Rick VanDeWeghe: Teachers Writing — Writers Teaching
The Denver Writing Project
In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard posed the question most often asked by a beginning writer, "Who will teach me to write?" Dillard answered, "The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming times' scrawl as a right and your daring necessity."
The blank page can be either an intimidating barrier or a gateway to discovery for students who are learning how to write. Writing well, as we know, is a difficult skill for students to master and for teachers to cultivate. Yet learning to write well is the one essential skill that students must bring to every subject they study and almost any career they pursue. Teachers know that the entire course of a student's academic life must be spent on learning to write. They also know that students who gain an early appreciation of writing's power discover that their personal as well as professional lives can be enriched by this dynamic form of expression. So, how do teachers from elementary school through college make that blank page come alive with possibilities for their students? Helping teachers become better writers themselves may be part of the answer.
"An increased appreciation of the critical importance of learning to write has led to an explosion in research on how to teach writing," said Rick VanDeWeghe, CU-Denver English department professor and director of the Denver Writing Project. "A fundamentally important question has been raised that we thought would be worth pursuing. If teachers were better writers, would they be better teachers of writing?"
Developing teachers as writers and therefore better teachers of writing has been a goal of the National Writing Project, located at the University of California at Berkeley and funded by the federal government, since the mid-1970s. Since that time, over 170 sites have been developed across the country, and now there is a new site for the project at CU-Denver, called the Denver Writing Project. Begun in 2000, the Denver Writing Project is funded by the National Writing Project with matching funds from CU-Denver's Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and the Dean's Office of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
"Teachers at all levels from elementary, middle, high school, and college may apply to the program," VanDeWeghe said. "They must demonstrate leadership abilities, an interest in the teaching of writing, and a willingness to grow as writers themselves. They attend a five-week intensive workshop where they teach each other their best practices for teaching writing while they work on their own personal and professional writing. Following the institute, these teachers may be selected as teacher consultants who form teams, visit schools, and teach other teachers best practices."
A Community of Writers
The year 2000 marked the first five-week intensive Summer Institute of the Denver Writing Project, attended by 14 elementary, middle school, and high school teachers from Front Range area schools. They spent their time together working on their own writing and teaching one another. At the end of each week, they shared their professional and personal writing over a potluck supper.
"The institute helped every teacher who participated rediscover the writer within," VanDeWeghe said. "A good supportive writing group like this one helps the shy writer with expression. The participants also learned more effective ways of teaching writing from each other. They went back to their schools more engaged, more energized. At the end of the institute I was thrilled to hear the teachers say that they couldn't wait to get back to school at the end of the summer and apply what they had learned. I can 't imagine a more positive outcome than that. What's maybe even more significant is that the institute created a supportive community that has extended beyond the summer. Participants have formed reading and writing groups in order to continue to interact with and learn from each other."
VanDeWeghe has been teaching writing and how to teach writing for over 20 years, and he learned a great deal from the teachers as well. "I had fun writing according to every practice they taught me," he said. "It gave me a strong sense of commitment to and belief in the importance of teachers teaching teachers. It made me realize how much we have to learn from teachers from different places and different grades—urban and suburban schools and elementary, middle school, high school, and college teachers. There's a continuum of learning we need to be aware of, as well as a rich variety of learning opportunities afforded by different environments and communities."
During the institute, an elementary school teacher shared ways of integrating reading and writing in the classroom. She showed the other teachers how she was able to enhance her students' notions that writing is a naturally integrated part of reading. Another teacher told the group how she published students' writings to give students the satisfaction of seeing their names in print.
Since this was the first year of the institute, VanDeWeghe encouraged these teachers and students of writing to write a position paper for the Denver Writing Project. "This is a teacher-directed and teacher-run project, after all," VanDeWeghe said. The institute participants defined the mission of the project as follows:
"The Denver Writing Project Institute 2000 seeks to promote and foster the importance and value of writing. We believe writing is thinking and communicating, and the path to discovery.
"As a community of writers and proponents of writing, we engage in professional dialogue regarding writing for our needs, purposes, and professional development, and, as such, we act as models for our students. Our intent is to foster continued interaction and influence with our colleagues, further our writing ability to extend our private and public objectives, and teach with increased confidence in providing students with tools as writers.
