A Better Way to Essay

I get it. We aren't getting away from essays anytime soon. No pitchforks needed in this post because I will not be arguing for the death of this most venerable of writing forms.

Despite the sarcasm, I actually do believe that the essay does have a place in the classroom. It does teach our students something valuable, challenges their skills, and is widely applicable outside of the classroom. It is a worthy format and worth our time.

That's more of my point. The format is worth our time. In most cases, a lot more than we have been putting into it. Or at least, a different format for the investment. Let me explain.

When I was in school as a student, much like today, we would write numerous essays throughout our English classes. In some cases, it was a badge of honour for the teachers in assigning the highest number of essays and novels in the course. You know, because that's more rigorous and therefore better teaching.

In our class, after a lot of discussions with my colleagues, we are writing a single essay. We are breaking it down into pieces and assigning it part by part.

We start with the thesis, of course, but we are willing to invest a lot of time with it. We read samples and examples, learn to look for the good and bad, define the parameters that make a good argument. They write, revise, and play with the language of their thesis until it is ready to submit.

Then we repeat the process for an introduction paragraph. Yes, I ask them to write the introduction before organizing the essay. This is done to help them refine the scope of their essay, but also to be clear that what they are writing will change, as you will see later.

Next, we look at different ways to organize an essay.  We look at fallacies. We look at and design templates for the individuals in the class. We learn how to break down the argument and organize it, what works for the writing and what works for the author's understanding.

Then it's on to the first body paragraph, same process. Then the conclusion, same process. I want students to revise and edit bad samples to show them how to do that work for themselves. I want them to explore, refine, define and explore the language and how it works. I want them to have a good understanding of what an essay is and what the parts do before I set them to writing one.

And yes, I could absolutely design a plug-and-play template, where students fill in the boxes and then, like magic, they have an essay. But they won't have an understanding of what they have accomplished. They won't know what an essay is or how to work with it. There is very little chance that they will be able to learn from the process unless they are involved in it.

This method takes a lot of time, but we are working on building expertise, not volume of work.  We want to have learners, not automatons.

In the end, not everyone will write a full five paragraph essay. As they submit each piece, we work on the revisions necessary to lead to better work.  We want students to learn how to produce quality work, how to accentuate their own voices, and that is an investment of time that I will always be willing to make.