But+How+Do+You+Teach+Writing?

Lane, Barry. //But How Do You Teach Writing?: A Simple Guide for All Teachers.”// Scholastic, Inc. 2008.

I was pleasantly surprised that I read this book the same way I would read a juicy novel: interested, engaged, and asking questions about what would happen next. In //But How Do You Teach Writing?,// Barry Lane provides a useful “how-to” for doing everything from creating writing workshops to teaching kids how to save the world. His ideas are practical, meaningful, and understanding of the pressures teachers face in the classroom. In every chapter he presents his thoughts on the topic, ideas for how to incorporate the topic into the classroom, and a “Yeah but…” section where he addresses the concerns about using his methods in their classroom.

This book will be by my side as I venture into my own classroom. Lane focuses on what every good teacher should remember: lessons must be meaningful and memorable. His lesson ideas are fun and effective. He provides stories along with the lesson topics so the reader can see either how this lesson works (or doesn’t work), and/or the origins of the lesson being proposed. He also provides helpful tools in the way of 21 worksheets in the back of the book to help keep a writer’s workshop organized. And while he provides many ideas to be used, all of the ideas can be revised to fit the teacher’s individual needs, or be combined with other ideas to make powerful lessons.

Barry Lane’s passion for writing is apparent as I read through this book. His main focus in writing this book was to teach teachers how to instill the love of writing into their students, but he is also very straight forward about what it takes to be a great teacher. In the introduction, he empowers the teacher-reader to be more than just another cog in the wheel: “Creativity, passion, and good humor will always be the motivating forces in learning, but these days it takes another quality to teach effectively: courage. Courage to teach in a way that you know is good for children no matter what you are being told from above; courage to create lessons that break the mold and teach your students to see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears; courage to see that you don’t always have to follow the state teaching standards. The standards can follow you (Lane, 7).” Lane also uses his past unfortunate writing experiences to guide much of his writing. He warns teachers against insensitive teaching habits: “In my thousands of workshops with students and teachers, I have learned that teacher comments can leave scars that don’t heal for years (Lane, 18).” I would recommend this book to any teacher, new or veteran, to take on the teaching writing world full force and with great enthusiasm.