An Example of a Teaching Essay - Goddard College's Intranet

Teaching Essay, Ken Damerow
allowed her students to share their work with their classmates everyday. Mary’s daughter
believes she attained her sense of audience from her experiences in third-grade.
Sharing Around the Room was the method Mary’s daughter’s third-grade teacher
used and is very simple to implement in the classroom. Every day after students have
written, I ask who would like to share their work with their classmates. Hands go up, and I
ask each student in turn to describe what they’d like to share. Alex might say, “I have my
Noise Poem.” Another student might share an alien story, another a letter to the principal
about how much fun he is having in Mr. Damerow’s poetry class. (I swear I did not put him
up to it!) I then tell the class that if they would like to hear Alex read her poem, she’ll be in
such and such a corner of the room. After all the authors are standing in their particular
area, the remaining students choose a group to hear the author share their work. It has
become a favorite part of the day. I encourage listeners to share their reactions with the
authors after they read. Authors receive a sense of audience and a desire to revise based on
the reactions of their peers.
I’m also finding another spillover effect from their poetry work into their prose
writing, a pleasant discovery since quality prose has been so difficult to get from them. An
example is “Catastrophe After Catastrophe” by Haley. This story is the product of a unit
study on the steps of the writing process. I always give my students free rein on the first
writing project of the year as far as genre and subject. Some write stories, some poems,
some personal narratives. Beyond the poetry lessons, I taught nothing of craft but spoke
only of generating seeds for writing, writing a discovery draft, revising, editing, and
publishing.
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