Jen Hair - Writing Portfolio

“I am an intelligent person who has this love and passion for educating kids” (Dana Goldstein, The Teacher Wars, 2014, p.262). This statement is reminiscent of the mantra I have repeated since the start of my M.Ed. program. Having been away from school for many years, I realized that although I still could write, I was seriously out of practice. Taking this class, Rhetoric for Written English, has given me an opportunity to renew confidence in my writing ability and to cultivate my personal writing process. Over two decades have passed since I last sat down to complete a writing assignment for a grade. On the first day of class my mind raced. Could I craft a cohesive and convincing argument? Did I understand the assignment? Would anyone find my thoughts interesting? I was out of practice and knew I had forgotten the nuances of practiced writing. For 20 years I have composed emails, business letters, and even press releases now and then, nothing that would be submitted

               C.S. Lewis shared this vivid metaphor regarding teachers, in his book The Abolition of Man: “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts” (1943, p.4). To Lewis, students were the desert, education the jungle and the educator tasked with irrigating the desert to promote growth. Education today is a mixed bag at best. Public schools, charter schools, private schools, online schools, and home schools are possibilities for kindergarten through twelfth grade students. Among the many options for schooling, there are two major education models in practice, modern and classical; there are major differences between these teaching philosophies. Modern education, also called progressive education, trends toward preparing students to pass standardized tests. Classical education, at its very essence, is a pedagogy focused on training students to think independently without bias. Modern education teaches students how to do things, whereas class

Responding to a question about seeing the writing process to fruition posted on his blog, author Neil Gaiman wrote, “There's no magic answer, I'm afraid. This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard, and you put one word after another until it's done. It's that easy, and that hard.” (2004) A rather simple answer, for a sometimes-arduous process, but true none the less. Writing is hard, and the only way to write, is to write. The onus is on teachers to lead students through the writing process, encouraging success by embracing the struggle even “real” writers face. In his book, Teaching Adolescent Writers (2006), Kelly Gallagher shares best practices gathered during his tenure as a high school English teacher. I found many of his stories and metaphors regarding critical reading and writing practices insightful. He relates the skill of writing well to surviving an oncoming stampede, not of livestock, but the ever-growing onslaught of literacy deman