Authenticity

Recently I met with a team of educators responsible for implementing a grant for improving middle and high school teachers' practice in the teaching of academic writing. We will accomplish that by a) increasing the amount of time spent on writing and the number of extended writing assignments, b) increasing the use of research-based instructional strategies, c) increasing the use of writing to learn strategies, and d) improving the quality of writing assignments. I've decided to distill that into "more writing, based on research, for authentic audience and authentic purpose." I agree with Regie Routman who writes, "Writing for a real audience (not just the teacher) is one of the best ways to get quality writing" (145). I, too, was convinced when I saw "the quality of students' work and what was possible when students wrote for meaningful purposes and real audiences" (145).

The DARE essay is a rite of passage for fifth graders across the country. It can easily fall into a rehashing of statistics from the DARE book. A colleague says the DARE essays of her students were lifeless while the purposeful writing they did was alive. "When students are focused on constructing paragraphs and sentences to comply with a program or format, they may learn to write to a standard, but we often lose the voice of the writer in the process" (146).

Luckily, I had a DARE officer who encouraged me when I asked to break free of the prescribed formula found in the exercise book. The persuasion of the DARE piece can be embedded in many different genres. I encouraged poetry, memoirs (some of them heart-breaking), letters begging a loved one to quit addictive behavior, and skits with fairy tale characters adversely affected by alcohol and drugs (the Big Bad Wolf couldn't blow a house down because he smoked and the Gingerbread Man couldn't run fast enough to get away.) The high school drama department performed some of the best pieces for DARE graduation which meant that more students were recognized than just the overall classroom winners.

Our annual letters from Santa project was another project giving student writers authentic audience and purpose. The first grade teachers sent their students' letters to Santa to us, and then we wrote responses to them. Our letters were rich with humor and carefully selected words. The high school got involved as well because they typed all the letters with matching font so our handwriting wouldn't let children wonder if there was more than one Santa.

Our service projects also were authentic writing projects. My students decided having an extra supervisory adult on board school buses would decrease bullying and wrote to the governor with their recommendation. They successfully lobbied the principal to allow students to carry water bottles to class.

Can I craft online writing projects with as much authenticity and purpose? I have written an online assignment with personal value to me--exploring where my beliefs come from and developing that into a podcast--but much of  the authentic work in the face to face classroom was charged with a spirit of collaboration. How do I bring that to an online writing course?

I will have to think carefully about how to use shared documents, forums, and assignments to expand the place writing has as a purposeful activity, with the power to "be the change." How have you brought purpose and authenticity to an online writing course?

Routman, Regie. Writing Essentials. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005. Print.



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