Teaching Writing Philosophy...What Teaching Writing Philosophy?

When I first started writing my response to Tobin I was critical of his bias toward expressive pedagogy and his equating of expressive pedagogy and process pedagogy. However, this approach did not really evaluate my own teaching writing approach, and I fully intend to use this class to try and develop a teaching writing philosophy that will actually work for students. I am not sure this is going to really be a response to Tobin as much as it is going to be a reflection on where I am with teaching writing. So...

Like Tobin I have had a hard time focusing on a particular writing theory or even practice in my teaching. I have never been one to stand and lecture about writing or teach lessons on how to write the perfect paragraph. However, I also have never had a coherent approach to teaching writing that I believe actually improved student writing. This is hard to admit since I have been teaching for 8 years and should be an expert by this time. :)

I have asked students in the past to write in their journals every day, but I have found too many students who do not take it seriously. I know...I'm probably not doing it right because I haven't been able to get them to buy into it. That is just it, how do I get them to buy into it? I envy those teachers who are able to get their students to faithfully write every day and then those students become Freedom Writers or accomplish some other great writing feat.

I have also used paper conferencing, peer editing, and several other gimmicks that seem to work for some students but not for the majority of students.

One approach that has worked for my advanced students is group paper conferencing. With this approach, students hear how I critique a paper and they learn how to critique each others' papers. But, this approach is only practical with a small group of students and those students have to be somewhat confident in their writing or they will be devastated when someone criticizes their paper.

This year I am trying a new approach for my low skill writers and average writers. With this writing process students are given four to six writing skills that the paper is going to be graded on and that they must focus on while writing the paper. Though I have only used this approach for a week or so, I have already heard some interesting comments from my students. The final step of the writing process is to annotate their own paper telling me how they did with the skills in their paper. To achieve the best score they must be able to show that they understand a particular skill and know how to use it effectively. During this final process several of my students raised their hands and asked if they could correct the mistakes they found in their papers. I, of course, said yes. In fact, I'm not sure they believed me because I had to repeat it at least once in every class.

All of these approaches, I think, are a part of the process pedagogy, but I admit that it definitely seems like a hodge-podge. I know they do not all fit into the expressive branch of process pedagogy, yet even Tobin says that he is uncomfortable with some aspects of the expressive approach even though he still believes it is the best.