The "difficulty" of teaching writing

In recent conversation with someone seeking a college teaching job that involves a large amount of writing instruction, that person mentioned twice that teaching writing is "difficult." The individual's background and scholarship are not in writing instruction, but if he's to present himself in job interviews in such a way that this "difficulty" doesn't come across as a disqualifier, he might consider some of the following ways to talk about teaching writing.

• "Teaching writing is really challenging. I've tried a variety of approaches over the years, and while I'm still not convinced that anything really works, here are the most successful strategies I've used in the classroom: . . . ."
• "Teaching writing is difficult, because we see our students for such a short period, really, in their development as writers. But in the short 14 weeks or so when they are working with me, I try to convey the ideas that . . . ."
• "I'm still not convinced that any one person can 'teach' writing to another, but I believe that a semester's conversations about writing, combined with a lot of practice of writing, can aid a student in developing greater awareness of . . . ."

Actually, I have to agree that teaching writing is difficult. But that's what I do for a living. So I spend a lot of time thinking about--and reading about and writing about--what might work in each situation I'm currently confronted with. In the time that I've been doing writing center work, I've been more firmly convinced than ever that most real teaching happens at the level of the one-to-one interaction. It is a luxury to work with one individual for a half hour or more on his or her paper while that paper is still evolving. It is also hard work. After I've spent a few hours in the writing center, working one to one with several students, I'm really tired. Such work requires continual adaptation--constant assessment of the text and of the student's understanding of what needs to be done, a repertoire of strategies for eliciting the student's thinking and for tutoring him or her in the writing skills most needed at the moment--and one may be doing this with one person working on a history paper, followed by another working on a research paper for a computer science course, followed by another outlining a speech, followed by another writing a critical paper on a literary text the tutor hasn't read. Even the peer tutors who staff the writing center, with all their youthful energy, attest to the tiredness they feel after a busy shift of several hours' duration.

And it's difficult to teach writing in the classroom, because literacy is developmental and, all standardized testing to the contrary, each individual writer's understanding and repertoire of skills, as well as motivation to communicate in a classroom setting, are different from those of all his or her classmates. In some way, the teacher of writing must outline tasks or facilitate investigations that draw students into engagement--because without engagement, no one writes well, or at least more than perfunctorily. And then the teacher must decide when to intervene in students' writing--at what stage(s) in the process--and how to intervene, whether through brief or detailed feedback, whether in writing or in formal or informal conference, whether to refer the student to a peer for feedback or give it oneself. And the teacher of writing must devise relevant instruction--ideally, "at the point of need"--and must deliver it in such a way that it reaches all those who need it (and doesn't confuse or terminally bore those who don't need that particular lesson), enabling them to apply the instruction to their practice of writing. And finally, the goal of the writing teacher is ultimately to be self-effacing: the successful student is the student who has made the writing instruction his or her own, with the strategies needed coming to mind as he or she composes or revises. What the student once heard only in the teacher's voice will eventually be heard in his or her own internalized voice--and often, that growth in writing seems simply to be natural--not the outcome of the timely help that a good teacher gives--so that ultimately, much of what the writing teacher does goes unacknowledged: the student is simply a better writer at the end of the course than at the beginning.

Sure, it's a difficult job. But the joys of working with texts and working with student writers--the joys of those breakthrough moments and suddenly inspired papers--make it really worthwhile!

Review of Finn by Jon Clinch

I loved Finn, Jon Clinch's first novel. I loved the style, the feel of the narrative. As one can discover from any brief review, Clinch takes Huckleberry Finn's character Pap and gives him a past offstage from Twain's main action--and a present, since Pap Finn's death is one of the events of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, its circumstances mysterious. I have recently read other novels that build on classic texts, an intriguing form of reader response--a kind of fan fiction taken to high literary levels? This is one of the best. Clinch takes as his premise that speculation advanced by critics and readers of Twain that Huck Finn is himself Black and envisions Pap as the White ne'er-do-well who can't stay away from Black women. Thus Huck's biracial status places him in a tricky position along Illinois-Missouri border, his status changing as he moves from his orignal home with Pap to his home with the Widow.

