The Writing Workshop: Working Through the Hard Parts

Radical Teacher, Summer, 2004 by Wendy Weisenberg

THE WRITING WORKSHOP: WORKING THROUGH THE HARD PARTS (AND THEY'RE ALL HARD PARTS)

By Katie Wood Ray with Lester L. Laminack. National Council of Teachers of English, 2001.

Katie Wood Ray has written a comprehensive book about the teaching of writing that goes beyond the structure of the traditional writing lesson plan for elementary grades, especially four to six. While focused here, it seems that her workshop structure could fit into any educational level through twelfth grade.

The premise of the book is based on Ray's belief that the learning of writing takes place in the process of writing. What she has written between the lines is that the traditional teacher-chosen assignments, student-written responses, and teacher grading is a dead, overused, and limited way to teach writing. This pedantic style of teaching essentially leaves the student out of any profound learning experience. Her book challenges teachers to consider how much significant learning of the process of writing is done within this present restrictive and conventional mode of teaching.

Using her vast experience of teaching writing workshops, Ray describes an alternately complex but very structured way of teaching writing. Her idea is to fashion the workshop in a way that fosters the real-world experience of professional writers so that students can understand by doing what real writers do. For example, Ray says, "In writing workshops, teachers invite children to do all the things a writer really does: research, explore, collect, interview, talk, read, stare off into space, coauthor, and, yes, pre-write, draft, revise, edit, and publish." Lending credence to the rationale for this type of writing workshop, Ray adds supporting quotations throughout the book from published authors describing their own processes.

In reading The Writing Workshop, teachers can see how the workshop fosters thinking about what goes on behind the writing, which can be very challenging. No longer should a teacher assign a generic topic written by the student simply to elicit a good grade. In this book teachers discover how individual attention can be given to their students, helping them to learn how to think about what they write, take responsibility for what they write, and get excited about what they write. They can see how to engage with their students as professional writers. The writing experience then becomes much more alive, personal, and meaningful to students' lives. Ray argues that "one of the main goals teachers have is to help students find good reasons to write ... They see the writing process as a tool they can give their students to use when rocking the world, not just as something to learn to do." This stretches the limited borders of traditional teaching goals that often emphasize writing to a topic.

Although Ray has a self-proclaimed tendency to repeat herself, the book is teacher-friendly, offering concrete ideas, examples, and advice along with the tools and insights as to what makes this complex process work. The beginning of the book is a summary of later chapters where she details the individual parts of the workshop. This is an efficient overview and encourages readers to go further to find out how it will all take shape. Ensuing chapters describe the different kinds of writing students do and the rationale for this kind of work. Her rationale is clarified by contrasting the students' experience with the traditional composition writing class to their experience with the different levels of writing within the workshop. From the fourth chapter on, the book describes how the workshop should look and feel in contrast to the conventional classroom. All of the proposed work is oriented towards giving the student autonomy over their learning process. It is here that the value of the book lies.

One of the best sections of the book consoles teachers about the out-of-control feeling they may have working in this non-traditional way. Ray offers encouragement to teachers to let go of control over what and how students write: grading is not based on a final product but the process by which the students involve themselves in the workshop. The book is very clear and helpful at illustrating that teaching writing in this fashion is at once very structured, but also very extemporaneous because it relies heavily on the variable day-to-day needs of the class. Therefore, the beauty and the challenge of this kind of workshop depend on the teacher having articulate goals and visions for their students as writers, and creating an atmosphere that encourages this in its structured spontaneity.

Ray's book challenges the traditional role of teacher in the writing lesson. It encourages teachers to look at an alternative and exciting method to engage students in their own, individual progress in writing. It offers a deeper rationale for teaching writing than just having the student be able to put words on paper. Working through the hard parts helps students "to enrich their lives and not just to maintain their lives."