WriterCoach Connection

A new coach learns to draw a student out

I think we are coaching our students not because they are unable to come up with answers but because faced with an assignment and a blank piece of paper they find it hard to come up with questions. 

So my MO has simply become to ask them questions - to give me three reasons why such and such should be happening.  When they give me answers I just say Write that down.  Then give me an example for each one of the three to provide color, movement and texture.  Write that down.  These are the middle three paragraphs.  Then ask the student whether he/she thinks all this is a good thing or a bad thing.  Write that down; this is paragraph 5.  Now, what is this all about?  Write that down; this is paragraph 1.

I notice that when I say Write that down it takes them a few moments to adjust to the idea that what they have just said is in fact worth writing down.

Peter Geraghty, first-year coach

Re: Coaching a student with a dubious essay idea

I'd use an approach similar to Bob's, explaining that it's always a good idea to explore several possibilities before beginning to write. I'd encourage brief brainstorming of each of two or three possible choices, to see which one produces the largest number of good ideas (points of comparison, in this case) to explore in the essay. This step will help the student see for herself which topic will work best.

Jayne Walker

Coach and coach trainer

What if your student seems to be presenting an ineffective overall argument in an essay?

One of Sahib-Amar Khalsa's coaches at CP Academy (Berkeley High) posed this question for their up-coming coach refresher workshop:

 "The main question I have is how to gently but clearly steer a student away from what seems like a bad overall direction/argument. For instance, a student chose to compare Oedipus with Nemo (as in Finding Nemo). It had been a while since I saw Nemo, so I couldn't say for sure that this seemed like a bad approach. We did find some similarities. But overall, I suspected she was going to spend a lot of time and was never really going to get a good paper out of this choice. What to do?"

CAFL program manager Teresa Barnett has this suggestion:

"My first instinct is to say that our goal is to help the student clarify their own ideas rather than impose our own. So, part of the job in this situation might be to ask some gentle questions that could help the student arrive at the conclusion on their own that they might need to shift direction. I know this can be frustrating because it results in a session with more 'discussing' and not as much 'down on paper', but I think that can be ok. I'll toss this question out to a couple of our trainers and see if any of them have some more specific suggestions.... I think we've heard variants of this question over the years, and it actually could be separated into two questions: 1. What to do when a student is "sort of' on track, but working in a direction that will be difficult when there might be some better examples/arguments/evidence, etc. to support a stronger argument? 2. What to do when the student is using examples or pursuing a thesis that is just wrong, or where the examples/evidence actually don't support the thesis at all, etc."

Here's my somewhat similar response to Sahib-Amar and her coach:

I think we should always keep in mind that it's the student's voice we're focusing on, and not the coach's. And we should also keep in mind one of the main points we make early on in the first training session, that our goal is not to generate the perfect paper for the assignment.

But it's also our job to guide students in what we think will be helpful directions. So my instinct here would be a variation of what Teresa is suggesting. The coach could point out that it's always good to have options when considering an approach, and that the student's Oedipus/Nemo idea has merit, so it should definitely be one of the options to consider. Then suggest that the coach and student spend a little time thinking of some other possible approaches, with a goal of ultimately having, say, three ideas from which to choose. If the coach has an idea he or she thinks is better, he or she could suggest that it be on the list. Then, when it comes time to choose, the coach could help the student make the best choice, which might or might not be Nemo. If Nemo seems clearly to not be the best choice to the coach, but the student insists that's the one he or she likes, then I'd say the coach should go with it. And make sure the list of options is on the coach worksheet.

Blog readers: What other suggestions do you have for Sahib-Amar and her coach? You can respond by clicking on the Comments link below this message.

Bob Menzimer

Coaching proficient writers

Many coaches seem to have a favorite type of student that they like to coach.  Some feel most comfortable helping emerging writers get organized.  Others like the challenge of helping ELL students learn the nuances of English.  And some like the challenge of helping the proficient writers really polish their work.

 Well, I am *not* in the latter group!  I find coaching proficient writers to be one of my biggest challenges.  I usually end up lost in the minutia of punctuation as a way of adding *something.*  So, yesterday at the Albany Middle School Coach Refresher Workshop, I asked our AMS coaches for ideas to help me -- and they came through for me.

 As always, the suggestions were wonderful and far-reaching.  I felt like I learned a new way to look at coaching proficient writers, just by trying some new phrases and approaches.

