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Aug 31, 2022Liked by Arnie Sabatelli

Yes! My thoughts exactly and so well written. Sigh. But glad to read this on the morning of our first day back—encourages me to keep doing what I’m (not) doing when teaching writing.

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Sep 1, 2022Liked by Arnie Sabatelli

Your observations on the frustrations inherent in the teaching of writing are spot on :) I shared many of the same frustrations when I taught Spanish, French and Italian over a thirty + length career. The loss of a sense of play in later years is the saddest of all things, the cause for a precipitous drop in self confidence and interest, most often manifested in high school. The contradictions inherent in teaching students to fit into preexisting “knowledge boxes” while expecting them to somehow find their own “voice” became a source of heartbreak for me as their teacher, tasked as I was with filling those boxes with information. I did all I could, within the demands of a rigid pathway to AP tracks and the like, to celebrate errors and spontaneity and to share in the humor and joy of discovery. For most, the sense of creative play that had been encouraged in the early years had, by high school, been beaten down and replaced by a sense of dread and fear of making punishable mistakes. Tragic, really.

When Ali, at around age five, referred to the state of the world as she saw it as a “doggy dog world “, it saddened me to tell her that the expression was actually “ dog eat dog”. She was quite horrified…To this day, I’m not sure that my correction did her any favors.

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Aug 31, 2022Liked by Arnie Sabatelli

I loved this post! And I love my moment of fame :)

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This post resonated with me on a lot of levels. It’s important to prioritize creativity, which can sometimes fall through the cracks, at least for me, when I’m trying to help students who have more trouble with abstractions. But as you suggest, it’s probably more valuable to allow them to hang out with that discomfort, because that’s often where discovery and creation come from.

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