Reflecting on Nancy Atwell's Reflections

           The honesty of Nancy Atwell’s introduction to In the Middle managed to capture my attention as a teacher-in-training. She writes of her experiences as a teacher of writing (as well as literature and history) as if she has managed to become an outside observer of her own teaching habits of years past. This came clearly into focus as she describes her teaching style as having been “creationist” and moving toward teaching as an “evolutionist,” able to let “go of my creations when I see that they get in the way of students acting – and growing – as readers and writers” (Atwell 4). I think the impulse for many teaching candidates, especially given the emphasis made by many instructors and associate teachers on preparedness, is understandably to lean toward learning to teach according to the “creationist” style. Work, work, work to create lessons planned to perfection and then cross your fingers that the students buy into them. This is by no means the intent of professors or ATs, but I think it is the inevitable consequence of a stress on preparedness coupling with the natural stress of teaching for the first time.

The transition that Atwell details in her teaching must have been a difficult one, requiring as it did a surrender of some significant measure of her power by her jettisoning the theory she clearly had become quite attached to. In this context, the passage she provided from Graves’ 1975 report struck me as particularly evocative of just what motivated her to make such a profound and difficult alteration to her teaching style: “It is entirely possible to read about children, review research and textbooks about writing, ‘teach’ them, yet still be completely unaware of their processes of learning and writing. Unless we actually structure our environments to free ourselves for effective observation and participation in all phases of the writing process, we are doomed to repeat the same teaching mistakes again and again.” (Graves 29/Atwell 9)

It seems a truism of the current teaching dogma that teachers should emphasize observation of their students’ individual paths toward learning, and differentiate their teaching to each students needs. So too is the idea that teachers must provide their students with a sense of control and empowerment surrounding their work. Each of these ideas I agree with, but have often found silently at odds with the goals of providing structure and actual opportunities for new growth in student learning. When given the tools and the power to set their own goals, I agree that often students will surprise in positive ways with the breadth and depth of their curiosity, but so too have I seen students led nowhere new by this over-reliance on freedom from structure or direction. 

In this respect too, I found Atwell’s writing compellingly balanced these competing interests when she wrote of how, “Freedom of choice does not undercut structure. Instead, students become accountable for learning about and using the structures available to writers to serve their purposes” (Atwell 15). Her stress on pursuing a balance between the goals of structure and freedom is certainly what most imprinted itself on my mind from this excerpt. As she concluded that she has reached the point of, “striving for the fluid, subtle, exhilarating balance that allows me to function in my classroom as a listener and a teller, an observer and an actor, a collaborator and a critic and a cheerleader,” I found in Atwell a model for what I think I would like my own teaching style to look like, but also a model for how I should hope to reflect on my teaching as the years pass and my students’ needs change (Atwell 21).