But this is Pap's story, and throughout much of it, Huck plays little part, although Clinch has made maximum use of Twain's details, giving a history to the objects in the river-wrecked house in which Huck and Jim find Finn's body, along with writing and pictures on the walls. Finn is not a pleasant character. He is filthy and uncouth and opportunistic and, for a surprisingly long time, a survivor. He is simultaneously drawn to Black women and a virulent racist, and his father has disowned him and threatened him with the death sentence for a murder he didn't commit (but not for the murders he does commit) because he has so flagrantly disregarded the father's values. A hopeless alcoholic, he squanders the money that comes his way, and the money he hasn't come up with yet, to keep himself in drink, most often the cheapest whiskey he can cadge, even the woods-brewed poison of a local moonshiner. Drinking makes him randy, touchy, aggressive, violent with the woman that he clearly comes to value, Huck's mother. When she is not caring for his home and cooking regularly for him, he lives in squalor and foregoes nourishment.

There's sometimes something likable in him, though. He lives off the river and is handy enough in his way, and he cherishes the boy at first. The turning point in his relationship with the woman, Mary, though, comes with his year-long imprisonment, because his absence means that she must taken in laundry to earn some money, that she runs up some debt for food, and that a kindly neighbor has taken care of a couple items around her house. Finn is not only fiercely independent (except from his brother, who has financed his household) but also jealous and distrustful, and once he's been to prison, whatever peace and stability have come to him in family life are precariously balanced on that knife-edge of distrust. When his violence finally drives Mary away altogether, he feels as much relief from responsibility as any other emotion. But before that point comes, we see him teaching his way of life and values to Huck, and thus he makes a substantial contribution to the charm that Twain's Huck has for us. From Mary, Huck acquires the folklore that endears him to the boys he meets once he's living in the Widow's household. For the most part, he rejects her, though, as his mind is poisoned by his rare contacts with his father.

The novel has a strong Faulknerian feel, some of the same darkness, pathos, and humor. I'd love to quote a couple of sentences or paragraphs as examples of Clinch's mesmerizing and original style, sometimes nearly as leisurely as Faulkner's, but I don't want to violate copyright restrictions. Read the novel yourself, to see what I mean, to select a couple memorable passages you'd like to share. After you've read this, you'll go back to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I suspect, because you'll be reminded of the wonders of life on the river and moral dilemmas shaped by conflicting values at a crucial moment in our national past.

Review of Capote in Kansas by Kim Powers

Yes, I do read adult fiction from time to time. Kim Powers admits to a bit of obsession with Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote, chronicling her fascination in an Author's Note at the end of the novel, where she also distinguishes the work of her imagination on the materials from the historical, biographical, verifiable information that she includes. Her inventions are plausible, based on the sound research she brings to her portrayal of the famous authors. She imagines a drunken Capote vulnerable to visits from the ghosts of the Clutter family and their murderers, whose misery and horror he used to craft the work that stands as his enduring bid for fame. She imagines the reclusive Lee haunted in a different way--hated--by the sister of the man who inspired Boo Radley, one of the most memorable characters in American fiction. She imagines Lee--and her sister--continually troubled by the rumor that Lee's masterpiece was "ghost" written by Capote. She imagines Lee's injured feelings about these Capote-instigated rumors after her generous help in helping him win the trust of his informants in Kansas. And she imagines Capote's spiteful gossip and self-centeredness as the triggers for this plot that involves a laying to rest of all the ghosts--subtitling Capote in Kansas with the descripive genre category, A Ghost Story.

It's a pretty good read, made more pleasurable for the reader who has traveled some of the same territory--as fascinated by the relationship and mutual influence of Lee and Capote as by their wonderful texts. Powers's style gets a bit tedious at times when she draws ideas out in successive single-sentence, or single-frament, paragraphs. But like some other works that draw for their inspiration on the work of masters, this novel yields a high degree of enjoyment for the reader seeking new perspectives and new ways of engagement with the originals that sparked it. After you've read this, you'll want to go back to To Kill a Mockingbird and In Cold Blood.

