My Philosophy Of Writing : My High School English Teacher

It is essential to understand that classes taken in grade school do not give students a full understanding of each subject. With the topic of writing, there will always be a new lesson to learn, an aspect to improve, or a differing way to explain. Author Craig Vetter states in Bonehead Writing, “This is your enemy: a perfectly empty sheet of paper. Nothing will ever happen here except what you make happen.” Each story, essay, or response comes from a writer’s experiences. With each attempt at a new piece comes an underlying story of emotions the writer is facing. Each person’s writing is unique and the ideas people have are related to their past experiences and what they believe to be familiar with when deciding which writing style to use. As a high school student, I have learned many things about writing that helped me become the improved writer I am today, but the most essential advice I have received is practice makes perfect. Although there is no actual perfect way of writing, I have discovered that each essay I write, my writing improves. It is easier to spot mistakes, find areas to improve, and ponder elevated word choice to use.

Being a high school student in the tenth grade things a bit hectic all the tests and book reports I have to do I always get caught up in my school work. Since my school life consists of nothing but essays, keynotes, benchmarks and free response questions. Never anything less than teachers pressing on about double spaces, sentence patterns and “Where to put the semi-colon.” I have never really noticed that they fail to teach or lecture me about unique writing skills until I got into this class. “Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.” That quote was from Napoleon Hill and it means more than enough to me because I thrive everyday to succeed in life and over the years and through this class I’ve learned, Growth and success are the key things. I have learned that if you put effort into all you do that you’ll be surprised with what the outcome may be. That you can start now because you’re never too old or too young to learn how to succeed and have a successful life.

Logan Pearsall Smith once said, “Fine writers should split hairs together, and sit side by side, like friendly apes, to pick the fleas from each other’s fur.” All be it an overwhelmingly disgusting image, Smith’s words are true when it comes the art and science of putting pencil to paper. In the classroom, students should be able to be vulnerable, honest, accountable and “real” in their writing so that they may grow to become better writers. It is the responsibility of the teacher to insure a quality learning environment that is conducive to these three factors. Observing the writing process and identifying the experiences within, be them personal, direct or indirect, contribute to how the educator teaches students using best practices.

I, one of millions of first-year college students, believe that I write bland essays due to the fact that my high school English teachers failed to teach me how to think clearly and creatively. For instance, with my twelfth English teacher, Mrs. Tuttle, there are many cases to which I felt she could’ve improved her teachings not only for me to understand how to write a well-developed paper but as well as others students. First case scenario being how she gave class activities and her teaching style. She had a way of giving activities based on the feeling of how she felt would be a good way for us to learn the material versus what we felt would be the best way to learn the material. These ways included little to no group work. Writing a bunch of illegitimate papers that would be graded by my peers who had little to no idea of what right or wrongs they were looking for. Thus for leaving me with an ambiguous reason to what my writings were lacking or why I never made anything higher than a C in her class. Another way would be the fact that she lived off the teaching theory of “if one can do it then all can do it”. This hands down was the number reason why I could never write a well thought out, clear and creative paper. With this method she felt that if Amanda Ho, class valedictorian, could write an outstanding paper, then the entire Class of 2015 could write one just as well. Never coming to an understanding that everyone wasn’t Amanda Ho, everyone didn’t have the brains

Even as a young kid in elementary school, writing was one of my weakest subjects. I always sighed when one of my teachers mentioned a writing assignment. It started in elementary school and continues to affect me to this day. Starting out my junior year, I was hesitant to have Mr. Zollman as a teacher because I heard he was a tough grader. I soon found out that was true, but he ended up being the most helpful teacher to get me through my writing problems. Mr. Zollman helped me get through my struggles of writing papers, and he taught me to be a stronger writer.

The role of an English teacher’s writing is important, not only for future English Majors in the classroom, but also for the advancement of science, technology, engineering and mathematics because it helps expand student’s interest in these subjects and strengthens their verbal and writing skills.

