Thinking Is Hard

Just as I had the most interesting day on Tuesday, I had the most exhausting day yesterday and today. The students completely drained me!!! The day didn’t end at 2:10pm when the bell rang after the last class. I had students suddenly stressing to do their essays, and they wanted me to practically tell them the answer on how to write them and what to write in them. The gall of some of these students! They don’t do their work—or they do half—and they expect me to do the rest.

Part I: The Beauty of the Essay (Thursday)

A student who was just starting his essay today finally revealed to me, “I don’t know what to write for my introductory paragraph?” In other words, he didn’t have a thesis, and so he didn’t know what to write. Mind you, readers: I asked for a rough draft last Monday. This student was just starting his rough draft.

We started with the choice of essay prompts that I had given them. He chose one prompt. I asked him what his idea was, and if he had an idea for a thesis. Nothing. He had absolutely nothing. He asked me instead, “What can I write for a thesis?” My reaction: *_*

Second student: he was working on the meat of his essay, which was polishing his opinions for objective literary analysis. He had some stuff down, but not strong enough to support what he was trying to prove in his thesis. I helped him by asking question after question, hoping that he would connect all his answers as proof and commentary for his analysis. He kept saying, “I don’t know. Why don’t you just tell me the answer?” My reaction: >_<

Third student: she really worked hard on her essay, and I saw light bulbs going on and on whenever we hit a great idea. When we were almost done, she said to me, “This is hard, Ms. G.” My reaction: ^_^

“Writing is not hard," I said smiling. "Thinking is. That’s the beauty of the essay."

She nodded back with a smile, too.

When all the kids left, I thought about what I had said to my last student. I realized that writing is not difficult to teach. Much of the time when I’m helping students with their essays, I’m not teaching the organizational skills of writing, I’m teaching—and almost telling—students how to think. That’s not why I went into teaching. I want kids to learn and think on their own. I feel that I’m not doing my part if I’m telling them answers. All these essays are going to start sounding alike because they got their answers from me.

Oh, the difficulty of teaching writing! Having the kids realize that thinking is a large component before writing is a lesson in itself.


Part II: Light Bulbs (Friday)

I thought I would get to leave campus early, but it never turns out that way. I had kids waiting for me in my classroom after school because they needed help on their essays. My last student didn’t leave until 5:30pm. Although I would have normally despaired at having to stay THAT late for a student who needed help on an essay, I was glad to help her because, in comparison to yesterday, I was actually teaching writing. She already had a rough draft and all her ideas were just jumbled in her brain. As we worked together, we hit on idea after idea, and it was just the writing process that was laborious for her. She had to write every thing down, even if she wasn’t going to use it because she visually had to see the words that represented the ideas in her head. Question after question, she connected all her answers, then tried to create flowing ideas into fluid sentences on paper. Every time I said, “Perfect!” for every mark she hit, I saw a light bulb turn on in her head as she feverishly wrote down more thoughts. Next, she would ask me if her ideas sounded right as she structured them into syntactically correct sentences, then she corrected her own mistakes, and did it over again. It’s interesting and wonderful to see students like her understand her own learning.

We stayed so late that her mother came in to wait for her daughter (we teachers love supportive parents!). She seemed to enjoy watching us laugh together. As they left, her mother expressed her gratitude to me because I spent so much time helping her daughter, but it meant more for me to see my student learn and to be part of that process. These are the positive moments that remind me why I went into teaching in the first place.