“The Teacher Who Changed How We Teach Writing”
New Yorker
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10/14/21
“He saw the damage done by a teaching model that focussed on error and that proposed simplistic, mechanical “fixes” to student writing. This was an ostensibly scientific approach to writing composition that equated students with their “deficits”—and implicitly encouraged students to identify with them… Mike, on the other hand, provided writing studies with a heart: he modelled a deep compassion that asked teachers to understand students as whole people, with very mixed feelings about academic writing, who are nonetheless trying to do a very difficult thing. He had a keen gift for uncovering, through intensive one-on-one work with writers, the deep (and often poignant) logic behind surface errors. His work heralded a paradigm shift in the way that writing is taught in our educational system, from elementary school through college. A former classmate wrote to me that Mike had taught him that “every piece of writing, from freshman comp to Samuel Beckett . . . represents a complex, fascinating, almost miraculous set of intellectual and imaginative processes.””