Will's+Process+of+Composition

The Process Approach to Writing Brings up many questions for me: 1. Why isn't the process approach more widespread? 2. How were my high school teachers in the early 2000s still not using a process approach?

It seems like all the evidence, despite its many evolutions over the past century points to writing as a process that is nonlinear. It is elusive. It is hard to understand, and thus hard to teach. So why would the solution for this problem ever be to revert? To go back to prompts, and forced, timed writing. There is nothing that says writing with more restrictions will improve the writer or the writing, and yet that's the only experience I can recall in my middle and secondary education. Even as in AP and Honors classes, we did timed writing. What other writing we did (longer writing) was done outside of class. Class time was devoted to the teacher desperately trying to engage us in discussion about a book that we neither chose nor read. Most students skimmed the readings to stay out of trouble, but I knew only a few who really enjoyed reading Willa Cather. Not to take anything away from her as a great novelist, but the idea that reading and writing is somehow impersonal, and can be dictated to a student is insane, and it surprises me that it continues to exist, and in some cases is argued for, today. The paper also points out something that I had not thought of which is the idea that some teachers may know how to identify the writing process and communicate it correctly to administrators but still do not implement it correctly. It should not come as a surprise, but I suppose it happens in every profession. It is just too bad that some teachers aren't willing to redefine their own ideas about how teaching should appear in order tot better serve their students. Because I think that is the greatest thing to learn from this reading. Teaching writing will not look like any other type of classroom teaching. It is more of an apprenticeship. It requires more work on the part of the student, and more guiding on the part of the teacher. A writing teacher will not be in front of the class reeling off facts for memorization, but will be conferring with individual students, writing his or herself, or mediating a discussion about reading and writing. At least that's what I hope it looks like when I teach, because that's what all the evidence and readings point to as the most effective way to teach writing.