How we learn to write

In class on Tuesday, one of my writing students who has been wrestling with her memoir had a breakthrough, and it made me ponder how we learn to write. There are the obvious things that we've all heard, of course: first of all we learn through writing, writing, writing. And through reading, reading, reading. I'm a firm believer in the long years of practice.

I know I learnt a lot about writing through workshopping and seeing other people's comments and their line edits. I know some writing teachers don't do line edits because they don't feel that they have the right to cross out somebody else's words, but I think it's an important way of showing how to improve the flow of words/information/narrative. The student is, of course, free to take your advice or not, but to me not line editing is a wasted opportunity to show the students (rather than tell them) how to improve. All very well to just write "awkward" next to a line, but some don't have the craft knowledge yet to know how to deal with that.

I'm a subscriber to the theory that our learning proceeds in a slow gentle curve that eventually plateaus out, until the day when another thing clicks and you jump up a level, up a straight cliff-face, onto another gentle incline curving up. And so we proceed in a series of curves and plateaus with the odd leaps that take us to the next level. And my student jumped one of those levels in class. Most years, at some point, at least one student will make such a leap, and it's a heartening thing for a teacher to see, because it means that all that we're saying and doing has at least had some effect. For me, it's moments like those that make teaching worthwhile. I love my students -- I find it inspiring to be among like-minded people, but these moments when you see such tangible evidence of improvement, teaching becomes something more than a job I enjoy doing.

A few years ago, I had two students who were close friends in my class: one was the most eager student I'd ever seen and so keen to improve her skills. She was always asking me what she could do to improve her work. She and her friend were pretty much on the same level and, as luck would have it, it was her friend that made the leap during class that year. The first girl was glad for her friend, but became increasingly frustrated at her own lack of progress. We can't will these jumps; they happen when we've assimilated some piece of knowledge, deconstructed and reconstructed it and come up with something new -- an insight, an epiphany, a light-bulb moment. I know at times I've experienced that frustration: knowing I've needed something more in my writing, but not quite what that thing is or how to get it. I had to tell my student not to lose heart, but to be patient. Patience does bring us improvements as long as we continue that essential practice. We all learn at different rates. Sometimes these leaps come through trying something different -- a completely different approach. For my student it was trying present tense instead of past. Present tense allowed her to relive the moment and so to capture it as if it were happening right there, right then. It doesn't mean her story necessarily has to stay in present tense, but for now it is helping her unlock the door to her own creativity. She's bubbling with excitement about it, and so am I.

Becoming a student

Every few years every teacher should have to become a student again to see what life's like on the other side of the teacher's desk. At the moment, Sherryl, Susanna (another fellow teacher) and I have joined our students in a class learning how to use Dreamweaver.

Since the class began, I have swapped computers in the computer lab, and had previously downloaded some files onto that first computer because I didn't have my USB stick with me. So today I started by redownloading the files (that I was already supposed to have) onto my stick. Now my stick is quite old, so quite small by modern standards, and I hadn't realised it was full. So here I was trying to get files that wouldn't load, and meanwhile the teacher had moved on to something else. By the time I realised what my problem was, I was so far behind that I had almost no chance of catching up, and though I had been listening, the amount of information was such that I had no hope of remembering it. And I didn't.

As the class went on I felt I was really floundering, and though I did catch up in the end, with some help from Sherryl, the experience was a timely reminder of how students can struggle -- even those that we might expect to be coping or who might look like they're coping. There are lots of reasons students won't speak out about the troubles that they're having. I'm a fairly open person, and don't mind being honest about things like that. But not all students are. Sometimes they won't speak out for fear of looking silly, or because they're shy. (I used to be like that.) They might think asking questions will make them look like they're sucking up, or might piss off their peers.

I tell my students that there's no such thing as a stupid question in my class -- and I do welcome all questions. I had that lesson driven home to me when I was doing my science degree. I remember a student asking what I thought was a genuine question, and the teacher saying, "Oh, so we have one of those, do we?" And then going on to ridicule this guy for asking what she thought was a ridiculous question. My respect for her plummeted, and ultimately if you haven't got the respect of your students, you haven't got any chance of having a successful and rewarding class.