National Healing: Race, State, and the Teaching of Composition

Why a Book?

Why a Book? Several educators have explored the value of having students write and publish books as part of informed grade school, high school, and college curricula. Nancie Atwell (1987) has described ways for publishing school writing, including the important role that publishing plays in classroom student writing groups. Anne Wescott Dodd, Ellen Jo Ljung, Brenda Szedeli, and Sheryl L. Guth (1993) have discussed the crucial ways that publishing inspires students to see the social significance of their work. Janet Irby (1993) has explained how encouraging student publication can help to inspire the development of active, rather than passive, forms of subjectivity. Maria Varelas, Christine C. Pappas, Sofia Kokkino, and Ibett Ortiz (2010) have even argued that having students create and publish illustrated science books encourages learning at the same time that it provides windows into student understanding of science and their world. Lastly, Tim Laquintano (2010) explains that one of the best ways to help students be ready for the world that awaits them upon graduation is to help them understand the digital nature of writing and publishing. As Lacquitano reports, the dawn of the ebook era continues to blur the distinction between writer and reader by placing each in ever-more collaborative relationships. We teach for and in a world of books whose interactive dimensions are yet to be fully explored and understood. As for myself, years of reading, study, and teaching all lead me to the same conclusions: students who write for publication tend to invest a tremendous amount of effort in learning how to write. Moreover, students who write semester-long pieces remain in the recursive processes of reflecting, composing, revising, and editing. Indeed, by going over and over a single piece of writing as many times as possible, students learn more about writing than students who perform short, exercise writing. Students who write longer texts that emerge from organic needs, including their questions, concerns, and desires to explore the meaning of their lives and worlds, have greater opportunity for developing their understanding of the significance of meaning and meaning making, of critical thinking and coherence in form, and perhaps most importantly, 194   national healing of the consequences of meaning. They have greater chances to develop, in other words, a profound sense of craft. I am not alone in these observations . Patrick Finn (1999, 122) explains in Literacy with an Attitude: “It’s commonplace for students who first begin to write lengthy papers to be surprised to find that what they wrote on page twelve is inconsistent with what they wrote on page two. With experience, writers are no longer surprised; they expect this to happen. Writing permits us to reflect on our knowledge and beliefs, notice inconsistencies, and work them out.” In “Longer, Deeper, Better,” researchers Jay Simmons and Timothy McLaughlin report findings that support Finn’s and my views. Their three-year study, “Producing Writers,” for which they received a United States Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) grant, proceeded from the position that first-year developmental and ESL students need to be deprogrammed from the short, error-fixated, limited nature of five-paragraph , weekly theme writing. The participating teachers, who came from community and four-year colleges and universities, thus developed a writing course in which students wrote fewer but longer pieces along with accompanying texts in which the students reflected on their writing experiences. Based on the portfolios the students produced, the researchers assessed the writing samples for such issues as length, ideas, organization , language and mechanics. But the results of the study go far beyond the quality of the writing: We find that in writing extended pieces (1,000 words or more), developmental and second-language writers, often cautious by nature and wary of error, stretch out as writers in ways not encouraged by shorter, more modest assignments . We find that students who are not prone to reflection gain much as writers by thinking about their pieces and by writing assignments that integrate reflective writing. We also find that assignments that bring reading and research into the mix enhance the process of exploration, reflection, and meaning making. We find that as students develop an enhanced sense of audience (through reading and responding to another’s work), student writing becomes better shaped, better developed and more sharply focused. Above all, we find that challenging assignments, coupled with peer review and response, help all students to become better writers. (2003, 425) The outside evaluators of the study...