“Back to the basics” works if you chose the right basics. (We could debate that.)<\/p>\n
“The Writing Revolution<\/a>,” an article in The Atlantic<\/em>, argues that attention to basic rhetorical principles \u2014 as opposed to expressing your feelings or writing in order to become a better person\u2014 helps disadvantaged high school students to succeed.<\/a><\/p>\n And so the school\u2019s principal, Deirdre DeAngelis, began a detailed investigation into why, ultimately, New Dorp\u2019s students were failing. By 2008, she and her faculty had come to a singular answer: bad writing. Students\u2019 inability to translate thoughts into coherent, well-argued sentences, paragraphs, and essays was severely impeding intellectual growth in many subjects. Consistently, one of the largest differences between failing and successful students was that only the latter could express their thoughts on the page. If nothing else, DeAngelis and her teachers decided, beginning in the fall of 2009, New Dorp students would learn to write well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Back to the basics” works if you chose the right basics. (We could debate that.) “The Writing Revolution,” an article in The Atlantic, argues that attention to basic rhetorical principles \u2014 as opposed to expressing your feelings or writing in order to become a better person\u2014 helps disadvantaged high school students to succeed. And so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,12],"class_list":["post-4659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-education","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1d9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4364,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4364","url_meta":{"origin":4659,"position":0},"title":"British University Lecturer Faces Wrath of Choronzon","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Joanne Bedford, who teaches creative writing at The Open University in the UK, has a simple writing technique:' \u2022 Select \u2022 Copy \u2022 Paste Then you change a few words. Evidently that is the part that requires university-level instruction, since her students certainly arrive knowing the first part. It's one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2574,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2574","url_meta":{"origin":4659,"position":1},"title":"The 4C’s: Still Lost in Theory-Land","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"When I started teaching college writing classes (here meaning mainly rhetoric and composition) in the early 1990s,\u00a0 I attended the national Conference on College Composition and Communication at least three times at university (i.e. taxpayer) expense. One of them produced an early Letter from Hardscrabble Creek piece back when it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2488,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2488","url_meta":{"origin":4659,"position":2},"title":"Gallimaufry with Graphs","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 The writing process, graphed, from Boing Boing. \u2022 The \"great conversation\" lives on: University students discovering ideas that their so-called teachers kept from them because they were not \"relevant\" or something. \u2022\u00a0 Why did Borders crash? Here is one view. Too much space given to music. for one thing,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"education\"","block_context":{"text":"education","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=education"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1002,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1002","url_meta":{"origin":4659,"position":3},"title":"Meme: Passion Quilt","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Ambulance Driver has tagged me in a post about teaching.I let his request rattle around in my brain during spring break, hoping for inspiration. And by doing so, I violated Rule 1, which is \"Don't wait for inspiration. Start writing.\" (But, Professor, I was on vacation!)AD writes, \"If I had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2721,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2721","url_meta":{"origin":4659,"position":4},"title":"A Quick Writing Course from John McPhee","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I used to teach a class in creative nonfiction (a descendent of the \"New Journalism\" of the 1960s-1970s). If there is an American master of creative nonfiction, it would be John McPhee. I could have just taken this long interview with McPhee from The Paris Review, chopped it into bits,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2710,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2710","url_meta":{"origin":4659,"position":5},"title":"Trapped on Block Island","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Randy Cassingham makes the argument: \"There is no such thing as writer's block\" and invokes the \"10,000 hour rule.\" I used to tell students, \"The first million words are just for practice.\" But you can count blog posts on your way to the million. Cassingham's version of a traditional exercise:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/blockisland-300x172.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4660,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4659\/revisions\/4660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}