I have greatly enjoyed being able to read student’s work. Being a writing coach via the internet has been my first time reading and commenting on high school students’ work. I have learned a lot about what to expect as I go into my first years of teaching. I have enjoyed reading their ideas and getting to know about what is going in their classrooms; what they are reading and learning about. 
My favorite part is watching the growth that happens from draft 1 to draft 2 or 3. It’s comforting to see the students take my advice and put it into practice. I was unable to see most of the students’ final work and this was disappointing, I won’t lie. However, I got to see the final product of one of the students I helped out. This was the most encouraging because I felt the student’s writing had grown to a whole new level.
The truth is, we all go through the grueling stages of writing. As a writing coach, what I had to think about was what is important for me address. Spandel writes in her book, The 9 Rights of Every Writer, “When I sit down at my keyboard, I don’t want to feel the pressure of needing to create something masterful and moving. Like all writers, I would love for that to happen, of course, but I know that most days I will write a lot of words. I’ll end up simply throwing away. That’s the way writing works. You need to create a lot of garbage to get at the heart of it” (13). Having this in mind helped me decide what was important to address. Grammar or perfect organization may not have been necessary in early stages of writing because students were using that time to get ideas down. As teachers our job is to get them through this tough step. The goal is to help student’s better communicate their ideas. Any writer will tell you that this is the biggest headache. Luckily, no one is alone in this. High school students might be interested in reading a “tumblr blog” entitled Reference for Writers. Tumblr is a popular site among young people and they may be encouraged to know that writing sucks for everyone. However, there is help out there. This site might be overwhelming at first, but the side bar contains “quick tags” that help narrow down the problem. When they click on the link that best fits their problem, they can find advice and help to get to the next step in their writing.
The Pink Motel 
I too love the change in progress that you can see in your students. It really shows that we left an impact on the kids we are tutoring. Knowing I helped others succeed is one of the most wonderful feelings I ever experienced. I also really liked the link you posted. I follow them on my http://www.tumblr.com account and I love learning more about the writing process. I will say that there is one thing that you may wish to change is your outlook on writing. You say “writing sucks for everyone”. I think that using negatives toward the things we love is wrong. Writing is fun! But we have to teach it how to be fun. We can use things like poems and short story creation to make this stuff fun! There’s no need to get a Hasa Diga Writing attitude!
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I see where you’re coming from that the phrase “writing sucks for everyone” is a negative outlook. I suppose I meant it more that it’s a difficult process no matter level you’re on. It’s okay to be stuck or frustrated because it’s just part of the writing process and that is OK.
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Wow, Emily! I never thought of Tumblr as a way to improve someone’s writing. I guess it would make sense since students from the same school tend o also be on Tumblr, and they can give suggestions to others to do better. This is an example of how a student writers can improve a s a result form suggestions from their peers, not just teachers and writing coaches. If a students needs help on what to do during their writing process (myself included)< they should definitely go on Tumblr!
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Wow, Emily! I never thought of Tumblr as a way to improve someone’s writing. I guess it would make sense since students from the same school tend o also be on Tumblr, and they can give suggestions to others to do better. This is an example of how a student writers can improve a s a result form suggestions from their peers, not just teachers and writing coaches. If a students needs help on what to do during their writing process (myself included)< they should definitely go on Tumblr!
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It’s been hard for me, so far, to try to walk that thin line between trying to ignore some grammar, spelling and syntax issues to focus on more higher-order issues. While I don’t want to be bogged down as a human spell checker, I also want the student to know how to fix these easily correctable errors. Even anticipating some of those issues from what I’ve learned over the course of my time in the program, I was still surprised at the prevalence of some very basic issues.
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I really enjoyed how you connected the practice of tutoring/mentoring writers to your own writing process and practice as a writer. The Writing Reference blog on tumblr is great. I had to add it to my own list of “writing life” blogs. Thanks for sharing.
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