How do we get to where we need to be?

My students are writing papers this week.  Not the pick-a-side type of persuasive essay they have written so many of, allegedly in training for the multitude of standardized assessments we impose upon them throughout their school lives.  They are writing fairly complex synthesis and analysis essays, apropos for students soon to be venturing into college classrooms where the pick-a-side essay is a long-forgotten acquaintance.  

In preparation, we were reviewing some of the Common Core Standards relevant to our endeavor.  I posted this on the board.

Big (Learning) Goals (copied from the Common Core):

• Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive texts, using valid reasoning and sufficient evidence.
• Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
• Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.

After a brief vocabulary discussion - What defines a text as substantive? writing as coherent? evidence as sufficient? -- we moved on to another subject:  Our own, individual process of writing essays.  We moved quickly past what students think they are supposed to say - of course there is prewriting (it’s in my head), and planning (also in my head), and writing, then revising (yes, I know it is more than just fixing mistakes.)--and landed on a truism that every writer discovers at some point.  Writing is hard.  Hard in different ways for different tasks, but hard.

These goals are things we have talked about before.  And other teachers have talked about with them in years before this.  But as I graded a recent batch of essays, it became more clear with each paper, that there is still much work to be done.  

So, we focused on my favorite snippet from amid the language of the above goals:

trying a new approach.

Rather than simply assigning a paper and leaving them to their own devices, we talked about how we grow as writers. We discussed the important distinction between writing to demonstrate knowledge and writing to figure out what we think. We talked about the unfortunate fact that writing in school is often assigned, and less often taught. We talked about how few chances in school we have to really practice writing without the fear of grades hanging over head.

Then we talked about our own, real writing processes.  How, most of us (myself included) more often than not, sit down at a computer, start typing, and hope that something brilliant magically appears.  Then we hope to be able to follow it with more, equally brilliant ideas as we proceed through a piece of writing.  And that, more often than not, that doesn't turn out the way we had hoped.  

Metacognition has shown me (and everybody else, aware of it or not), that making a metaphor for something brings it more clearly into focus.  In reaching for a metaphor that might help my students to develop some strategies for writing stronger “analyses of substantive texts,” I asked the room full of relatively new drivers:  “What is the first thing you do when you want to use your GPS as a guide to help you get someplace in the most sensible way possible?”

“Put in the endpoint!”

“Yes!”

“Before you start!”

“Yes!”

“That’s like your thesis statement!”

“Yes!”

The carbonated bubbling of “Oh’s” and “That makes sense!” that overflowed like CO2 from an intentionally shaken can of soda let me know that they got it.  It really did make sense.  

And the next day, after a little reminder of what a thesis statement should convey, and a little modeling on the whiteboard, they constructed the best thesis statements they have ever written (at least for me).

Tomorrow we will use our essay writing GPS, endpoint already entered, to try a new approach to the typical, boring introduction.