6 Ideas About Writing I Want to Live Forever (005)
A quick trip through some ideas about writing that I want to live forever—a companion to last month’s crowdsourced theme “The Idea about Writing You Most Want to Die” that I discussed with that brilliant panel of educators at Bread Loaf (004). Afterwards, several people asked if I would be willing to highlight some ideas I have found most useful as a teacher of writing for two decades who continues to work with writing instructors as part of my consulting work in schools, so here are six of my favorites.
Thanks as always to Shayfer James for our intro and outro. Buy his music here. Thanks to Roy Chambers and John Opera for suggestions for this episode's format and content. Thanks to you for listening, sharing, and offering feedback!
episode structure
Some Ideas About Writing I Want to Live Forever:
- Ask students what they think. #stuvoice (01:46)
- Develop assignments based on your own favorites. (03:41)
- The Artist and the Editor (05:04)
- Alternatives to the 5-Paragraph Essay (08:09)
- Some questions I ask when designing assignments (10:36)
- Some thoughts on grading. (12:23)
Supplementary Materials
No. 3, The Artist and the Editor segment, refers to Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anchor, 1994). Click for Goodreads review, etc.
No. 6, Some thoughts on grading, cites Linda Christensen and her book Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-Imagining the Language Arts Classroom (Rethinking Schools, 2009). The last chapter is called "Grading: Moving Beyond Judgment," which includes the eminently re-readable essay “My Dirty Little Secret: I Don’t Grade Student Papers.”
Toward the end of the show, I rail on standardized testing. Click button for some more thoughts about that ...