 Here are some ideas:

"What do you notice about this piece?  When you read it out loud, what did you hear that you would like to focus on?"

"When you were working on this, what gave you pause?"

"We all need to edit and rewrite our work.  Even Joyce Carol Oates has an editor!"

"This is very good, and let's see what we can do to make it better."

(We discussed how it's important to use "and" in the sentence above, rather than "but.")

Also we talked about how important -- and valuable -- it is to educate students about the writing process.  Helping them to see that the process of critically reviewing their work can be the key to making a great paper even greater.

What ideas do you have? Thanks for sharing!

Karen Larson

Co-Site Coordinator, Albany Middle School

What's going on when we write?

In the paragraph below, author Robert Plotkin is saying that writing is a circular process, a feedback loop between the mind and the words on the paper. I think the passage points (indirectly, but compellingly) to the age-old need of the writer to just get something down on paper. Writers often face the block of getting started, and it may be that they feel the work should spring forth like Aphrodite from the sea, fully formed onto the paper, when in fact the process is entirely iterative and non-linear. This quote addresses the simple reality that putting words on paper is an extension of our limited short-term memory and so should be relied on for the most preliminary steps in writing, that is ruminating.(In this light, the idea of a writer's block in getting started is a "false" block. If one wants to complain of being blocked, the privilege to do so is earned only after one has filled a few pages with scraps of ideas, images, fragments, a few facts or details, phrases, simple outlines, word lists, and so on.) The fresh piece of paper in front of the writer is actually the key to unblocking, not the proof of a block itself. 

Jeff Wyneken
Albany Middle School coach

From "The Genie in the Machine: How Computer-Automated Inventing Is Revolutionizing Law and Business," by Robert Plotkin (Stanford U. Press, 2009), p. 89

"Try writing an essay longer than a few sentences in your head and you will see what I mean. Start writing the same essay on a scratchpad and you will find that the physical paper, with your work in progress stored on it in ink, serves as a temporary external memory to augment the significantly limited capacity of your onboard (biological) memory. As you “think” on the page, you also read back your own writing to prompt you to form additional thoughts and write them down as well. Physical writing is a two-way feedback loop between human and ink on paper, which enables you to formulate more complex ideas more clearly than you could if you had to rely on your unaided mind alone."

Continue the dialogue here after your coach refresher workshop

According to what I'm told, during the Albany Middle School coach refresher workshop at Karen Larson's house this week, coaches plunged into a lively dialogue about not only how to approach coaching with emerging writers as compared to coaching proficient writers, but about how to handle a variety of other coaching circumstances. For example, how do you approach a student who seems afraid to write, or appears to be intimidated by a writing assignment? This blog is the place to share your insights or ask questions about this stuff.

In an earlier post this morning, I described how to post a message, and it couldn’t be simpler:  just email me what you want to say and I’ll post it. We’re screening posts for reasons involving confidentiality, but we intend the blog to be an open forum. So unless there’s a violation of confidentiality involved, I’ll pretty much be posting whatever anyone submits.

The blog has category options, over there on the left. When you send me your message for posting, you can either tell me which category you’d like your message to be in, or I’ll pick the category that seems appropriate. On the blog’s main page, where you probably are right now, the messages appear chronologically, just like the conversation this is supposed to mimic.  But if you want to see only the “coach tips” messages, for example, you can just hit “coach tips” on the list over there on  the left.

 There’s also an easy way to identify what your message talks about (if, for example, you’re in a dialogue about coaching students at varying skill levels). Just identify your topic in the title of your post. For example, “Emerging writer coaching tip,” or “Proficient writer coaching tip,” or “What to do when your student seems intimidated by the writing assignment.” Make it clear in your title what you’re going to talk about, so readers can quickly identify which messages they want to pay particular attention to.

Happy blogging--and don't hesitate to send photos for posting!

Bob Menzimer

Coach tip: What a difference ten minutes make!

If possible, arrive ten minutes early for your coaching session. You'll have a chance to get last-minute information about the assignment from your site coordinator, ask any questions you have about the assignment or the session, and have time to talk with your colleagues, something all coaches love to do and which is much more difficult at the end of the coaching session, when everyone is racing off to attend to other obligations. Be early, for a more rewarding coaching session!