I do think that it is vital to foster an environment where students are encouraged to be great readers and writers, but I know that it won't be possible to make every child love to read, or every child love to write. However, this doesn't mean I won't try my hardest as an educator to create voracious readers and writers out of my kids.
Reading was my first love, but writing soon followed as I began to write poems, short stories and fairy tales. Kids have this fantastic store of imagination and creativity to pull from, and with many kids the stories just seem to flow out of them--and I was one of those kids! I wrote stories in my free time for fun, I entered contests (I even won a Young Authors award!), and I wrote for the love of telling a tale. So where has that magic within me gone to? I think it's been replaced with stark resumes, scholarly essays and a collegiate attitude that creative writing doesn't serve much of a purpose--which I understand, it happens. It's the end of Peter Pan and the beginning of Captain Hook; it's the end of Harry Potter and the beginning of Muggledom. Reading and writing because "I want to," give way to reading and writing because "I have to."
Luckily, my joy in reading has never disappeared... but the joy of writing has. I find myself stifled and blocked when I try to think of creative things to write, and it can take me hours to come up with the perfect five page paper. I loved to write in my personal blog, but I find blogging because it's an assignment or an evaluated project (well, sort of like this journal) takes even the joy out of my personal blogging. I find that when I am writing about things that really strike me or things that I really care about the words just flow forth and *BOOM* I have a fourteen paragraph blog in 20 minutes! But set me down to write a blog about a reading...and I'm stuck.
So I guess in relating this to teaching, I wonder how, as educators, we can continue a love of writing in children. How do we keep writing from being a chore? And there can't be an easy answer-- there are somethings in life that can't be avoided, especially as you advance in education. Scientific papers, expository writing, forced creative writing-- you just can't avoid these things in academia. So is there even an answer to this question? Can we keep a student's love of reading and writing alive as they get older?
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Reading was my first love, but writing soon followed as I began to write poems, short stories and fairy tales. Kids have this fantastic store of imagination and creativity to pull from, and with many kids the stories just seem to flow out of them--and I was one of those kids! I wrote stories in my free time for fun, I entered contests (I even won a Young Authors award!), and I wrote for the love of telling a tale. So where has that magic within me gone to? I think it's been replaced with stark resumes, scholarly essays and a collegiate attitude that creative writing doesn't serve much of a purpose--which I understand, it happens. It's the end of Peter Pan and the beginning of Captain Hook; it's the end of Harry Potter and the beginning of Muggledom. Reading and writing because "I want to," give way to reading and writing because "I have to."
Luckily, my joy in reading has never disappeared... but the joy of writing has. I find myself stifled and blocked when I try to think of creative things to write, and it can take me hours to come up with the perfect five page paper. I loved to write in my personal blog, but I find blogging because it's an assignment or an evaluated project (well, sort of like this journal) takes even the joy out of my personal blogging. I find that when I am writing about things that really strike me or things that I really care about the words just flow forth and *BOOM* I have a fourteen paragraph blog in 20 minutes! But set me down to write a blog about a reading...and I'm stuck.
So I guess in relating this to teaching, I wonder how, as educators, we can continue a love of writing in children. How do we keep writing from being a chore? And there can't be an easy answer-- there are somethings in life that can't be avoided, especially as you advance in education. Scientific papers, expository writing, forced creative writing-- you just can't avoid these things in academia. So is there even an answer to this question? Can we keep a student's love of reading and writing alive as they get older?
