Teaching Writing
Positioning Writers as Decision Makers
A Chapter from When Teaching Writing Gets TOUGH
Summary:
This short chapter from When Teaching Writing Gets Tough: Challenges and Possibilities in Secondary Writing Instruction offers three suggestions for changing your writing instruction to support student writers as independent decision makers.
“Recognizing our students’ humanity and acknowledging and leveraging the interdependence in this ecosystem—among the students, between the students and the teacher, and among the students, teachers, and texts—are the keys to addressing the wicked problem of teaching writers and of positioning our students as decision makers. This positioning means addressing each writer and writing situation as unique, the heart of the wicked problem that teachers face when guiding students to navigate the ecosystem in the classroom and to raise their awareness of their own decision-making power.”
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