What should Teachers before College Teach?

High school teacher helping a student with reading

Writing in general is something that I personally struggled with but I didn’t give up. I believe this day six years ago I was struggling with English its self. Writing is something you have to work for and put in the effort. Through my time trying to learn what writing is all about I sometimes struggled and the reason I struggled is because I didn’t have the experience coming in to college.  Today is the last day of my first semester in college. One thing I can say is that I struggled in coming in but I learned and expected a lot through the help of my English professor. Students coming from high school to college often struggle the most because of the lack of education their instructors provided them.

Stanley fish proved to me that before even coming to college middle and high school instructors should teach the proper writing skills.
Stanley fish stated in his post “By all evidence high schools and middle schools are not teaching writing skills in an effective way, if they are teaching them at all”. This absolutely true not just by agreeing with him but experiencing this through my time in middle school and high school. Literally in high school it was just basically writing something simple or reading something simple. We never focused on terms like research and thesis statement I mean we had to have it in the paper but we never actually experienced what it was all about. Also stated in Stanley fish “why a failure of secondary education relieves college teachers of a responsibility to make

Tutor session with a student and a teacher

up the deficit”. Now these college instructors have to deal with a handful of kids who aren’t ready or never experienced what they’re about to teach.

When first starting college I took a placement English test and got placed in English 1109. This class was very interesting because it was for kids like us they didn’t get the proper education in high school. The instructor understands our issue. We worked on our writing skills by going to the Ohio State University Newark writing studio and observing other students to get experience and learn by others. This was a very helpful matter because going there I didn’t know many writing skills for example there were students who were struggling to cite a quote or a research and I barely knew how to cite either. After observing so many students I now have a clear understand that citing takes a big impact in your paper and helps back you up and also prevents plagiarism.

Ohio state Placement Test 

So the real question here is what should be taught in a classroom? After all my research and doing the reading about Stanley fish I believe that high school and middle school instructors should prepare their students for the next level and teach them the right writing skills. Instead of just reading random books and writing essays they should provide what writing is all about and also teach them the proper structure it should be in.

According to Stanley Fish “But what about just doing a lot of reading and hoping that by passing your eyes over many pages you will learn how to write through osmosis? I’m not so sure.ording to Stanley fish”. I also tend to agree with this because I honestly remember just reading a whole chapter book in high school and not even knowing the meaning of the book just basically reading it. So at the end of the day it’s not the college instructor’s fault it’s the middle school and high school instructor’s for not preparing their students for the next level or not even caring. Hopefully my work paid off this semester and I feel like I’m ready for the next level.