Our “Incidentally” column shares English Teaching Resources & opinions about the state of education, from a teacher who has worked the systems for almost 25 years.
L.L. Barkat is K-12 permanently certified, holds a Masters in English & American Literature from New York University and a Master of Science for Teachers from Pace University, and has taught at every level of education preceding graduate school.
From college teaching of business and group dynamics to elementary teaching at a troubled urban district, from high school teaching at a private Hebrew day school to high school teaching at a leading U.S. public school, then on to K-8 of home educating two daughters (who are now enrolled in accredited distance learning schools for 9-12), Barkat has managed to form a few enthusiastic opinions about education along the way—and a whole lot of love for learning that she now pours into the business of Tweetspeak Poetry.
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She is now sixteen years old. She writes things like…
“The unnamed narrator, whose existence is from the first liminal, also has the power and freedom of the role which comes not from the situation but from the intense self-possession of the character, that carries through even toward her death, and with the long-ago sense of the poem, even beyond the grave. Yet, even the narrator is not clearly the character that is spoken of, but becomes her through the telling. This sense of mutability exists on every level…” (read more Poem Analysis: Anne Sexton’s “Her Kind”)
At fifteen, there was this…
The end of the day does not break, like glass—
maybe; you can catch it, with broken string
on an old piano, black notes white notes
falling out the window and the shatter—
bends. Breaks. The other cacophony sits
silently watching, fingers bend like wood…
read all of the sestina “Un done”
I’ve written a little about how I educated my children, in Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing, but people ask for more. They want to know: how do you teach kids to write the way your girls write?
Read aloud to them, I say. A lot. And let them sit for hours and lose themselves in books. Without demanding “a response.” (Fastest way to kill the love of reading in a child: make them respond and respond and respond. Don’t let them dream the reading deep into themselves.)
People think it can’t be that simple. Reading won’t make good writing. You must teach a child to write.
So teachers compel students (albeit because teachers are compelled by standards and common cores and no-student-left-behinds) to write. I did it myself when I was a public school teacher. I apologize to my students now, especially the elementary level students.
Must we teach children to write?
All children are writers. We ruin many of them by putting paper under their noses and pencils in their hands and demanding: write. They cry. (Oh, I’ve heard stories and seen it myself). They lie. (The dog ate my journal is alive and well.) They despair. They don’t care. Some make it through the system. And then they spend years unlearning what we compelled them to do.
When I left public school teaching, I took a risk with my own children. I had a hunch, based on my habits as a professional writer: you don’t need to teach children to write. Just give them space to play, to talk, to dream.
It was a risk, a very real risk. What if I ruined my kids? What if they entered high school and took the PSAT and proved to the world how wrong I’d been?
I took the risk.
It is not cool to brag about a child’s test scores. So consider this to be something besides a brag. Consider it to be part of your personal research into the question: must we teach children to write?
My eldest has now taken the PSAT twice. Once as a tenth grader and once as an eleventh grader. Her respective percentiles for the English sections (critical reading & writing skills): 99th and 98th the first year; 97th and 99th the second. I’m happy with that. Relieved, even. There’s been so much pressure all these years, as people spoke their doubts to me.
Here is how I taught the girls to write (all the way through middle school):
I…
1. Took time to read to them, a lot.
2. Let them read to themselves (or listen to books on CD). A lot.
3. Never once asked them to write. Anything. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.
4. Never once graded them on anything they wrote. Not once. Ever. Never. Likewise, no writing tests.
5. Let them “play story” for hours on end. They would come downstairs after a marathon session with dolls, blocks, legos, string (oh, the Barbie zip line contraption was memorable).
“You just wrote for three hours, ” I would tell them. They told their friends. Their friends balked. “That’s not writing!” Quibbles would ensue.
6. Wrote, and wrote, and wrote. The girls saw me do that. They asked for paper and pencil. When they wanted to, they wrote, and wrote, and wrote too (last year, my eldest wrote 45, 000 words of a novel, just because).
Must we teach children to write? I don’t believe so. Instead, we can say—as they play and “story” the days away—“Incidentally, you just wrote for three hours.”
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Teaching Tool: Children will play if we let them. Even up through middle school (okay, and won’t adults even play?). Provide ample space for play in the day and the classroom. Is your district cancelling recess? Don’t let it go unchallenged. And while you wait on the powers-that-be, consider giving the kids recess in your own room.
Writing is primarily an act of the mind, not of the hand. Writing comes from living, reading, speaking. 99% of it never gets put on paper.
