Originally posted on May 12, 2016, “‘Righting the Wrongs of Student Writing” extols the value of taking pride in what you do and doing it to the best of your ability. And contrary to what my boss thinks, not everyone can teach kids how to write. Look at where I work. Look at where other teachers work. There are teachers who can convey complex material to students, and there are teachers who cannot. Lumping them all together in one category makes the bad, worse, and worst look much better at the expense of the good, better, and best.

And while that’s not right, I guess in every job I’ve ever worked, there’s always been sloven, indolent workers who show up to collect a check and not much else. But, again, everyone pulls their own weight.

Including the boss.

Writing in middle and high school is not sexy. There, I said it. It’s not a PowerPoint presentation or a website or a task-based assessment or an immersive project. It doesn’t have glitter or glue or reside on a gargantuan poster board bereft of content. Worst of all, it can’t be done in groups.

Translation in the minds of students: No fun.

Whether the assignment be a critical response paragraph, a character sketch essay, a business letter, a comparative paper, or the dreaded persuasive model, each  takes planning and time and you actually have to think about it before you do it. Whoever would have thought that in order to excel you have to think? Unfortunately, far too few of my students.

As I realized in high school and have stated an innumerable amount of times, writing is a process – from the formulating of a coherent thesis to the scaffolding of topic sentences to finding the evidence to substantiate or rebut claims to finally writing a rough draft. That’s a lot of work just to produce something that Toni Morrison is quoted in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird as saying is “an incredibly shitty, self-indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft.”

The issue here is not that student writing is ‘shitty,’ but rather that it neglects the remainder of Morrison’s advice, which is to ‘Then take out as many of the excesses as you can.’

Unfortunately, for many of my shortsighted student writers, there is no “excess” because they’re slopping words on the page trying to fill it up like it’s a bucket. But they don’t know there’s a gaping hole in the bottom of it. And they do not care, for to adolescents and teenagers, the mere production of something, anything leads them to believe they have fulfilled their obligation. Forget that what they have written doesn’t make any sense or doesn’t follow the parameters of the assignment. Their parents will tell me their child worked hard, so therefore they deserve a good grade. My response: If I work hard on a Spanish project for French class, I’m not going to get the grade, so why should your kid?

Most of my students fail the essay before they even write it. Why? It starts with the outline that we model in class and that I distribute as a graphic organizer as well. Since the objective is completing the assignment rather than doing it well, outlines will come in incomplete, missing the most crucial elements needed to produce a well-thought-out and engaging essay. Really, how can you write an essay without a thesis? No wonder why it’s such a struggle to tier your body paragraphs and find evidentiary support: You don’t even know what the hell you’re writing about.

Sure, students are lazy and their parents back them with more excuses than a child-star on downward spiral and some simply will not put in the requisite work necessary to get half a 100. However, too many teachers hide behind their students using them as easy scapegoats when failure in student writing starts with the Teacher.

Middle school students in particular cannot be expected to write competent essays if they do not know the fundamental components of it, i.e. thesis, topic sentence, MLA formatting, citation. Moreover, since writing is time-consuming and a bit tedious if it is done right, students need to work their way up to the full essay gradually, first being built up with prompts that present potential topics to them. These give them confidence in themselves and empower their thoughts.

I’m not in the business of throwing teachers under the bus unless they do not serve their purpose, but here are some questions I’ve never heard from parents:

Has the teacher given the students enough time to compose the essay? Moreover, has the teacher given comments on the drafts in a timely manner, for there is a shelf-life where if it’s exceeded the assignment becomes meaningless? Finally, are the teacher’s standards realistic? When I student-taught in Bridgeport, I’ll never forget when my co-teacher gave the class one night to write a persuasive essay. The one draft they produced that night would be evaluated as the final draft. Good luck, I thought. And she wondered why kids hated writing and probably her. Writing isn’t for everyone, but there are also plenty of bad English teachers who do not give their students the means to excel. Instead, they bore them with busy work, languorous lectures, and inert knowledge. Give the kids a meaningful task and see how much easier it is not only to manage a class but also to control their behavior.

Now that I’ve given students and their parents permission to blame the teacher when the writing does not meet the standard, I can pool over comparative drafts that bear a closer resemblance to a used tissue than an essay and identify dangling participles, sentence fragments, misspelled three-letter words, names and titles that aren’t capitalized, commas sprinkled around like salt and pepper.

The common trend: Carelessness. Or rather not caring at all.

Yet, as much as I espouse the virtue of taking pride in whatever you put your name on and demand my students put forth their best effort even if it’s a subject they do not care about, I’m realistic. Some have no interest in English just as some cannot palate math. I abhorred math class in high school, from the teacher who looked like Grendel’s mother and clearly was too browbeaten by too many thankless years of teaching to exude anything but misery to the concepts.

The same can be said about English, yet I’m not sure why since it is such a crucial skill to be able to articulate your ideas in a clear and professional manner no matter what your occupation is (Not to say that geometry or basic calculus aren’t important in the real world). I’m notably biased towards English if you cannot tell.

What many miss is the tangible application of having to complete a task that you’re not comfortable with or you do not necessarily do. While I still do not know what to do with SOH-CAH-TOA or how a parabola affects my everyday life, I worked tirelessly to get an 80 on the Math B Regents. I earned that grade, and I was proud of myself. I strive to instill that same work ethic in each of my students so they too can excel when asked to perform a weakness.

The reality is that the real world doesn’t care about what you like; it only cares about what it asks you to do and if you’ve done it.

Copyright ã 2017 Andrew Chapin

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