Hi all,
I have been thinking about writing a lot today. I enjoy writing although it has been too long since I regularly put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard for the pure joy of creating something. I realise for many people writing is not a pleasure. I hear a lot of reasons for why that is, but one of the most common is that they are not very good at it. I think a lot of the responsibility for that feeling rests with us as teachers. Yes, there are students, perhaps even many students who struggle with the conventions of written language. The spelling, the grammar, the punctuation. And I am clearly someone who loves those elements of writing ( not that you could tell the way my keyboard is messing with me today), but that is just the mechanics of writing. It is not what makes someone a writer. Writing is a means to many ends. The mechanics are what make sure the person at the other end interprets what you said but it is not what makes something beautiful or informative or useful.
So I will never be the person who says don’t worry about spelling and grammar we don’t need them. But I am the person who says, that is what editing is for, to catch and fix the typos and the run-on sentences and the words that got missed because we thought faster than our hand could record. I want to see what people think, and how they explain , and to read the humour that is hidden in that cheeky grin. There needs to be time in our days to write for joy, for therapy, to let out the stuff that we want out of our heads but not to be lost. We need time to play with words, to look back on old ideas and see what we can do with them. We need to write because it gets our meaning across. Sometimes in lists, or poems or stories but sometimes in big angry capitals or with all the flowery romantic words we would never use in public but just want to try on for size.
There needs to be room in the classroom for journals – to try new things without being critiqued to the point where we never want anyone to read our writing again. There needs to be a place to be vulnerable and safe with the fledgling skills our students ( and many of our adults are writing).
Sorry for my rant.
Take care
Alison