Writing+and+Teaching+Writing

Writing has two main elements: meaning and technique. The challenge with teaching writing is to teach the technique in the context of meaning-making. While you could probably design a curriculum that took writing step by step in terms of technique, that curriculum would only work on a minority of students who can tolerate such things. For the rest, the fact that the focus is on technique at the expense of meaning would be alienating.

There are two qualities a writing teacher should have (which every teacher should have): be an accepting person and have an imagination. Frequently when we are working with other people's texts, we don't really think up a lot of possibilities for the text. Where could this personal narrative go? What could this freewrite turn into? What else? What else? What else?

Being accepting means that you do not judge students' meaning negatively. You try to understand it and you may try to help students explore the implications of their meaning, but you do not reject a person, particularly a student, based on what he or she writes.

Being imaginative means that you can figure out a lot of possible directions for the next step of the text.