To Write or Not to Write...
Learning through action?
A wise and very intelligent man (who I deeply respect) told me that I need to write a book about my work in the disability teaching space. Although, completely shocked and incredibly grateful, my initial internal reaction was ‘I can’t’. He then proceeded to ask me why? Through vulnerability and verbalising my excuses, I realised that I have been telling myself for a very long time that ‘I don’t know how to write’. He then graciously told me to ‘Just fucking write’ so this, my friend, could be the most the perfect opening to me ‘writing’.
Isn’t it ironic?
I have a deep-seated belief that I cannot write well, despite being a pretty solid ‘HD’ B.Ed and M.Ed student, which by anyone’s measure would mean that I can write. Yes, I can ‘smash out’ a 3000 word essay in a weekend and not think twice about it, but it is easier to write a university assignment where only one person sees it, then writing for an unknown audience with many eyes on my grammar, language use and prose. These are the hidden layers of writing that teacher’s want their students to use, but do not explicitly teach. It is also amusing that I have to write a 40 000 word thesis which will be scrutinised by many: let’s just say I didn’t think that part through when I signed up for research.
‘cause you said the brains I had went to my head…
Despite not talking till well after I was 3 years old, I did very well in my primary and my early secondary years of school. I had good grades across the curriculum, despite my unhealthy levels of procrastination. I was in school performances, joined the school band, received awards, had excellent attendance and wanted to do well. My parents and my teachers thought I was doing well but I was slowly crumbling internally. I was chronically bullied throughout my primary and early secondary years of schooling for being ‘a nerd’, for knowing too much and I was ‘that’ annoying kid in the classroom who put their hand up to answer every question. I was a voracious reader, I devoured novels, and read the Children’s Britannica Encyclopaedia for fun because I was the happiest with my nose buried in a book: I had extensive background knowledge. By all accounts I should have learned to write well, I should have naturally got it… but…
Being relentlessly bullied has a two fold effect on children; it shuts down the innate urge to learn and it also encourages children to not draw attention to themselves. Children who are bullied stop answering questions and stop asking for help. This means that when I didn’t understand something I didn’t ask for help, and nor did I answer questions to check that my own understanding was right. I also didn’t ask for clarification on written feedback, because any attempt at doing better just furthered the bullying. This carried through into high school and this meant that when we moved into the curriculum areas where writing became more important I withdrew from those subjects (humanities, English) and immersed myself in the sciences and maths. I told myself that I am not good at writing and that’s it.
Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?
At this stage in my life nobody knew that I was autistic and that I processed language differently than the other students in my class.* In short, my voracious reading was not going to make up for the difficulties I had with the formulaic nature of writing. What I really needed in school was explicit instruction in writing, from the sentence level up.
I needed to be taught how words fit together, to understand the ‘weeds’ of writing, such as using punctuation, clauses, conjunctions, and signal words to emphasise your message.
I needed everyone in the class to be on the same journey (solid tier 1 instructional practices).
I needed support that was scaffolded and targeted across different curriculum areas so as not to assume that ‘smart kids’ understand everything.
I needed teachers to use check for understanding well so that difference was not targeted.
I believe that all of these classroom practices can also stop bullying amongst students, as it evens the playing field and values everyone’s needs and abilities.
Last week, I needed to refer to William Van Cleave’s ‘Writing Matters’ book for school and I almost wept from frustration: I wish that ‘little Charlotte’ had this knowledge. I want all students to have this knowledge.
We run until she’s out of breath…
Needless to say that I struggled in the upper levels of high school and into my first foray into university. I barely passed my environmental science degree and then through the good grace of some lecturers at university I fell into teaching and then special education where I started to find my feet. My life would have been so different if I did not have the few teachers, academics, and colleagues/mentors who saw (and still see) the potential in me: when parts of my life were/are crashing down. Ironically, writing has been my biggest hurdle to overcome, but it is also what has opened the doors to where I am now.
In short, I have a great appreciation and admiration for authors who are able to express themselves so beautifully, and I hope to be one soon.
I close my story with the wise words of the beautiful and most encouraging Pam Snow, who constantly tells me “you can’t get better at writing, if you don’t write”… so here I am.
Can't understand what I mean?… Well, you soon will
After four years of running an explicit writing program through our mentor text program in our school this is what I have learned:
Writing needs to be taught from the very first year of school, to all students.
Don’t wait, time is precious!
Use good quality children’s literature to unpack sentence structures: our students need an anchor for their learning.
If a student with a disability can grasp an object, then give them a writing implement e.g. pencil, whiteboard marker or crayon. Yes, it is that simple- we don’t need complicated fine motor programs to teach them to hold a pencil before they are taught to write.
Start teaching simple sentence structure from the moment they enter the classroom, expect that students can do this, even if you have to give them the words they can’t spell. But don’t limit them to predictable sentences, which is often seen in programs for students with complex communication needs.
Assume competence whilst scaffolding- don’t assume that a lack of output means that they are not learning. Some of our students need years of input before they can show their learning (output). If you have sound instructional practices in place then trust the process, it takes time but it is worth it.
Teach handwriting to automaticity: it frees up the working memory to allow for the complexity of constructing sentences.
For feedback focus on sentence structure or spelling or handwriting- not all three at once. Too much feedback at once creates reluctant writers.
Teach linking verbs systematically and explicitly, yes they appear in speech but are transient and are often left out of independent writing.
Oral language supports writing, but writing can develop without strong oral language output. We have a few students who write better than they can orally communicate, often many levels apart, and use writing to communicate on mini-whiteboards.
Teach spelling through a systematic synthetic phonics program- we focus on spelling, not reading to free up working memory.
Master Tier 1 instructional practices, these are the glue to every lesson.
There is no one ‘magic bullet’ or program to use- we use a variety of frameworks/programs in our teaching: writing is the most complex component of becoming literate. However these are the resources and books that I recommend:
Colourful Semantics
The Writing Revolution
Writing Matters
Story Champs
The Reading Comprehension Blueprint
Just to be real about my struggle with writing: This approx. 7 minute read took me over 3 hours to write…
*There are numerous recent studies that show that there are fundamental language processing issues for autistic people. One theory is that we are gestalt language processors so do not ‘hear’ the intricacies of language, but look for meaning through the whole and learn language through whole ‘scripts’. Another theory is that we are not attuned to human speech, so do not learn language innately. I know I struggle with language and deciphering meaning from spoken language and often use the wrong idiom or metaphor verbally. However, I always understand meaning better through reading things myself.