Developing Content Area Writers

Early on in this chapter, one of the sections deeply resonated with me. The section I'm referring to is the one that addresses the different demands of high school and college writing. If you spend enough time with me, you'll eventually hear me whine about my high school teachers and how they didn't teach me how to write. I spent four years of high school in AP classes, earning A's like nobody's business, only to come to university and find myself making C's in the honors college. I'm usually the type to put the blame on myself, but this discrepancy wasn't my fault. Luckily, I had some amazing professors who taught me how to write.

My own experience, my clinical experience, and this chapter got me to thinking. We don't spend nearly enough time teaching students how to write. Sure, I wrote in school and the kids at my practicum write, but the writing isn't really meaningful. It doesn't prepare you for university and it doesn't prepare you for life. It's a hollow sort of writing, the type of writing where you make sure that you have x number of sentences/paragraphs/pages to get your grade. I have actually watched kids cut things out of their planning so that they don't have to include it in their final paragraphs; they were more concerned with how much they had to write as opposed to write a solid essay. I like to think that I'm going to be the type of teacher who gives my students "important" writing assignments, the kind where they get so involved in what they are doing that they forget about word counts and all that, the kind of assignment where my students feel they have something important to tell and they don't put down their pens until it's done. And if things work out well, they will develop the strategies they need to write whatever they must in life.

Another section that struck me in this chapter concerns the way that technology is changing so fast that we really don't know how or what or students will be writing in the future. In my own school career, my teachers never talked much about writing in real life. My 7-year old brain never imagined a day when I could write things that the whole world would have access to. And yet, here we are. The thing about kids is, they adjust well to new technology. We all know this. I watch my nephew play video games and my niece surf the internet and my baby niece talk on a cell phone. Likewise, I have (repeatedly) taught my parents to use the internet and watched my grandmother give up using her cell phone. I think that as long as we teach our kids to be good, strong writers, to embrace quality over quantity, and to never take shortcuts, the skills they learn will serve them well no matter where technology takes us.