"As charter members of the DWP, we believe in an atmosphere for writers, including ourselves, that encourages an exploration of their own issues/purposes/interests. Further, we believe that teachers need to be writers themselves in order to be effective teachers of student writers; teachers need opportunities to learn from one another; exposure to a variety of literature promotes higher quality writing; the process of writing is vital to student and teacher growth; teachers need to seek opportunities to exert their voice, influence, and knowledge to aid student growth; and the process of writing is integral to learning in any subject.
"Based on these beliefs, our actions include the following: teachers continue their writing in their classrooms and in their own learning; teachers continue professional growth related to writing by collaborating with DWP members and colleagues within their educational settings; teachers immerse themselves and their students in diverse literary works; teachers encourage feedback on the writing process through collaboration with other writers."
Brain, Mind, and Spirit
VanDeWeghe's current research interests logically extend from how to teach writing to exploring the processes involved in engaged learning. He is attempting to integrate what we know about the brain when it is engaged in learning with what we know about the mind when it is engaged. What could this brain/mind intersection reveal about teaching and learning? His interest in mind reflects the spiritual side of learning. What can "mindfulness," as described in Buddhism, possibly teach us about the process of engagement? How may the states of flow—of mind and body—as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience enhance the learning process? Csikszentmihalyi observed that when people are involved and engaged they do not recognize that time has gone by. He asserts that people can be most joyous inside this kind of engaged experience.
"I want to put something together for teachers that will help us understand the engaged learner in the classroom," VanDeWeghe said. "What are the conditions in which the learner's brain is engaged? What are the conditions in which the mind is engaged? As teachers we try to engage the mind, brain, and spirit all at once whenever we can."
The Tensions of Teaching
VanDeWeghe has been a President's Teaching Scholar since 1989. He still feels humbled to be a member of a community of such extraordinary teachers and scholars and finds the interaction with this group to be a tremendous source of renewal in thinking about engaged learning.
"I think my experience with the President's Teaching Scholars, as well as my experience as a teacher, has underscored what I perceive to be the three tensions in teaching," VanDeWeghe said. "When I interact with the scholars I know that they experience these tension too; my fellow Teaching Scholars illuminate and legitimize these tensions for me.
"The first tension is the one between teaching and research. How we use our time is a constant challenge. I feel lucky that I've been able to integrate my teaching and research; nevertheless, it remains a real issue for many faculty.
"The second tension is the one between confidence and doubt. No matter how many years of teaching experience we have, it never goes away. When I look in the corner of my classroom and see a student who is disengaged, I wonder what I can do to change that. Another time I will think I have just given a great lecture, only to discover that the students didn't understand half of it. In a way, I don't ever want this tension between confidence and doubt resolved because it makes me always seek ways to be a better teacher.
"The third tension in teaching is the one between isolation and community. When we stand alone up in front of a class, I think we often feel a sense of isolation. There is no one else in the room doing exactly what we are doing. And yet, we belong to a large community of teachers that encompasses all ages and disciplines. We cannot say that what happens in the first grade really does not matter because, even as college-level teachers, we are all affected by what has been taught in first grade. In English, physics, law, and medicine, we face the same problems and enjoy the same victories. Building on this sense of camaraderie can validate everything we do and give us the energy to continually strive to do better. We need to be careful about trying to quantify the results of teaching because measures made by certain general standards may not account for some very positive results.
"I do not mean to imply that the three tensions in teaching, which I have just described, are negative. In Robert Frost's poem "West-Running Brook," he describes a situation where a man and a woman are arguing across a stream. The stream has a wave made by a sunken rock that makes a white wave fall back upon black water over and over. The couple argues about what it means that the stream, like existence, 'Stands still and dances, but it runs away.' This 'strange resistance in itself' is 'time, strength, tone, light, life and love—And even substance lapsing unsubstantial.'
"In this natural tension there is a resolution in the stream' so that 'the fall of most of it is always / Raising a little, sending up a little.' The waves in the stream between the man and woman also help them resolve the tension in their own argument. It is 'this backward motion toward the source' — this tension — that keeps life and change going. It is the tensions in teaching that keep me going and make me always strive to do better. Even after being a teacher for many years, I would never want to reach the point where I had nothing more to learn."
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