All Work and No Play Makes Jack (or Jill) a Dull Writer

Authors

Joseph Anson

Keywords

English teachers, wordplay, writing practice, secondary classrooms, classroom instruction

Submission Type

Research

Preview

Yes, I am one of those geeky idealistic English teachers, who occasionally fantasize about being Robin Williams’ character Mr. Keating from the classic film Dead Poets Society. After twelve years of unsuccessfully convincing my students to call me “O Captain, My Captain,” I still hold to the belief that I can get my students to “savor words and language” (Haft, Henderson, Witt, Thomas, & Weir, 1989). Regardless of an individual’s ability or inherent wordsmithiness, I encourage all students to play with words on many different levels. On Fridays, we set aside time to play with words. Just play. But why? Aren’t there roughly sixteen kajillion “testable” language arts objectives to cover in the first semester alone? Yes, but don’t worry about those; I’ll explain.

Recommended Citation

Anson, Joseph (2012) "All Work and No Play Makes Jack (or Jill) a Dull Writer," The Utah English Journal: Vol. 40, Article 2.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/uej/vol40/iss1/2