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Jeff Anderson has taught writing and reading for over 18 years. Over his career, Jeff has worked with writers in grades K-12, focusing in grades 4-8. Jeff's passion is motivating and developing struggling writers with instructional strategies such as writer's workshop and process writing, with a particular interest in making editing and grammar in context a meaning-making experience for students and teachers. Jeff has written articles in NCTE's Voices from the Middle, English Journal, as well as an article on motivating struggling writers in ASCD's Educational Leadership. NCTE recently awarded Jeff with the Paul and Kate Farmer Award. He has published a book, Mechanically Inclined: Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into Writer's Workshop, and a DVD filmed in his inner-city classroom, The Craft of Grammar. His latest book, Everyday Editing is due out this month! I suspect it will be well received by teachers of writing, language arts and literacy. In this interview, Jeff discusses the art (and science!)of everyday editing!

1) Jeff, first of all, (comma) what got you interested in writing and editing?

Actually, as a kid and adolescent, I wasn't that interested in writing or editing. At least at school. I was the kid who'd not want to do the writing assignment, but would spend countless hours at home writing serial novels, poems, and songs. I never really felt that honored for my writing in school. I'd write really big (back in the day when we didn't have computers to use), so I could write less. Consequently, my handwriting is still pretty large (kidding!...or am I?) I thought I'd slip in some controversial punctuation to let you—as I do my readers—in on a little secret. Like many kids and teachers, I hated grammar, but I loved how writing could entertain and make people laugh or cry. Editing? Are you kidding me? The first years of my teaching, I pretty much avoided it. But I wanted to find a way to take the excitement that I created in my classrooms with writing and move editing into that same realm. It was easy for me to get kids excited about getting into writing, but then when we had to edit, I would either avoid it or treat it like something icky we had to do. And frankly, it was icky. Have you seen a grammar book or an editing practice sheet? No wonder kids (and teachers) hate it. That's a long way to say that, the thing that interested me about editing is how kids hated it, saw it as separate from writing, and learned nothing from a teacher merely correcting errors on their papers.

2) Secondly, how did you get involved in teaching?

I did it for all the clichés. I wanted to make a difference. School was hard for me. I was one of those first ADHD kids—again, back in the day, that's what they called it. The H for hyperactive has been lost over the years. I was on Ritalin. My teachers said I talked too much and couldn't stay in my seat. Hmmm. Who does that sound like? Yeah, the teacher. Teachers get to talk all the time AND they are expected to move around the classroom. In fact, if teachers sit at their desks, they get in trouble. So, ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder) is a perfect formula for a moving, talking teacher.

3) Now, let's talk about the (gasp !) difficult chore of getting students to edit. How do you do it?

Okay, it's like this. Sometimes all we do in American schools it practice errors. What do I mean? Well, instead of teaching the concept of say apostrophes in depth, we teach it with a worksheet where kids mindlessly pepper them in or instead we put a sentence on the board with apostrophes in the wrong place and ask kids to fix them. It seems reasonable: Practice fixing errors and you will become proficient at creating prose without errors. But do we start history class with all the wrong dates and names on the board and ask kids to fix them? What about learning the concepts first? What if we would learn concepts like apostrophes or commas deeply before we start looking at wrongness all the time. We don't spend enough time letting the kids marinate in correctness, the correctness of well-written effective prose. Let the kids look again and the flowing sentences of E.B. White rather than an error-filled fix-a-thon. If they don't become familiar with the concepts they are asked to edit for BEFORE they are asked to edit, of course they won't do it well. How could they? How can you tell if something like a mark is missing if you don't know where it is supposed to be in the first place? And just pause for a moment and think at what staring at all those wrong sentences is doing to kids visual memory? What looks right, huh? By rehearsing error rather than using punctuation to shape meaning and play with effect, we miss an opportunity to make editing about creating meaning rather than avoiding error. In my book Mechanically Inclined, I say "Teach grammar and mechanics as a creational facility rather than a correctional one."

4) Why is there such resistance to editing? Is there no pride in one's work or one's finished product?

I think the resistance comes from the way it's being taught. Many of the same objectives (like commas in a series or compound sentences) start as early as 4^th grade and then are repeated through the end of high school. And yet, these very errors are still some of the top errors in college freshman (Lunsford and Lunsford, to be published). Kids don't know or understand the deep patterns, nor are they practicing on their own work. Kids need to write and write and make editing a part of that process. I complained about the kids not editing as well, but then I realized, how am I showing them by the way I teach, the way I spend my time in my class that it's important to reread your own words? How much time do we actually spend on this in our classes?

5) Why do people like you and I ruminate over our choice of words, and whether or not to have a comma, or whether or not to break that overly long sentence into two sentences?

I talked to a few children's book authors while writing Everyday Editing. They both described how they learned to be editors and better writers by wrestling with the process: rereading, changing, rereading, changing, making something beautiful and sharing it. You can't get that from correcting crummy sentences. You get that from studying the work of great authors, learning to see how they create and dazzle their readers with the special effects that grammar and mechanics can provide. And that this process of rereading and rewriting is what makes writing strong. I need my instruction to communicate this, and this is what I tried to do in this book. I wanted to share with other teachers a way of teaching editing that worked with my students in an inner city middle school in San Antonio, Texas. I know how hard it is to teach kids to edit, but I guess this hyperactive guy still wants to make a difference. We all have innate desire to express ourselves; writing and editing are what help us articulate our lives.

