It’s All About the Writing

1. It’s All About the Writing Low-stakes writing for high end results Professor Elizabeth Klein

2. The Problem/The Process • Students have a vision of what academic writing should look like as opposed to formulating their own message. Students are “shoulding” on themselves. • They often lose sight of the big picture and the detail and produce bland writing. • Students become anxious, fearful or don’t know where to begin. The Writing Process is used to: Help students improve their writing but also to share themselves, rid themselves of fear of writing and learn to take the perspective of others. Change the narrative: Reimagining the narrative with “Strong Stories”. Change the point of view:

3. The Solution: Hybrid writing Assign an existing piece and have students write from a different point of view. • Students strengthen their writing by providing examples, rich detail and citations. Connecting to memories or writing from different points of view helps strengthen writing. Show don’t tell. • Self-Discovery and content through writing.

4. Assignments • Assignment 1:Instead of telling students what it feels like to be a new teacher, we took an article from The Atlantic written by Michelle Kuo and they had to re-imagine it from their own perspective. Retrieved from: https://www.michellekuo.net/reading-with-patrick/. While experiencing the act of creating their own piece, their voices were able to come through. Students loosened up and presented much more detail than speaking about the procedures of becoming a new teacher. Assignment 2: Letter to self -Write two different narratives of true stories about student behavior that you did not handle well (leave out real names - use fake names). Write a note to yourself telling yourself what you could have done differently. Also, be sure to sign off with empathy and understanding.