Blog #2 My Writing Instruction

Writing has been my solace and an outlet for as long as I can remember.   As a writer I have had very unique experiences as far as my instruction.  Throughout my career, it has been a mix of formulaic instruction (ugh, grammar books!) and creative.

Growing up in Vermont, we were lucky to have a lot of artists in residence who would work in our schools for short periods of time working on writing with us.  In school I met authors, poets and songwriters.  Through them and my teachers too, I learned a lot about the craft of writing.  In fourth grade, Vermont author David Budbill came to my school.  At the time I was in a tiny school that had only 30 students from grades 4-8.  He spent a month with us working on crafting fiction pieces.  We had read one of his books as a class so for me it was like meeting a legend.  After his stay, we bound our books of stories and to this day I still have mine. 

As I got older, my instruction became much more formulaic and prescribed.  In 8^th grade, I had a teacher who hated how I wrote.  For me it was probably the most miserable time of my life – mostly because every paper got turned back to me with a lot of corrections to be made.  It was the only time that my mom, a teacher, ever took my side in parent teacher conferences!   This teacher thought my writing was too flowery and did not appreciate or like my independent voice at all.  My mom said that she didn’t have to like it, it was my voice and it was how I wrote and she needed to learn how to respect our differences.  My teacher was not amused.  I entered the state poetry contest that year and of all of the students in the state who entered, I got an honorable mention, flowery writing and all!

In high school, my creative writing endeavors got relegated to notes and poetry.  I spent much more of my time learning formal writing processes.  When I was a freshman, I almost failed English!  It was a steep learning curve from elementary to high school as far as academic English was concerned.  Looking back now I realize I had the worst teacher I could have possibly had that year and most likely would have done much better had this teacher had any teaching experience and spent more time guiding us through the writing process instead of just expecting us to already know it.

University brought whole new challenges to my writing.  I attended school in Vancouver, British Columbia.  Although they speak English there, it is the Queen’s English and man oh man did I have to relearn how to spell.  To this day I spell travelling with two l’s and recognise with and s.  And don’t even get me started on ‘our’ words!  My biggest challenge at this time actually came when I began writing in Spanish.  When I started college, I had just come from a year of living in Mexico.  My oral Spanish was very strong after a year of speaking it daily.  However, I had yet to learn to write much more than a few words.  Spelling in Spanish is very easy though because the words are written just like they sound.  But, accents and syntax were totally lost on me.  I struggled to master these skills, again with a professor who thought I should know all of these things if I was going to be in such a high level Spanish class. 

Of course, my instruction was not your usual experience – but for the most part it was authentic and meaningful and filled with lessons that I take with me know as a writer.  Writing has always been easy for me so it is something that I have enjoyed (minus the grammar books!).  Because of my experiences learning to read and write in different languages, I can also understand how hard and frustrating writing can be.