Review of Night of the Soul Stealer by Joseph Delaney (Book Three in The Last Apprentice Series)

There are terrifying creeping and crawling feral things--female things--imprisoned in the basement, and once again, Tom Ward is up against them alone. This time he's engaged in desperate battles of wits against creatures of the dark without his master, the Spook, for a couple of reasons. First, the Spook's weakness is his love for a woman in pointy shoes (hence his warning Tom away from the likable Alice, an adolescent witch in pointy shoes) and this weakness ends up in the Spook's imprisonment in the cell he's devised for others, muzzy witted after being dosed with his own potion, which he's been administering to the love of his life to keep her from draining his neighbors' lifeblood. Second, Tom foolishly keeps secret from both his master and Alice the information that a rogue apprentice, now dabbling in the dark arts, is bending Tom to his will by exercising power over Tom's recently deceased father--who wants only to rest but whose soul is forced to suffer by the infamous Morgan. Morgan wants Tom to become his apprentice, and he wants Tom to steal a spell-book from the Spook so that he can summon a terrifying pagan god, Golgoth, and plunge the land into perpetual winter and misery. Tom's reluctance to speak openly to the Spook comes from two sources--first, he knows the Spook keeps secrets from him, and, second, the Spook is ill, then imprisoned by his love, the lamia witch Meg, so his counsel is unavailable during the time when Tom must make crucial decisions. Tom's emotions are heightened by his father's death and his mother's disappearance from his life; he feels guilty that he did not make it home in time to say good-bye to his father--the letter informing him that his father was dying having been conveniently misdirected through Morgan's interference. And Morgan has managed to inform himself rather well as to Tom's circumstances so that he can manipulate Tom, especially during the Spook's imprisonment. So Tom finds himself underground and in danger twice, trapped by Meg and her scary sister, Marcia, and then later bound underground in a barrow with Morgan, awaiting his sacrifice to Golgoth.

Tom is separated from Alice, whose quick wits and practicality helped him battle monsters in Book Two of the series, for most of the winter when these events build to a dire climax. Tom is increasingly on his own, using the knowledge he's acquired to help his master trap a boggart, to rescue his master from the lamias, and to save himself from Golgoth and Morgan. We know that he is the Spook's "last apprentice," and we see his sources of support for his battle against evil failing him--his mother will return home to her own country, now that his father has died, and the Spook is aging. The Spook's routines and teachings have shaped Tom's practice of his craft, but he recognizes he is free to disregard at least some of what the Spook says. And even the Spook can be brought around to appreciate Alice's efforts on his and Tom's behalf. So the way is paved for some of the dangerously powers of an adolescent witch to weave their way more firmly into Tom's life. Will he fall in love? Will his love for Alice let him keep his wits about him when he must save ordinary people from the monsters that prey upon them? Will he renounce love to live priestlike, so that his power will not be sapped?

We'll all have to wait for the sequel to find out.

Great Class!

Today, in Teaching Writing, a question was raised even before class started--about a student in a public high school whose family was told she must have tutoring but who was accused of plagiarizing when she turned in a paper written under the tutor's guidance. The student who raised the question was incensed, but she brought the question into class for discussion, and it sparked a truly passionate discussion that served to bring together a number of important issues we've been talking about all along.

The circumstances: An administration required the family to provide tutoring for the student. No list of tutors was provided to the family. The family selected a friend, not trained in writing instruction or tutoring but characterized in our class discussion as "very smart." The student who was being tutored was said to have "good ideas" but needed help with essay structure and editing. According to the student who reported the situation to us, there was some feeling that the tutor began taking over the paper, so that the final product was, perhaps more representative of the tutor's thinking than of the student's. After the student turned in the paper, the teacher, without any consultation with the student but in full awareness that she was being tutored, reported the student for plagiarism.

Who's at fault here? What could/should have been done differently?

