Oct 23 2007
Coaching Writers
Welcome to the end of October when the leaves have faded and are falling in piles… Kathy commented at the end of our last set of posts that helping her daughter with her college admissions essay was a challenge. It made me think about how hard it is to coach, encourage, support and challenge writers to improve their work.This week my seniors have been cleaning up drafts for college admissions. I struggle with two things:
- How much should I help? One student wrote an essay about raising his younger brother. The entire piece is tell. Writing teachers learn early on to teach writers to “show not tell,” so that they focus on specific details and make the experience live for readers. I reminded him of this lesson and underlined places where switching from tell to show would improve the piece. Today he had draft two for me to look at, and it is all tell. I asked him what he changed. He found a few mechanical things. I reminded him of my comments and how I had hoped he would try showing what he meant. Now what should I do?
- How can I best maintain the balance between honesty and integrity as a reader of poor writing a student has produced while still encouraging the student to keep working at it? I read an essay today and the drumbeat in my head was ‘cut,cut,cut.’ The student rambled on without a lot of conviction about overcoming a fear. It sounded like something someone told her to write for admissions; it sounded nothing like her. I searched for a few lines that I could tell her were good, but there were so few. This admissions process is already terrifying. I don’t want to destroy this writer, but I want her to write better. What would you do?
I’m hoping you’ll think about your own history as teachers and writers and offer me some advice. I want every student to leave my class believing he/she can write well; I want to give them the tools they need to make that happen. But what do I do when they won’t use the tools or can’t seem to?Tell me about your experiences in receiving feedback from people on your writing. What hurt? What helped?
