How writing informs teaching and vice versa

Reading the first two chapters of these books, I can’t help noticing the commonalities between writing and teaching. For example, Ramage et al. suggest that writers can use exploratory strategies to generate ideas and think critically about subject-matter questions. Exploratory strategies include freewriting , idea mapping dialectic talk, and the believing and doubting game. These strategies indicate that ideas come from causal thinking or informal exchange of ideas. This resonates with what Boice’s calls “active waiting.” He advises invoice teachers to start working before formal preparation of teaching or to jot down ideas and thoughts in their spare time, such as waiting for television commercials to end. The nature of active waiting is actually very similar to that of exploratory strategies mentioned above. They both emphasize the importance of casual/informal preparation before one sets out to do their work. So, I believe, one can learn how to teach by learning how to write.

    Besides, some tips offered by Boice on teaching also help one to think of writing. For example, his advice about conceptual outline (COL) encourages teachers to simplify their ideas and what they are going to teach in class. Conceptual outline is very much like a thesis statement in closed form of writing. They are both the simplified version of thoughts that writers/teachers can later expand, clarify and revise. So, I found that writing and teaching actually inform one another.

    There are, of course, many differences between writing and teaching. When it comes to audience, teachers and writers think of their audience very differently. Writers should pose problematic questions and offer new interpretations that surprise readers. Teachers, however, should make their class schedules and in-class activities clear and predictable for students (audience). It seems inadvisable to “surprise” students in a way that writers surprise their readers. Though there are differences between writing and teaching, they share one significant quality— writing/teaching as a process. Both teachers and writers have to go through several steps before they achieve a particular result.