I loved this article! Because I am blogging post-discussion (and, by the way, it was very fun to get to talk and work with both of you Shiao-Wei and Susan!), I am going to summarize the key differences between “authentic” and “inauthentic” writing.
Inauthentic is pretty easy to see: The stories aren’t their own, the kids fret over topics, overly-probe the teacher for clarification, listen to and steal each other’s ideas, include false information, add things that “teacher might want to hear,” write to comply, and can’t tell for themselves if a piece is finished. Furthermore, there is no sense of pride or ownership in the work produced. The kids won’t use, keep, look at, or discuss work produced inauthentically.
Authentic is also pretty easy to see (just more difficult to encourage, I guess): Kids feel ownership and take pride in this type of work. They want to share, they want feedback, they want to provide clarity through revision and discussing the work. This work is student-driven—they are interested in their own findings, their journey, their discoveries. I love the example from the article that depicts the authentic journal writer as being more secretive and protective of their thoughts as they write.
My big takeaway from this article is that I WANT my kids to behave as authentic writers and to produce authentic writing! I believe we do quite a bit in the education world to sabotage a young person’s desire to engage through writing. Inauthentic writing won’t and can’t translate magically into authentic writing, and we’re doing a huge disservice to our students when we assume it will.
The journal writer example was another touching story from the article. I can just picture a student sitting with his or her arms covering their writing to keep it private--to keep it his/her own. Occasionally my own writing is like that, especially in my journal. It was interesting that it took time for the students to feel safe enough to treat their journals that way.
ReplyDeleteIt was nice to get to know you, too. Enjoy your little one. :)
Kate, I think there is value in all kinds of writing, including writing to a prompt, which they will need to do in high school and college. Reading responses are also good because they are designed to make them think about what they read, and it helps me find out what they didn't understand. I just think that writing is like eating. You have to try everything on the plate and least once. To get a well-balanced meal, you can't indulge in any one kind of food, you have to eat a little bit of every food group to stay healthy. Whatever writing you taught, is better than no writing at all and what you did will help them down the road. :-) Geri
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