Crafting Writers, Chapters 10-12

As usual, I found quite a few rich suggestions from Hale in her final chapters of Crafting Writers.  Instead of trying to conquer it all, I would like to highlight a few segments I found to be particularly helpful.  The first important notion I took from Chapter 10 was the idea that students must feel emotionally secure in order to succeed as writers.  While I think I always assumed this in the back of my mind, I read this part of Hale's description and thought, "Oh my gosh, that is so incredibly important!" Hale gives credit to Gay Su Pinnell and Patricia Scharer and their idea that "the emotional aspect of teaching can either impede learning or cause it to flourish" (Hale 161).  Hale goes on to explain, "Reaching one's potential to learn depends so much on the relationships between the people involved, not so much the content of what is being taught" (Hale 161).  This passage has continued to resonate with me for the past couple days because it provides so much hope, both to the teacher and the student.  By taking some of the focus off of the actual content, the teacher can also learn to nurture and encourage her students before teaching them the content they are supposed to be learning.  This notion also relieves some pressure for the students, although they might not recognize it, because they are not expected to be masters of the given task right away, but instead are encouraged in their learning as a gradual process.  As a future teacher, I took comfort in this passage because it recognized that there are other aspects of successful teaching that go far beyond teaching students content mastery.  I was left with a question though...What is the proper level of emotional security and the proper level of content mastery?  How do we, as teachers, help our students feel emotionally ready to learn while still pushing them to achieve greatness?

Another small detail I noticed and particularly liked in Hale's writing was the "Next Steps" she demonstrated in Chapter 10.  Hale gave three examples of ways teachers can make statements when they are conferring with students who need some improvement in their writing. Hale listed one way to phrase a sentence that I especially liked.  She said, "One thing I think you're ready for as a writer is..." (Hale 165).  I loved this phrasing because it gives the student a challenge to work on, while still encouraging them of their strengths.  It says...I acknowledge that you've mastered this, and now I'm confident that you're ready to move on to this.  What a great way to give suggestions in a positive way!

While I feel like I could go on for a long time about Hale's suggestions, for the sake of time, I'm only going to highlight one last idea that really jumped out at me. I loved Hale's recommendation of letting students assess writing samples from previous years with a given rubric.  To me, this does two great things: 1. It gives students a sense of responsibility; they can see that their teacher trusts them enough to move on to the next step as writers--evaluating others' work, and 2. It allows students a chance to become familiar with the rubric that will be used in the grading of their papers.  This way students will gain a deeper understanding of the concepts being graded on the rubrics and will be able to become stronger writers in the future.  I'm sure that this exercise has many more benefits than the two I mentioned, but these two seemed to really jump out at me.