Writing Beyond the Boundaries
When is writing not actually writing?
Lately I have been re-evaluating what it means to write or more accurately what counts as writing.
Partly because of the changes my own writing has gone through these past few months as I find myself writing less fiction and writing more material for Teach Write and school, but also in part because of the writing I have asked my students to do.
Like many of you, I struggle to get students to see the benefit of writing regularly. They think if it's JUST for school then it's not "real". Many of the "Who Am I as a Writer?" responses I see from students mention that while they write for school, they don't write for themselves or other reasons and so they aren't "real writers." And don't even get me started of breaking them of the 5 paragraph habit of writing.
Is it any wonder that programs that generate content with AI are now becoming the bane of teachers every where? Many teachers I follow have suggested that the problem isn't in the AI programs, it's in the types of writing we are assigning to do. Prompt based writing may indeed be a thing of the past, but then what replaces it.
There are arguments to be made about teaching students email etiquette, resume building, and other "real world" writing -- though again I believe any AI generator is going to be able to create these as well. Instead, we must focus our efforts in what makes writing not just an assessment tool, but an art and a way of processing ideas.
We have to emphasize the process and not the product -- which should not be an unfamiliar mantra to many of you here at Teach Write.
Another aspect that may help with this writing problem is to reconsider the types of writing assignments we are giving students in the first place.
My own students wrote essays at the beginning of the year addressing how they did not feel that their school was doing enough to educate them on "real world" skills. This complaint is not new, but is has made me more likely to verbalize for students how what we are writing in class goes beyond the assignment, the classroom, or even the realm of education.
I was very nervous when I announced to my students on Tuesday that we would not only be doing a traditional research paper, but we would be taking that research paper and transforming it into either a presentation or an infographic. I gave them the example of how, on social media like Instagram, I often see pictures paired with informational text -- usually graphics or eye catching images to focus the information.
Writing for professional social media is something I have been struggling with myself, but that's why creating the social media writing for Teach Write gave me the idea in the first place. I think it's important that we, as writers, also push ourselves in the boundaries of how we define writing.
That way we have an easier time sharing these skills with our students.
I know there are jobs out there that require the creation of social media content and the same skills we use in our writing -- brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing are obviously happening regularly with social media. It is this knowledge that has made writing the social media content for Teach Write much easier. It is also this knowledge that has reminded me just how important it is that we go through the same struggles as our students so that we know how to guide them -- another familiar teaching from our time here together!
I think to better support my own students, I will see what I can do about writing alongside them and completing this project just as they are completing it. I'll report back with results soon.