First of all, it seems to me that if the administration requires tutoring, they have some obligation to set guidelines for families obtaining tutoring, perhaps developing a list of qualified tutors. Who is a qualified tutor? Someone with some training in writing instruction, in the ethics of tutoring, or in both. Second, it seems to me that if the teacher has been informed that the student is being required to work with a tutor (as this teacher was), she has some obligation to communicate with the student, ideally with the tutor as well, about how the tutoring is being conducted. In a school with a writing center, regular communication among all of the stakeholders is a key ingredient for successful tutorial work--work that helps the student grow as a writer and that is informed by familiarity with teacher expectations and standards. This is not to say that a writing tutor should contact a teacher to say, "I'm working with so-and-so. What can you tell me about her needs?" But tutoring that is going on outside of the system may well go astray--as apparently happened here--and if the system is mandating the tutoring, it is up to those who do the mandating to facilitate the communication process.

Our discussion proceeded like this. Some of our class members are tutors in our Writing Center, under my direction. I asked them what might be a problem with employing a tutor who had no background in tutoring writing, and they responded based on their knowledge of how we work with writers without taking over their papers. We talked about ownership of a paper, and we situated teaching relative to tutoring and editing--noting that editing is not teaching or tutoring, and that a student whose papers are simply edited by someone else is not learning more about writing. This brought us back to considerations of writing process--of why an understanding of process is important, so that we can prioritize our responses to learners' texts, moving from global, or whole-text, considerations to local, or sentence-level and word-level, considerations. We revisited a topic that had come up earlier in the week: what if you don't know what to do with a text, even if you know it's below-average, and we saw how these process-embedded priorities could help teachers work with students and help us look more carefully at our own papers.

What if you have good ideas but can't get them onto paper? was another question. We talked about ways to work with individual students, taking dictation, for instance, and getting those ideas onto paper where we can, then, work with them. Of course, no one can take a tutor along to a standardized test session, so it is useful to give students a quick test-prep mini-course in the couple of weeks leading up to a standardized test, when a pretty standard approach to essay writing will work quite well.

Talking about standardized tests and test scores, and the pressure to prepare students to perform well on a small subset of lifelong real-world literacy skills, we noted how grades, essentially meaningless and arbitrary numerical assessments, have become the currency of education. One participant in the discussion reminded us how GPA affects college admissions and financial aid packages. This awareness led us back to the important principle that learning literacy is a developmental process--that despite all of the standards set for certain grade levels, in reality, people can learn or improve literacy at any age. We revisited the important elements of writing instruction that can foster substantial improvement: (1) write a lot; (2) write about something you care about; (3) write to communicate. We linked this approach to writing instruction to the ways we'd work with students who didn't read well and/or didn't like to read, noting that our top priority would be to find texts that those students would find interesting. That affective dimension of literacy learning plays a far more important role than our standardized-test promoters will acknowledge.

Because it is so important that we devote adequate time to helping students care about writing and find ways to use writing to accomplish their purposes--like getting the school picnic organizer to provide food for the vegetarian students!--we know that we must work against conventional wisdom in planning for writing instruction. And I mentioned that at the end of the semester, we'll be talking about professional communities and staying in touch with other people who believe in giving students choices in their writing and ownership of their texts, once we all go our separate ways, possibly into schools that don't support best practices for literacy instruction!

That's my summary of what we talked about today. Many people volunteered, and I suspect the conversation will continue in the logs students are keeping for this class. I hope my students will review this post and add to what I've said here--qualifying, correcting, and reflecting on our discussion.

Review of Millicent Min, Girl Genius, by Lisa Yee

This is a book for fourth- to sixth-grade readers, shelved in the local library in Juvenile Fiction rather than Young Adult. Millicent is a phenomenon, already attending high school and enrolling in a summer course in poetry at the local college at age eleven. Unfortunately, Millicent's genius has isolated her from others in her age group, and the social behaviors she has developed to cope with her isolation have only exacerbated her oddness. She has been teased and tormented by kids her age, excluded by the high school and college students she meets. Her only real friend has been her grandmother, Maddie, a feisty, independent-minded, sociable woman who gently probes Millicent's self-isolating behaviors, like putting up a wall of 4-syllable words when flustered. Millicent dismisses much of her fun-loving parents' behavior as immature, and she is embarrassed by them, but she listens to Maddie, even if she seems unable to act on Maddie's advice. Except for Maddie's company, Millicent seems determined to live life exclusively in the intellect, reading sophisticated books in trees and training her binoculars on the neighbors.

