Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter 7

(Page 142) “…the goal for each student is the same: everyone improves…it is unrealistic to think I am going to make every one of my 165 students a strong writer.”

First of all…165 students? Yikes!!! Can you imagine reading that many papers? It makes the Freshman Academy load sound not so bad! Gallagher has so much common sense. Making every student an exceptional writer would be an impossible task, but making every student improve is definitely attainable. This idea supports why we need to do initial assessments with our students. Writing is one of those tricky things to test, so if we don’t have a sample from the beginning, it is difficult to see what sort of gains are made throughout the year (or semester). I like the idea of taking students up a notch (from weak to average, average to strong, or strong to special). Gallagher’s method of conducting the mini-lesson for what students are struggling with—and doing it in three minutes or less—seems very doable to me. I think it definitely makes learning much more meaningful to the students because what is being taught obviously applies to them. Also, the teacher is more likely to have the students’ attention in a small group setting instead of having them getting lost in whole class instruction. I don’t know about your experience, but I’ve also found that students are more likely to ask questions with just a few others around as opposed to an entire room of students. I’m actually the same way myself. I hate asking questions in front of a large group of people unless I absolutely know it will apply to many.

Teaching Adolescent Writers: Chapter Six

(Page 122) “When students understand the real-world purposes for writing (instead of simply writing to meet the next school assignment) they begin to internalize the relevance of writing, and more important, they develop an understanding that writing is an important skill to carry into adulthood.”

So often kids don’t realize how much they will need to write once they get out into the “real world.” I suppose, perhaps, a person could get by without doing a whole lot of writing, but they could end up with many more advantages with being able to write well. I can’t begin to tell you how many free dinners my sister has received because of complaint letters she’s written to restaurants. One time a bag of mints were 25 cents more at one Wal-Mart than another but the cashier said they didn’t price match Wal-Mart stores. My sister then took to her pen and ended up with at $25 gift card to Wal-Mart…over a quarter! Maybe a lesson in how to write a letter of complaint would seem worthwhile to students because they could possibly “get something” out of it. There are just so many instances of when being able to write well can be beneficial. My goodness, just in the last month I’ve had to write a letter of appeal to the insurance company and a letter to the state benefits office to convince them that a health power of attorney was good enough to sign some disability retirement documents for Mike. If I had no writing skills, I don’t know that things would have swung in my favor. I know we have to get through the HSAP writing with kids (and the SAT writing goes against good writing habits as well) so that kids can graduate, but what service are we doing students if we don’t do more than teach them how to write for a test?

I’ll tell ya, the more I read of Kelly Gallagher, the more I want to just to go out and have dinner with him to talk shop. I think I’ll add him to the list of people I want teaching at my dream charter school.