In the book Continuing the Journey 2 by Ken Lindblom and Leila Christenbury, both state the following about authentic writing assignments, “students write to a real audience for a real purpose in a real forum” (Lindbolm 33). With an assignment like this, it is the students who have the say in what they write. Not only do they have a say in what they write, but they also get feedback from specific interest groups, those that the student is writing for. Here’s the issue, however, there are still many teachers that are pushing students to read and write a certain way, a dry way, as I like to call it. When you tell your students, as the teacher, to use an outline, brainstorm, and write using a specific prompt, you’re forcing them to do it in a way that may not work for them. It also pushes young writers away.
The “Pick One” Method
This is a writing exercise I learned from my friend John. An avid writer himself, he told me that he and his friend usually write down three things of interest down on a piece of paper, and then when they’re done, they each pick one topic off the other person’s list that they’d want to write about. It’s a great idea and one I needed to include in here. It’s such a great idea that I’ve already started to think about ways to include it in my future classroom. With this exercise, the students are demonstrating authentic writing because the topics they chose came off of their friend’s list, so the topic has interest to both.
Authentic Genre
With authentic genre, the days of students, well, students were never too enamored with the idea of writing boring five-paragraph essays about topics or things irrelevant to daily life. I can tell you this, though, students would be eager to write a paper around a vacation they just took to Disney World, or even a paper about their last soccer tournament and how it played out and impacted them. Writing authentic genres or topics that impact or pertain to a person’s life is a great way to engage young students with the idea of writing. What student wants to give you an essay based around a boring topic that has nothing to do with their life in any way, and probably will never matter to them the second they hand it in? Nobody, and that’s a fact. But, what if we told our students they could write about a book that impacted their life in some sort of way and why? Now that’s a story I’d want to read from my student. In Anne Elrod Whitney’s “Keeping It Real: Valuing Authenticity In the Writing Classroom,” she mentions the idea of authentic genre, and then she goes on to mention the things she has her students do.
Authentic Process
Yes, writing isn’t easy. Students need to know that even the best writers in the world have struggled and continue to struggle when putting pen to paper or fingers to keys. Everybody has their own process, but if students think writers don’t ever struggle, they’ll quit early and claim it isn’t for them. Writing is something you have to do over time to really understand whether or not you have a future with it. You can’t get on a bike for the first time in your life and think you’ll never be able to do it based off the current struggle. It takes practice, effort, mistakes, falls, etc. Writing doesn’t always go according to plan, so let your students know that it is okay to wander in different directions, based off what your brain is telling you to do. Yes, it may be wrong, but you’re also embracing the authenticity of the assignment. Writing is messy, and whoever tells you it isn’t is not being entirely truthful.
Writers Uncensored 