But this summer is different! Millicent's family members have conspired to plunge her into social situations with kids her age. She's been signed up for volleyball and hired as a tutor for her nemesis, Stanford Wong. Volleyball gives her the opportunity to make a real friend her own age--the new-to-town, homeschooled Emily, who doesn't know Millicent's history as child genius/social leper.

Now at this point, I have to say that I came to Millicent Min, Girl Genius by way of Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time. Having read the second book first, I came to Millicent Min with a great deal of fondness for Stanford, whose summer has been ruined by his failing English--he has to attend summer school instead of attending the awesome basketball camp he's been dreaming of for months. And when Stanford works hard, actually listening to Millicent, and is thrilled to get a C+, everybody around him seems to be disappointed that he didn't get a higher grade.

So reading Millicent Min, Girl Genius, I lose some of my sympathy for Millicent in the tutoring situation. She does not understand Stanford at all, and she does not understand how Emily can find Stanford attractive. She doesn't recognize his small overtures until he teaches her how to serve a volleyball--and then she remains suspicious of him. Millicent has a lot in common with Harriet the Spy--just not very likable. She keeps a lot to herself, including her misconceptions about others. Readers can't help but cheer, though, when she takes a few small steps into appreciating friendship and appreciating her parents--and when her progress in volleyball is acknowledged.

I haven't decided yet whether Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time is a better book. I kind of think so, but I'd hate to be cavalier in dismissing Millicent. She may not be likable, but she's got the weight of the world on her shoulders, and she can't figure out how to be normal, so she dismisses normality as irrelevant to her goals and her life. You gotta feel for an 11-year-old who's living that kind of a life.

Review of My Swordhand Is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick

In My Swordhand Is Singing, Marcus Sedgwick gives young adults another totally absorbing, dark novel, this time revolving around the undead in Transylvania. Protagonist Peter is a woodcutter because he's the son of a woodcutter, Tomas, now an alcoholic. They've led an itinerant existence until settling outside the village of Chust, where they've built a cottage so near the river's fork that Tomas has been able to island their home by digging a trench across the yard. Living on the edge of a magnificent forest, the villagers are subject to the ravages of recurring waves of vampire activity. In the past that Tomas has hidden from his son, he fought with the king, wielding a magical sword against the creatures, but at the point when Peter discovers the villagers' fears are not merely superstition, as his father has claimed, Tomas has renounced warfare and hidden away the sword. He refuses requests made by the gypsies, who have sought out Tomas to ask him to wield the famous sword again against the supernatural invaders. Their other weapon is a famous song.

In the course of this creepy invasion, Peter must give up the girl he hopes to marry but finds he's drawn to a gypsy girl; he learns that his father has sought to protect him from disquieting knowledge and that he loves Peter, even if he has allowed drink to make him into an abusive and neglectful father; he learns that the tales his father dismissed as superstition are, after all, true; he learns that he has the courage to choose the right side and to fight against the forces of darkness led by the Shadow Queen; and he learns that he is not as committed to a stable life as he thought when the gypsy wagons lure him back to a roaming existence.

The story is suspenseful and chillingly spooky. It is rooted in Eastern European stories from the 16th through the 18th centuries, though fortunately for us as readers, Sedgwick has wrought the creative transformation that a gifted storyteller can bring to his materials. Readers will have difficulty putting this book down.

