This morning I was able to meet with my former teacher, Mrs.
Y. After catching up with each other, we
set to work. I explained my complete
idea for the project and shared the data I have collected so far. She explained to me that studies have shown
that almost 60% of students entering community colleges are severely
under-prepared for college writing courses.
These statistics confirm what my research has led me to believe: writing
instruction in primary and secondary schools is sorely lacking. Mrs. Y told me that she has had college
writing students who have never heard of the writing process. They were essentially given diagrams for 5
paragraph essays and told to fill them out.
This led to the topic of students being unprepared for standardized test
essays due to a lack of foundation in their skills.
Students who have not been taught to embrace any room for
error in their writing at the most basic level are unable to perform in highly
stressful situations.
It is her
professional opinion that students must be taught to embrace the hard work and
mistakes they will encounter when writing.
If they are not, they will become discouraged, considering themselves to
be “bad” at writing.
This lack of
self-esteem in their creative process will only be detrimental to their
academic careers.
She encouraged me, as
a future teacher, to help my students find their angle—aid them in their discovery
to find how they can approach a project in a personal way so every writing
assignment holds importance to them.
Hearing all of this from someone whose opinion I greatly
value was very encouraging.
It makes me
feel as if I may be on the right track for this project and my professional
career.
Furthermore, she has offered to
ask her students to fill out my questionnaire so I have more data to work
with.
She said I should expect about 35
of them.
This, in itself, is
incredible.
I will be able to access data
from a broad range of students and use it to help me in my final project.
Once I receive the questionnaires from her, I
will report back here with another update on my findings.
It is interesting how most students were never taught how to accept errors in their writing. It's so true, at one point of my life I felt like crap if I saw mistakes in my writing. I'm happy that I've matured and can now understand that improvement comes from mistakes.
ReplyDeleteI think I will teach my students that mistakes are okay in writing :)