Mitchell Nobis - Real Writing: Modernizing the Old School Essay

Endorsements

In Real Writing , five teachers invite you into a conversation about writing essays: how complex and unique and beautifully crafted they can be. These wise teachers show that joy and rigor are dependent on curiosityin students and in teachersas their own critical thinking about teaching is made visible. You will find much to think about here. Enjoy this important journey.

Penny Kittle, English teacher and author of Write Beside Them

Real Writing: Modernizing the Old School Essay makes the bold arguments that our students will become more engaged in the art of composing and that they will develop identities as powerful essayists when they are encouraged to produce real texts for authentic audiences and purposes. As English teachers we need to heed their call; todays youth have so many valuable contributions to make to the larger world of ideas and it is our professional and moral responsibility to cultivate and affirm their unique and beautiful voices. Toward this noble end, the authors have presented us with an honest and thoughtful guide to revolutionizing the teaching of writing in the age of digital participatory culture. Essays, they remind us, are key artifacts in the manifestation of civic society and the act of writing them an essential civil literacy. I am inspired by their words to become a better teacher and a more audacious and prolific composer myself.

Ernest Morrell, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Pity the essay. Few forms carry the stigma of school writing like that thing we call the essay, particularly in its 5-paragraph form. Yet in the wild, the essayist tradition of exploration and argument amuses and delights, finding its place in magazines, short films, civic arguments, and cultural criticism of all types. It is the very medium of thought. The authors of Real Writing: Modernizing the Old School Essay urge us to liberate the essay from the constraints we as teachers artificially place on it so that it take up the passion and complexity that makes it worth reading and, for students, makes it worth writing. Thats what they have done, and in this practical and readable book they show us how we can do it as well.

Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, executive director, National Writing Project

Real Writing: Modernizing the Old School Essay is an accessible and eye-opening book. It reminds educators why the essay is so much more than a boring formality today. Instead, through practical examples and hands on activities, Real Writing reveals how to make composition vital and necessary in our classrooms. Challenging what writing looks like, who its for, and how to make it more impactful than any formulaic five-paragraph example could ever hope, Real Writing is a call-to-arms for instructors everywhere; it guides us to take a solid look at what just might be the secret weapon for student engagement in our classrooms today.

Antero Garcia, assistant professor of English, Colorado State University

Real Writing

Modernizing the Old School Essay

Mitchell Nobis, Daniel Laird, Carrie Nobis, Dawn Reed, and Dirk Schulze

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

Copyright 2016 by Mitchell Nobis, Daniel Laird, Carrie Nobis, Dawn Reed, and Dirk Schulze

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 9781475824780 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 9781475824797 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 9781475824803 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To Carrie

for supporting me in every way and for challenging me to be

a better teacher, father, husband, and human.

M.N.

To Mitch

for being my ideal personal and professional teammate.

C.N.

To Kelsey

for reminding me what is important

and supporting me anyway with whatever I do when I forget

D.L.

To Michael

who reminds me to keep it real

and for all those that work for social justice and encourage civic engagement.

D.R.

To my parents,

because the best teaching begins with love, with joy, and with patience, and they have, every year, modeled this for me.

D.S.

Contents

As I read Real Writing: Modernizing the Old School Essay , I kept thinking to myself: FINALLY!

Finally, a sensible and wise book that takes on what we could call the salience of the traditional when it comes to well-meaning but unhelpful and even misconceived writing instruction.

Finally, a book that is grounded in the authority of actual classroom practice that demonstrates the options for promoting real world writingwith all its joys and struggles, challenges and satisfactions.

Finally, a book that promotes moving away from the schoolish and toward what cognitive scientists call the correspondence concept, the notion that we need to teach students to do what real experts do in the real world, and that instruction must move students toward expertise and down the correspondence continuum by having them practice doing what real experts, readers, and writers do.

Finally, a book that explores the importance of teaching rhetorical stance and situation and explores how context informs how a piece must be crafted.

Finally, a book that explores the difference between argument and persuasion.

As I read this book, my FINALLYs were punctuated by several BRAVOs!

Bravo for promoting arguments and essays that require hard thinking about issues that matter, and that tell the story of that thinking.

Bravo for bravely and compassionately taking on the five paragraph essay and all forms of formulaic writing in favor of teaching the kinds of composing that are extremely challenging, but also exciting to do, that are filled with voice and energy and even joy.

Bravo for demonstrating how to create classroom contexts and activities that will assist students over time to be inducted into the strategic repertoire of expert composers.

Bravo for exploring how to create inquiry contexts for writing, and for modeling how to create inquiry-oriented instructional assistance. Bravo especially for the intelligent consideration of invention: how to help students generate topics and material worth writing about.

Finally, a book that offers challenges and solutions not only to what and how we teach when it comes to writing, especially argument, but also to what counts, and why this counts, and how to assess what we say we value.

This book is immensely practical, but its about big ideas too. Its about personal and communal responsibility. Its about how evidentiary reasoning needs to be the basis of personal as well as democratic decision making.

Another big idea: argument is about creating knowledge and furthering understanding versus winning. Argument is entering into a conversation, and is about working hard to see all perspectives and take them seriously.

This book achieves all this without simplifying the profound expertise that is required to be a successful teacher of composition and a composer of arguments and essays. I found myself thinking several times of the Tom Hanks character in A League of Their Own telling the Geena Davis character: Its the hard that makes it good!