Teaching Writing Fast and Effectively!

I was a business major in college, and an actor after college, before I became a teacher. I have always had in interest in both creativity and productivity. Nowhere in the teaching of elementary students do these two opposing sides create more confusion than in the teaching of writing. It creates confusion for the teacher, which in turn leads to confusion for the students.

Let’s Compare a Typical Fictionalized Version of a Writer vs. a Real Life Working Writer

Fictional Writer

Starting Out In the Evening is a movie about a once successful writer who is also a professor that teaches writing. He routinely explains his process by saying things such as, “I never know what my characters are going to do…” and “I let them go where they want to go and then see what happens.”

It seemed the process worked well in his early years, but now this writer/professor has been working on his current novel for nearly a decade. A novel that in the end goes nowhere and ends up in the trash. It took him a decade to realize that his story had nothing really important to say.

Real Life Writer

David Simon is a real life writer and creator of the television show The Wire. This is a show that many consider to be one of the greatest television shows ever. He said, “We know how it’s supposed to end and we know what happens to every character, and we know the thematic context of what we are trying to say. Then we start to break it down into how the parts are going to play out over 13 episodes.”

Our goals as teachers of writing should be clear based on this comparison!

(Note: The Wire is known for its realistic portrayal of inner-city decay. Season 4 took place inside the Baltimore, MD school system and gives a powerful and realistic portrayal of the challenges many inner-city schools face. One of the creators of the series was a former school teacher in the Baltimore school system, so he knows firsthand.)