REALity Check.

As writing teachers, it is important that we treat our students like real writers. One of the first things that immediately come to my mind in order to help facilitate this is we could send them a barrage of rejection letters. Perhaps we can make them move into a studio apartment with a roommate on a minimum wage salary and prescribe them unreasonable deadlines for an endless pile of projects.

Unfortunately, even though this may be a reality for a good deal of working writers, we do not want to scare our students away from writing. Maybe it’s time to look at a few less intimidating ways to make our students experiences in the classroom feel “real.”

Give authentic writing assignments

The best way I can think of giving students a taste of real-world writing is to assign real life writing assignments.

Ken Lindblom and Leila Christenbury said it best in Continuing the Journey 2 when they say: “The only way students will experience real written communication and come to understand all the nuances of language and the social dynamics involved is to engage in authentic writing: real writing, written for a real audience, for a real purpose, in a real forum.” (30)

Obviously, we cannot always have our students write real letters to real people or submit articles to real publications, but we can certainly replicate this experience through an assignment modeled after the process of doing these kinds of things. This would be known as “Pseudo Authentic Writing” exercises, which is almost as good as the real thing if done correctly.

Share my own writing – no one’s perfect

One of the best lessons a teacher can impress upon their student is that no one is infallible. This is best illustrated by demonstrating our own writing processes in front of our students. Do not be afraid to lead by example and especially do not be afraid of being less than perfect in front of your students. When we write in front of students, we are not only allowing ourselves to show the vulnerability that we expect from our students which makes their work so much better, but we are allowing students a glimpse into the messiness that comes with an early draft. Also, as a bonus, this helps our students see us as real people and not just some kind of robot that get charged in the classroom closet at night. Do not pretend you did not think your teacher was a real person when you were a student! We have all thought it at least once growing up.

Have them share their writing

This may come as a shock, but part of real writing is having a real audience. Unfortunately, this is not always possible in a classroom setting. However, something very easily done in a classroom is to have other students evaluate their classmate’s work!

Ken Lindblom and Leila Christenbury in Continuing the Journey 2 offer a plethora of suggestions regarding ways to do this kind of evaluation: “To evaluate their writing effectively, writers can read their drafts carefully; ask peers or writing tutors to read their drafts and make suggestions; read their drafts out loud to themselves (or have a computer read it to them); run a draft past a test audience to see if the draft does what the writer intends it to do; and more.”

Having someone else read your writing not only gives you the benefit of an audience, but also when you hear your words come from someone else’s mouth, it’s easier to spot mistakes you’ve made.

Free writing to come up with an idea for a writing prompt

One of the toughest parts of writing is figuring out what to write about and then getting a word on the page. When I am stuck and do not know what to write about, I force myself to write whatever is on my mind at that exact moment. Sometimes I write lists of my favorite things and least favorite things at that moment. In fact, I’m good friends with quite a few comedians and one of the oldest tricks comedians use for material is to write lists of things they like and don’t like so that they have a variety of ideas to expand on regarding things they feel strongly about one way or another. It’s much easier to write about something you feel passionately about in either a positive or negative way!

Get them to journal & write every day.

Related to free writing is keeping a journal. Like any other skill, writing only gets better when we do it often. It would behoove anyone to keep a journal, but it is especially useful to professional writers because journaling not only keeps you in the habit of writing often, but it also gives you the unique opportunity to reflect on tour past writing and experiences. It is probably one of the best tools a writer possesses to really refine their skills while also offering a running account of writing progress and growth. It does not matter so much what the students write, as much as it matters that they write and that they do it often.

Practice makes better!

Hopefully, these are some tips that can make your students feel like they are real writers without giving them the crushing anxiety and self-loathing that can come with the real professional world of writing!