No More "Don't Worry About It"!

"Don't Worry About It"

I don't know about you, but I can certainly remember free-writing in middle and high school, with teachers telling us, "Don't worry about the grammar and mechanics for these...Just write!" — But Jeff Anderson in Mechanically Inclined brings up a great point about this. While we shouldn't necessarily worry about the grammar and mechanics, it should certainly matter. Those conventions aren't just so arbitrary that we throw them out whenever we please. Instead, Anderson tells us to:

"EXPERIMENT with spelling, punctuation, and grammar" (32)

This is great because it allows our students to actually free-write. It's truly free! What we're really telling students here, when we tell them to experiment with conventions, is to use the skills we've been learning and try to use them in your own writing. Certainly, our students shouldn't worry about these conventions being perfect, but they should be mindful of them! There's a huge difference between worrying about it and just being mindful.

Free-Writing Rules

While it might seem a little oxymoronic to talk about rules for free-writing, I'm a big fan of the rules that Anderson lays out in Mechanically Inclined (32), which includes the experimentation which I talked about above. Here's his full list:

1. Write. Just write. Keep your hand moving. 
2. Experiment with spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
3. Go wherever your writing takes you. (If another story comes to mind, maybe that's what you should be writing about. Go for it.)
4. Be specific. (As you teach strategies like naming concrete nouns ... , encourage those things in first-draft freewriting by praising them when read aloud.)
5. As Natalie Goldberg says, "You are free to write the worst junk in America (1990, p. 4). (Students need to know that everyone has doubts about their writing...)

Trust the Gush

As I read the above list, especially #1, I was reminded of Tom Romano's Crafting Authentic Voice, which I read earlier this semester. He kept saying, "TRUST THE GUSH"!  This is especially important and relevant when talking about free-writing because it's not truly free-writing if you're not trusting the gush. However, we have to make sure we have our students keep those conventions in mind when they're gushing. Like I said, be mindful, but as Anderson says, experiment! :-)

"Reading like a Writer"

"...Students will begin to read like writers"

First of all, I hope you love that as much as I do. So often, we talk about ourselves as learnin to write by first reading, and then writing as readers; however, Jeff Anderson's Mechanically Inclined turns that on its head. He says, "We can't expect our students to be flexible enough to apply these conventions if we don't cycle them in front of our students in various ways. By discussing the dash and figuring out what it does in authentic, well-crafted texts, students will begin to read like writers" (23). Once you understand the function of certain conventions, you can pick them out in reading and understand how it contributes to both style and meaning, which leads us to...

Making Meaning

I'm totally guilty of considering meaning of a text separately from its style, craft, and mechanics, but Anderson says this isn't necessary (or even right). Certain grammatical structures help a writer convey important details, and those details can make the difference between meaning one thing and meaning another. So it's naturally important for us to consider them in the same breath. The way a writer describes something (by using subordinate clauses, for example) is almost always deliberate, so it's important to consider why the writer did that. However, we can't consider why without understanding first how it works. This is why we've got to focus on the functions before we can really read like writers.

"What sticks with you?"

One final thing that stuck with me in Chapter 2 of Anderson's Mechanically Inclined was this question. "What sticks with you?" Anderson says, "It simplicity is its genius" (18), and really, it is. Asking students this about a long text wouldn't be so helpful, as they get bogged down with messages and themes. On the other hand, asking this about a short text (even just a single sentence) can indicate the qualities of the individual conventions that really catch the students' eyes.

Teaching Grammar Deliberately

This week, my classmates and I discussed the importance we place on grammar and mechanics. Much of the class said it's "somewhat important". But I lean towards the pretty-darn-important side of Mechanically Inclined is pretty interesting to me. Call me a grammar geek, but I find all the little intricacies of grammar and mechanics to be actually kind of intriguing. (Although after taking a little grammar and mechanics survey in class, I'm kind of ashamed to say how little I apparently know, oops!)
the spectrum, honestly, which is why Jeff Anderson's book,

One conclusion I've taken away even from the first chapter of Mechanically Inclined, though, has been that teaching grammar and mechanics has to be a balance between teaching a grammar lesson singularly...and teaching grammar as a side-bar to whatever else we're teaching. Basically, it's possible to teach grammar and mechanics both in context and workshop-style. Anderson gives a list of ways to do this. I've simplified it a little bit:

1. Using the shortest mentor text possible
2. Teaching one thing at a time and applying it to our daily writing
3. Adding quick daily doses of grammar and mechanics experiences with short mentor texts and editing
4. Providing rich experiences in the writer's notebook to play with mentor sentences

I really love the idea of mini workshops in the classroom, and I think this is what Anderson sort of achieves, especially by doing quick daily doses of grammar and mechanics. For me, that teaches students that grammar and mechanics are important on a daily basis, not just on the occasion that we might be talking about it. Because we can just talk about it and think about it almost every day.

Why Teachers Need This

One thing that really caught my eye in the beginning of Anderson's Mechanically Inclined was why he thought he had to write this book. He cites that our generation of teachers doesn't feel confident about teaching grammar and mechanics, and he's SO right. Sometimes, I feel insecure about my abilities to teach grammar and mechanics because sometimes I feel like I should know more. I often think, Oh my goodness -- I need to take a class on this stuff...
But Anderson makes me feel a little better about this. He says that grammar and mechanics is a "creational facility rather than a correctional one". And one thing I've come to learn about myself is that I am a great writer, and in turn, a great creator, so I know I can help my students do this and see it this way.