Decide that this is okay. Give your kids a bucket of legos. A lump of Playdoh. Read to them while they play. Or sit down and let a CD read while you play along. You could even simply let them talk-story amongst themselves. Talk precedes written language! Trust that if they want paper and pencil, they’ll let you know.
Photo by Stormwarning, Creative Commons via Flickr. Post by L.L. Barkat, author of Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing
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Donna says
So much here. What leaped off the page at me were these 4 words: Without demanding “a response.”
And there’s this – not all children respond to demands in the same way. Some don’t feel even the most brazen demand to be such a big deal, while others feel the act of requiring a parent signature on a reading log such an egregious offense that they cease voluntary reading for years and years… some forever.
L. L. Barkat says
Fascinating, Donna. Hadn’t even considered the layers upon layers of “response” issues.
A good story will automatically create a response inside a person. Why make a child articulate it? Stories are secret worlds. They are worlds that create connection, human to human, by virtue of their very nature.
Have we stopped trusting the power of story itself? I wonder.
Donna says
That is a wonderful question – have we?
I am learning about the power of story in a whole new way and I’ve got to tell you it’s shocking to me. It tells me that we don’t even trust our own stories, and that is the heart of story isn’t it? Egocentric tho it may sound, and because it is egocentric we (the very polite societal we) are afraid to even consider it, but I am remembering my development learning here – that we develop from the CENTER out – and so then when we wall children off from their center we wall them off from their own stories, don’t we? Trust is destroyed.
At first I was going to say that I am quite certain we (societal we) have stopped trusting children…. but this is symptomatic of a larger problem.
L. L. Barkat says
What do you think the larger problem might be?
I love your background with developmental learning. This idea that we develop from the center out and that some teaching tools would wall students off from the center is quite a way to reframe our possible methods (choosing those that develop the center rather than destroying it or making it largely inaccessible).
Donna says
I’m not sure but it might be that we have given our power away. I think we have stopped trusting children because we have not really come to trust our own gut anymore – we quickly run to google and the “experts” when things feel “off”, throwing our intuition aside. We give our power away. When we give our power away it’s like saying our story doesn’t matter.
Ann Kroeker says
Our homeschool co-op is in a quandary. We have many high school students who cannot express their thoughts coherently. They can’t form complete sentences or order them logically. So we are having to do our best to step in and coach them as writers, pointing them to models that follow a kind of logic that might help them see at least one way to develop an idea. I’m teaching one of the classes, and one of my three daughters is signed up. She fits your description–steeped in language and stories since day one with little formal instruction. She now putting together a decade-and-a-half of exposure, applying to her own projects all the things she’s heard and read.
But she has needed me to point things out. I actually used your incidentally idea with the class. They loved it. I’m just holding up great models–or at least the greatest I can find–and pointing things out to them. Then asking for an assignment.
At the beginning of the year, I overheard her tell someone the hardest class at co-op is her writing class. “But it’s also my favorite,” she said. “I love what I’m learning.” More recently, after the semester break where she experienced several strong, successful projects in my class, I overheard her say, “I feel so confident as a writer, because I’m seeing how easy it is for me to write, compared with others in my classes.”
She fits everything you’re saying (though we are providing formal instruction now–she’s a sophomore).
Contrast that with my son, a sixth grader, signed up for a class that uses lists to remind kids to incorporate certain stylistic techniques. They have to write a paragraph and then go through a checklist to make sure they’ve used: a quality adjective, an “ly” word (ugh), a because clause, a who/which clause, and so on…and no banned words. He agonizes over the list and moans and groans, “I hate writing.”
So, yeah. That.
L. L. Barkat says
Starting with 9th grade (and really, this coincides with the logic stage, developmentally), I have given more direct instruction on writing technique.
But it has been so simple to do. The expression is there already. The ability with language is there. The deep knowledge of not just grammar but the grammar of story is already there. It’s just been a matter of pointing out, as you say, how an essay might be constructed (and there are multiple ways, really).
Your son’s story is all too common. I want to see those stories all but disappear.
Will Willingham says
Good grief. I don’t think I could write from a checklist even now. Not anything worth reading, anyway. (Would be, to check one thing off the list, ugh-ly.)
I can’t honestly tell you how I learned to write. At the first grade level where I actually remember having writing assignments (6th), we wrote weekly essays. I wrote one. After that I was given the stack of my classmates’ essays and the gradebook (to check off, not actually grade). I was told I had no need to write them anymore, but no other real explanation. 😉 The teacher was a man named Mr. Palm, and was approximately 257 years old.
I did read. A lot. I have no recollection of agonizing over the writing assignments I was given throughout school, but I do remember it was unpleasant (putting it mildly) for many of my classmates.