Review of Glass by Ellen Hopkins

I have read two of Ellen Hopkins' earlier books, Burned and Impulse. This 2007 novel in poems is a sequel to Crank, which I haven't read. In Glass, we follow teen mom and addict Kristina Snow's return to using meth, the "monster" from which she doesn't want to escape. The book opens at a point when Kristina is still free from earlier use, working at being a responsible mom, with functional relationships with her stepfather, mother, siblings, and infant son, conceived when she was raped by her supplier. The first few poems describe how her life as a good student and happy teen was disrupted during a summer visit to her father when she was introduced to crank, an experience that enabled her to discover her inner alter ego, a brash risk-taker whom she's named Bree. Baby Hunter is demanding, and Kristina's relationship with her mom is fraught with tensions, and Kristina-Bree is ready to take the plugs out of her ears and listen to the siren that is luring her back to feeling good, living in the moment, and taking whatever desperate measures she can--from robbing Hunter's piggy bank to taking a job at the local convenience store where the manager cops a quick feel on every possible occasion--to hook up with a connection again. And when she starts buying from the gorgeous Trey, a college student whom she sees on his irregular visits to his cousin for replenishment of his supply of Mexican meth, she finds herself not only hooked up, but even falling in love.

Kristina's addiction rapidly destroys her family relationships. When her mother kicks her out of the house, denying her access to her baby, she flees to Trey's cousin's home, where she soon wangles a job as nanny--with benefits--at least until Brad's wife reappears. The relationships among the four individuals in these two couples are complex but end in betrayal. Homeless, on their way to California to deal, Kristina and Trey are arrested, ending Kristina's second dance with the monster--though the irrepressible Kristina ends on a note of hope for her future.

I like Hopkins' stories, even if they are sometimes melodramatic. When it comes to stories of addiction, I find her plotting and characterization wholly believable--every time Kristina starts using, she goes overboard overnight, and if casual sex, loss of friends and personal goals, stealing from her family, rape, and the decision to deal seem melodramatic, I'm nonetheless convinced. I like her poems, too, which take a variety of contemporary forms but read like dialogue in a novel or a drama. I did find Glass a little long, at 681 pages, especially any time that it became clear that Kristina was not going to hold out too long against temptations to engage in increasingly outrageous behavior. On the whole, though, it's an absorbing read. Hopkins' books have been recommended to me by first-year college students, who were pleased to discover I was already acquainted with her work. They are for older teens, not middle-school students, given the gleefully antisocial tendencies of the protagonist, even though this behavior ultimately leads to the appropriate comeuppance.

The Search for the Red Dragon by James A. Owen

This is the second volume of Owen's Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, following Here, There Be Dragons. I found I liked this volume better, maybe because I knew more about the "territory" from the beginning, but I think that the pacing was more even, on the whole. Similarly to Here, There Be Dragons, The Search for the Red Dragon begins with a summons to a quest beset with dangers that require quick-witted responses along with interpretive abilities on the part of the three Caretakers of the marvelous atlas and the lands it maps. They go to the city of Paralon (in each volume the section that moved most slowly for me as a reader--and I got stopped for a bit at that point), and they spend some time with their engaging friend, the charming talking badger Tummeler, consult the mapmaker in the Keep of Time, and escape in a dragonship (converted at the beginning of this volume to an airship) to embark on a perilous quest in which they explore lands known to the rest of us through fiction, epic poetry, and myth, meeting an array of historical and fictional characters, including the aged Peter Pan, and tracing the "origins" of the pied piper/pan/Orpheus's seduction of children.

One of the pleasures of reading this second volume is starting it with knowledge of the identities of the three Caretakers, John, Jack, and Charles--J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. The experienced reader can enjoy tracing Owen's layering and linking of many, many stories, ranging from Greek mythology through the Children's Crusade through Dante's exploration of the inferno through the fate of the Lost Colony on Roanoke Island through Sir James Barrie's writing of Peter Pan through the mysterious disappearances into the Bermuda Triangle. It's probably a mistake to search this volume too closely for logical connections--although as a free-associating trip through legend and mystery, the novel is highly successful. Above all, it is immensely entertaining, made more appealing by Owen's illustrations and chapter titles that keep drawing the reader in.

Owen's Amazon Blog at http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/A2M4WN9FNQA837 summarizes the "history" of the Imaginarium Geographica, conceived as an actual rare book that Owen tracked down in Vienna.