I Think I’m Going to Be All Write Now


“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 for assessment. My fears began to diminish as the weeks passed, the more I wrote, the more my confidence grew. Focused writing assignments and studying multiple texts on writing education theory forced me to exercise my mind and my vocabulary. Writing was becoming fun again.

Like the muscle memory of a tennis player who has been off the court for many years, my first few serves [papers] were rough, but I began to remember the writing process: planning, pre-writing, outline, draft, rewrite, revise, revise, revise. I had to, as Kelly Gallagher (2005) in Teaching Adolescent Writers suggests, “let go of the idea that this first draft has to be the best thing I have ever written” (p. 53).

This course may be the most important I will take as I work towards cultivating a classroom full of young writers. It has reminded me how it feels to be a student of writing. We all come to writing the same way, with a pen, a notebook, and an idea; then we write one word at a time until we are done.

Resources

Gallagher, K. (2006) Teaching Adolescent Writers. Strenhouse Publishers.

Goldstein, D. (2014). The teacher wars: A history of America’s most embattled profession. Anchor Books. New York.

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