Quintessentially Quilly

I took a class today titled, “How to Teach Writing.” For those of you who want to ask, “Why do you need that class when you’ve been published?” Let me just say that knowing how to write, and knowing how to explain writing well are two different things.

Ineffective teaching:
Effective teaching:

-Teacher: This paragraph is wrong.
-Teacher: This paragraph is missing necessary details.

-Student: “Why?”
-Student: “Why?”

-Teacher: “Because I said so.”
-Teacher: “Because you haven’t told me what made you fall off the bicycle. Were you just riding down the street and fell over for no reason?”

-Student: No. The dog caught my pant leg.
-Teacher: What dog? There’s no dog in your story.

-Student: “How do I fix it?”
-Student: “How do I fix it?”

-Teacher: “Rewrite it.”
-Teacher: “Rewrite it.”

-Student: “Gee thanks.”
-Student: “Gee thanks.”

Okay, so maybe the class wasn’t that simplistic (because I’m not that dense) but most of the things the facilitator pointed out to us made me think, “Duh!” Yet despite that, duh, they were things I hadn’t thought of, because they were things I didn’t have to be taught.

I am a good math teacher because math did not come easily to me. I know how the kids think and feel when they are confused. I know what questions to ask to figure out why they don’t “get it.” I know how to explain things so they do “get it.” That is because I had a model for that; whereas I was always at the top of my class in writing. I was the model — therefore I wasn’t learning.

This leads me to wonder — who might I be if I had had someone to emulate?

Probably still me, huh? Drat.