As we are preparing ourselves to become future writing teachers, or become better writing teachers, we must learn how to make them not only great writers, but effective ones. This is a complicated task for of a number of different reasons. The first being that we do not know what career path our students will take, and therefore are unable to tailor their writing skills to that particular career path. In turn, although we may think we are doing our best at improving their writing skills, it may not benefit them at all in the future depending on what exactly they will be needing to write within their field.
In the article, “Writing in The Work World”, the author states that “Moving away from test-centered writing to world-centered writing better engages and prepares students for the worlds of college, work, and life.” I could not agree more. I strongly disagree with the way we, as students, are prepared for the world in terms of our writing. Throughout high school I did my best to ensure that my writing progressed in the terms that the school deemed correct. Although I did well, it did not thoroughly prepare me for the real world and especially did not prepare me for the various types of writing I would have to do in college. In high school, we were taught how to write to pass. But in reality, we need to be taught how to write to succeed. In this, I mean that we were always taught how to write in order to pass the tests we were given by teachers and the state, but we were never taught how to write reports, emails, speeches, even checks and letters. How is that possible? I know some of these may seem like a given that one should just know, but it amazes me to see just how many students my age cannot complete these essential tasks. In addition to the traditional teaching methods we use to improve out students writing, we should also teach them how to write more than just what passes in the eyes of standardized testing.
Rhiannon's Blog 
I completely agree with you. I think education has become way too based on standardized tests, where teachers are essentially making lesson plans in order for their students to succeed on the tests, but not necessarily much more than that. It’s sad, and I don’t entirely blame the teachers because a lot of the times they are evaluated on the test scores their students achieve, so it makes sense that they want their students to do well on the exams. So, I think teachers have to change their approach, but also that school’s reliance on tests as a measurement of a student’s knowledge and teacher’s competency needs to change. Otherwise, we won’t be taught how to write things outside of English essays, which is important because like you said, students go on many different career paths. But, a teacher won’t teach writing for other career paths if it doesn’t directly correlate with a standardized test because teaching to write, for example, a speech or email isn’t going to help a student on a test and therefore won’t benefit the teacher in that way. Other forms of writing are extremely important to learn, and I agree that we need to move in that direction.
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Being graded to pass, not to succeed, is a very enlightening way to look at this discrepancy between what students are taught to write in high school and what they actually need to write in life. What sucks the most about all of this is that teachers still need to hammer down these standardized writing methods because it’s out of their control. It’s in the state’s control, and that just doesn’t seem right. Hopefully we can become teachers who will go beyond this barrier and can learn to teach our students how to succeed in addition to pass; make the best out of the situation we’re given
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