The author of this book, Cynthia D. Urbanski, called on her experience as a track and field coach. She said that she worked right along her students, sweating in the heat, conquering the steep hills, tiring her legs out. She claimed that her presence through their running experience helped her to connect and relate to the students' struggles and victories better. She wrote: "When I was coaching, I felt a connection with what I was doing. In my classroom, there was an invisible wall" (25). At the time, she felt that she was keeping her students doing busy work, and was not connecting to them in the same way she was through coaching.
Then she realized that the role of teacher and coach could be the same thing.
She stresses throughout this book the importance of the teacher modeling behaviors, and being a member in the classroom. Not just a dictator over the classroom, but a member who is contributing and expecting students to contribute in the same way. Modeling the writing process and reading process can, in turn, build a community within the classroom.
This is useful in so many ways. Not only do students get to see examples of active, lifelong learning, but they begin to gain a trust as they watch their "teachers engage in the real act of writing or reading" (26). They see the skills as an ongoing process, and they get to see goals being accomplished while ALSO learning reading/ writing skills.
She said that her goal was always to show students the difference between good and bad writing. "The difference between good and bad writing--and for that matter, good and bad reading--is the level at which the person opens up herself, her thoughts, and her feelings for others to see." (27). When we are asking students to write, we are asking them to show us part of who they are. They have their own style and ideas to reflect. We should be coaching those individual strengths and ideas, and supporting them to show them the skills of good writing in terms of their individual writing.
This writer is soooo good. I feel like I've already written down so many quotes from my experience.
I'm so glad that you have found this text valuable. That notion of writing along with your students is so important. I ended up doing all of the writing assignments I assigned along with my students, and we work-shopped mine as a class. This modeled the writing process in a way that nothing else I tried did. There is definitely something to be said about participating right along with your students!
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