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Kelsi Long

Dr. Cook

English 3580

11 May, 2017

Final Reflective Essay

As a student in Dr. Cooks Teaching Composition course at Appalachian State University,

I have learned a plethora of knowledge about writing this semesternot only how to teach it, but

how to assess and evaluate composition, and even more about myself as a writer. Over the course

of this semester, I quickly learned that a major part of learning how to teach writing is to, well,

write. As students, we have had numerous writing opportunities: daybooks, annotated

bibliographies, reflections, etc., and each one has revealed to me more and more about myself as

a writer and a teacher of writing.

As a writer, this course exposed me to the many detrimental limits I have set for myself

in the past, and it taught me how to break through them. It might sound silly, but prior to taking

this course, I had never thought about how many different genres & subgenres of writing exist.

In a double-entry journal from my daybook I recorded, Writing is a big world mural, not a

snapshot. Writing is book reviews, email messages, poems, journal entries, news stories, love

notes, editorials, technical instructions (TNR, 88-89). On day one of this course, I had never

considered a recipe, an ad, or cartoons as forms of writing. My mind was so narrowwhen I

thought of writing, I genuinely thought of the standard 5-paragraph essay (yikes!). However, as I

flip through the pages of my daybook I see further evidence of how my thinking has transformed

over the past few months. For example, in one of my sticky-note annotation entries, I have listed
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8 Motivations for Writing from the Teaching Adolescent Writers text. These include the

following:

1. It is hard, but rewarding.

2. It helps sort things out.
3. Helps persuade others
4. Helps to fight oppression
5. Makes you a better reader
6. It makes you smarter.
7. It helps you get to and through college.
8. It preps you for the world of work.

Wow. What a powerful, honest list. Prior to reading this section of TAW I had never before

considered all of the many useful ways in which one can utilize writing. If nothing else, I have

learned to broaden my mind as a writer. Over the years I have become so conditioned to formal,

educational writing that I failed to see the full potential and value that writing can have, if we

only open our hearts and minds to both accept and utilize it.

The broadening of my mind as a writer to realize and utilize the many different uses of

writing also translates to what I have learned about being a teacher of writing. As a high school

English teacher I hope to use the 5-paragraph essay as rarely as possible. I believe it is a positive

writing model to get students started writing, but by high school I really hope to begin

broadening their horizons. The annotated bibliographies helped me gain some insightful ideas for

creative writing assignments, both from my own readings and from my peers presentations of

their readings. One of my articles from the narrative writing annotated bibliography spoke

primarily on the idea of flash fiction, a condensed, brief version of writing to help ease

students into composing narratives pieces. What was unique about the author of this particular

article was that she utilized flash fiction to encourage students to write their own personal

narratives, but some elements could be fictionalized if they wished. This, in turn, allowed

students to open up more with their narratives because if they were embarrassed about certain
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parts of their life story, the teacher wouldnt exactly know if it was truth or fiction. As a teacher

of writing, I have learned that I want an open, honest, and safe environment for my students, and

the flash fiction personal narratives is certainly an assignment I might one day utilize in my

own classroom.

In promoting a safe and accepting learning environment, I also want to support

individuality in my students. In fact, I believe this will be one of my strengths as a teacher of

writing just as individuality is a strength of mine in my personal life too. This course has taught

me that, as a teacher of writing, it is okay to encourage students use of their own unique dialect

both in speech and in writing. I have learned that common dialects here in North Carolina,

such as African American vernacular and Appalachian dialect, are not incorrect or inappropriate.

In one of my double entry journals in my daybook, I recorded the following quote from the

article that we read back in January titled Professional Knowledge for the Teaching of Writing:

The teaching of excellence in writing means adding language to what already exists, not

subtracting. Personally, I love the idea of adding on to the language and dialects that students

already use, rather than taking away from them. The infusion of a diversity of languages and

dialects in a writing classroom gives students their own unique and individual voices to employ.

By being more accepting rather than critical, I hope to encourage my students to open up on

paper as well as in speech and, in turn, become better writers.

Over the past few weeks and months of this course, I have been challenged to consider

many of the possible situations with which I will be confronted as a writing teacher, including

grading, assessment, and evaluation. Personally, I believe this portion of teaching will be the

most challenging part for me as an English teacher. It is difficult for me to come to a point where

I feel comfortable putting a number or letter on a students work. I feel as though, as long as they
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are writing, they are growing and expressing themselves, and who am I to judge their self

expression? If they are writing for a grade, is it really true and honest work? However, as a future

teacher, I realize that I should also be pushing my students to grow, and sometimes that takes

being able to look back on past grades and work to see how far one has come and how much they

have improved.

After several class discussions (or debates, rather) and being given the chance to look at

real students work, I came to the realization that, compared to my classmates, I am not a harsh

grader. I try to empathize and realize that these students are still learning; they are not perfect,

and of course they will have grammatical errors. When doing our mock assessments, I tried to

focus more on content and whether or not they had followed the prompt rather than petty

grammatical errors that every middle or high school student is going to make at some point. I

believe that the grammar will come eventually, but the most important aspect of writing is

learning to effectively get ones point across, and to help students realize that writing is a

process. I hope to reinforce this philosophy by giving smaller grades throughout the course of

projects and assignments, such as a grade on the introduction paragraph, then the rough draft of

the entire assignment, and so forth, then giving a final score at the end to display how much they

have grown.

All in all, I will have strengths and weaknesses as both a writer and a teacher of writing,

just as they will have strengths and weaknesses as writing students. However, writing, like

growth, is a process. As a teacher, I want my students to know that we will grow together. We

just have to trust the process.