Content-Area Literacy Teaching Writing

Modernizing the Old School Essay

By Rachel Bear, Mitchell Nobis, Carrie Nobis, Dawn Reed, Dirk Schulze

 

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Duration: 23:44

In This Clip: The authors of Real Writing join the NWP’s Rachel Bear to talk about where the book came from and what they think the essay could be. Drawing on examples from their lives as students and teachers, they discuss how to bring purpose to school writing and help students understand themselves as active participants in their world, in and out of school. Other topics include why the book concerns the old school essay, not the old-school essay; the importance of assessing for thinking, not assessing for structure; and the value of exposing students to the diverse and powerful ways that contemporary essayists like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Malcom Gladwell, and Elizabeth Kolbert use argument, narrative, and language.

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