Helping Struggling Students Pages 70-73 Helping Writers Find Power

By valuing students ' deeper messages and helping them learn from their errors, we can repair writing attitude breakdown. Jeff Anderson Most of the students who cross the threshold of my English classroom every August struggle with some aspect of writing or grammar. But rather than seeing these struggles as obstacles, I prefer to think of them as soft spots that I need to help students firm up. During the last 15 years, I have learned how to approach struggling writers so that they become proficient beyond their wildest imaginations, sometimes even surprising me in the process. Students who struggle with writing feel frustrated and unsuccessful, always fearfully anticipating their next mistake. That's not a recipe for intrinsic motivation and effort. Because struggling writers often view writing as “a way to be wrong, ” they miss out on the value of using writing to express and make sense of their thoughts, experiences, and feelings. Struggling writers often believe that they have nothing of value to say (Spandel, 2005). So first I have to change that belief and allay their fears