sticks.

That’s what I want to show you today: a way to pour cement so that we might firm up the foundation of new learning you’ve established in your instruction.

Relevance: The Rubber on the Road

At this stage in my development, I’d have to argue that good writing instruction includes what I’ll call a range of relevance.  What I mean is, from a student’s perspective, some assignments (read practice) are more real and some less real.  In other words, we aren’t publishing everything.  We aren’t actually sending every letter, or submitting every opinion piece to our local paper–nor do we want too.

To write and share our ideas with a real audience, for a real purpose, is what we’re working toward. It’s the game day for which we’ve been preparing.

So, what that means is: We Need Game Days!

And I would argue that, once we’ve reached a certain level of writing–we need them as often as we can get them.  There is a reason writing is such a valuable skill.  And it’s not to impress a teacher.

So how do we do that?  How do we consistently create unique, meaningful, relevant writing opportunities for individual students–without completely losing our minds?  Because, let’s be honest–this can be a lot of work.

I would argue. . . let them argue.  I’ve written about this before.

Most often, the most relevant writing tasks are not graded assignments, but opportunities that spontaneously present themselves–you just need to be able to recognize them.  How?  Here’s a tip: They almost always center around something a student wants (or does not want).

Like:

• A detention
• A field trip
• A grade
• A due date (for an assignment)
• An assignment
• A point or points on a particular test, quiz, project, or assignment
• The ability to choose (a partner, an assignment, a due date, some element of a project)
• The right/privilege to eat or drink or chew gum in class
• The right/privilege to listen to music
• To go outside
• The list goes on and on!

The key here is that students MUST have the ability to actually create change with their writing. I strongly caution teachers against merely pretending that students have some control.  This is not a semi-relevant prompt in which only the problem is real.  

Do that–only go half way–and we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.  Part of the opportunity here is to show students the very real power of quality writing.  And therein lies the second key. The student must produce quality writing in whatever form and at whatever level of expectation you’ve already established.

As writing teachers, we know we have a problem when it comes to skill transfer.  Students will write well in a Language Arts, English, or Writing class–but ask them to produce a quality lab summary for Science and it all falls apart.

The piece itself–or I should say, the reason for the piece–may have nothing to do with your class.  In short, we are demanding transfer of skills.  But, again, in order to pull this off, quality must be king.

I’ll close here with an example.

At the beginning of the year, we supply each of our Middle School students with a planner. Recently, a girl in my class came to me with a request.  She’d lost her planner, and she knew I had a spare.

Initially, her approach was to make a verbal plea.  Bingo. This was my chance to create an opportunity for her to reinforce what she’d already learned about persuasive writing.

I told her that I would consider giving her my extra planner if she was able to produce a persuasive essay convincing me to to do so.

Below, is her actual handwritten essay (and below that, because it might be hard to read, I’ve supplied a typed version).

Please keep in mind that I offer this up, not so much as an example of quality (there’s plenty of room for improvement here as you will see), but as just one example of an almost limitless number of simple, yet very relevant opportunities to reinforce the elements of quality writing that you’ve established in your instruction.

I think it’s a great supplement to an already rigorous instructional plan.  And on top of that, it’s always fun to read what students will create when it really counts.

 I pledge, yup that’s right, pledge to be a more organized student.  For years I have been a disorganized student and the messiness has to stop.  I can’t stress this enough.  I can’t be a well organized student without a well organized assignment notebook.  And that is why I strongly believe that I should have the nice new neat assignment notebook kept in your planning page box.

Let’s think about this.  As a teacher, you encourage kids to improve in there weak spots, like reading and writing , and you try to help them in whatever way you can.  So if you think about it, you would be helping me in my weak spot by letting me start over in a nice new assignment notebook.  You know, you would really be helping me succeed.

In my own defense, I have to say that you’re not actually using the assignment notebook.  You did say so yourself.  So by giving me the assignment notebook, you would be saving paper and giving it to a good cause.  ME!  You could be a really eco friendly man.

And last but not least, I am going to say that this is no joke.  I’m not going to rip it or write dumb stuff on it, like my last one.  I promise.  And trust me, Mr. Wondra, I never break my promises.  I also promise not to lose it or let anyone draw on it.  I will guard it with my life.

Mr. Wondra, giving me that assignment notebook would give me a chance to be more organized, which not only is extra stress off my back, but also it will help with my grades and so much more.  You will see improvement in my organization right before your eyes if you just let me have your assignment notebook.

Related posts:

1. Mining the internet: a space for “writing without writing.”
2. Research on writing conventions: U R what U write.
3. Using toilet humor to teach writing

Clay Shirky’s latest Ted Talk has huge implications for education. Through the use of three modern day examples (a movement to prevent voter suppression, an earthquake, and a political discussion) he argues that the way people send and receive messages (news) has shifted from a model that has historically been largely crafted and controlled by the sender, to now one that is completely uncontrolled and reported (unedited) in real time.

Traditional audiences of media have now also become producers of media.

What that means is that through the use of media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs, citizens now routinely beat news and government agencies to the punch when it comes to announcing and spreading messages.

