This chapter explores writing and writing instruction as essential components of an equitable education. The authors argue that teachers must see themselves as writers to effectively teach writing in their own classrooms. The authors describe their work with teachers in educator preparation courses and in a grant-funded project with teachers and published authors. In both situations, the authors frame their work around motivation theory and the belief that students should do the kinds of writing that real writers do, such as generating and developing ideas, rather than only writing in broad genres or in response to texts. The authors posit that students should believe their voices matter; it is through agency in writing that students will see themselves as writers. This chapter recommends that teacher education programs include writing instruction for its licensure candidates, and that classroom teachers create space for writing based on students' choice of topic and format.
TopVoice And Choice: Toward Equitable Writing Instruction
Nearly 40 years ago, Tim Gillespie (1985) argued that teachers must be writers so that we can teach student writers based on our own understanding of the process—so that we do not “give up our curriculum to experts,” but rather that we, the teachers, become the experts (p.3). Gillespie, co-director of the Oregon Writer’s Project at the time cited writing instruction giants Donald Graves and Frank Smith’s agreement. Decades later, the National Writing Project (NWP) continues to help teachers learn to see themselves as writers, and writing experts such as Ralph Fletcher, Penny Kittle, and Kelly Gallagher echo Gillespie’s call for teachers to identify as writers, to practice writing in the classroom and outside of it. Yet, the literature on writing and writing instruction shows that little writing is happening in schools, especially writing in which students choose the topic and format (Applebee & Langer, 2011). Standardized writing scores are stagnant (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2012), and many teachers do not identify as writers (Luce-Kapler et al., 2001; Gannon and Davies, 2007; Cremin and Oliver, 2016; Morgan, 2017), a component that decreases teachers’ self-efficacy as teachers of writers (Cremin and Oliver, 2016). The most predominant forms of writing that happen in classrooms are responding to text or writing in a particular, broad genre, such as expository, argumentative, or narrative. Little if any writing based on student choice of topic and format occurs. As professors who prepare teaching candidates for licensure and provide professional learning to K-12 teachers, we see these problems around writing and writing instruction in our daily work, and we believe these are problems of equity.
We believe that using mentor texts and working with professional writers is beneficial for teachers and their students. Exposure to good models of writing is a well-supported strategy for effective writing instruction (Graham & Perin, 2007; Graham, Bruch, Fitzgerald, Friedrich, Furgeson, Greene, & Smither Wulsin, 2016; Graham & Harris, 2017). Additionally, we posit that teachers need to write themselves, to take up the work of writing, whether or not it is ever published or publicly read. When teachers write themselves, they can understand fully, as Morgan (2017) describes, the emotions and the process of writing. If teachers see themselves as writers, they can teach what they know about writing to their students.
Teachers who develop a writerly identity can help their students to form their own identities as writers (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This foundational tenet offers an equitable framework for the teaching of writing because it offers agency to teachers and their students. We argue that the problem of equity lies within the lack of opportunity for teachers and their students to develop a specific aspect of writerly identity, the belief that they can create their own ideas and use their voices to say something that matters.