trying to focus is hard after all that food...

I am trying to write a paper about what works in teaching writing, even though I've never really taught writing. Well, not to a classroom of kids, well, not for more than a little bit at a time. There are all those hours I've been putting in as a consultant at The Writing Center. And Last week I gave a little talk about paragraphing in fiction, which was actually more like a conversation. And last spring in San Francisco when I was subbing, I would try to steer kids in the right direction whenever I saw them writing things that made no sense. But I guess I've been learning that a hands off approach is better, that instead of telling them what to write and how to write it, instead of fixing every typo, it's a lot more valuable for them (and easier on me) to focus on the bigger picture, to have a conversation about what it is they are trying to say. I guess my opposite impulse was developed when I was in high school in Surabaya, one of only five native English speakers in my class, and really the only on who cared much about English class. Anyway, I was kind of a dork and sort of obsessed with getting people to like me so whenever people would ask me to fix their papers or articles, I would. I would make them perfect--no conversation, no questions asked. So I guess I've been working towards unlearning that in order to some day perhaps be a decent teacher of writing but for now I have to write this annoying paper.