The Goals

One of the first problems I feel that needs to be addressed concerns workplace literacy. We, as teachers, do not have the right to decide what students can or should do with their lives after high school. As soon as we expect certain students to go to academic colleges and others to immediately enter the workforce or go to trade schools, we are limiting their possibilities and their opportunity to choose. As educators, it is our job to teach students of all types, with any future plans. Claggett describes the purpose of her book, Strategic Writing,: “The goal throughout is to give teachers some specific ideas on how to help students become confident and effective writers, no matter what their purposes are or might become as they enter into their separate paths when they leave school” (Claggett 1). She goes on to say, “I have never considered teaching as preparing students for ‘life after school.’ I’d rather think of it as a time for putting down roots for life, life in school is not apart from life, something we do to ‘get ready’ for life” (Claggett 1). If I do my job, I will cover enough of the spectrum while teaching writing so that after they leave my class, students will be able to succeed no matter what is expected of them.

This simply cannot be accomplished by teaching students according to how to pass the state writing tests. Teaching one specific form, style, or genre as the one right way limits students when they face situations where the five paragraph essay, for example, is not an adequate form for their purpose. Claggett concludes, “My experience shows that students who are well prepared to think and write for multiple purposes and in multiple genres do exceptionally well on most mandated tests” (2). If students can be exposed to a variety of forms, styles, and genres when it comes to learning composition, they will be much better prepared to decide for themselves what works best in each situation. One educator suggests that this can be solved by allowing “students to work with a wide range of texts and strategies to address a variety of audiences for different purposes, as well as instruction on language structure and conventions” (Robbins 44). Claggett elaborates, “We need to teach students how to write in various genres, for various purposes and various audiences” (1). Looking back on my high school experience, I feel like most years, we were bombarded with strategies and rules that would allow us to pass the PSSA, Pennsylvania System of School Assessment. I wish that I could say that by my senior year AP composition class, my teacher began to expose us to other forms of writing besides the standard—thesis in the first paragraph stating what you intend to prove and the ways you intend to prove it, followed by paragraphs that expand on the thesis and concluding in a summary/restating of the thesis. I generally enjoyed my teacher that year, but, looking back on it, I realize that she was teaching us to pass the AP test and not much more. As a teacher, I’m slowly coming to realize that it is my responsibility to help students to see that writing is an excellent way to explore your own ideas, understand concepts better, express yourself, and influence others around you. If we stick to standard essay prompts with standard grading and standard expectations, students will never be able to see how influential writing can be outside of the standard classroom setting. Instead, students need to be exposed to a variety of genres, strategies, and audiences.

Another problem I’ve found with workplace literacy and similar teaching strategies is that students are not forced to think critically. Students will rarely remember trivial facts and even specific strategies may be difficult to remember years after they are taught, so the focus needs to be on teaching students to think. Reggie Routman, author of “Conversations—Strategies for Teaching, Learning, and Evaluating, affirmed that our goal needs to be to get students to “focused on their own thinking” (136). Claggett agrees: “School is not the place to determine the specific writing needs for the jobs that exist now, much less those we don’t even know about because they are changing as we write. What school is the place for is creating an environment in which high-level thinking meshes with high-level reading and writing” (Claggett 1). Asking literary questions allows students to expand their minds and get used to thinking about what they read, which leads them to ask good questions and develop good thinking skills, which ends in thoughtful writing. Of the three types of literary questions, those related to the text, those related to other texts, and those connected to life, teachers tend to focus on the first. In order to create life-long writers, students should be encouraged to explore what they are thinking, what they notice, what questions they think of, and what insights they gain (Routman 184). Thinking critically is not a strategy that students will be quick to forget. It may be a more difficult mission to accept, but the positive repercussions will be to create life-long critical thinkers and writers.

If our common goal is to create a desire in our students to utilize the writing process, it seems natural that we need to relate writing to the individual interests of our students. However, too many teachers continuously assign the tradition prompts for every assignment instead of allowing for variety and choice. Allowing students to explore their own thoughts and interests through writing will hopefully open their eyes to the benefits of personal writing. Claggett encouraged, “Students need to understand how important it is to know that they can write whatever kind of writing they need or want to do in their lives, from personal to professional” (Claggett 2). If students are never given the opportunity to write whatever kind of writing they need or want to in their lives then they will never learn to use it once they leave the classroom setting. Darvin had a great suggestion to ensure that we are able to reach all kinds of students. “English teachers who work with vocational students can also gain admittance into these literacy clubs; by welcoming these special-interest texts into their classrooms and providing students with opportunities to display their vocational knowledge and their feelings about related issues through writing” (Darvin 38). This strategy can be applied whether you have vocational students or not. Variety and choice will allow students from all backgrounds and with all interests to personally connect to writing. Just because I like to read good literature and write about it definitely does not mean that my students will feel the same way. And I definitely didn’t learn to love writing by writing about literature. I developed my love and need for writing when I began keeping a personal journal. Journal keeping began as a requirement in elementary school and has continued throughout my life and I still use journal writing and undelivered letters to sort through my own feelings. I have always loved writing in my journal, because it is something that was and is of importance to me. Writing had to be something personal to me before I could appreciate it I want to keep that in mind when I’m teaching writing to my students.