There was something almost heartbreaking about getting a paper returned that was full of red marks. I never wanted to get papers with a lot of red pen, so I studied those markings and I learned. Yet, that visual taught me. It taught me where capitals went. It taught me where commas went. It taught me about run-on sentences. To be fair, it did not teach me spelling because to this day, I’m the worst speller, but it taught me about word choice. Notes in red in the margins with arrows taught me about context flow and to expand my ideas. Red arrows taught me how to better organize my thoughts. The red pen taught me how to be a writer.
Over the years, just with my kids, I have noticed several issues when it comes to writing instruction. The first thing I noticed is that writing structure is not formally taught anymore, at least not in the traditional sense. The writing process now is a lot more about thinking and gathering ideas than actual structure of text. That works for some kids, but there are students, like my children, who need more structure in their learning process. Even when I taught at a progressive school that let children progress at their own rates, we taught the writing structure. What the kids wrote about was more up to them as opposed to a set topic.
The second thing I noticed was that there was no red pen. Here, we could get into the psychology of it and there have been studies done on how red markings on papers are damaging to children’s psyches, but there was very little pen at all, red or otherwise. Teachers would “conference” with kids about their writings. What this meant was that students would write, be called over by a teacher, teachers would verbally tell them what was good or bad with their papers and send them back to make corrections. I don’t know about you, but, even now as an adult, someone droning on about what I did wrong and telling me that in a certain sentence something is spelled incorrectly or I need to add a comma in this place, by the time I get back to the writing, I have no idea what they said. This was a huge issue for my son. This held him back from his full potential. Finally, in 5th grade, his teacher put post-it notes on his papers and it made all the difference. It wasn’t red pen markings, but it was the same concept. That small change of adding a visual cue helped him better understand the structure of writing, correct his mistakes, and learn more about the process of writing itself. Now, in 9th grade, the boy is a much stronger writer and finds that the entire process comes much more easily now that he has a solid foundation.
In the four years since my son was in 5th grade, I noticed the biggest change to writing instruction. Everything the kids write is now done on computers. I understand that this year was different, but I’m not talking about just this year. Once in middle school, my son barely wrote anything on paper. At the high school level, essays are now just turned in digitally. A grade, with zero feedback is given. How are kids supposed to learn and be able to improve when there is no feedback? Every now and again, there will be a teacher who makes a note in the margins, but it’s not the same. My kids ask me to edit their writing quite often. When it’s on the computer, it’s hard for me to show them what to change. Capitals, periods, commas. Change this wording or that wording. Then we’re right back to the “conferencing” and they have no idea what to actually change. I have to literally stand over them, looking over their shoulder, and point to the screen and show them exactly what I’m talking about. This is not learning. They can not visualize what to fix in future writings. It’s not just kids, it’s adults as well. I speak from experience. I apologize to everyone who read my last post that had over 5 typos when first published. My husband caught them. When I tried to go back to fix what he said, I couldn’t find it or remember. He ended up having me pull it up on my computer in edit mode and he just fixed it for me. When you try to edit what you have written, it’s difficult, even when someone has pointed out your mistakes. You know what you wanted to say, what it’s supposed to say. That makes it more difficult to find the small errors.
What all of this has led to is a lack of structural integrity in writing. My daughter is an amazing writer. She writes the most magnificent stories. Her creativity astounds me. The amount of dependent clauses, lack of proper punctuation, missing capitals, and a multitude of run-on sentences appalls me. How can a child who is this amazing of a writer, and one that has received extremely high marks for her writing, lack this much knowledge of structure of writing? In her 5th grade year, I was more than a little excited because I knew that her teachers were amazing and could take her writing to another level. Things started to fall into place, and then everything shut down. All of the great techniques she had learned the first part of 5th grade seem to have vanished. What she remembers from all her elementary years is, “We’re supposed to write and worry about punctuation and capitals later”. I then circle back to the point where it is difficult to edit your own work, so we should try to write using these in the first place.
This year, every student has a Chromebook. Every Chromebook has Grammarly installed on it. I can’t stand Grammarly. It’s a lazy way out. It teaches nothing. No, it teaches that you don’t need to learn how to actually write. I’ll be the first to admit that when the marvelous invention of Spellcheck came out, it was a game changer for me with how awful of a speller I am. My mom felt about Spellcheck the way I feel about Grammarly. My only defense to this is that you can’t look a word up in the dictionary if you don’t know how to spell it! The main difference is, Grammarly teaches you that you don't have to learn how to properly write because someone else will fix your work for you. After years and years of Spellcheck, I’ve learned that I’m finally becoming a better speller because of how often I mispelled particular words (particular is actually one of those words). An important technique I learned my freshman year of high school was to try not to begin your sentences in a paragraph with the same word. This technique keeps your reader engaged. Grammarly does not care if you drone on and your writing is uninteresting and repetitive. You can pay Grammarly to check for those things, but only to a point. There is no substitute for learning proper writing technique and how to better articulate your thoughts.
Currently, in 6th grade, my daughter is learning about the structure of paragraphs. It’s funny because I was sitting in the living room writing this and she asked me to help her study for her Language Arts test. As I began to help her study, I found that what I’m writing about is exactly what she’s learning about. I also found out that she really doesn’t understand it. She has the vocabulary memorized. She can tell you what dependent and independent clauses are. She can tell you what a subordinate conjunction is, but she still does not understand the application of it. I blame the demise of the red pen….and her strong will. I have been trying to teach her these concepts for years, but she refuses to take any advice from me. Afterall, I don’t know anything about writing. I’m just a mom, not a person who knows what she is talking about. making her change things, such as run-on sentences. Hopefully, after this unit in Language Arts, some of the things I’ve been saying for years will sink in.
Writing instruction is becoming a lost art, yet we expect people to be able to write well thought out, articulate pieces. The more we delve into the world of technology, the more we rely on that technology to “fix” our mistakes. With a lack of foundation, how do we expect growth? We need to bring back the red pen. It can be green if that makes people feel better and less intimidated. We need to get back to teaching the fundamentals of writing so that the next generations are filled with people who can write stories that inspire, entertain, and inform. We need to do this so that we do not go backwards and head to primitive times when the only form of communication was pictures. This may seem extreme, but we are living in society where people can communicate with emojis, but can’t start a sentence with a capital letter.