There are some topics that cannot be taught, they must be experienced.  Writing, both academic and creative, along with every form in between is one of those areas.  To say that a teacher “teaches” writing skills is a myth.  Teachers who work with students in developing their writing abilities must themselves experience the writing mind. There is no recipe for learning to write, no matter what the curriculum companies and book authors want us to believe. 

It is for this reason that the majority of our students and instructors fear having to write, and avoid the teaching of writing.  As a result, writing instruction is too often reduced to a shallow step-by-step process that does not help the writer invest in their topic, form their opinion, or express their unique perspective.  To teach writing by a rote process is like denying Thomas Edison a laboratory before creating a working light bulb. It is asking a surgeon to operate without ever having touched a real human body.

“No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” E.B. White reminds us. Students and teachers both must be given the opportunity to experience writing in a supportive atmosphere where the students’ feelings and opinions are treated with respect.  I have something to say and it is worth hearing, is the first lesson a student should practice.  Once a student is confident of their ideas and enjoys putting those ideas into writing they can then sculpt the thoughts into any format they choose, from story to doctoral dissertation. 

Teacher preparation courses are missing this element in their methodology classes.  We teach grammar, composition, and theoretical steps to designing an academic paper.  But we do not teach what it feels like to be a swimmer in a sea of prose.  We do not teach that each of us has a vital contribution to make to any discourse.  We desperately need a course in writing that is in essence a love letter to the act of writing.  What is thought of as the most tedious of writing chores, such as an open response on the CRT test, can be felt by the author as an opportunity to create something unique, useful, and fulfilling to its creator.  So essential, in fact that test adjudicators ultimately don’t matter. With the experiential writing course teachers can then re-create the learning environment in their classrooms, whether they work with kindergarteners or graduate students.

 


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