Boring Reasons:
1. It's a skill that every person should have. By definition, it determines if a person is literate or illiterate.
2. It's an unavoidable task. It'd be very difficult to avoid writing in everyday life.
3. Having the ability to write, and write well, can be the determiner to what school you get in, what scholarships you recieve, what jobs hire you, etc.
4. There are nation-wide and state writing standards that are geared towards student writing expectations.
5. The PSSA and other state standardized tests require students to write.
Not Boring Reasons:
1. Writing can be fun
2. It's a form of expression
3. It can be a creative outlet
4. It extends learning and knowledge (Gallagher 37)
Why should we teach writing?
The list would be exactly the same, in the exact same categories.
Why I want to teach writing?
I'm going with the second list. I am not at all saying the boring reasons are not important, they are. I want and need my students to know about list 1, but I want to start teaching by list 2. I believe that once students get an understanding of list 2, all the reasons on list 1 will be obvious but also easy to accomplish.
Gallagher, in Teaching Adolescent Writers, wants to rid students of their fear and hatred towards writing. To most students, it's an abhorred task. (To me, that's slightly frustrating and hard to understand. How does one hate writing? I guess this is why I'll struggle with teaching writing) The question then rises, how do we get students interested in writing? It'd be easy to disregard our students' disinterest and assign them writing assignments anyways (because we can do that). We can continue to assign persuasive, compare/contrast, and analytical essay because they are important (and they go along with the curriculum and the standards), but isn't that what made students hate writing in the first place? As Gallagher notes, those kinds of writing assignments are necessary and students need to know how to do them, and I agree with him and with all the curriculum and state standards. Students do need to know how to write in those specific ways for their current education, higher education, and future jobs and endeavors (also just to gain knowledge, that's always fun). However, as 12-18 year olds that kind of writing is just seen as an assignment, a time consuming-boring assignment. So, first I want my students to have fun writing assignments. I liked Gallagher's writing assignments, and I also liked Savich's writing example he showed us with poetry. I want to show my students that writing is not always a burden. It does not forever require an introduction and conclusion, a thesis, 3 supporting paragraphs. It does not always require analyzing literature or doing research. Song lyrics, screen plays, advertisements, journalism, slam poetry, comedians' scripts, ect.- are all types of writing that seem ten times more fun to write than your 10th grade research paper on community service. However, through writing song lyrics students learn about rhyme, rythem, unstressed and stressed syllables. Through journalism, students learn to conduct research, intervies, and cite others. Through screen plays students learn the elements of drama and how to write dialogue. Most importantly though, students are able to be more creative and express themselves through these outlets (at least I think so). Gallagher, as well as Smagorinsky, both stress the importance of student choice, and I think by providing students with more options, or genres, of writing it promotes that idea of choice. In the end, writing can be fun and for students to see that we need to present our students with more fun writing assignments. We need to let them know that it's more than an assignment and more than a grade, but it's an oppurtunity for them to be creative, share what know, and express what they feel. The written word is powerful, and who doesn't want strong students?
