Once upon a time, a decade or few ago, the constituency of public schools considered it important for us English teachers to teach kids to write coherent, meaningful, and reasonably correct English prose. In those halcyon days of yore, we had standardized tests that evaluated the quality of students’ writing by having them actually write essays on assigned topics, and these essays were hand-scored by specially trained English teachers, reading them under controlled conditions. An excellent example of such a test was the Idaho Direct Writing Assessment, 1979-20??, which Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna has proposed discontinuing permanently. “As we move toward the next generation of assessments, we have to look at the value of the assessments we currently have… The Direct Writing and Direct Math Assessments have served their purpose. Now, to continue moving student achievement forward in the future, we must focus on improved assessment tools,” says Superintendent Luna. http://educationidaho.blogspot.com/2010/04/superintendent-luna-announces-plan-to.html These “improved” assessment tools seem to be the current crop of standardized tests that assess “writing” by bubble-sheet questions about writing and about error-based proof-reading.
A quaint notion in those olden times was that teachers of writing should actually themselves be writers. Many books and articles were written to foster this notion. Some of this professional literature went over the top. One Pundit (an academic Pundit, not a political one) went so far as to suggest that mere reports, memos, newsletters, and journal articles didn’t count as real Writing. “Through a Cynic’s Eyes: The Teacher As Writer,” Inland: A Journal For Teachers of English Language Arts, Spring/Summer 1998, was my cry of “Enough, alright, already!” You will find it in From the Files.
Quaint as the idea may have been, I think it was – and is – a sound one. If I presume to teach others to write, then not only should I be a competent writer myself, I should do a bit of it. Since I retired, I have continued to reflect upon myself as an English teacher who writes (or makes a brave show of it). What does an English teacher write in the course of a rather lengthy career? What did I write? Thus, I peruse my filing cabinet and the files on my hard drive. My reflections on what I find there provide the rationale for From the Files. (Yes, it is a journal article.)