L. L. Barkat says
Sometimes I think we teachers should try these assignments we give to students, so we can see what the assignments feel like. I’m guessing we’d be in tears (of either frustration or boredom).
Ha! On the 257 years.
Reading a lot. Playing outside. Telling ourselves stories in the woods (or acting them out). I think these things teach us to write. Because they *are* writing, just without pen and paper.
Maureen Doallas says
That question about story is fascinating and could be a topic of discussion for days. Think how far back story goes.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” That was a topic we discussed last week in my women’s group WOW (Women of Wisdom).
I don’t think the power of story is mistrusted so much as the uses made of it. . . the “truthiness” problem. It is precisely because story is so powerful that it continues to be used, and perverted. One has only to study advertisements, corporate statements, and so on to understand how often we turn to story to tell a story. Entire books (many of which are on our shelves) have been written on the subject of story.
The best storytellers draw from life reimagined.
My youngest sister used to sit on the stairs and carry on entire conversations with a cast of characters. No one ever thought her strange or tried to get her to stop doing that. I always thought that was wonderful.
My son was lucky in that he had a couple of teachers who recognized his talents. Still, looking back, I now think he found much in the classroom a complete bore. He and I still talk books a lot. He gives storytelling workshops at arts festivals, is a musician who can write music and lyrics and play a range of instruments; he’s enormously creative and can speak about so many subjects. The best thing I ever did was making sure he wasn’t put on some track someone thought he should pursue. At NYU – he graduated from Gallatin, where the kids do independent programs – his final project was titled “Zen and Psychosocial Acoustics”, which should give you some idea of what this 25-year-old might be like.
I despise rigidity, particularly in public education, and all the testing drives me nuts. I’m example of someone who tested poorly because I did not think the way I was expected to. I don’t think I turned out badly.
L. L. Barkat says
Your son sounds so fascinating, Maureen. And I am going to have to look up that program at NYU.
Maybe you’ve hit it right there… “draw from life reimagined.” That means two things: we need life and we need space to imagine. Putting these things into the classroom (and not overprogramming outside the classroom) feel key.
Maureen Doallas says
http://gallatin.nyu.edu/ It’s a great school.
Tania Runyan says
I wrote lots and lots and lots starting at age seven. But maybe the difference is no one told me to.
As one who teaches writing to public school kids, the best I can say here is that the personality variation from child to child means that some love structure and assignments and others don’t. Different kids thrive under different conditions. I can’t flat-out decry checklists and rubrics because some thrive with those. Others clam up.
Regardless, the hyper-standarization of education is helping very few students because it removes teachers’ freedoms to individualize instruction.
L. L. Barkat says
Yes, yes! The ability to give a student what he/she needs is so important. My sestina girl loves form, loves to read books like ‘Plot and Structure.’ My youngest has internal patterns she seems to work by and is stymied when presented with too much structure and direction.
Yet, the girls can sort of switch places in those qualities, depending on what’s in front of them. It’s so interesting to watch.
Mostly what I would love to see is classrooms where kids can have more choice about methods. The “free wheeling” table versus the “rubric and prompt” table. As long as they sit at one and find something inviting to do, that should be good enough. 🙂
Donna says
Teachers wear many hats and many handcuffs these days.
Charity Singleton Craig says
This is very interesting. I have my own experiences of early reading, early being read to, always playing writing and story, always pencil and paper available. I went to public school, but I had just enough encouragement at just the right times to play with words. Plus, I also happened to appreciate the structure – I was one of the students who absolutely loved diagramming sentences. A real weirdo.
Now, I have step-sons. And I see such differences in each of them in their impressions and abilities at writing. My youngest is the one who’s always writing – though only occasionally on paper. I recently revealed to him that his favorite subject is writing. He hadn’t realized it until I helped him see how very, very good at it he is.
I love this!
Will Willingham says
I still love to diagram sentences. Feels like math to me, in English class. 🙂
Chris Yokel says
This is a thought provoking conversation. I would agree that there is a balance. You want to foster creativity, but at some point you also have to teach students that there are times where they must write. I wonder if it’s a stage of life type of thing: childhood is the time of play and exploration, and maturity brings discipline and form and shape to that creativity.
L. L. Barkat says
Definitely been “stage of life” for us. Now that they are 9th grade and above, they are working on assignments through their distance-learning school.
Though I still think there should be a good deal of leeway in that (just the way when we get professionals to write for us here we give them choices).
Before 9th grade (before the logic stage), I think we teachers should focus more on general mind development and creativity as a foundation, unless children really, really want to write (and of course, who would withhold from them in that case? The daughter featured here has read many a writing book because she had a curiosity about certain things).