Teaching Gimmicks: My Thoughts On Them

The work of readers and writers is challenging. It can be isolating. Much of the work is invisible, happening within a reader’s or writer’s head or heart. It isn’t always satisfying. Sometimes the characters don’t make the choice the reader anticipates, and often, the words don’t land on the page quite the way the writer expects. It is exhausting, even though there isn’t any sweat.

It seems logical that readers and writers who are young or struggling or inattentive or disengaged or __________ could become both il- and a-literate.

Image from The Fresh Exchange

Enter: teaching gimmicks

Let’s define a teaching gimmick as something that engages learners in reading and writing that actually has no connection to the real work of reading and writing. A teaching gimmick might be something that makes learning a little less painful, something we do just for fun, or something we do to build community.

An example. . .

I was recently part of a writing workshop where participants were asked to form a revision group. We each shared a descriptive sentence from our writing, chose one sentence, and recreated that sentence using a tableau, a living statue that captured the action in the favorite sentence. Creating this tableau was labeled as “publication” of our writing.

While I wasn’t busy panicking about the possibility that my group would choose me to play the part of the tail-wagging dog in our particular tableaux, I was trying to imagine writers doing a tableaux to improve their writing. I’ll wait and give you a minute to picture your own writing rockstar tableaux. (In case you were wondering, my imaginary tableaux included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Toni Morrison, a Bronte, Harry Potter, and Amy Poehler.)

Were you able to picture authors doing tableaux to improve their writing? Are you laughing uncontrollably? And, the biggest question - How does tableaux teach aspiring writers to do the work of writers?

That big question - How does this instructional decision teach aspiring readers and writers to do the work of being readers and writers? - is the question we need to ask ourselves each time we are faced with the temptation to use a teaching gimmick to engage our students.

What would learning look like if - instead of gimmicks - we engaged students with topics that interested them, opportunities to talk, or texts that are worth talking about? What if we believed that each of our students is already a reader and a writer and we taught, assessed, challenged, and talked with them accordingly? What would learning look like if we used reading and writing - instead of gimmicks - to engage students and build community and have fun?