Struggling Writers: Authenticity

     Teachers writing alongside their students helps to make the writing feel authentic. As there is more to the writing then merely a grade. Creating a writers community is vital to helping create a feeling of authenticity. This image put together by Rebeca (which Rusul Alrubail uses in this blog post) gives some basic, yet helpful key ideas to remember when discussing and trying to bring authenticity into the classroom and to the into writing.

            

     Allowing students to choose their own topics can be challenging, it requires that we, as the teacher, give up some control, but in doing so we are putting faith in our students as real writers, and often given the choice to engage in something they want, they put much more effort into the task. Brian Sztabnik discusses this very idea, explaining that authentic writing only comes when students are truly engaged and write in a voice that is totally their own. Sztabnik also gives a variety of authentic writing assignments that were submitted by teachers around the country. Patrica Slagle makes it clear that role-playing is not an authentic topic, “A role-playing prompt may have valuable writing-to-learn potential, allowing a teacher to see how well a student understands a concept, but it allows little room for developing personal voice.” It is vital that we help encourage students’ own voices, doing so helps create the confidence in their belief that they are a writer.

            As a student takes on a topic that interests them, a natural audience tends to emerge. When a student focuses on writing to a real audience beyond the classroom, they are much more aware of their own voice as a writer. They are writing with a purpose and that requires them to focus more on how effective their writing actually is. This then encourages the desire that student writers have to share their writing and receive guidance from their peers. It is important to acknowledge that writing with an authentic purpose and to an authentic audience every day, or for every assignment may not be possible. Slagle makes this point clear, “I do not intend to make authentic classroom writing easy or even always possible…it is not possible to write to a real audience everyday…but authenticity stays in the forefront…because it remains an important goal.” It is important to take Slagle’s advice into our own classrooms. Authenticity is challenging, but it is extremely important and should always be on our minds as we create writing assignments. Writing with an authentic purpose to an authentic audience encourages authentic writing, and can encourage struggling writers to write because they have a real purpose behind their writing.