Shirky outlines the implications of a new media model that is:

• Global
• Social
• Ubiquitous, and
• Cheap

When it’s inevitable that the majority of your students are not going to simply sit back and listen to the media, but become active producers of media, wouldn’t it be wise to begin a discussion about what this means?  Since the production and distribution of media is no longer controlled, and amateurs are now as powerful as TV networks or newspaper conglomerates, how do we prepare our students to participate in ways that create value?

Watching Shirky will make you realize that shift really does happen. Now the question becomes, how do we, as educators, deal with this?

Using the comment section below, please share with us your thoughts.

Related posts:

1. Key words in instruction: literature circles.
2. Whose interpretations matter most – teacher’s or students?
3. Helping students value learning. Sullo, B

A teacher affects eternity; no one can tell where his influence stops. –Henry Adams

“It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it!” –my wife (more times than I can count)

Guys, let me tell you, I’ve been married for fourteen years now, and the moment you hear that, it’s pretty much over. Sure, you can debate semantics and linguistics all you want, and logically, on paper, I’m sure you’re on the money. Still, I hate to break it to you—you’ve got no shot. It doesn’t matter how airtight your logic. Your best option is to run up the white flag and surrender. Apologize as sincerely as possible and try to change the subject. Drop it and move on. This is fourteen years of marriage speaking. Trust me.

There is no way to win this fight, because what you said doesn’t mean a thing. The only thing that matters is what she heard. And what she understood about your meaning has a lot more to do with your tone of voice, facial expression, posture, and proximity than the words that came out of your mouth. Forget that you were in the process of pulling a bee’s stinger from your eyeball. It doesn’t matter.

I’ve noticed this to be true in the classroom as well. Regardless of how I feel on any given day, if I make a conscious effort to bring energy to my craft, the kids always seem more upbeat too.

It doesn’t matter what I say. If I say it with a smile, if my tone is upbeat, if I’m standing straight with my head up high, if I’m moving around the classroom, making eye contact—the kids are more engaged.

And thus, more learning takes place.

The opposite is also true. If I’m blah, to a certain extent, so is the rest of the classroom environment.

But this is all common sense stuff, right? Much like the stand-up comic, as teachers, we all know that our “delivery” matters . . .right? This isn’t rocket science.

Turns out, however—it is brain science.

How Feelings Are Contagious

According to research done at Harvard and the University of California at San Diego by Dr. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, who have been mining data collected from nearly 5,000 people over a period of twenty years, “Happiness spreads through social networks like an emotional contagion.” So if you bring positive energy to your lessons, that energy is going to rub off on your students.

But why is this? Here is where it gets truly fascinating. They’re called, mirror neurons, and their job in the brain is to literally mirror observed emotions so that a person actually feels the pain and joy of others.

This truly astounding neural WiFi was discovered by neuroscientists in monkeys in 1992; but they have since also confirmed the presence of mirror neurons in the human brain through a series of experiments so sensitive it boggles the mind. It turns out we now have electrodes so laser-thin that they can be implanted within a single brain cell. Not only are they small, but these electrodes are so sensitive that they can measure the firing of a single neuron.

In his book, Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships, Dan Goldman reports of a remarkable study. After implanting and monitoring an electrode in a fully conscious person, scientists found that the same specific neuron will fire when a person anticipates pain (of a pinprick) as well as when watching someone else receive a pinprick. As Goldman puts it, the lighting up of that electrode is the equivalent of taking a “neural snapshot of primal empathy in action.”

But that isn’t even the most powerful discovery. To understand that, we have to revisit what Christakis and Fowler discovered about happiness. As it turns out, the energy you bring to the classroom doesn’t merely stay there for the benefit of only that class with only that lesson. It ripples outward and affects people you don’t know, have never met, and in places you may have never been.

According to Christakis and Fowler, if you project positive energy, you increase the chance of feeling good in those near you by 25%, but it doesn’t stop there. When your students leave the classroom, people close to them (friends, family, neighbors, etc . . .) enjoy a 10% chance of experiencing positive energy. Likewise, a person close to that person has a 5.6% chance of getting a positive charge.

Ever wonder what happiness looks like? Each node in the diagram represents one person (circles are female, squares are male). The lines indicate relationships (black = siblings; red = friends, spouces). Color represents degree of happiness, with blue indicating “the blues,” and yellow indicating sheer joy. Green is somewhere in between. Images by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, courtesy of BMJ

The Impact of One Teacher

What does this mean? Let’s just say, for the sake of simplicity, that you come in contact with 50 students a day, and each of those students then interacts with just five other people. That’s 250 additional people that you can affect–bringing your total to 300. But it doesn’t stop there. Remember, you still have a 5.6% chance to affect all those who connect with those additional 250. If we keep it simple and give those 250 each five contacts, that increases your potential outreach by 1,250–bringing your grand total to 1,550 people each day.

And that’s just based on the students in your classes! (Yes, yes I know you teach more than that, but, “Dammit Jim! I’m a Language teacher not a mathwiz!”) Now calculate, if you like (and you are a math wiz), the rest of your contacts in a day, and you’ll truly begin to understand the scope of your influence.

You should feel good about that. Still, guys, it would NOT be wise to bring that up during your next communication snafu with your wives or girlfriends. It won’t help. Trust me on this one. Sometimes it is what you say.

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Related posts:

1. Inspiring active learning: a handbook for teachers. Harmin, M.
2. Visioning and the development of outstanding teachers. Duffy, G.
3. Teaching the Teen Brain.

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