My Philosophy of Teaching Writing

Terri Tims
Dr. Brent Lynn
Teaching College Composition
17 November 2013
“I Can’t Teach These Kids How to Write!”
            My first semester of teaching high school senior English was a surprise to everyone.  After receiving my B.A. in English in 1990, I had gone on to pursue a career in state parks.  I had been scared out of pursuing my teaching license during classroom observations my junior year in college, and a career in parks welcomed me with open arms.  However after marrying and starting a family, the odd hours and stress of being a park ranger were no longer as enjoyable as they used to be.  I wound up securing a position teaching high school English in January of 2006, and I was the new senior English teacher when the students returned to school from Christmas break.
            I quickly had to rid myself of many of my misconceptions about the abilities of high school seniors.  I plainly remember standing in the office, speaking to the vice principal and saying, “But, I can’t teach these kids how to write!”  I’ve come a long way since then, but the teaching of composition is still my greatest weakness in my teaching.
            One of my first realizations in teaching composition was that my students in general have very weak vocabularies, and most are very averse to reading.  I mused for a long time over whether students had poor vocabularies because they did not read or did not read because they had poor vocabularies.  Either way, as a new teacher with no shame about teaching students material that seemed below grade level to other teachers, I began a crusade of teaching vocabulary and requiring reading.  I still teach vocabulary and require reading in my classes today, though I have been openly mocked by other teachers in my department. 
            I assign one major research paper for my classes, and that paper has always been an argumentative paper.  Students have to choose a topic, research the topic, and prepare a three to five page paper.  I use teaching resources I have gathered from a variety of places, but I use the OWL at Purdue University a great deal.  We discuss plagiarism thoroughly, and a comment that I always make is that I would rather see a horrible paper in the student’s own words than a perfect paper that has been plagiarized.  I will still get several papers that contain plagiarized information.  I think that students are so frustrated with their own inabilities; they cannot read and comprehend the source material, but it sounds good, so why not copy and paste it into the paper? 
            I just finished grading a set of research papers from my regular English class.  There were a few bright spots, but in general, the papers were pretty bad.  Out of a class of 25 students, I received 15 papers.  The rest of the students were willing to take a zero on a 200 point assignment rather than actually have to produce something.  For most of the papers that I did receive, I found myself thinking, this student could really polish this paper into something good, but I know that giving the papers back and asking the students for more would not work.  We spent a month on learning about writing a paper: plagiarism, research, thesis statements, organization, outlining, drafting, introductions and conclusions, citing correctly, and MLA format.  The students are done; they just want their grade so they can move on with their lives.
            Already, just in reading the two articles that we have read for this course, I have started getting new ideas about my teaching of composition.  Strong’s “Language as Teacher” inspired me because I’ve always felt that there is a “zone” that I have to get into as a writer to be effective and that maybe some of my students don’t understand how to get into that “zone.”  I think that Strong described what I consider as “the zone” to be the experience of having a conversation with oneself as reader and writer, and having one’s own inner critic commenting on one’s work.  Can I get my students to that zone?  Can I get them to participate in metacognition to the extent that they can have that interior dialogue with themselves about their writing?  I truly believe that if I can get them to that point, their writing will improve.  First, however, I have to get them to care enough about their own writing to make that extra cognitive effort.  There lies the greatest challenge.
                                                          Works Cited

Strong, William.  “Language as Teacher.” College Composition and Communication. 38:1 (1987): 21-31. JSTOR. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.

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