6) Do you think students in your elementary school like to write?

I have taught both middle and elementary school and I would say the joy of writing sort of gets beaten out of them. I try to spark the love of writing again. Any kindergartner will say he or she can writing even when they don't know the alphabet or even how to hold a pencil. By third grade kids tend to say they "hate writing" or they "can't write" or they veil their disdain or lack of confidence behind "I can't think of anything to write." This comes from being "red penned." Teachers feel a duty to edit a kids' papers—every last bit. Teachers do this out of love and the hope that correcting will teach them. But we know better. Kids don't look at a marked up paper and think about all the opportunities they have for improvement. Instead, they start to identify with an "I can't write" persona. In fact, in their minds they have empirical evidence. "Look at all the marks. I can't write." If we listen, kids can teach us a lot about our teaching—good and bad.

7) I have often felt that one obstacle to getting kids to write is that there is no outlet for their writing. Where do your students send their short stories or poems, or plays?

In my class, we do try to send some writing into contests. Some have won. But really the best audience can be their peers—right there in their classroom. Great writing classrooms have kids writing and sharing with each other all the time. We have an audience every day and we get to know each other's voices. I have also had kids create anthologies of their work, but I find regularly sharing with peers is one of the best opportunities for an outlet. It's quick and it's sure. Sometimes the waiting for contest entries, and not hearing anything if they don't win, is a real enthusiasm killer.

8) Could you tell us about Everyday Editing?

Everyday Editing is my attempt to give teachers and students a way into editing. In fact, the book is set of as a series of invitations: invitations to notice (for we must know what good writing is to recognize, correct, and create it), invitations to imitate (for we can learn much from the masters), invitations to combine, edit, revise, and write (for writing is a messy process and we are constantly coming in and out of creation, reflection, and revision.) I wanted teachers to have more than the English book or marking up papers to teach editing. That didn't work for my students, so I wanted to share what did work. I invite teachers in to reflect on their practice and think about the possibilities of editing instruction and writing being one rather than separate.

9) Has Spell Check helped or hindered the writing process?

That's an interesting question. I can only go with the Lunsford and Lunsford study I mentioned earlier. I can tell you that between a study done in the 80s and one done recently, it appears that computers have helped spelling improve—at least in college freshman's essays. However, wrong word is still defiantly a problem. Get it defiantly? I love that. I am not sure that it actually has people spelling any better but it can—if you know what you're doing—help you make corrections. But, if you're a poor speller, you take the wrong suggestions.

10) What do you mean by a mentor text?

A mentor is someone who teaches us. We learn from their modeling, their depth of experience. A mentor text is a well-written text—often writing by a professional author—that can teach us something we need to know about writing. The wonderful thing about well-crafted prose is that we can learn endless things, from the craft of writing to the craft of editing. And we can do it all at once, see how the author uses grammar and sensory detail to reveal character or setting.

11) Does your book discuss the minutiae of writing- such as dashes---and commas, and semi-colons and …dots..and abbreviations and apostrophes and ampersands and i.e. and e.g. and things like that (that I have probably just butchered?

Actually, my first book Mechanically Inclined: Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into Writer's Workshop does deal with that minutiae of writing (
This book has all that you mentioned in the list save the i.e. and e.g. This new book deals with less things in more depth. As I like to say, kids can't learn when we try to give them a sip of water from a fire hose. We have to focus and go in depth. I don't claim to cover it all, but I invite kids into a way of thinking about grammar and punctuation. That's what this book does.

12) I think kids can learn to enjoy writing and written expression, but they just need a lot of feedback and encouragement- True or False?

True, truer, and truest. Encouragement is a huge part of the writing process. In fact, some researchers (Johnston, Purkey) say that if a child doesn't feel he has a chance of success at something, he won't engage with a process. And we know when kids don't engage, they don't learn. So yes, yesser, and yessest. (I just read aloud the book Pig, Pigger, and Piggest by Walton today—if you read it, you'll understand my bizarreness. I am in the DFW airport right now—fried from a week of giving training. I took a sabbatical this year to do some staff development for teachers and write a children's novel.)

13) How do you teach punctuation and grammar and style? Or do I have to buy the book and read all about it?

Yes, you have to buy the book, but you can read it online right now for free. Check out the serial comma lesson and you'll see. (You may already know that, but I just saw that it was online today.)

Here's a link:

http://www.stenhouse.com/assets/pdfs/Anderson0709%20pp47-60.pdf

But here's my short answer.

Two words: Mentor texts. Okay, so you've picked up that I don't say only a little about anything, but I try. It's about asking kids to pay attention in new ways, to read like writers. I can put a lovely sentence by Andrew Clements or Maya Angelou on the board and ask the kids, "What do you notice?" And we marinate in all its power, soaking up craft and grammar so we can become intimately familiar with it. When we do that, we start a process of noticing that can flow into their words and inspire them to create beauty and clarity as well—like their mentors.

14) What question have I neglected to ask?

None, Mr. 14. I think I feel sufficiently asked;-)

15) As a final comment, I would like to ask you to print this out for all of your students and let them know that there are people out here in the world that care about writing, and prose and the fine art of writing well and using grammar appropriately. Would you do that for me?