Dead pedagogy

As I have mentioned previously, teacher education programs are woefully inadequate at preparing teachers for the reality of the classroom. Writing is an area that is just left up to chance too often. And yet teachers are charged with teaching writing so they figure it out the best they can. Teachers are amazing at surviving. And this survival instinct is what helps us achieve and it can also be the root of poor practices.

Enter Jane Schaffer. Her method of teaching writing can best be described as formulaic. Taking the art and craft of writing and turning it into a mathematical construct. No thinking needed. No craft. No analysis of great writer's as models. Just learn her special vocabulary, insert banal information and tell us why, and presto change-o, you're a writer.

Schaffer's method can best be described as a life raft approach. When all else fails, follow the formula and you will pass the test. So from a practical standpoint, that is a nice tool to have. A parachute if you will. But preparing learners to communicate in the real world should not rest on emergency planning.

Often times teachers extol the virtues of the Schaffer method as a good scaffold for future adventures in writing. And those future adventures are where? They don't materialize because every teacher on the next step up assumes the children can't write so they reteach the Schaffer method again and again.  Students have learned to be compliant in our factory schools so they just go along with whatever they need to do to get an "A."

The writing curriculum doesn't improve in high school either. My sophomore still comes home talking about "concrete details" and "commentary" years after Schaffer should have been abandoned. A group of writing teachers from Cal State San Marcos came to our district over a decade ago and point blank told our high school teachers the Schaffer method should NOT be used in high school except for struggling writers. They scoffed and continued the drone of CD's and CM's.

The Schaffer method is mechanistic, factory thinking and it needs to be relegated to the survival strategy methodology it was designed for years ago. Sophistication can't be nurtured in writing that is prevented from being daring and experimental. When children are more concerned with counting the number of comments they make about "concrete details" we have really entered a world of cogs and levers. Stop the factory thinking! And quit reserving any quality writing for the elite children in honors and AP English. All students deserve the best!

Teachers, learn how to embrace writing. Write yourselves. Make mistakes. Be daring! Writer's workshop is a far better pedagogy and it asks learners to ask, "What do real writer's do?" And the more we do that, the sooner we will stop telling lies to kids like:

• a paragraph is five to seven sentences
• you can't start sentences with AND
• you can't end a sentence with a preposition
• you must have two commentary sentences for every concrete detail

We need to embrace the nebulous and realize writing is far messier than a factory can streamline. Writing is an art and all writer's have a style. It is our job to help these young writer's find their voice and become engaging authors.

For a far more scholarly critique of the Jane Schaffer method, please visit:

http://www.csun.edu/~krowlands/Content/Academic_Resources/Composition/Form/wiley%20resisting%20formulaic%20writing.pdf