What Every Writing Teacher Should be Teaching 

(The Occam's Razor Solution to effective writing instruction)

      Many years ago, on a summer break from my elementary school teaching position,  I visited the caves in Lascaux, France with my wife and a small group of tourists.  As we entered, the cave was very dark and none of us knew what we were about to see.  As the guide turned on his ultraviolet light, our eyes adjusted and we suddenly saw, inches away from us, hundreds of cave paintings on the walls near where we stood.  Countless bison and primitive scenes were scratched on the walls throughout by various scribes. There was a dual quality of beauty and crudeness to each of the works that surrounded us. In truth, none of the paintings,  at first glance and without context,  would qualify as worthy of being hung in the Louvre. Yet, as my fellow tourists and I looked at those paintings, everyone was awestruck and overwhelmed that someone had taken the time to scratch them on the side of a cave,  that the pictures had endured,  and that the stories they had told were clear while at the same time rudimentary.  Standing there "reading the walls," it was impossible not to feel a deep common connection to the men and women who had inhabited those caverns thousand of years earlier.

     It was then that I stumbled upon the obvious and profound reason why and how writing should be taught.  It changed my instruction from pedantic to purposeful.  When I asked myself the questions:"Why and how should I  teach writing?" the answer came back to me in what might be called "The Writing Teacher's Occam's Razor Solution." ("Keep things simple and personal!")

     I went home and wrote down the five reasons people write and why society encourages the practice in schools.  I realized the five reasons haven't changed since at least the cave dwellers at Lascaux. Here they are:

1) To promote literacy

2) To promote self-esteem

3) To promote empathy

4) To promote social-emotional connection via meaningful collaboration

5) To promote respect for and immortalize collective memory

     Of course, as a society we want our students to become literate.  We also want to build their self-esteem in meaningful ways.  Of course, we need to promote empathy, as it is society's best hope for survival.  Additionally, we want to help students make social-emotional connections to one another through meaning collaboration, because this leads to mutual respect.  Finally, we need to honor each person's memory, or the idea of the past being irrelevant will negate the learning and experiences that people have banked in their lives.

    Fortunately, my experience at Lascaux led me to develop a strategy for teaching writing that has never failed me;  in fact, I have had success with it in every place I have taught, including both "low achieving" and "high achieving"schools. Specifically, the instructor must encourage and nurture writing that is both personal and at the same time shared.  Again, go back to the cave paintings of Lascaux (or earlier.)

     In my case, for the past 30 years, I have been collaborating with my students on works of literature that incorporate students' unique ideas into a larger whole.  By writing books that include individual essays (What We Believe), grammar books (101 Grammar Lessons by WY Students), rewritten Anthologies (Spoon River to The Lake Michigan Anthologies) and countless novels (30 Days to Empathy, Someone Else's Shoes, The Absolutely Awesome Adventures of Internet Ed), my students and I have written from the heart with the creative bravery of cave dwellers.

   By collaborating on meaningful content with students, I have tried to model  behavior (regular writing, editing, and rewriting) that validates the student and enhances self-esteem.  By honoring ALL student writing in the classroom (at whatever level it might be) I promote student understanding of the value of collective memory.  Some of the writing of my students is primitive, to be sure, but all of it is rich in human experience and pathos.  None of it may find its way on to the New York Times Best Sellers list, but all of it will endure.

    In the end, teaching writing is not difficult, but it requires those of us who do it to be willing to honor students' writing even as the work is honed. We must try our  best not to crush the spirit of the author by being dismissive of the effort. By first understanding why we write and why we teach writing, we who teach this vital skill honor the craft by allowing students to express themselves in as many different venues as possible.  It sounds simple because it is simple: we must respect all the authors in a classroom, just as we honor our cave dweller ancestors. By collaborating with our students, encouraging them to write and share what they feel, what they know or what they think they know,  we  empower and educate students and the society we collectively create.