Not long ago I sat in on a workshop presented by a member of the Faculty of Education at a major university. His topic was on the newest trend—“edutainment” in the classroom, requiring teachers to design and implement lessons that are engaging in a more entertaining way in order for educational objectives to be met. The rationale behind this is somewhat valid: that students—especially compared to previous generations—are less disciplined, less motivated by desire for academic achievement, more addicted to audio-visual amusements, and consequently have shorter attention spans than at any other time in history. Whether this is a good or bad thing he did not say, but he stressed the point that teachers today have to adapt to a different type of student than existed in the past, even thirty years ago.
While there may be some truth to these claims, I see two dangers in this type of thinking. The first is that it can place a great burden on the classroom teacher, who may infer that unless all students are having fun all the time, she is somehow failing. Certainly I see the value of festive and lively classes—and I very much understand the power of humor in a classroom, but it can be very disordering to the relationship between a teacher and student when the student is always expecting to be amused, and the teacher feels compelled to always meet that expectation. The second danger I perceive is that the teacher may come to underestimate the ability of students to engage and concentrate. Yes, the modern world of sound bites, three-second scene changes, texting, and high intensity sensory stimulation have taken their toll on students’ aptitude for concentration, but they do still have a basic human capacity for learning and engagement. Our task is to nurture and maximize it.
For many years, we at IEW have studied the question of what motivates students. One of the most satisfying things we can hear is when a teacher reports that a particular student—for the first time—experienced success with a writing assignment, or when a teacher tells us that writing has become students’ favorite part of the school day. How does this happen? The teacher has discovered one of the Laws of Motivation: Students like to do what they can do well. Most of us like to do what we’re good at, don’t we? If we’re good at cooking, we like to cook. If we’re good at basketball, we like to play basketball. And the opposite is true as well: We tend to not like doing those things we are not good at. So the trick of motivating students to write—and do their best—is to get them to a place where they believe they can do it decently well. And this is never impossible.
When we ask a student who doesn’t like writing what he or she doesn’t like about it, the answer we hear most often is “I don’t know what to write!” or “I can’t think of anything.” Not surprising, since that blank-paper-blank-brain condition is painful for all of us regardless of age. But it’s particularly torturous for students who so easily experience being overwhelmed. Sometimes the overwhelm is because there’s just too much information to sort through, and at other times it’s because a student’s thoughts are moving so fast he doesn’t know how to slow them down in order to hear what he is thinking (and hearing what one is thinking is prerequisite to being able to write one’s thoughts). Fortunately, we have the solution to both of these challenges, which is to return to a tried and true method of developing any skill: imitation. All too often, we can suffer from the modern idea that teaching writing is more about self-expression and personal creativity than about the communication of ideas. This has led to some very ineffective methods of teaching composition in schools, the consequences of which often become obvious in the college and professional worlds. However, the fundamental way in which any skill must be learned is through imitation.
Imagine a piano teacher who instructs a student thus: “Just sit down at the piano and play whatever comes into your mind, just try to express yourself through music, and practice that way for a half-hour each day.” Were we to use this method, what level of musicianship would we achieve? Instead, music teachers know that to learn to play well, students must develop technical ability by playing pieces of increasing challenge while imitating the teacher in motion and sound. Then, through imitation, tools for creativity are acquired. The student who has memorized dozens of pieces and mastered many technical problems of playing will be the one who has the greater aptitude for the creative music activities of composition, interpretation, and improvisation.
IEW’s Structure and Style syllabus is based on this same principle: building the path from imitation to innovation. We’ve seen it work time and time again, with even the most reluctant, struggling writers. And once students taste the satisfaction of improving their ability, they want—or are at least less reluctant—to do it again. Their attention becomes more focused. The graded “repertoire” of structural models and stylistic techniques allows students to easily see their progress as compositions and checklists grow in length and complexity while the papers in their portfolio portray this progress. As they reach clearly marked milestones on the path of developing the skill of writing, the hard work gradually becomes enjoyable. The students are engaged, and they need not be entertained.
