What Was Useful For Me In OWP

By Linda Cole

I went into English teaching because of my interest in writing. Part of my training was done with the Bay Area Writing Project, so my teaching style has always contained a large writing component. I have loved writing since I was 12, so that aspect of the course didn’t threaten me. Instead, it was a welcome excuse for me to create. I will bring two main things away from this summer’s institute: specific teacher tips from my colleagues and concrete life changes I need to make in my own quest for writing improvement.

The presentations of the elementary school teachers particularly impressed me. I was trained to teach high school and was never taught how to get the attention of less mature students. Now that I’m substituting mostly in elementary and Special Education classes, these techniques are invaluable. All of them had their own tricks to get sidetracked students refocused. They had special clapping sequences and special sayings (One, two, three eyes on me). Ideas to use for more advanced students included: turning over the computer mouse during a lab, so that students wouldn’t be fiddling around with their computers while directions were being given out, and constantly asking the students questions to make sure they were understanding important information.

Also of note, was how different teachers broke down the steps of writing and research into manageable pieces that fit their students’ ability levels. Even though the principles of the Writing Project are still intact for me, I forgot many specific teaching techniques and many of the lessons teachers shared have been created since the Project’s inception. The seminar reminded me of my early teaching methods and added new ones to my repertoire.

I think, the most useful parts of the seminar were those lessons that could be used both in the classroom and to improve my own writing. On Writing Well by William Zinsser stressed the importance of cutting the needless words from your writing. He takes this principle from Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. In fact, when our group’s high school teachers got together, we agreed that if the Project adopted any book as required reading, Zinsser’s On Writing Well should be the one.

To illustrate the principle of cutting out the excess and clarifying the vague, Zinsser shows how he edited two pages of On Writing Well. By doing so, he became one of us, struggling to find the right words and showing us how to mercilessly slash our own verbosity. The book inspired me to go back over my second paper. I extracted fifty words in the first reading or about 5.5% of the text. I’m sure I could remove more words with further analysis, but I was amazed with the results of my first attempt. His attention to detail resulted in me freezing up while writing the first drafts of papers 3 and 4, but I’m sure that in the future I will be able to separate my original writing process from my rewriting, and Zinsser’s principle will help to improve everything I write.

I will also take away with me a new preferred writing genre. For several years I worked on children’s books, but now I find that humorous personal stories are what come easiest to me. Nothing is stranger than real life if you look at it through warped lenses, and I seem to be blessed with such lenses. Now I know what I should be writing and, thanks to Zinsser, hopefully I’ll write it better.

Also for me, the discipline of due dates and critique groups proved to be important. I am lazy when it comes to writing. The seminar brought home the truth of, "Stop making excuses and just write the crap." Hopefully, after going through critique groups and rewriting, my words won’t be crap. The first step will always be putting thoughts on paper, and that is simply a matter of personal discipline partially activated by group induced accountability. Upon my return to Grant’s Pass, I plan to form a writer’s group by contacting local writers whose names I collected through my recent contacts with the Association of Children’s Writers and Illustrators and The Christian Writer’s Conference.