The Write Way to Do Things

     I don't know if I'd consider myself to be a writer. At the risk of boasting, I'd say I'm a good writer, but I'm not a writer, if that makes any sense at all. A writer, to me, is someone who enjoys writing and spends a good amount of time (maybe an hour or two a day, at least) doing it, whether it be stories, essays, articles, etc., whereas a good writer doesn't necessarily have to spend a lot of time writing; he or she simply produces medium- to high-quality work when he or she writes. To clarify, I enjoy writing sometimes, depending on what I'm writing. I don't like writing essays at all, but it's one of my strong points. I really enjoy writing fiction and personal narratives, but I spend hardly any time doing that outside of homework assignments.

     I would definitely say I prefer writing to drawing, however. When I was younger, teachers would ask us (the students) to draw pictures of random things (e.g., my family or siblings). I was always the one to raise my hand and ask if I could write about it instead. I'm not an artist, nor am I a good artist. The picture below illustrates my point. :)

Writing v. Drawing? Writing wins every time.

     When I was in fourth grade, my teacher was constantly assigning writing projects. I wrote personal narratives, poems, fiction stories, etc.; you name it, I wrote it. Looking back on it, I'm glad I have the stories, but, at the time, I got tired of it. I'm glad she had me write so much, though, because it made my writing stronger. Besides homework, though, I didn't do much writing. I wrote in a journal every once in a while and wrote letters to people occasionally, but that's about it. It's basically the same now. I write in my journal, less than every once in a while, and I write e-mails instead of letters. Facebook posts are a rarity. Any other writing I do is usually homework-related.

     As I said, I've never particularly enjoyed writing essays, research papers, or literary analyses, for that matter. They're simply no fun. I always procrastinated them, finding 700 other things to do before forcing myself to sit down and write (maybe that's why I didn't like them, because I always waited until the last minute). However, I would be lying if I said I'll never assign them to my students. One of the biggest parts of writing those kinds of papers is making a point or argument and then defending it with proof or evidence. Being able to do that effectively will help my students for the rest of their lives, so I'll have to teach them how to do it one way or another. I'll intersperse those assignments with other writing assignments that they'll hopefully enjoy (I guess some may enjoy essays and research papers, but I think that will be the exception more than the norm), like creative fiction stories, personal narratives, free verse poems, etc.; those assignments allow students to be more original in what they write, and they're not tied to a certain text or material. I think I just like freedom in writing, and I prefer not to write about someone else's writing.

     I'm kind of excited about the huge expansion of technology that's happening, and I'm hoping to learn more about all of it so that I can allow my students to express themselves in different ways (like this blog!!).

I read good!

     For most of my life, I've considered myself to be a pretty decent reader. I'm not the world's fastest reader, but I feel good about my comprehension skills. I've enjoyed reading since I was six or seven, starting with books like Bruce Coville's My Teacher Is an Alien, the Boxcar Children series, Goosebumps, and Animorphs. Those occupied a lot of my time until fourth or fifth grade, when I made it through nearly the entire Hardy Boys series. I've always really enjoyed fiction; nonfiction, even to this day, doesn't appeal to me much, with the exception of news articles on ESPN.com. Reading was a huge enjoyment for me until high school, when it became homework instead of a hobby. Don't get me wrong; I still enjoyed reading, and I read a lot of good novels and plays in high school, but it was something I had to do, not something I wanted to do. I can probably count on less than one hand the number of books I read for pleasure (okay, there's one exception; I read the entire Harry Potter series--the books that were already published--at least four or five times) during high school. If I would have been more awake and coherent during those four years (I was a chronic late-night homeworker and averaged less than four hours of sleep a night), I probably would have read more. But I wasn't. And, despite the fact that I consider myself to be a good reader, I don't read very well through closed eyelids.
     It wasn't actually until last summer that I really started reading for pleasure again. Because I've taken so many English classes in college, I was simply burned out when it came to literature. I couldn't take it any more. Thankfully, getting into some Education classes (as opposed to English classes) took my mind off of reading as homework, and I made it through some good books during the summer. My summer reading list for this year is already three miles long, including anything from The Lord of the Rings and Gulliver's Travels to the Percy Jackson series and Fablehaven (still not much nonfiction). Every time I hear about a good book, I write it down. I'm sure I'll read plenty of ESPN articles during the summer, too.
     I honestly don't know where my love of reading came from, but my parents have never been against it. If I wanted books growing up, they were always good about making sure I had something to read. My siblings read a lot, too, so maybe my parents drilled the idea of reading into us when we were one or two and we just don't remember it; it just stuck in our subconscious somewhere. It was also an alternative to video games, but we had plenty of those, too. Most of my friends didn't read, but I didn't care. I loved lying down on my bed and finishing an entire Hardy Boys mystery in a day, or staying up all night to finish the newest installment of Harry Potter. My friends could wait. Nowadays, I'm a lot busier spending time with my wife, going to school and work, and taking care of everything else that needs to get done, so I can't decide to spend a whole day or night reading. I still fit the time in, though.
     So, how does this novel apply to future students? I hope to instill into my students the idea that reading isn't just a smart thing to do, but it can be a lot of fun at the same time. Many students don't read because they have trouble understanding or comprehending, and I hope to help them overcome that by assigning books that are somewhat simple, engaging, and entertaining at the same time. If I can get them hooked on lower-level, higher-quality literature, then they'll be more willing to move up to the higher-level stuff. I might have to alternate some entertaining books with some tougher books to keep them going. I also don't want to assign them more material to read than I need to, because I don't want them to get burned out like I felt at times. Because I've always seen myself as a good reader, I'm a little worried about how I'll help my struggling students (because I haven't been in their shoes), but I'm sure I'll figure out ways as certain situations arise. My goal is to help them realize that, if they put a little effort into it, they can become great readers and comprehend things themselves.