I spent this past weekend in Las Vegas. While driving the endless hours by myself through the Mojave Desert, I had lots of time to think -- lots of time. And my thinking led me to wonder about the parallels between my roadtrip and writing.

The connection between the two may not be obvious at first glance, but I will argue the parallels are intriguing -- and I guarantee I had plenty of time to work through the complexities of the connections before arriving on The Strip.
Let’s start with your own trip … a journey down memory lane. Think about your adult life and the various experiences you’ve had with writing.

In your professional life, you may have had to write a marketing proposal, a website landing page, an RFP, or a cover letter for a new job.

In your personal life, you may have written Christmas letters, Yelp posts, flyers for your kid’s school, or donation requests for nonprofit organizations in which you’re involved.

Whatever the writing task, I would bet the first step you take is finding a model. You probably visit Google and type in something like “Sample Marketing Proposal” or “Effective Flyers for Nonprofit Events.”  And if you don’t visit Google for your sample, you may ask a friend or colleague for one. Or your sample may even be something you’ve written before that you can use as a springboard. We all do it. We all do it, because we all need to know what a good final product should look like -- we need to know the “destination.”

It’s the most natural first step.  I promise you I couldn’t have made it to Vegas if I didn’t know I was headed to Vegas -- my “destination.”  

So why in the classroom do we assign writing without providing students with a destination -- a model text? A model text just like we need when we write?

I would no sooner have taken off on a road trip to Vegas or any other location without first having looked at where I was going. Knowing my destination allows for me to plan what freeway to take, avoid the roadblocks, estimate total driving time, calculate gas requirements, and arrive at the right place.

In the same vein, I would no sooner assign an essay in my classroom without first giving my students a model, so they can find the same success I had in finding my way to Vegas.

Let’s use a literary analysis argument essay as an example. If I ask my students to write a literary analysis argument essay, I show them their destination through sample essays -- examples of well-written essays that show them what’s expected. We spend significant amounts of time evaluating these samples together for their elements of good writing, including: organization, transitions, balance of evidence and elaboration, length, audience, claim. Then, and only then, can students confidently take off for the destination, because they now know where they’re headed.

Are you wondering at this point if all the essays will then look the same?

I can guarantee they won’t. This is because the how of achieving a well-written essay comes with individual style. Just like every driver handles a trip to Las Vegas with a different style -- speed, pitstops, alternate routes -- a student will do the same.  This is where detailed directions come into play.

When road-tripping, not only do you need to know your destination, but you also need these detailed directions for getting there. The same holds true for writing -- writers need both the destination and detailed directions. In the writing classroom, the detailed directions come in the form of rubrics.

Rubrics provide the details for how to arrive at the destination, the final product, successfully. Students need to know how they will be assessed, what will be scored, to what extent each category will weigh against the final grade, and any number of other specific requirements for the task. This information helps students learn how to write more effectively. They learn where they took a wrong turn and how to improve their trip next time out.

Without models and rubrics, how would a student know how to improve or what to focus on in order to achieve the next level of sophistication, mastery or competency? Why send them out on the road without preparation? Why set them up for failure? Without the pairing of these two tools, writing becomes just one more rote activity that has little impact on student achievement.  
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Therefore, let’s provide students with a roadmap for success -- before we set them out on their writing journeys. ​

The days of passive learning are over. The days of teachers being the keeper of knowledge, the sage, the owner of content are gone. My memories of how to be a student -- and yours -- are behind us.

With the advent of the Internet, knowledge has become a commodity. It is everywhere, all the time, in any form. The teacher’s role no longer lies in disseminating information and being the stewards of that information; it lies, or at least should, in engaging students in that knowledge to help them make meaning from it. If all we offer to our kids is memorization tasks and rote repetition, we are failing them.

Let me explain.

When I think back to my education, I sat passively in the classroom, diligently taking notes, filling in worksheets, staying whisper quiet, answering questions at the end of a piece of literature, listening to teachers pontificate, and regurgitating information to earn my A on any given test as best my memory allowed. Sound familiar? I will argue it’s the same education most of us received. And it worked because knowledge was hard to come by. We’d spend hours in the library finding content from rows of encyclopedias, magazines and books only accessible through card catalogs and glasses-clad librarians.

But times have changed. Our childhoods do not resemble those of our children’s. And the role of education, the teacher, and the student over the past twenty years has changed because of it. If our students are only being taught in this nostalgic, old-fashioned approach, they are going to enter their adult world at a disadvantage.

Because the world of today requires a workforce who can problem solve, work collaboratively within cross-departmental teams, write about innovations in science, technology and medicine so that humanity can be changed for the better, and be critical thinkers who can take this onslaught of information and make sense of it in a global economy. This doesn’t happen in a “traditional” classroom. It happens when the classroom embraces 21st century learning and engages our kids on a level that is hard for us -- their parents -- to understand.

So how does a 21st century student engage in their learning?

They need to be active in it.

An engaged student reads critically with a pen in hand, writing to create meaning, plan, problem solve, ask questions, and explore an idea. An engaged student interacts with other students in pairs or small groups, listening actively  in order to respond, clarify, challenge, and critique ideas and conclusions. An engaged student experiments with content to make sense of it, applying new-found skills and strategies to think and act creatively. If true learning is to occur, then students have to be engaged participants in the process, and not merely products.

Most teachers pick up on cues as they teach and can tell when a student in not interested or engaged. As a teacher myself, I act on what I see and adjust to try to engage all students -- tap kids on the shoulder, call a student’s name, tell a personal anecdote, vary my intonation, walk around the room, and even ring a bell to help kids find focus. No matter the technique, however, I have come to realize that a lecture is still a lecture. And a lecture is still a passive activity.

The solution is simple -- increase student engagement by increasing student activity. This doesn’t mean more; it means different. Get them moving. Get them talking. Get them writing, discussing, debating, synthesizing. We need to be challenging our students with lessons so engaging and active that it’s hard for them not to participate.

Now that I’ve written it, I guess the solution really isn’t simple at all. And not only is it difficult for a teacher, it is just as difficult for a parent. How do we become an active participant in our own child’s education -- in a system that we’ve all been through, but in which we now feel completely estranged?

The typical question, “Did you get your homework done?” will no longer suffice.

It means that we need to start having dialogue with our kids that helps us engage. We need to begin asking questions about how they learned, what they contributed, when the spoke, and why the content matters.
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The questions are very different. They ask how they have been a participant in their own learning. The better our questions, the more thoughtful and engaged our kids will be about their education -- turning their educational journey from just another commodity into a tool for unlimited success.