"No I don't want to write another story!"- Students Everywhere

While I was reading Holding On to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones, the chapters about writing seemed very familiar.   As an educator we have been "taught" how to teach writing.  There is a format the students must follow, there is even a rubric.  The writing traits which include focus, organization, support and conventions.  We introduce similes and the wonderful world of figurative language, we encourage the students to use their own voice and ideas (as long as it is within the rubric, of course).  I use different books to illustrate different genres of writing and relate reading and writing as one.  I encourage them to be creative with their limited background knowledge.
To say the least it is frustrating, but I still love to teach writing.  Some of the student thrive with the expository rigid format, mostly my ELL students.  They know what exactly to do, there is limited creative requirements.  Others immerse themselves in the narrative world, create elaborate setting with wild characters.  As Newkirk points out some of the best writing is free writing, this I believe is important and more valuable than the writing I am teaching (don't tell the district).  Especially with the boys, as Newkirk explains, with censorship of writing boys fall dramatically behind girls in reading, and particularly writing, by the third grade.  Boys enjoy excitement, comics, video games more than girls.  I have more break downs during writing from the boys than I would like to acknowledge, the pressure from having to "create" to a prompt that holds no interest for them can be too much for them to handle.  Especially when they know it is a standardized test.
We are getting rid of writing FCAT and replacing it with responding to text writing.  Maybe this will eliminate the meltdowns (doubtful).  Maybe, I will have time to encourage free writing, they can explore the world of creativity without me reminding them of how many similes and pizzazz words they have, let them enjoy writing about what ever it is nine year olds find facinating.