The learning style I identified with is read/write. I basically learn things better by reading and writing things down. As you read and write things down it makes it easier for me to remember things better. If I continuously re-read things, I would remember them for a long time. And if I re-write things I’d be ably to remember it for a long time as well. Because I remember better if I read I always keep a highlighter near by because if I highlight something I know it’ll be important and it will make it easier for studying for test. Not only that, because I use different colored highlighters it makes me remember things more also. Yes, I did know that this was my preferred learning style before completing this assessment because,

Since I can remember I have always loved to write. When I first took college composition I it was so fun and I loved everything I learned in that class. It was so long ago so I don’t really remember everything that I learned but for the most part, I remember being able to pick a topic and write about that one topic throughout the semester. There are three aspects of my writing that I would like to improve which are tone, grammar, and style. I always write in the sarcastic tone. I would love to learn how to write in a different tone such as disapproving, critical, pleading, humorous etc. I would struggle with grammar because I'm always the type of person to do things fast. I would free write and I would write so fast that sometimes I do mistakenly

Writing has always been something I really enjoy doing. However, in my mind, I do not think I am that good of a writer. My mom really enjoys my writing and has stated many times to me that she thinks I am very good at writing. Somehow I just do not see it. I think I am an okay writer, but I would like to get better. My goal for this year is to gain more confidence when it comes to my writing and to stop being my own worst critic.

It may come as no surprise, then, that I was thrilled to be "required" to enroll in a writing class. Writing for any reason, whether academic or creative, always throws me back to the joyous childhood creativity of sitting before the computer, preparing to let the waves of story come crashing out of me.

Vetter’s claims that teachers cannot teach students how to write and that teachers have no influence on a student’s writing. I disagree with Vetter’s claim, I believe that teachers have a big impact and can greatly improve a student’s writing. I have had a personal experience where my English teacher in high school actually taught me how to improve my writing, and in the piece we read in class “Making Children Hate Reading” by John Holt. the teacher John Holt improved a lot of his students writing by changing his method.

I walked into my first day of 6th grade English class greeted by a young woman with a voice that easily filled the entire classroom. I listened intently as my English teacher introduced herself and enthusiastically described all the creative assignments that were awaiting us. As the bell rang, signaling the end of class, I excitedly thought to myself that this was going to be a great teacher who challenged me. After all, writing was one of my passions as evidenced by the endless notebooks and scraps of paper that blanketed my bedroom. As the first few days unfolded I was optimistic and excited. That was until the work began.

I have heard many of my peers say that they can’t write or that they aren’t good writers. But, we are already writing. Telling and retelling our days, our lives, and our knowledge. Through various outlets we write everyday: we are texting friends, posting vlogs on youtube, tweeting, updating our Facebook status, pinning on Pinterest, narrating our pictures on Instagram… We shift our practices, receive feedback, and shift our practices again. We find communities. We learn from our peers from the feedback they give us and we try again. But, schools often actively work to devalue, undermine, and even try to get us students

Writing proves daily to be a tool one can use in their own way to express themselves. Many teachers have their own approaches to teaching writing and not to say that they are not effective I just feel that if some people change their approach some of the problems I myself see can be changed by a change in the approach to teaching and assessing writing. Some issues I see are students not being exposed to different styles of writing, their writing assignments challenge their knowledge and remembrance instead of their analytical and critical thinking skills, and the way teachers assess writing. These problems are pretty I love writing and I have had good and bad experiences with teachers of writing.

On Thursday, June 22nd, I observed a writing class at Sherman High School at the Perrin Field location. The instructor, Catherine Cunningham, granted me permission to observe her Writing Class which meets M/W/F from 9:00am – 3:00pm during the summer timeframe. Since I currently not do not have any teaching experience in the classroom yet, this was an opportunity to observe how an experience teacher of 25 plus years conducted her class.