Am I a good coach?

Without a doubt, I have always loved correcting writing. I loved making red marks there and there and there, and I loved commenting my thoughts. I thought that I always knew that I was talking about when I corrected the writing of others. I thought that I knew what I was doing.

Until I took a particular course on writing at UWM.

This course changed my look on revising and editing completely. When commenting, we weren't allowed to correct grammar or small mistakes. We could only comment on the ideas as a whole, on what the writer is trying to say. I had never corrected a paper like this before. I was lost. No longer did I feel like I was the shit at correcting papers. Through the stress and the heartbreak, I am forever grateful that I took that course, and that I learned how to comment on papers the correct way.

When looking at the batch of student papers that I have received so far, I must say that being a writing coach is more difficult than I expected. Some of the papers have been amazing, where I could barely think of a useful thing to suggest. Some have been less than great, where I don't even know where to start.

As a coach, I feel it's important that we almost overlook grammar mistakes and spelling errors when revising early on. I have encountered many of these, and I have not commented on a single one. These corrections can come later. As stated in "The Right to Write Badly", it is a natural step of the writing process to produce crappy writing. People need to write badly in first stages of drafting in order to produce something amazing later on. Instead of focusing on petty mistakes, I feel like commenting on the ideas of the paper are more important. Students need to learn how to develop their ideas, how to talk to their audience, and how to develop a proper thesis. I believe that by commenting on these things that I will be a more useful coach, rather than me commenting on grammar and spelling.

I watched Sugata Mitra's TED talk "Build a School in the Cloud". I found it interesting that the children didn't necessarily need a teacher to help their learning. They just needed the proper resources. These children taught themselves different languages and different facts just from playing on a computer. They did their own research to learn what they needed to learn. With that being said, I feel like anybody can learn anything. Students can be good writers if they have the proper tools to do so. I am not their teacher, no. But I am somebody who can guide them where they need it. I can ask the proper questions, and they can expand from there.

 As always, I love the site Purdue Owl. Not only does it have information on how to properly cite sources, it also has plenty on grammar.